Elder Jerrod Crouch Mississippi Jackson Mission: November 30, 2015

Hey Hey,

This week has flown by and it was full of great times.Tuesday we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders over Jackson and me and Elder Cole somehow got all the people we had scheduled to listen to us so we had like 7 lessons that day which has never happened to me before. 2 people were pretty uninterested but it was still a miracle for people to open the door to us. We scheduled DD for baptism for the end of December and she said the only way she will do it is if we have a blow dryer for her because shes so dang worried about her hair. Its crazy. Black people are so scared of water when we tell them we baptize by immersion because 90% of the people I have extended the baptismal commitment too tell me they cant swim. Its mind boggling to me. But they are more comforted when I tell them how high the water goes. Wednesday we had meetings like we always do and so for lunch we went to this place called Mug Shots which is only in Mississippi and they serve huge Burgers and holy crap it was so dang good. I had a bacon burger with an egg on it and all the fixings and I scarfed that thing down. Most nights we have been doing some construction on a float because the ward is entering the Christmas Parade by making a nativity float to get our church's name out there and so Me and Elder Crisp and a guy in the ward named Greg Allman have basically been building it by ourselves each night. Thursday was a great day. We woke up and went to the turkey bowl. It was the biggest one I have ever played in. We had three games going at a time (so six teams of 9) and we played 3 different games. I was by far the most athletic person on my team so every play it was "Elder Crouch, go long and jump high" and so I did that.....every play.... so I got a lot of touchdowns haha. We then had all the missionaries play beach volleyball for a few hours then left to get ready for our dinners. We went to the Cooks house and they had a good feast for us. We ate at noon and left at 3 then went to the apartment and took a power nap until 5. We woke up and got invited to go to the Mission presidents house to eat some left overs, have more dessert and play games and so we went and played catch phrase and I was super good at that game and Mission president sucked. He couldn't dumb down phrases and so he made their team lose every time it landed on him. Luckily he wasn't on my team haha. I also beat him in ping pong. It was a close match but obviously I prevailed and defeated the master. After thanksgiving, the days were pretty boring. We tracted for 7 hours in two days. Always fun. And in those seven hours, only taught 2 lessons so the success wasn't too high. The new transfer started today and so we got a call saying we are staying here for at least 6 more weeks so I will be at the same address through new years. Elder Crisp had a cool experience tracting. He is a really good skateboarder and has his board out here. He saw a house with a rail outside and he had to knock. Asked if they were skateboarders and they said yes, showed us their back yard and it had a full skate park set up. Elder Crisp was drooling basically, went home, changed, skated with the kid for like an hour and we taught him a lesson. Pretty cool stuff. But I hope your weeks was a great week. (PS I did get the package. Thanks so much. We will grab some Chick Fil A today for lunch and the sweater fits really good!)

Love y'all

Elder Crouch