New schedule for the missionaries and a visit from Elder Holland

It has been such good weather down here!! I have been wearing short sleeve shirts and it has been nice. :) Today I found out that I will be spending the next 6 weeks with Elder Olsen in Ridgeland. It should be fun and I am looking forward to it! Hopefully we can find someone to be baptized this transfer. But this week I hit 6 months!! I was so excited!!

This week has been amazing!! So the missionary schedule is being changed. They are making it so we can be out of the apartment longer and so we can be out talking with more people. This can be either super fun or super annoying just depending on if the person woke up on the wrong side of the bed and forgot to eat their cheerios, haha. The new schedule will also give us more time to exercise and time to be able to sleep a little more!!!

Also besides that, Elder Holland came to our mission and spoke to us!! It was super amazing and I was able to shake his hand again:) The spirit was so strong there and he is so funny. I wish we could have spent more time with him but sadly he was on a tight schedule. So at the meeting all of the missionaries from our mission met up in Jackson, so I got to see a lot of my friends, and I was able to see my father (my first trainer)! It was so much fun. This week has been super spiritual and I loved it so much. I can't wait to be able to carry that spirit with me hopefully to people's homes and help them come closer to Christ. I miss ya'll and hope that everyone has a good week!

Love Elder Corbett

Me and Elder Holland

The Ray Town Branch

Crazy weather and zone conference

I am so jealous that you have another snow day!!! Everyone gets days off, but the Lord's work never has days off. I guess this is the year for storms. Here in Mississippi, they say they have bad weather, and the tornado warnings go off but nothing happens... I wanted to see a tornado. The warning was going off one night, and I looked outside and there wasn't even any wind. So I just went to bed. It has sometimes rained hard, but that is pretty much it.

This week we had zone conference and we learned a lot. One of the things that I learned is that apparently, the schedule that has been in place for the past 12 years, is going to be changed. I am not totally sure on what that change is going to be. I will find out on Wednesday at the missionary training broadcast.

Besides that this week has been pretty slow. We were able to go up to this little branch on Sunday called the Ray Town branch. It was at one of the oldest church buildings in the mission. It's over 100 years old! I think there was only about 20 people who attended. That was crazy for me! I also gave a talk for about 20 minutes. Amazing that I could talk that long with just a few bullet points. Anyways, this week has been crazy and fun. I just hope the weather stays warm and that we will be able to find some people this week.

Elder Corbett

An eventful week

Wow, this week was crazy eventful. So let me start off by telling you about the man who was baptized last Saturday. His heart stopped and he has been unconscious since the day after he was baptized. So he was not able to receive the holy ghost or receive a priesthood blessing. His mom will not allow any visitors from our church, which sucks. So we have been praying like crazy for him.

Then I went on exchanges to South Jackson and we did service for 4 hours haha. It was so funny, my pants ripped pretty bad and I continued to work though it. I thought it was so funny that my joggers ripped. I thought they were stretchy but I guess I have out grown them.

Then later on in the week we were able to go do service at this food network. We made food boxes with female inmates. I think it is so funny that they would give them box cutters. But they were all cool. I think it was so fun to work with them. I even asked one what she did, and she just took the rap for her cousin, so she didn't even do anything. I was like wow what a homie. That is a true friend.

On Saturday we went up to Canton which is the poorer part of our area. We have had so many people request bibles that the church gives out for free. I have asked a few how they found the website and all they do is search free bible on google. But we were able to contact a few of them, and teach them.

We didn't have P-day on Monday because of MLK day, so it was just a regular day. We taught a few people but at the end of the night, we tried this lady Elder Neilsen, my last companion, met. When I first met her, she was going through a hard time, she had just left her boyfriend with her 4 kids, moved in with her parents and was just heart broken. We realized that God had sent us to her in that time to help comfort her. So it has been a while since we have seen her, but she was outside last night. We talked with her. She got a new job that pays a lot better and is easier work, and she has been reading the Book of Mormon and has been feeling peace and comfort as she has read it. I was honestly so happy to see this change in her life.

I finally have found a cotton field down here in Mississippi and I took some pictures in it. :) One of the pictures shows how happy I was.

Elder Corbett

Ice Rain and a Baptism

The weather down here was nothing like snow, and more snow like you got in Utah, but it has been cold and there has been ice rain. The people down here had like .01 inches of snow/ice rain on the ground and they were driving 10 mph and I was just cruising, because I know how to drive in it. I thought it was so funny. The people also do not like going outside in the cold either. We went tracting on Saturday, and no one would let us in because it was so cold. They would tell us to go home and be warm. This one lady wouldn't even open her door, and she told us to get out of the ice. Also my companion isn't used to ice so we were walking and he was going so slow because he didn't want to slip and fall and I was just trucking along, walking normal, because I am used to it. Besides that, we didn't have anything crazy happen. It has just been so cold haha.

But on Sunday we had a Baptism. Paul Irby is his name, and he is one of the kindest men I have met. So his story is that he has been going to church with this family for over a year, and in October he asked this lady how he could be baptized, so she called the sister missionaries. They taught him everything, but the boundaries changed and we inherited him with about 3 weeks before his baptism. It was such a blessing to be able to finish off his teaching and help him be baptized. There was such a great spirit there, and I loved it so much. Hopefully I can help some more people be baptized.

Elder Corbett

Before the ice storm and after

Paul Irby's Baptism

Let's begin the Blackout Year

So the blackout year is the full year when you are on the mission, so January 1st to December 31st. I began mine just a few days ago. This week I got to celebrate my birthday and New Year's. On New Year's Eve, we celebrated at 9 o'clock as we went to bed. It is so different with holidays on the mission, but they are still a lot of fun with members.

On Thursday, I turned 19 and I am so grateful for everyone who wished me happy birthday and emailed me. Ya'll are the best. The Alhaltehs took very good care of me and threw me a birthday party. :) We were also on exchanges and Elder Hunter took me to Ihop for breakfast.

This week has been a week to see if we are willing to work when we we're seeing no success. So we tried and knocked and sadly no one wanted to hear our message. This old guy tried telling us that we follow the wrong calendar and he called me stupid. Luckily, I was able to let it go, and wished him a good day. So you can see what we are struggling with.

But Monday we went to Canton which is a poorer area and we knocked a few doors in the rain, which works. Three out of ten doors opened and we were able to teach some people. It was a lot of fun to be back among my fellow black friends again! haha They are so nice to us.  I am so happy that I get to be help people build their faith in Jesus Christ the entire year of 2017! I hope all is well for you!!:)

Elder Corbett