A Hot Week

This last week was a HOT ONE. My goodness, we've been hitting the high 90's for the last eight days, and it's quite the adventure to be biking around in that kind of heat. It's both hot and cool at the same time, since you're exercising more than just walking, yet you're going pretty fast, so the breeze helps to cool you off. And then you stop biking, and WHOOMP, the heat takes you. However, amidst the heat, we've had some pretty awesome things happen this week!

Wednesday last, we began our day with some mormon.org time, and I ended up talking to this random guy that I'm pretty sure wasn't all there in the head, but what was really funny was that he started doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression in the library quite loudly, and everyone turned to look at us. I just smiled and waved, and he kept doing his impression. We then went to see if we could find anyone that we could talk to. We went and met the F.'s, the DA.'s, and then backtracked to visit with Hno. C. On the way to his house, we ran into this random guy named M., and as we started talking, he asked us to sit on the curb with him. He asked if we talked about Jesus, which we affirmed that we did, and we got onto a great gospel conversation. We talked about the Book of Mormon and how God revealed His word to all nations, etc., and then M. asks us if we believe in the multi-dimension theory. I knew it as the string theory, so I asked some questions to see what he meant. Then he went off on this completely random tangent about how every world that we're not living in is dead. (???) So we read a quick scripture out of the Book of Mormon, and he got REALLY interested. He asked if he could have a copy, so we gladly gave one to him. After parting ways, we visited Hno. C. who talked a bit with us about the signs of the times, (not quite sure how we got on the topic), and we then went to visit another less-active family, the P.'s. They welcomed us in, and made us some quesadillas, which were quite good. We then went and picked up our bikes, and biked the 3 or 4 miles to the church for dinner. A sister in the ward wanted to give us dinner, but she lived forever away, and the other Elders couldn't give us a ride, so she brought us the food at the church. We ate, and returned to our area. I swear, I have the worst luck on a bike. I've almost gotten hit somewhere around 30 times, I've almost crashed several times, and I'm just not the most coordinated with a bike yet. We then taught M., and after hearing the lesson of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we asked her if she wanted us to keep coming by. She said yes, so we said that we'd like her to do some things to help her come closer to Christ, such as reading, praying, and attending church. We have to work with her parents on the church thing, but we'll get there. Afterwards, we visited R., and he had missed us since we'd dropped him, so we stopped by and visited. Then we turned in for the night.

Thursday was a day of service, as we were helping a member of the branch to move from one house to another not too far away. We Elders showed up and took care of the heavy lifting, and the several other people that showed up worked mostly with boxes and the such. The member had planned on it only taking around 2 hours, but it ended up taking 4 hours. They then bought some massive pizzas and we had lunch with them. We then came home and got cleaned up before weekly planning, which was then completed shortly thereafter. We then went referral hunting, and were able to contact a few. One of them was bogus, the other said no, and the other ones weren't home. We then had dinner with a member, and went to try and find L. to teach her. Once again, she was absent for some odd reason, and we committed the members to take her to church this Sunday. We then went to see K. and see how he was doing. We then ended the night.

On Friday, we had Zone Meeting, and it went pretty well. My comment was actually heeded about keeping the goal the same since we hadn't hit it the previous month. We then did some practices, finished up, went and got lunch, and from there, we went to some more service with the English Elders. We transported boards, and extracted screws and nails from said boards, and the English Elders demolished a Jacuzzi that didn't work anymore. We then went to dinner with some less-active members, and they gave us wings with Mexican spaghetti and salad. Pretty darn good. We then visited a few less-actives, tried to find some investigators at home, talked to a bunch of people in the street, (or rather TRIED to), and turned in for the night.

Saturday, we had even MORE service, but this time, it was for an investigator of the other Elders. His landlady had a bunch of junk in her back yard that she wanted extracted and taken care of, so we showed up, got the job done within 20-30 minutes, and took it all to the dump. The investigator then wanted to take us out for pizza, so we waited a bit while he returned his work truck and retrieved his normal vehicle. He then took us to Filippi's Pizza Grotto, and the pizza that he got us was pretty huge. It wasn't so wide as it was piled high. We ate to our hearts' content, (or rather to our tongues' and stomachs' content), and went home. We got cleaned up, and headed out to get some work done. We received a text that said that a missionary had gone missing, and that we were doing a mission fast for that missionary that he would be found safe. We stopped by and saw our less-active, A. We talked with him about what he's been doing with his life, and he told us about all of these crazy things that he's done, one of which is a native american sweat lodge, which is much hotter than a sauna. He then told us about a bunch of hikes that we can do on P-day if we wanted to do.

Sunday, we went for branch council, and we had a really good council session and were able to get some really good revelation one for another as to their several duties and responsibilities. Not so much missionaries for auxiliary quorums as much as auxiliary quorums for missionaries. We then had church, and for some reason, we had a lot of english speakers in the congregation, so Presidente asked me if I could translate. So I went back into another room with the headset, and translated for sacrament meeting. I never felt so cool in my life. :3 We then got a text saying that the missing missionary had been found, and that he was safe. We then had the classes, had some great input and ideas, and then went to our apartment for lunch. After our studies, we went to give a blessing to K.'s daughter, who was sick, and went from there to the mission president's fireside. We sang, we felt the spirit, and we went home.

Yesterday, we did a lot of looking through our former investigators to find some people that we could go visit. We went from one side of our area to the other, knocking on doors, finding out that the people didn't live there anymore, finding the people that weren't interested anymore, and we then found some people that said to come back! We felt pretty good about that. We then went to dinner with the G. family, (now that Hna's husband has returned from his long work trip), and we went to try another former. We found him, he welcomed us in warmly, and we got to know him a bit. It looked like he'd been a burn accident victim, but he was really happy to talk to us! We shared a powerful message with him, and he asked when we'd be coming back. We said that we'd come back Thursday, and parted ways. So we added a new investigator! Yeah! WHOOP WHOOP. Our goal for the rest of the night was to find people home with the which we could share a family home evening message. Nobody was home, so we went to see K. to see how his daughter was doing, and the C. family was there doing their own FHE, and we joined in. 

Well, that's just about it! I had a cool thought the other day about how leprosy is like excommunication from the church. The lepers were kept out of the camp, they were considered "unclean", and the disease ate away at them. If they were cleansed from it, they had to go through washings and cleansings to be admitted back into the city or camp. The same goes for the excommunicated. They are "put out" of the church, considered "unclean" until they repent of their sins, and are then admitted back into the church through a re-baptism. Thought it was pretty cool.

Have a great week!

-Love, Elder Crook