The Yoakum Branch & Catholic Parade

The Christmas Tree at the end of the pier in Port Lavaca

The Yoakum branch meets in this little office building 

Gas prices here in Port Lavaca

About school, I am having a stupor of thought on all of it, so I just don’t even try and decide anymore.  Thanks for the $300!  We went and spent like $50 of it today on part of the gifts.  I am starting to think that we have more money than people that need it!  We will use what we feel comfortable with, and then save the rest for little random things I can do for investigators. (i.e. I bought a water filtered pitcher for an investigator who hated drinking from the tap).

This week we made some danko Fajitas. We bought some random piece of beef and then added bell peppers, onion, tomatoes, and avocado.  It was so delicious!  But it was too much money and not very filling. 

Then on Tuesday we had district meeting in Yoakum!  Man, that is the Shire!  It is so out in the country it would make a good location for the Walking Dead! But out there, the branch has only 20 people and they meet in a rented office space.  I will attach a photo. 

And then we went to a little Mexican cafe across the street and I had sopapillas!  But they weren’t at all like the New Mexican ones. These were just fried corn tortillas, coated in cinnamon sugar, and topped with chocolate syrup and cool whip.  Pretty much they were mini Mexican toaster strudels.

Also this week, I figured out that driving the car means bad luck. There were a couple instances where we needed to use it, and then we would just use it for the rest of the night.  Well when we did that, no one would ever be home and we would run out of things to do really fast.  Or maybe it is just the fact that we got everywhere too fast and we don’t have enough places to go.  Anyways, I like my bike better. And it gives me nice legs.

When we were biking in Palacios, we met a 92-year-old lady raking her leaves so we stopped to help and boy did she have a healthy collection of leaves in her yard.  She had like 80 pecan trees and in an hour we filled 3 big bags and all we did was about 9 square feet.  Let’s just say she also has a very big yard!  But in the process we got to talk to her, Mrs Porter, a lot and figured out that she worked at ACE hardware her whole life.  At age 90 she retired because of her husband’s poor health and she got bored of working there after 70 years... I think I would die if I did the same thing every day for 70 years.  And who in the works until they are 90?!  Crazy Texans!  It is one of the reasons why I have just decided that I am going to check out at age 45.  Life just goes downhill after that anyways.

Anyways, while in Palacios, we saw a bunch of people in the street, so we scurried up there on our bikes and realized it was a parade.  Well, on closer inspection, it was a Catholic parade for the Virgin Mary.  At the front was the priest and his helpers, then there were 4 guys carrying a throne on their shoulders, and in the throne was a life-size Virgin Mary statue. Then behind them was a mariachi band and about 100 Catholics.  It was pretty sweet.  Well we realized they were dangerously close and we could not get around them so we turned on the first street.  And then we got to talking to some man and before we knew it the parade was right behind us!  Well, we had a line of slow cars in front of us and the parade behind us and we couldn’t go anywhere!  So for a block or so, the Mormon bikers led the Catholic parade!  Haha!  I wish I took a selfie, but I think that would have been disrespectful.

Elder Lund