Brian Email 4-14-05

Hey y'all.

How are things? I'm still here, more or less healthy, and everything is
going really well. I'm with only one companion now, Elder Gordon. He's
finishing up here in 5 weeks, so it's my job to keep him from slacking.
He's doing better than Elder Frost did, it's pretty hard to stay focused
when you know you're about to leave. It looks like I'll be in Charlotte
for a while, I haven't heard anything really though. Is Venezuela still
struggling with floods and things? I heard that Hugo Chavez is accusing
Pres. Bush of planning an assasination of Fidel Castro, and I know that
something is going down between Venezuela Colombia and Brazil, but I
don't really know how much of that is affecting my visa. I'd be ok with
staying here, it's nice, and they need Spanish speaking missionaries
here anyway. We only have about 20 in the mission. Venezuela is
loaded, they can wait. :)

I have to say congratulations to both of the boys for their piano thing.
I wish you two could come play for our branch out here. It's a real
struggle trying to sing along to our pianist, but he's the best we've
got. He can only play the melody line (usually) and then he makes up a
left hand part, which is usually not in the same key. And when he
messes up he goes back to fix it, so the whole congregation gets
confused. He's a cool guy, but it's really hard to sing along to him.

It's good to hear that the yard is looking good. I did a lot of yard
work last week. On Friday we helped our relief society president do
some weeding in her garden, and then on Saturday we had a zone activity
of planting trees in Rock Hill, SC. A baptist church was building a
building, but according to city zoning they had to plant so many trees
in specific places. Down here, all the buildings are practically hidden
from the street by all the trees. It looks pretty nice, but it takes a
lot of time and money to put them all in and take care of them. So we
helped plant around 100 trees, and then they fed us after, it was a lot
of fun, but we were pretty beat afterward. A lot of the trees were
taller than me, and we had to dig all the holes by hand, so that took
from 8:00 am to 1:30 pm. It's kind of weird to think we were doing yard
work at the same time last week.

How is Bro. Hunt doing with his field? Does he have a lot of help this
year, or is he still out there alone every night?

We had a Noche de hogar (FHE) with an investigator on Monday. Usually
they are really quiet and we can't get many answers out of them when we
ask them things, but it turned out really well. We watched Finding
Faith In Christ with them and then we played a game, and everyone had a
good time. The mom has committed to be baptized but she hasn't picked a
date yet. She said she wants to do it in May, which is good, that will
give us time to teach the rest of the lessons. We're going to get a
firm date out of her next time we see her.

Another funky thing that happened, yesterday we tracted into a member.
He's from Honduras, and he said he was baptized there, and was active
for a year and then came here and hasn't looked for the church. A lot
of Honduranians (Catrachos) have had the lessons before. One of my MTC
teachers said that in her whole mission in Honduras she only taught
about 5 people that had never heard all the lessons before. Crazy isn't
it?

Well, that's all I've got for now. I was going to go play disc golf
today, but it's been raining (just like every other time I've planned to
go so far). Maybe next week. Have a great day all!

Elder Harris

P.S. 1 month until Shannon's wedding!! and until I call home. :)