A little under the weather

Alas, this week's email will be much shorter than usual, seeing as we have been sick with the flu for the most part of it. Last week while I was emailing, I started feeling a tickle in my throat, and started sneezing a lot. From there, I progressively got worse and worse, until Wednesday morning, I didn't wake up until 9:30. I felt like trash. My face felt like it would melt off, my muscles all ached, and I really wasn't in the mood to go out and work. However, to my dismay, we had some appointments that we wanted to keep. So we went to them, got them done and over with, and we came back to the apartment, where I got to sleep the day away. Elder M picked up the infection also, so we both just slept. The next day, I developed congestion, my lungs and nose filled with mucus, I developed a smoker-cough, and my balance was a bit off. I'm still battling the nose problem, but the other symptoms have moved on.

For Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday last week, we were called upon to give two hours of service per day helping out at the local Poway Rodeo Grounds, to help set up for the rodeo that happened last Friday and Saturday. So, us being sickies, but still wanting to help, we went anyway to do the service. During the Wednesday service, I was sweating cold sweats, and I was really struggling. BUT, we managed to get some fencing done up, and set up the dance floor, which consisted of wood panels ridged with metal that hooked together. It took awhile, and was pretty tenatious work, but we got it all done. During the Thursday service, we helped to rake out the roping chutes, and got that area set up, and then went to the bull-riding chutes and got those all prepped. After that, we went and visited with a couple of members. For the Friday service, we went and ended up doing some of the most interesting stuff. While Elder M and I helped to move some trimmed branches over to the mulching area, the other missionaries helped by taking inventory of the beer, moving ice into the beer truck, and then we all helped to get the beer stands set up. Needless to say, the majority of those cowboys made some snarky comments about the "Mormon kids handling beer". We, as missionaries, joked it up a bit, and I noticed that as we did, it put all of those tough cowboys at ease. Who knows? Maybe us helping them like that will open the doors of missionary work later on.

On Saturday, we ended up visiting F, and when we showed up, it turns out that he had gotten the flu as well. So, instead of trying to avoid each other, we just shook hands and hugged since we were all infected anyways. We shared the first bit of the Plan of Salvation, so as to be able to cover all of the points in a very nice way. We covered premortality, creation, the Fall, our purpose in life, the Atonement, and Death. F really liked it, and made some really good comments throughout the lesson. This Saturday, just after the first session of General Conference, we'll be finishing off the rest of the Plan.

On that topic, I am SO FLIPPIN' EXCITED FOR GENERAL CONFERENCE. I think being a missionary has special spiritual perks, because I don't remember EVER having had this much of a desire to watch General Conference. That and the fact that I'm doing a lot of things the right way NOW that I wasn't doing BEFORE the mission...yup. Anywho. It sounds like we'll be watching all of the sessions at the Stake Center, since almost none of the members in the Spanish unit have cable to receive the broadcast. We also got a special privilege just last week. There's this frozen yogurt joint called Golden Spoon, the which is owned by a member of the Church. The member gave permission to all missionaries to receive a regular size cup for free, whenever. The mission president placed a wise rule, (in my opinion it was very wise), that missionaries could only go to Golden Spoon once a week. Then, one of the missionaries in Poway a while back decided to go every day to get free yogurt. Sometimes multiple times per day. As a result, the "free missionary yogurt" thing stopped at the Golden Spoon in Poway. Just last week, however, the rule was reinstated, and we're planning to go get some yogurt after the Priesthood session on Saturday. Awww yeah.

Along with that, I've been doing some missionary work to Elder M this week. Apparently his family, not even his parents, have emailed him in the last month. I've been doing all that I can to help him out and make him feel better this last month, but as we can all probably understand, it's just not the same as having your family give you words of encouragement and love. Just today, he had an interview with President to see what he could do to help his family write him more. After the interview, he was visibly happier and more at ease. So as you pray for me, remember to pray for him.

Well, that's just about the whole kit-'n-kaboodle for this week. I'm glad to hear that Utah has been receiving so much moisture! I personally attest the lack of rain in California to the huge amount of sin and immorality here. After all, isn't that what happened when the Nephites were extremely wicked and immoral? I guess that's just what happens, because we haven't seen the slightest bit of rain here since a month ago. We got nuthin'.

I hope you all enjoy General Conference!

-Love, Elder Crook