There have been three points on my mission where
time has hit me. When I hit 6 months, when I hit 18 months, and this
past week when I realized I had less than 4 months left.
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That's the sound that I made when Elder Myler and I
realized that. We've made a lot of jokes about it like, "the hotter it
gets..." etc etc. Good thing neither of us are slowing down at all.
South Phoenix is insane hahaha. I love it here. Everything about it is awesome. Story time!
This
past week we drove into a gated community on the golf course (the gate
probably cost more than most houses here). We drove around, found a
white Mormon family that is in the spanish ward, asked if they knew Spanish people in there, drove to the house they gave us, and on the way
I noticed something...A 2012 Maserati Grand Sport! So naturally I
pulled the car over and we went and knocked on the door. It was the race
spec - big fat tires, double exhaust. Beautiful car. After some moving
around inside and some whispering, someone finally opened the door. It
was a man from Venezuela with very broken English. I asked if he would
turn the car on for me and rev it. Nope. I asked if he would trade it
for our Corolla. Nope. Finally we gave up and started talking about
faith. He wasn't interested and reached out to shake our hands and say
goodbye. He had a massive gold watch on. Four of his five fingers were
cut off halfway and so he only had stubs.
DRUG HOUSE!
I've also been
picking up lots of Mexican slang words. They're the best. I used one
with a member this last week and he started laughing so hard that he was
crying. He was driving at the time and I felt a mixture of awkwardness
and danger haha. Turns out the word that i used meant something TOTALLY
DIFFERENT than what the person in Yuma had told me. It was a really
really bad word haha. Oh well, you learn new things everyday!
Last week I wrote about the South Phoenix zombies. Well
this week I need to correct that and add a new category to it. South
Phoenix Witches! Elder Myler and I were sitting at an intersection,
minding our own business, when Elder Myler leans forward and says, "look
at those nails!" I thought he was talking about construction nails.
Nope. In the car to our left was a woman with 7"
fingernails on one hand! And they were BLUE! Naturally I let out a
shreiking cry and we drove away quickly but not before I could take a
picture of it. For all of your sakes, I won't attach it, but it is
disgusting hahahah.
And then returning to the previous topic: ZOMBIES! WE SAW A REAL ZOMBIE THIS PAST WEEK.
But
first, some background. Elder Myler and I were finishing a split that
we had done. I went with one member, he went with another. On our way
back to the church we got a phone call from him and he told us that a
truck had just driven into the house across the street from the church
and it had resulted in a complete demolition of the house and an
explosion! There was lots of smoke. He told us to meet at one of the
other companionships houses so we took a different route and met there.
It was 9:40pm
- very late due to the traffic. As we get into our car and turn away, I
noticed how dark it was. No street lights! That's ok though, we were in
a car. As we turned the corner onto a dark street, the headlights of
the car brightened a silhouette. A ZOMBIE! It was a man walking all by
himself EXACTLY LIKE ZOMBIES IN MOVIES WALK! He was on the sidewalk,
arms out to his sides at shoulder level, and stumbling forwards with his
legs matching the height of his hips! I SCREAMED SO LOUD. I'm sure he
heard me. Elder Myler stopped the car and I screamed "GOOOOOOOOOOO!" So
we shot down the road! When we reached the end we looked out the back
window and he was still walking like that, 100 yards behind us! We were
laughing so hard all the way back to the house. It is the most
ridiculous thing i have ever seen in my life
There are zombies here.
Speaking
of fun stories, Elder Myler almost died this week. We are teaching a man
who has two ferocious German shepherds. One bit a missionary three
weeks ago right before I arrived. The house is enclosed with a fence. To
knock the door you need to walk past the fence. Being a great
companion, I let Elder Myler walk past the fence to knock the door. He
did so very, very cautiously. Before he got to the door he looked around
the corner of the house to see if the dog was there. He saw one chained
up and thought he was clear. So he turned around. In a quick flash of
fur, the OTHER German shepherd was all of the sudden at his side! Elder
Myler panicked and RAN but for some reason not for the gate! The
Shepherd went into pursuit mode, jumped, and bit his bag. Continuing to
maintain my reputation as most-supportive-companion-
Pause. To justify myself, it was either he die or we both die. Survival instinct! Totally justified.
Continuing...anyway,
so the dog is flying through the air biting his bag and a split second
later the owners run out the door and scream at the dog and it runs
away.
Elder Myler survived with no damage, except that done
to his pride. We laughed awkwardly for the next few minutes as the
owners got things under control. Good times.
This
week we had a great week! We jumped from the 12 member present lessons
that we taught last week to 23 lessons with members present! The mission
is still really struggling with knowing how to use Facebook
effectively. This last week we talked about how to teach and find people
and Elder Myler did a great job! President Toone is trying to find a
way to get me to go around the mission and train people but I don't know
how that would work. We taught 15 lessons in our area and 8 lessons
with members present on Facebook. That was a great week.
One such lesson was to a woman that lives in our area.
She and her family went to MX for a few days so we taught them over FB!
We used the relief society president as the member present and she did
PERFECTLY! And now she's taking that excitement to the ward :) I try to
give as many different people as possible chances to teach on FB with me
so they can catch how exciting it is. I think I've used over 20
different members now.
While teaching that lesson on Facebook, Elder Myler got
a crazy message. One of his family members had walked allthe way from
Idaho to Phoenix (with a guitar) on a spirit walk. We read the message
and had a good laugh about it.
It's March. What happens in March? March Madness! So,
to spike some competition here in the zone we created a triple
elimination March Madness bracket! It was inspired! Every week there are
"three games." Each game, each companionship will "play against"
another companionship (8 competitions per game) to compete in something.
Monday-Wednesday the "game" is a combination of member present lessons+referrals contacted. Thursday-Friday is a "game" about new investigators found. Saturday+Sunday
is a game about total at church, on date, and progressing. Those are
some of the key indicators that we use to measure ourselves. After each
"game" we will update the roster (which we printed 2 feet x 1.5 feet)
and text out who each companionship will be competing against the next
day. Each companionship created a team name. It's awesome. Everyone is
super excited about it!
This past week I met a man named, "the Prophet Israel!"
He sat us down and we had a non-contentious conversation about his
beliefs and ours. He knows his bible better than anyone I've ever met.
Let me rephrase that, he knows references better than anyone I'd ever
met. As he talked to us I took notes of what he said. It was hilarious.
These are directly from his mouth:
-"Moses and Jesus prophesied of ME!"
-"There is no such thing as a white Jew! The Jews were all black and it's only us blacks who will be in heaven!"
-"Leprosy just means their skin is white! All white people have leprosy!"
-"Black means clean, white means dirty! You all have a devil!"
-"Isaiah 53 is hogwash and was written by the feminist Pauline!"
-"King James (of King James Bible) lived before Jesus Christ!"
-"Satan is a bad booger."
-"Don't defend yourself because you have nothing to defend yourself with!"
-"Obama and I were buddies back in university!"
-"Russel Smith wrote the Book of Mormon!"
-"The whole new testament was written by a woman! Pauline!"
-"The first man [Adam] was made out of the blackest soil in the universe!"
-(paraphrasing) 'when Jesus cast legion (which apparently was originally LIGION) out of the swine they ran into the water! Every time you get baptized you get a demon! And getting baptized makes you RE-ligioned!"
-(paraphrasing) 'when Jesus cast legion (which apparently was originally LIGION) out of the swine they ran into the water! Every time you get baptized you get a demon! And getting baptized makes you RE-ligioned!"
It was one of the funniest and most entertaining
lessons of my mission and despite him going off on us about being white
and having leprosy, there were absolutely no hard feelings and we all
left loving each other!
Weird!
We had a man show up to
church yesterday who has been anti-ing our members. He sat quietly
through sacrament meeting and then when we invited him to stay
afterwards he said, "I have to go - I am teaching a class on Hebrew and
Greek in my church." Hahahahahhaha. He has a PhD but that was the
funniest reason I've heard in a long time for not going to church haha.
As of today, all 30 test missions have iPads! That's over $2,000,000 of iPads! Exciting times!
Thanks
Grandma and Grandpa for the letter this week! You won the competition
of fastest to write me! And thank you family for yours as well :)
All is well here, I hope all is well there as well!
Have a great week!
Love,
eJ
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