Howdy yall, hope you had a fantastic week!! First off transfer news came for this upcoming week and I am going to be training!! I am so excited! This will be my first time training and I will be staying as the district leader of New Braunfels as well. In our mission we lovingly refer to new missionaries as greenies 💚 and if they are your trainee then they are affectionately known as your son or daughter. So I am going to have a son and for the rest of his mission he will get to refer to me as mission dad 😂 But as of right now I have no idea who it is – just I know I am one of the 16 Elders training this transfer and I will meet my companion at transfers when President pairs us up. So I will have a name and picture of him next week!

This does mean that my current companion Elder Randall aka RANDY will be leaving the area which is a sad goodbye because we really enjoyed being together. He was super chill the whole time and we got along great. It's been a little bit since I “one and doned” a companion and so it feels a little odd cause it's like bruh I just met this dude! But it's alright he is going to the Stone Oak area of San Antonio with Elder Kimball Walker. Who my Elder Walker trained so now we each have an Elder Walker in the companion history log. 

As for this week though we really didn't do much to be honest. Kinda felt burnt out from the past few weeks and so not our best performance 🫠 Lowkey going to need to lock in next transfer and set a good example for my new child. But during this past transfer I feel like I've grown so much! I am good at waking up everyday and going to the gym!! Something that was really hard for me to do for my first few transfers. I've enjoyed being district leader to and have built good relationships with those in my district and we saw a lot of success overall for it. We focused heavily on members and we are sitting at a fat 117 MPLs (Members Participating in Lesson) which is the most I have ever seen a district too. We played a fun game of emojis in our group chat and I kept track of points and would buy drinks for everyone if we hit our weekly goals. A cool thing too is honestly we didn't do like any knocking it feels like this transfer and yet simply through member work we found the same amount of people as the last transfers when all they did was knocking. I full heartedly believe what President Bramwell said about how important member work is because when we focus on that – everything improves and I have seen that true 3 times now!! 👏 👏 👏 

One cool opportunity we had this weekend was we got to go help with the flood recovery in Kerrville, TX. You may remember last year hearing on the news about a Texas town that flooded and that a bunch of kids at a Christian camp passed away – well this year the town flooded again – in some spots worse than last. But not any casualties I have heard of. But on Sunday instead of going to church in our wards we were sent to Kerrville – 2 hours away – for an 8am sacrament meeting and then we got to work!! We split up into different groups with local members and we went to the home of an older couple who got hit really hard. They were blessed though because their home wasn't made out of sheetrock or wood. Instead it was made of steel beams and foam which meant we didn't need to cut out any of the wall. We sat down with the couple for a little bit and talked to them and it was a really heartbreaking tragedy. He actually was laid off recently and then in the middle of the night out of nowhere, at least 3 feet of water ran through their house in 10 mintues. They escaped through a window with nothing but their phones and their dog. It ruined pretty much all of their belongings including one of their cars being completely destroyed with the engine ripped out in the garage. 

Our job was to help clear out the debris from their driveway, yards, and smashed fences. Wood and bits of trees were all over the place as well as a ton of dirt. We mainly shoveled everything out in truck beds and wheel barrows. Seeing the devastation even just a few feet of water bring really shows me how scary flash floods really can be. Luckily our crew didn't have to do any mucking out because a crew already did that a few days ago. But we sure did work in the hot sun and I haven't done that hard of work in a while but I felt very strengthened by the Lord and was able to feel a lot of charity and peace. The Church mobilized the whole process at an incredible speed, starting with people from local wards going around and offering service to anyone in need and then signing up their house for a crew to come to. They also provided meals and cleaning kits for the families as well. The incredible work of the Lord's people made sure everyone had enough food, water, and plenty of helping hands. 🙏🙏🙏

With Love,

Elder Noble

(Pictured below are Elder Randall and I, Elder Johnson and I are on our exchange when we got Bahama bucks, our mission leaders sent in a photo of themselves making 6/7 jokes which they've been doing a lot lately lol, and some pics of the flood damage.)