So after finally arriving in Tenn. I can actually get to work teaching real people.
It is way different in Tenn. It was funny when we got here because we had a lot of kids from Arizona and Utah that had never experienced humidity. This place reminds me of home quite a bit except there are mountains and tons of trees. There is no flat fields and not a lot of agriculture going on around here. They said that there is a little bit of tobacco and cotton but that is about it. I think yesterday is the first time I've have seen cows since I got here.
I am currently living in Rockwood which has a branch that is about the same size as ours. Yesterday we had what I guess was a ton of people show up for that little branch. I think what the clerk said was we broke 90 people. They do have enough members that if everyone showed up that they would be a ward but they have a problem with non-actives or less actives (LA). Right now I think we visit one LA for every investigator we visit.
There are a lot of people that live in government housing and don't have jobs. It seems like there is either people that are pretty well off or there are people that live in the projects, I don't think there is a middle class here. We encounter a lot of people that have Word of Wisdom issues here and in fact if you come across a house that doesn't smell of cigarette smoke they are most likely a Baptist preacher or either a member of our church already.
This week we have been doing a lot of tracting because they just split our boundaries in half so we have two sets of missionaries in the branch and of course the half that they had all we had all the investigators that had a lot of potential were given to the other set of sisters. Of which one is being baptized this Saturday. I think that the sisters will be good for some of the investigators and trying to bring back less actives.
We have ran into a couple of good people while we are tracting. It is tough though because it seems everyone is Baptist down here. Literally on every block there is a Baptist church. I now see why they call it the Bible belt. I think we are right on the buckle of it too. So whenever we actually get to talk to people they are either convinced that they know our church and that we don't believe in Christ or that our religions don't go together at all. It is nice when somebody does let us teach them.
It is kind of rough trying to keep up with Portuguese here. I have another companion that is going to Brazil so we have taken turns practicing teaching each other but we can't use it all the time. It is pretty tough trying to maintain with only having an hour a day and no teacher to teach us. I still want to be in Brazil so I don't lose my Portuguese and it isn't as big of a shock when I get there but I know I'm here for a reason and I need to remember that I'm serving the Lord and not time.
Love
Elder Saueressig
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