Like Forsest Maidens, Except We Wear Business Casual

Hello hello again everyone! Coming live from the data septic tank I have the glorious job of managing, it’s Elder McMullin! As always, feel free to send me any hot dogs or eye drops, and I will happily accept them. But, without further ado, here we go!

   This week was pretty meh for work, in all honesty. You see, once again we get to be the happily little dumpster fire of an area and our job. Several more problems cropped up of a diverse and almost humorous nature, from more broken sims to various problems with our mulitude of slideshows. Oh, and our AI is going absolutely rogue and we aren’t really sure why. I am halfway tempted to rename its folder “Skynet” or “HAL” or something, because it’s a little concerning at this point. True, it can’t blow up the earth or open the airlocks or anything like that, but it did ping the Chesterfield zone chat 4 separate times in a row with an identical message, which isn’t a good look for us. Additionally, President got a little mad at us when we said that it was broken and told us to fix it ASAP, so we may have faked it for one day and manually entered all the information. It worked (sort of) but it hurt our pride when VRMSMRB successfully fired about 20 seconds after our grand façade and made us look like idiots. Especially since that makes 5 in Chesterfield.

     However, things are still on the upswing in our area as we try to, in the words of Elder Miller, “Hunt the poor”. Since we are not welcome in a lot of the ritzy areas of Gayton, we’re sticking to lower-income areas and spending longer at them. This does mean a lot of logged hours at 7-11 and Dollar Tree, but it hopefully will yield some wonderful fruit and people who actually want to come to church. Not this week (we pulled 0) but hey, looking to the future is a pretty good action plan. In addition, we had another lesson with Cameron about the Plan of Salvation that was pretty dang spiritual, and we’re really trying to ramp up our member work as the sisters have more meals than us and that is frankly unacceptable. Also, PMG says to meet and align with members, but I am in this for the food. Other notable events were President’s last Zone Conference, the first district council in our megadistrict of 10 people (and my trainer as the DL), and getting a new car with exactly 44 miles on it and those little stickers on all the glass that are so dang crispy to pull off. 

     Before I explain my clickbaity title line (as per always), I wanted to elaborate a little more on Zone Conference. First of all, the Kings of Karolina are all back in the northern zones, and so we had the loudest, most raucous, and most fun table I think the Bennett’s Pasture building has ever seen. After that, we piled into the chapel for some trainings, although Elder Miller and I had to peel off for 10 minutes to fix a laptop, and then President came on. I was so excited to see how he would utilize the powerpoint we lovingly crafted for him, but he made it about 20% percent in and then closed the laptop. Instead, he did what only D&C 100:6 could describe. He talked all about Priesthood Keys and how we are loyal to them, not to President Hutchison or Sister Hutchison or even the MLC. Whomever has authority is who we follow. And when President Warburton enters VRM airspace, those keys turn to him. He exhorted us to unfailingly follow Him from whom all keys originate, namely Jesus Christ. It’ll be a deep and stinging wound to lose someone who I love and who is one of the greatest men I have ever met, but I know President Warburton has been called by the very same God in the very same way to lead us in whatever way is best. Plus, we get an advanced audience with him as he tours the office, which will be a great way to get in his good graces early!

    To explain the title line, we had a bit of fun this week finding in new areas. Because Walmart, Target, Home Depot, all three Wawas, one Kroger, and every Publix this side of the Mississippi has booted us, Elder Miller and I are diversifying away from parking lots. Now, we are keeping with the counsel to “Go where the people are”, but as part of our growing effort to not get arrested we decided to give Deep Run park a shot. Good news? There are a lot of people there at any given time. Bad news? The park is laid out like someone dropped a bowl of spaghetti on the Sacred Grove. There are tons of tiny winding trails all through the thick foliage, and you're never quite sure if you're on the beaten path or on someone else's property at any given time. This was especially true for us, as we had no map and no idea where we were going as we started tromping through the undergrowth. After clearing a few streams and climbing over a few bridges, we realized that we were completely and totally lost. So, we take whatever trail seems more likely to have civilization and continue our bushwhacking in dress shirts and loafers, trying to find any sort of clearing that looks familiar. Luckily, we avoided all poison ivy and poison oak although I was convinced every single shrub or vine with a triple leaf cluster would instantly kill us, and we safely returned to a playground nestled in the middle of the woods. After some *ahem* time there, we journeyed back to the car, invited some more people to church, and marked it as a success of a day. We even went back there today, and it turns out there was an asphalt trail the whole time that takes you through an easy walking trail for dogs and small children. Both dogs and small children were invited our second go around as much more productive elders, and Deep Run is now one of my new favorite finding spots.

Anyways, that about does it for the week. Thanks for reading this thicc email, and I’ll talk to y'all again next week!

From your favorite forest finding expert,

Elder McMullin

Photos!

1: I've already broken several trespassing laws at Walmart- what's one more?

2: Richmond!

3: A glorious hydrangea bush we spotted

4: Tee hee hee

5: yep, we have no idea where we are.