***NOTE FROM THE MOM: Sadly and shockingly, I forgot to write to Zak this week! It was awful, I felt very bad. I caught my mistake early in the morning, apologized profusely and started writing to Zak with reckless abandon. I sent him my letter is spits and starts. He responded with a couple of e-mails; he was very kind about my lack of email. So, each extra bit of note from Zak is included here...Enjoy!
So our car is still not fixed, we may be going onto week 3
soon without I think. The sad thing is that it has not yet been approved by SLC
(for more expensive repairs, church headquarters has to approve it. It goes
through our MBM vehicle coordinator who is new). People have been great helping
us with rides and everything else though, it's been good in that way. "No
unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing" and I guess not a
broken car either.
Remember how I said there used to be an extra
set of missionaries in this ward? Not sure if I already said this part, but
their apartment, which is on the other side of the boundaries than we live is
still available for our use, so we sleep over at it sometimes when it makes
sense (lessons in that part of the area one night and the next morning, etc) I
call it our vacation home. we stayed there last night and are now at a library
near by. Part of the reason we are here is because we talked to one of the
elders who used to serve here and found out they had bikes! they didn't really
use them for whatever reason, but we came up here to retrieve. Yesterday I
biked to a missionary lesson for the first time, I guess now I can say i'm
official. It was with a guy who pretty much hit rock bottom. It was our second
lesson with him, and we had a good, spiritual, down to earth lesson about how
as we make even small steps of faith towards christ the natural effect is we
can (and he can help us) put our life back in order. We read part of Alma
Another cool lesson we had this week was with an
grandma aged catholic lady named Mary. She became friends with a member about 6
months ago when they met at the YMCA pool and they got talking about the
church. the first time we taught her we talked about prayer, but she totally
disagreed that God could actually do much for you to answer your prayer. Maybe
give you strength, but thats it. Her friend told us that later that week she
said that she thought asking god a question was like asking a question to Santa
Clause (which is not the case!). We talked more about prayer and the idea of
feeling and following the spirit and she told us of numerous experiences she
had had that week where she had prayed and God was able to answer her prayer
(usually through another person). Her faith and belief are growing and she said
she could feel closer to god. It was fun to see the change.
I guess jumping back to what I was saying in the
beginning of the email, we have been expecting to get our car soon, now we've
kind of given up expecting and will just plan on using the bikes until
whenever. As a result of our lack of wheels previously though we haven't done
that much shopping, so we've done a lot of scavenging the apartment. Maybe this
isn't the best thing to write home about, but i've never eaten so much expired
food as here. a few days ago Elder Jones and I had this conversation
Him"want some red hots" (little red
candies"
me "sure" I pop two in my mouth
him "they expired 2 years ago"
they still tasted good though. I just don't get
how so many generations of missionaries can go through an apartment and one
throw it away or anything (we have thrown a lot of things away too, I think the
little candies were the only years old thing we ate).
Luckily there's still that lady who gives us a
bunch of food on sundays to eat throughout the week (yesterday it was good
lasagna) and she usually gives us a box or 2 of cereal. So we do have a good
stash of cereal, and it's easy to buy milk and that is plenty to sustain life
on. Plus we get dinner appointments like every night which helps a ton. Also
it's easy to buy bread so i've eaten a lot of PB sandwhiches. Anyways we're
going to go more food shopping today. Also our vacation home apartment has a
lot of canned food we're stealing.
It's still been great to serve with Elder Jones.
I don't think i ever mentioned he had a scholarship at UVU for track (which
partially explain all the running). He is a great high jumper and a decathlete,
so he also did all the events I did too.
I'll jump to questions now
How has your weather been?
bundle up weather. not quite single digits, but
close.
What is going on with your car?
nothing. it's sitting and decaying one day at a
time. we left a conference talk on the car, so it'll turn on as soon as a
mechanic person turns on the car though, so maybe something miraculous will
happen there
Have you had to get rides from Ward members?
many. And from some missionaries for meetings
too. there's been a couple times where we came way out here (the other side of
the area) and we weren't sure how we'd get back to the other side for our next
day appointments and something always worked out just right.
When you went on the pioneer trek at Riley's
Farm, how many pants did you bring? Did you ever change your clothes?
I don't remember. It was a pretty good trek
though.
any good, yummy dinner appts last week?
we had dinner at one family where both spouses
teach Piano. they asked if either of us played. Elder Jones does, but I had to
admit (for the umpteenth time) that despite my Mother's efforts I was able to
resist learning. She talked about all the missionary experiences she's had
talking to her students who ask questions and have good conversations with. She
plans on having a big recital at the chapel and we was asking if we'd have
things to put out (pamphlets, BoM's, etc) and in different languages (she
teaches lots of Asian people). It was neat. Also the food was good. She gave us
a coconut-something pie, and it did not taste like paper. Also at another
families house he fed us moose roast that he hunted (before it became a roast).
It was really good.
What are you doing to do for your p-day today?
We're doing a talant show with another zone (the
other zone leaders had the idea. A lot of people will really enjoy it) and then
probably playing some sportage afterward. that's also partially why we're in
this apartment today, it's near some other missionaries who can give us a ride
down.
So basically things have still been really good.
We've been reading the Book of Mormon every day and it's been great.
Love you
----------------------------------
we'll be careful. Apparently some lady in the
stake decided that the missionaries were freezing so she got all the RS
presidents to send out emails calling for a warm close/blankets drive and on
sunday we tons of people showed up with stuff. I'm not actually sure what we're
going to do with it all, but we'll certainly have warm stuff to wear
--------------------------------
Good luck with griffin! Good report too!
Mentioning steve reminded me of two things. As a
missionary I kind of like meetings. I always ask the exectuive secretaries if
they like gettting to go to all the big meetings, but not have big pressure,
like a Bishop. Steven will have to tell me what he thinks. I don't think many
people see being at all the meetins as much of a perk as a missionary does
though.
also,yesterday we had a good meeting with a
reactivating guy. He was funny. He's a CPA. He said being an accountant is
"one of the nerdiest jobs on the face of the Earth".
No comments:
Post a Comment