Elder Adam Walker:

June:
Cade's mission is right above mine. 3 or 4 areas border with many of their areas, maybe we will serve in bordering areas and go to lunch or something one of these times here in the near future. That would be pretty cool huh? It looks like things are all messed up with transfers and everything, and me and Mackay are just going to be staying another transfer together. Not for sure yet, but that's what it sounds like. I will survive I guess.

Tracy's baptism went awesome, by far the best baptism I have been involved in. It was so cool. The baptism was great, but also in sacrament meeting on Sunday, she was confirmed and 2 of her kids were blessed as well, so it was an extra treat. She told us that she wanted to pull a prank on us by calling right before they got to the church and tell us that she was backing out and she wasn't going to get baptized. Her husband, Pat, wouldn't let her. It was awesome though. Her husband is a member already, he has been a member for a long time and they are looking forward to going to the temple in a year, so we will be looking forward to that. It was a really good weekend though, I wish every one was like it.

So Wednesday night, I get down to say my prayer, I begin it by saying, "our dear heavenly father....." all the sudden I hear BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!!! I drop to the floor and wait a minute, cause I knew they were gun shots, I just didn't know how close it really was. To make a long story short, come to find out the guy who lives right below us I guess is involved in drugs and he didn't pay the drug lords their money in time. Luckily he was in his Bedroom at the time of the shooting because 3 of the 5 bullets went through his window in his living room, and one went right through his couch where he normally sits. Pretty crazy huh? Needless to say the member who owns the house kicked the guy out. It threw us for a loop that's for sure though. But we are all alive and doing all good! So yet another Gun Shot story, they seem to just follow me around.

This week I even have an atheist story! We were out tracking about 10 days ago and we knocked on this atheist guys door. Our welcome included: Be careful, my dog hates Christians. Eventually I coaxed my way into his door and he let us in and we had an awesome lesson! But at the end, it turned out to be that he didn't think it was such a great lesson, as I thought. He says thank you for coming into my home, have a good day, bye. It was pretty weird. I left him one little pass along card with the churches website on the back and we left it at that. Well, 3 days go by and we get a media referral for someone who requested a bible, come to find out it was this guy. So we call and set up an appointment to give it to him the next day. When we get there he tells us that he has had some interesting experiences the last while. One of them being that his grandma came to him in a dream and told him pretty much that he needed to be a christian because Christ does indeed live, he has just had some awesome experiences that truly show God's love for each of us. He wants us to come back as often as we can now. It's been really neat to see him come along. He doesn't know if our church is the true one yet, but he is interested enough, I can imagine that he will be baptised pretty quickly. I guess miracles still do happen each day.

Its been a great week, hot, muggy, humid, rainy, sunny... But we have been successful and we had an awesome baptism so it was great!!

So my story for the week! here it is...
It was hotter than the dickens so we thought we would go see this less active couple that wanted us to come out and see them and they live out in the middle of no-where. 30 miles away, and that's if you take the West Virginia Turnpike, it took an hour to get there. West Virginian directions are ridiculous as I have said before and the roads that we were driving on were barley suitable for our car but we managed. So we follow the directions that Elder Mackay had taken down and he tells us that we were there so I turn into the drive way and he says now drive exactly a mile up this holler (hollow) (long driveway) it was unsuitable for our car so we decided that it would be best that we just walked up the road to their house so we didn't smoke our car, and the members advised us to do the same unless we had a pickup, and of course we didn't. So we start walking and a mile later we get to the house... so we thought, come to find out, we had the wrong holler. So we turn around and hike back out. So this is over an hour later and it was all up hill in and all down hill out. It was a mess. But we get back to our car and we figure out exactly where the place we needed to be was and we drive to that place. This holler was even worse than the last one and it was much steeper than the last one we had just got done coming out of. So we start walking up it and I couldn't believe my eyes just walking up there, I think I counted 40 junked cars, 20 washers, a bunch of dryers. Big water tanks, batteries. and there was just all kinds of stuff! It was ridiculous! and this goes on for a whole mile!! Then we get up to the house... oh boy and did we ever have a wonderful greeting. Out of the forest around us all these chickens come out of no where and start making a huge racket and start coming towards us, I bet there was at least 100 of them and they are all just surrounding us. This house that they lived in was all but caved in, I would never have guessed that anyone would have ever lived there let alone how far out that they lived. Then we see the members, the guy had a beard down past his chest and just says, Whhhyyy HOoww youu do-in. He invited us in to his home and there was a trail leading up to his front door and once we got into the home that trail continued up to the couch that was covered with crap but had 1 cushion cleared off so that I could sit on it. The kitchen had 2 trails in it. 1 that led to the fridge and the other to the sink. What a journey it was. This explains my mission in a nut shell.. The nicest people in the world but boy are they interesting!! haha I love it though. The missionary work is pretty slow, we have a couple people that are coming along but we definitely get a good experience and meet some interesting people every day! Their names were the Purdues (Jack and Katherine I believe). I love it. Everything is going well here in West Virginia, you gotta love this place. It sounds like Brantley is getting a little taste of what my mission is like in his area that he is in now. Its great.

July:
For the 4th of July we went to this big festival that they had here in a town nearby and we just did a bunch of street contacting. There were 4 of us missionaries there and we actually had some good successs on finding some people for missionaries to teach. We didn't stay for the fire works that they had though. It gets pretty dangerous at night here. You just never know how many phsyco's are on the roads and everything. Everyone drinks and its just a mess. Its just a little different than Idaho. I really think it is for our own saftey.


I had my interview with president. Elder Mackay is leaving this transfer. I don't know who I am getting yet but I do know for sure that I am getting a new companion. He just told me to hang in there for 1 more week and then I would be getting a strong missionary to help this area get going again. Cause Beckley is an awesome place, good members, pretty good sized city, good people. But when the members don't like one of the missionaries too well things seem to just drop dead. But next week there will be a change but for right now I am just working hard trying to get things up and going a little to make it a little easier on the new missionary coming.