Ups and Downs

So gay marriage is legal in Utah now, huh? Well, that was going to happen eventually. And in the history books, Utah will be to gay people as Alabama was to black people. So that's exciting to look forward to. Brother Page told us this week that Arizona is right on the cusp of legalizing it because the judge here is like, "Unless someone here can give me a really, really, really good reason for why it should be outlawed, I'm letting it fly." I hope Utahns are being gentle and loving about it, but knowing them, they probably aren't.

This has been quite an interesting week, and I'm not even sure where to start, because it was so odd how laced it was with completely awesome and completely horrible things.

I guess I'll go in chronological order and say that last Monday after e-mails, we got to go to Walmart in Show-Low! I forgot to tell you, but my glasses had gotten bent out of shape somehow (I just put them on last Friday afternoon, and they were busted), so President Sweeney gave us permission to get them fixed. I hadn't been to a Walmart- or anything so convenient and cheap with such a wide selection- since July, so that was really fun! I think I bought enough groceries to last me til the end of the month! I was even able to buy fresh produce! Imagine that! And I got two new t-shirts: one that's just a bunch of poorly Photoshopped cat heads pasted together around the entire shirt (which makes me laugh every time I put it on) and one with Queen Elsa that says, "Keep Calm and Let it Go." Now, I don't approve of the whole "Keep Calm and..." movement, but they were selling Queen Elsa shirts in the men's section, which deserves praise. The sad thing is I forgot to take pictures of the shirts to attach... And we even got to eat lunch at Panda Express, which is also the first time I've had Chinese food since July, so that satisfied a craving I've had for months, even if it's fast food. Then we had a Little Colorado ward party that night and our ward mission leader, Chad's wife, Raj, an Indian immigrant, made authentic Indian food for everyone. Elder Blanchard and I got to help serve the food, and I didn't know if it was hilarious or heartbreaking that so many people had never, ever had Indian food and they were so scared to try any. Most people actually ended up loving it, but there were some we talked to who said, "Well, it was interesting..."

On Tuesday, we got haircuts at the beauty school! You wouldn't think St. Johns would have anything beyond public school, but for some weird St. Johns-ian reason, they have a cosmetology school out in a sketchy looking warehouse by their little airport. Anyway, all of us in the apartment got haircuts for free there, and most of the students just happened to be either non-member or less-active! So one of these girls says, "You guys should come to the Zumba class I teach!" And all of the girls are like, "Yeah, you should come!" And they're all a bunch of potential investigators so of course, we're like, "Yeah, we'll try to get permission to go!" And... we got permission. So on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we went to Zumba class at the elementary school. Most of the beauty school girls weren't actually there; it's mostly old ladies. But those old ladies are all non-members too! So we've been setting up some lessons and gaining some good trust by doing Zumba. And apparently, you burn 800 calories per workout, so that's a plus.

Wednesday and Thursday happened. I don't remember much of what we did. Well, Wednesday, we had Zone Training Meeting. And Elder Blanchard started going to voice lessons with that old lady we talked for a couple hours when I had to fart really bad, so of course I had to go with him.

So Friday and Saturday were the horrible days. See, it's always seemed like Elder Blanchard and I are always either getting along super well or there's some tension going on. Anyway, the tension was getting really bad on Friday, so I called for an emergency companionship inventory to get to the bottom of it. I was trying really hard to use all of my conflict-resolution skills I learned from Adult Roles (stay calm, see what you've done wrong yourself, no attacking the other person, using more "we" statements than "you", etc.), but it didn't take long until Elder Blanchard just started listing everything he hates about me. I guess he never took Adult Roles. Anyway, I stayed pretty calm and wrote down things I did need to work on, and I kept my statements about us, instead of attacking Elder Blanchard. But after we got through the inventory, I found myself pretty angry that he gone full-attack mode like that. 

So the next day, we ended up in another argument and it reached a point where Elder Blanchard literally said, "Stop trying to make this about both of us, and just tell me everything you don't like about me!" So I broke and I did. And then he cried. And I felt really bad. So I had to do quite a bit of apologizing even though he literally asked for it. 

So, yeah, Friday and Saturday were bad. I ended up spending Sunday fasting and praying for help to know how to better serve and love Elder Blanchard, and it seems to be helping so far. Oh, also on Saturday, Louie dropped us because he's moving to California to take care of his brother and he doesn't want any flack from his family about being Mormon. So that sucked. But we'll teach him on Thursday and try to knock some sense into him.

Sunday we had a stake fireside for the youth, and President Sweeney came up to speak at it! And guess who his co-speaker was.... Elder Holladay! I actually knew I'd be doing it a couple weeks ago and forgot to tell you (lol at me!). But yeah, the stake youth council picked me to talk, and I think that's because of the time Elder Denham and I taught the seminary classes. The fireside was built around social media, so I spoke about the church's new hashtag, #ShareGoodness. I basically just listed all the ways high school can suck and how #ShareGoodness can help by brightening someone's day. I think it went really well. President Sweeney said it did. The St. Johns district also had to sing Called to Serve at the fireside, so that's why Elder Blanchard got singing lessons. But it was really a good, fun fireside. I really enjoyed it.

So that was my week. I love and miss you all! Make sure Brandon hears that. That missionary mom story in Meet the Mormons was really the only segment that made me feel real emotions. So I know that feel.

Have a great week!

<3 Elder Holladay

That's One Hot Pepper!

This week had sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much service. My goodness, we only had two real lessons this week. On Monday night after P-day, we went and pulled weeds for Brother Pullins and his wife. Brother Pullins is the high school janitor and he lets us into the school's weights room every morning, so we definitely owed it to him to do some yardwork. He and his wife are super awkward though. She's always staring at us with a weird grin on her face, and then he tells us some serious TMI stories about why his son got kicked off his mission and how his daughter is, um, infatuated with black men. And he's always asking to see pictures of the girls we dated back home, and I don't feel comfortable giving him that satisfaction. 

On Tuesday, we moved out St. Johns' justice of the peace, Butch Gunnels. Butch is a nonmember, but he's one of the nicest, funniest guys around. He loves the missionaries and is happy helping us out with anything we need, but just enjoys "being a heathen". But then a few weeks ago, he had to go in for emergency open heart surgery, and he's been in an induced coma ever since. He had already made plans to move into the basement of his best friend, Lucas Rodriguez, a super cool recent convert, so Lucas called us up saying it was time to move Butch's stuff over. I had never been inside Butch's house before, because we always hung out at Lucas', but oh my goodness, it was disgusting. Butch is a frigging hoarder. And his horse once kicked out a window and he never got it fixed, so wind had been blowing dust in for who knows how long. And Butch's dog and parakeet had just been chilling out inside the house this whole time pooping and peeing everywhere. I'll tell you what, I felt way dirtier cleaning that house out then I ever did at JC Mickelson's, so that tells ya something. It took all day long. 

On Wednesday, we mowed and trimmed Doris Chavez's lawn. We met her husband, Joe, and he was really nice and happy that we helped. Then we taught Tanner and Jamie Page, a young married couple with a 9 month old daughter that we've been teaching to help them prepare for the temple. They're really the only people in St. Johns that know what's up with pop culture and fashion and the news and whatnot, so I really enjoy teaching them. But a couple weeks ago, they decided they wanted to split up. Well, they decided to try and make it work one more time, so we decided to teach them about the Proclamation to the World, specifically where it talks about what husbands and wives need to do for each other. But then it turned into a big debate between Tanner and Jamie about gay marriage and the church's stand on it, and Elder Blanchard and I couldn't really get it back on track after that. So yeah, we kind of ignited a huge fight between an already struggling couple and then just left. Oops.

On Thursday, we continued on with the Pullins' lawn. Then we went and cut two truckloads of wood with our Salem Ward mission leader, Brother Henry Cohen and an investigator, Roman Cordova. Roman's been an investigator for a long time, but has trouble committing. Then we drove out to the middle of nowhere, out of our area, with our Little Colorado ward mission leader, Brother Chad New, to move a slate pool table out of some lady's house, cuz Chad's dad bought it. That was a heavy sucker. Then we had to move it to Chad's dad's house of course. We did get to have a lesson with Madea that night, and her testimony is super solid, but she's too worried about her staunch Catholic husband to get baptized. 

On Friday, we got called up by the St. Johns seminary teacher, Brother Richins. We had to help him put in his new fence and pour concrete into the post holes. That took an impressively long time. Then our Meadows ward mission leader, Brother Devin Brown, called us up asking if we could move some more furniture for a recent convert, Charlie Gann. Also, Pabla called us telling us her charges were clear so she could be baptized, but we had to explain to her that we had found out she had another charge pending that she didn't even know about yet so baptism would have to wait longer (we knew this cuz Brother Brown is the city's lawyer or something). Then she got really mad and said she would just stay Catholic cuz she's tired of waiting. I tried to calm her down, but what I wasn't telling her was that this new charge would put her on probation for 3-5 years, and she really wouldn't be baptized for a looooooong time. So life kinda sucks for her right now.

On Saturday, we were finally able to relax and watch conference at Chad's house. I really enjoyed it. Lynn G. Robbins', Elder Holland's, Elder Eyring's and President Monson's talks really stood out. I also liked Elder Cook's priesthood talk.

On Sunday, Madea came to the morning session at the stake center and that seemed to be really good for her. Louie came to Chad's for the afternoon session, but he had to leave right before Elder Bednar's talk which really would have helped him.  Then after conference, I ate a habenero (is that spelled right?) pepper. Well, let me back up. Chad was telling Elder Blanchard to eat one the night before, and of course, I was encouraging ("Do it and you're cool! Do it and you're cool!"). But Elder Blanchard wouldn't do it. When we stopped egging Blanchard on, I was like, "Well, I'll do it." And Chad was like, "Okay." But I decided to do it the next day when I had my camera. So after conference on Sunday, I ate a habenero pepper. And you know. It's like a bell pepper at first except after like 10 seconds, it scalds your entire mouth. I drank 3 glasses of milk and then I was just putting ice cubes in my mouth after that. It BURNED for a solid 20 minutes or so. But then Elder Blanchard figured he had to eat one too, and he did. He took it a lot worse then me. The poor guy's stomach felt really bad after and we had to cancel our dinner. He got better though, and we ended up visiting this old lady in Salem ward; just the sweetest old lady. She told us all about how she met her husband (who is now in very poor health, but she's 84 and looks like a 60 year old), all about her kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, and gave us lots of marriage advice and everything. Just a sweet, sweet lady. But that pepper gave me the most painful gas I've ever had in my life! It has never hurt so bad to hold gas in, and I even took 2 Gas-X's right before! And she talked forever, and then some of her kids came to visit and they talked forever! I was clenching my fists and my teeth and was just sweating trying to hold this gas in. We finally got back to the apartment, and I let out some of the biggest, longest farts I've ever farted.

 

So that was my week.

<3 Elder Holladay