Elder Colton Craig: Tennessee? No. Kentucky.

TN Nashville Mission Home

So it has been a little long since my last email, so I'm sorry about that, but I'm here now aren't I?

So I went to Nashville with some of my district. I got to talk to my Mom and it was nice to talk to her. And we met the mission president and his wife. They are very nice people. We came with about 14ish people in all and we spent the night at the mission home. The next day the mission president put together a kind of orientation and set us up with our companions. It's sad to see the rest of my district leave but all is well!

Elder Ross with Jeff Foxworthy's
Complete Redneck Dictionary

Anyway, he set me up with my new companion, Elder Ross. He is an 18 year old and he is pretty cool. He can get on my nerves a lot like he lost our phone and he wasn't freaking out about it and just being super sarcastic the entire time. I am in Russellville, Kentucky which is about an hour away from Nashville. Russellville is really small!

Like there are some restaurants and stuff here but after that it's like the sticks. It's so small I think our branch covers four towns. Russellville, Adairville, Lewisberg, and Auburn. I also found out that culture shock is more than a gasp at cultural differences. It makes you stressed out. So I became super stressed at southern accents haha. I got over it eventually.

So I came to the apartment and my roommate failed to mention that we had cockroaches. So that was fun the first couple of days. You surprisingly get used to them pretty quickly. Anyway they mostly stay
out in the kitchen because there is food in there. I have never seen one in the bedroom or the bathroom so we are good there. Also we found bed bugs yesterday. So we spent about 2 hours cleaning the beds and spraying alcohol on them while we killed them. And we spent the night out in the living room last night because we wanted to be sure they were dead.

So some investigators/member stories. We helped Sister Wiebe clean her house because she has an oxygen tank and can barely walk and she has one of those antique spoon collections. They are everywhere. It's kinda cool. We went knocking on doors and met a preacher and we half argued with him about the gospel, but we all appreciated the conversation, including him.

Humpy's car

Oh my gosh my favorite investigator is definitely Humpy though. That's his nickname for Hump Daddy I guess. He is an older man who invested all of his money into his car that he has worked on for at least 20 years, like literally all his money and you'll see why when I send a picture. He is a really funny man who understand the gospel and he made my entire week he is so cool! I met Sister Lynda and she is a huge hoarder, but she is very sweet. I sat on what looked like a stained with cat pee pillow. It smelled so much in that house. Mix cat pee with smoke and that's what it smelled like. I got to meet the Coots and they are such a cute family. They made me a green enchilada because I'm a greenie.

Elder Ross, the Bear, and ME!

We met the Owens and dang I walked in that house and I just see a bear. Like a literal taxidermy bear that he killed in Alaska. He has also killed moose, deer and so many other things. I took a horrible picture with the bear though. We also went to see this one lady and we were teaching her but she kept the tv on muted and it was hard to stay focused because she was watching the original Silent Hill movie. So I got to see Pyramid Head a little bit haha.

Other than a couple of weird stories I can't remember like how we made cinnamon rolls with a waffle iron and how I showed my new district the infamous names of the Judd family, that is pretty much it. I'll see you all later! I'm not sure how I'm gonna get the pictures to send to you guys off my camera because I can't go to the library but I'll try to figure it out! Until next week everyone!