The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up!

Certified for CPR and to teach English!

Hola!

So all the cool little non-investigator stuff that happened this week:

I was doing family history work (by the way, its impossible because so much of it is already done by other family that I just end up getting frustrated the whole time), and I found a line filled with Scottish royalty and it went back all the way to the year 80 AD!  And a guy named King Geowolf of Troy!  What happened to the days when people had cool powerful names??

We did service at a Home Depot-style thrift store.  Like a thrift store for house supplies.  We showed up and they just told us to go to the warehouse and just find something to do, haha.  The people there never even work!  One guy would organize a few things and then just go sit and lay down somewhere for 20 minutes.  But we just went back and started organized and cleaning things because we didn't know what else we could do.  But it was super fun!  And we did it because the church wants us to do random acts of service for the community now.

I made super bomb pico at the Sierras house!

I learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube.  It’s actually super easy!  Just 20ish minutes of memorizing like 4 formulas and then when you do them, it solves itself!  Now I can solve one in like 4 minutes.  But I am still practicing.

We got a flat tire in our truck.  We ended up getting a bungee chord all the way in our tire!  But it was me and a Burmese Elder, Elder Simram (BTW he lives in Ryan Conk’s mission!), and we changed it in only 8 minutes! And it took so long just because neither of us had done it on a Tacoma before so it was a little different.

And let me tell you about the rain that fell this week!  I didn't even know there was this much water in the whole world.  So in most rainstorms, you can walk from your house to your car and just be wet on your shoulders, but here you look like you went swimming after walking to your car.  Maybe it’s because the drops here are the size of mandarin oranges!  It sounded like big things of hail as we drove around.  But it rained like this for a couple hours 3 nights this week. One of the nights, all the streets were flooding and all the cars that weren't trucks or SUVs couldn't drive down half the streets.  At one point, there was a big puddle and all the small cars couldn't get through so they were trying to back up, well there was just no way, so we just turfed it over the big grass median and got around. Truck power!!  And I know some missionaries that would drive until it got too deep, put the car in neutral and shut it off, then get out and push it until they got to drive-able conditions and could drive again!  And they would leap frog like this all the way home, haha.  Anyways, crazy rain and flooding, with the sickest lightning I have ever seen!

But on the spiritual side, the Sierras are for sure getting baptized this Saturday!  Jose just can't smoke till then.  And Satan is working really hard with them right now so we just need to keep praying for that and see them every day to help strengthen them.  So looks like we are going to have some long prayers in this companionship this week!

We also have been teaching Jose Bonilla a lot this week.  He is reading the Book of Mormon well, but still hasn't got the answer he is looking for and won't commit to baptism.  And his dad came in for one of the lessons randomly and never said a word, and then showed up to church on Sunday!  It was so random because he came but his son, who we teach, didn’t.  Well right when we walked in the chapel, we showed him to one member and the member just took him and sat next to him and completely became his best friend.  It was so cool!  Especially because it was one of those members who I have never even talked to before so I never even thought to ask him.  But Jose Bonilla Sr. could only stay for Sacrament meeting so we will have to go by and ask him what he thought about it. 

Also, with Hermana Marquez.  She loves to learn but never commits to anything, its always a maybe.  But she usually does it anyways.  And we couldn't teach her this week because she was super busy and stressed but we did find out that she quit smoking!  The reason: it costs the family too much money to buy her cigarettes.  So maybe that is why she is so stressed, because she quit smoking cold turkey, haha.

It was a fun week for sure. Please pray everyday for the Sierras and I will send pictures next week!

Elder Lund