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
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