So to start off this e-mail, let me backtrack to last Saturday, the 23rd. Elder Hegsted and I visited Sister Coble, a less-active sister. She has 5 kids and they'll all under the age of . She's also a single mother. Her two older daughters, ages 5 and 7 I think, decided it would be fun to put grass in my hair. That's fine and all, it was fun, they'd put it on and I'd be silly and shake it all off, wash, rinse, repeat. Then that turned into put grass in Elder Drake's glasses and stuff it behind his ears. All good fun. We got to the lesson, I cleaned off the grass and we left.
Then Tuesday came. I woke up and noticed that my nose was a little red and itchy. I didn't think much of it and let it go. Well now I have poison sumac on my nose and behind my ears and on my neck. It's rather itchy. Elder Harding and I went back over to the Coble's on Friday and sure enough the little girls had it all over their faces too. Luckily, it's not too visible so people don't think I'm some diseased zombie missionary or something. Oh the price you pay for being nice to children.
Also another story.
On Saturday, our transfer calls went something like this:
Zone Leader: "Elder Hegsted is going to Fayetteville 1st...and Elder Drake is staying anditsacararea."
Me: "Car area? Okay well sounds good, thanks Elders."
That's pretty much what I heard. Then I got a call from the Assistants on Tuesday:
Assistant: "Hey Elder Drake, how are you feeling about transfers?"
Me: "Good, Elder Hegsted is sad to leave, but we're excited for new things."
Assistant: "How are you feeling about the car?"
Me: "...What do you mean?"
Assistant: "Hm...tell me what your Zone Leader told you on Saturday."
Me: "They said, 'Elder Hegsted is going to Fayetteville 1st...and Elder Drake is staying'"
Assistant: "That's exactly what they said?"
Me: "Well they also said something about it being a car area, I assumed they meant Fayetteville was."
Assistant: "Oh...well, I hate to break it to you, but Rolla is no longer a car area. We're taking it. We got a bunch of sisters in this transfer and we're going to put it in a car share in Oklahoma with three different companionships. But don't worry, it's going to be great for Rolla, I can really see the members stepping up and getting more motivated to be involved."
If you could punch people through the phone I think I would have.
So that was a bummer. We are now a bike area. Rolla has a lot of hills. And also it's been raining.
Sometimes being a missionary is fun. Other times your car gets taken away and it's raining and you have poison sumac.
But it's not as bad as I make it sound. Sometimes it's just funnier to be pitiful. It's like that Pixar Short with the cute little sheep who gets sheared. And then the Jackalope. Right now we're making the transition to the "Boundin'" stage.
The good news is that we hit the standard of excellence this week. All of them, for the first time on my mission, so that was cool. Getting the number of lessons is easy, but it's hard to get member present lessons, new investigators, and people out to church. Many low fist bumps were had.
Otherwise it was a great week. We're still trying to figure out how we're gonna get up to some of the outlying areas, but so far it's looking good. I'm looking forward to the day when my butt is no longer sore and the members are giving us lots of exchanges.
Oh, here are some pictures. I have them this week because other people took them. That's how lame I am.
Okay, this is Zone Conference. I'm in the back there, because I'm always in the back. Elder Reese is right there in front of me, he's home now. Sad day. Elder Hegsted is not in this picture because we were on exchanges and he was being Elder Hegsted and was about 30 minutes late.
This is the Shaos, Yuan, and Elder Hegsted. We had dinner at their house this Tuesday and it was very yummy as usual. They also had serving utensils this time, so that was cool.
Yuan is the one in the orange shirt. We are helping her pick out a car. She's bad at it. She keeps picking these terrible American cars to look at. Well, to be fair, her budget is 4000 and under. But still. She wanted to go look at a 2004 Ford Taurus that apparently had some odometer problems. We had to talk to her for like half an hour to convince her it was a bad idea. On Tuesday we're going to look at a couple more. Fingers crossed.
Okay peeps, love y'alls and all that jazz!
Elder Christopher Drake
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