Pack. Try to see a few people. Pack, pack. Clean. Eat dinner at beloved members' homes. Pack. Pack. Sleep. Clean. Pack. Cry. Pack. Pack.
The good news is I got to see all the people I love. Here's the Broadbent/Williams Family. It was good seeing them. Especially since they started going to church and everything.
Me, Mevin, Nikita, Janet, Tim, Elder Allred, Tavier, Francesca, and Sawyer. Love those guys. Hopefully they get baptized before I go home. If not, then I'm going to have to come out for their baptism anyway.
Thursday: Finish packing, lose church keys, (some character traits never die no matter what) drive to Mt. Vernon. Get caught in rainstorm. Arrive at transfer point, in probably the most torrential downpour I've ever seen. Probably not hurricane or Vietnam typhoon status, but I've never seen sideways rain before. I've seen slanty rain, but not sideways rain. It was very similar to getting sprayed with the hose when your sister has her thumb partially blocking the end, except it was like you had 30 sisters instead of two and they all had hoses.
We all hopped on the bus and drove for an hour and a half soaked to the bone. It was actually pretty gross because the air vents started to collect condensation. At one point I got rained on inside the car. Gross.
We arrive at our destination and get out of the van. Elder Dickson and I try to find Elder Stearman so he can tell us who to look for to take us home. We find Brother Mason and pile our stuff in his van. He tells us all sorts of depressing stories about his life on the way home. I'm not sure how many times I can say "Wow, I'm sorry" without sounding insincere. But then again, it seems like he isn't too sad when he tells us about all of the tragedies in his life. So we just go with it.
A few minutes later, we arrive at our apartment. Time to unpack and shower and change into dry clothes. Luckily this ward is awesome and our ward mission leader is the man. We don't have a dinner that night, but we do have an exchange. So we go out and try to meet some peeps. We meet a few peeps, but still have no idea what we're doing.
To be honest, we still have no idea what we're doing, and it's about the most awesome thing in the whole world. Guess what happens when you have no idea what you're doing but you're determined to work? Miracles happen.
On Saturday we walked all day because our bikes both had flat tires. We wanted to visit an investigator we haven't met yet and walked and walked. When we got there, we couldn't find his apartment so we sat down and took a rest. A few minutes after we sat down, a lady came up to us and told us that she was a member, and wanted to come to church. She is from the Marshall Islands and apparently hasn't had her records transferred over from wherever she was last. She's not on the roles at least. So that was cool. Found a lost member.
About an hour later, after a very short conversation with a lady we soon learned is less-active, a man stopped his car and backed up in the middle of the street. My first thought was, "Yes! A member who will give us a ride!" Then he rolled down his window and said, "Are you with the LDS?"
"Yes we are!" We responded, although a little bummed that we probably weren't going to get a ride. We then had a 20 minute conversation with this guy about thi history of the Catholic church and how we should really be Catholic. I love that! I love when people know enough about their religion and love their religion enough to say, "You know what? You need to be a part of my church because you're soul is at stake and if you don't join my church you're going to miss out on a lot of blessings and possibly even go to hell." After all, if you don't believe that about your church, why are you going to your church anyway? So that was fun. We'll see where that goes. He actually e-mailed us this week and gave us some reading material from early church leaders I guess. Pretty neat guy. Totally gonna get baptized.
This weeks been fun and interesting. Loving it here already. Elder Dickson is great, and we have a family of pet raccoons who come up to our slider every night. We can feed them by hand and it's basically the best thing ever. Probably not the safest thing ever, but the best things rarely are.
Love you!
Oh yeah, this is Elder Allred pulling me along in Melvin and Nikita's pony cart. (Don't worry, he got a ride too.)
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