SISTER KATIE ZACKRISON: Booneville

My week has been quite a crazy roller coaster. From the busy city of Hoover, Alabama to the small town of Booneville, Mississippi. Yes, I know I was sent to Alabama, but we cover a few other states in my mission, and now I have been lucky enough to cross over the state lines. I have always wanted to serve in a small town, and in Mississippi, but that was before I knew what it was like! Ha ha. I am actually about 40 miles from Tennessee! The thought I have almost daily is, “Where the heck am I?” I didn’t have much of a culture shock in Montgomery and in Hoover because they were both pretty big cities. But Booneville is one different story! I am still overwhelmed with how different this small town is! I didn’t know that people still lived like this. I may never experience another small town life, so I am trying to enjoy it while I can. I have been making a list of the crazy small town things I see, and so I will share a few of them with you.

First off, driving up here from Birmingham is a four hour drive. It is funny, when you cross the state line, you can literally feel the road change. It is way more bumpy and countrified. Ha ha. I can’t tell you how many cow pastures we passed, and how vast and large the country is. We were driving down the road, and there was a tractor in front of us. I have never seen this before! But what makes it even better…we passed the tractor! We finally got to Booneville, and I noticed that we don’t have normal traffic lights. They are these tiny lights…and most streets just have a four way stop sign instead hanging from the power lines. It is pretty weird. We only have a few places to shop, thank goodness Walmart is one of them!

The culture here is so different. People were born, and raised here in this little town, never knowing anything different. The whole ward is related, and that is because people just marry and move down the street. I still haven’t been able to master who is related to who and that has been kind of overwhelming. One day a member was driving us around, and I saw a baseball bat in her car! Later on, she was talking about how you never know what happens in the country and she has guns loaded in her house! I thought to myself, ” I cannot be living this life. This is not real.” The people here have the thick accent, and I am hearing sayings I am now having to deciphering. For example, “How you making it?” means how are you doing? I am going to be so southern after my time in this little town!

As far as missionary work goes, I have been trying to get to know all of the investigators here. We are working with a few awesome people, and we have a lot of recent converts we are working with as well. We are going to start working a booth at the college in town, and so that will be fun to be a part of as well. I will be able to update y’all a little bit more next week when I get the hang of the area a little bit better. We don’t bike too often, at least not yet. We get members to go out with us, and that has been fun.

Booneville is such a new experience for me. As I was feeling a bit lost the other day, I had the thought to thank God for giving me the opportunity to grow. I will learn a lot about life here, and that will be so good for me as His disciple. Life is simple here. It makes me think of a quote I found in a store, it goes a little like this. “Happiness, is home made.” I can testify that that is seen here in the small town of Booneville. The people don’t have much, and we see a lot of broken families here. But they find happiness in the small things in life, and they “delight in plainness.” I hope to learn how to live like that. This will be good for me. Remember, that you have to make your own happiness. It won’t come unless you look for it.

My crazy southern experience for this week is that I went to the Hill Billy Mall, and I also was able to witness a truck pull. It is kind of like the stick pull game, except two trucks are chained together and they pull against each other…so red neck. We walked over and they all ran away from us…so against Mormons. Ha ha. I am seeing new things everyday!

I love y’all! Until next week,