Monday, December 22, 2014

Volunteering and Subbing for Joseph at the Branch Party

My Victoria District.  I love them!
Cooking chicken, potatoes, and green beens in my apron from Grandma Lund
The sub for Santa... We haven’t delivered anything yet, but we did buy gifts for about 4 families.  I have no idea how much I spent.  We also got some basic frames and are going to give each family a picture of Jesus Christ. I can tell you more next week.  I like your thoughts on Christmas.  Anyways, it is so much easier to spend time serving someone than to spend the same amount of time trying to pick out a gift that they will like.  And about serving, this week I was thinking about my future job and what I like and what my Patriarchal Blessing says, and I think it would be cool to start something humanitarian but I will have to write you a letter about it sometime, because I have no idea what that even means, haha.

So we started off the week by volunteering at the local Methodist church in their soup line.  It was super cool!  We got to pour all the drinks at first, and then I got to serve the people sandwiches and talk to them.  Finally we got to go in the back with some of the youth there and do dishes.  And at the end of it all, we went and ate soup with the late comers, and found out that we knew half of them so we all got to talk and fellowship together.

Then the next morning, Hailey called us around 7am.  She was freaking out because her dogs had followed her to school and she had to go in to take her midterms.  So we flew over there and found her dogs walking around the school.  Well we got a lot of crazy looks because we just parked the car on the side, picked up the dogs and put them in the car, and then took off again.  Talk about back alley dog abduction.  

Oh hey! This week we also did start teaching her mom Kristen again!  It has been so long!  She was always super busy and then one day she called us and invited us over for dinner.  And she came to the Christmas party and saw there are other families with crazy kids so she can’t use that as an excuse to not come to church now.  Now we just have to help her get up because she says 10 is too early... some people.  Actually, I would have probably said that before my mission. 

But the Christmas party was super fun!  Kinda weird though.  Maybe it was just because of the nativity.  Joseph didn’t show so I then became the Joseph. The weird part was Mary was a 10 year old girl and all the members kept making fun of me for it, haha.  But it was sweet, I just got to make up all my own lines and I got to dress up in robes.  And to the party we had a lot of less-actives come and the Mang family came so it was pretty successful.  Branch parties are always fun just because they are a lot less put together than ward parties and something always goes wrong. Classic.

Final story: A man named Michael Easter called us this week.  Super random.  He found our number at the church, called us, and asked if we could help him because he hadn’t eaten in 2 days.  So the best thing I could come up with.... go pick him up and take him to Whataburger (a famous fast food place in Texas).  So that is exactly what we did, went and found him, got him a burger and fries, and just sat and asked him about his story.  Turns out he is an ex Army Ranger who served in Bosnia, and just got messed up in the noggin.  And by that he has just seen and done things he can never forgive himself for, and he told us of a few mild ones... But he came to Port to fix some legal papers and doesn’t have money to go back to North Carolina, plus he kinda wants to stay here.  So now he is putting his Ranger skills to work and living in a tent in the brush behind one of the motels.  Now he is trying to get a job here and settle down for a few months.  He told us that he can just never stay anywhere for long.  The longest he stayed anywhere was in Tennessee.  But there he lived for 9 months in the wilderness by himself.  He was crazy, but so sick!  Anyways, he just needed some food for the time, so we just left him with a book of mormon and our phone number. I don’t even know if we will ever see him again... maybe he was one of the 3 Nephites?!  Maybe not...

Merry Christmas!!


Elder Lund

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