Sept. 22.2014 Letter

I got this one!  Alabama is legit.  Its green and it rains and everybody talks funny.  I'm in Cullman which is apparently the town where the KKK was founded so that's cool.  That's great about Cruz!  What made him want to start going?  Tell the young'uns to email me or write my new address is 301 3rd Ave. NE Apt. 2 Cullman, AL 35055.  I'll send you a picture of it.  My first day here was crazy.  First thing in the morning the relief society president calls and begs us to come to her CPR class because nobody showed up...so I'm CPR certified now.  Then we taught a lady named Nadine.  She was really cool and we talked a lot...southern women talk a lot.  At the end of our lesson though we asked her if she would be willing to pray and she literally spent 30 minutes planning out this prayer because she'd never prayed in front of people.  She had it all written down and everything.  She started praying by just reading what she had wrote, but towards the end, instead of just ending where she had stopped writing, she started asking that she would be able to gain a testimony and know if the things we were saying were true.  It was really cool to hear her say that after how nervous she was.  We spend a lot of time in the projects.  Its pretty sad seeing the people that live there that either can't get out of that situation, or choose not too, but the people there are nice.  There's actually a few people there that have committed to getting baptized, its just a matter of actually getting them to do it.  Then there's the recent convert, Mario, the first person who's accent I couldn't understand...he's from Mexico.  I think he might be from the same place that Luis is from.  Its still pretty hard to just go up and start talking to people.  I think the knocking door to door thing is a whole lot easier than that.  Most people here see us and first thing they say is that they already belong to a different church.  I had my first experience with those other churches last night.  So we were walking into the park looking for people to talk to when this group of people starts walking out.  They see us and ask if we are holy...I didn't know what to answer.  We just explained to them that we were missionaries and we were looking for people who needed service or prayers or were curious to know more.  That prayer thing got them and they wanted us to pray for them.  Which we did...but they wanted to do it in the way where you all stand in a circle and hold hands...which was weird, but we did it so we could get out of there and they would leave us alone...we thought.  After we said a prayer for them, they thought it was their turn and that they should pray for us....I have never seen anybody pray like that and I never want to experience it again...If I had ever had doubts before that this was the true church what ever they did just dismissed all of them forever.  It was the weirdest thing I've ever experienced.  The guy saying it claimed to be receiving revelation that one of us had issues with our dad that we needed to resolve...I was trying not to laugh cause dad is pretty awesome and this whole situation was ridiculous, but my companion was scared that I was crying because they guy was right and I was gonna up and convert or something, but I was trying so hard not to laugh...Alabama is awesome.  Smoking is a really big problem here though.  One of the reasons a lot of our investigators haven't been baptized yet is because they can't quit smoking, but all of our investigators are great.