Week 92

This week has been a good week, there were some scary times, some funny times, and lots of eating. I'm super jealous of all the people that were over for thanksgiving! It sounds like it was a lot of fun! I'll start out with that.

On Thanksgiving we went to Lakeport and we had a turkey bowl with the ward. It was the run of the mill turkey bowl, too many people and not the funnest. After, however, we played Ultimate Frisbee and that was the BEST. Oh man, it was so much fun. We played three games and I ran my heart out. I think I have terrible knees from skanking too much back home. But my team was me, elder Delgado, Elder Herrmann, Elder Walpole, and Sister Burgess. It was super duper fun!! 

After that we went home and showered, and the Kings called us and told us to come over in clothes to play sports in, so we just showed up in normal clothes around 1 and we played more football with them and pictionary and such! So let me explain the Kings. 3 years ago Brother King was a huuuuuge marijuana dealer in the Midwest. I mean huuuuuuge. He decided that he was going to move to Miranda, Ca to become a drug lord basically. Well Miranda has a population of 600, every single person has special gardens, and it's often called Murder Mountain. About 4 transfers ago the missionaries were taken out after someone broke into their apartment with a shotgun at 11 at night. Just to give a little background. Well one day about 2 years ago a missionary talked to Brother King at a bus stop, the whole family was baptized, and his life completely changed. So about 6 months ago they moved here to Clearlake to start a new life. Since all their family is from the Midwest, they wanted us over for dinner because we are their family! 

So we ate the best turkey ever, stuffed ourselves basically. There was also Mountain Dew, which makes any meal a feast, and it was just delicious. I'm sad to say the Mac and cheese didn't compete with Auntie Michelle's, however their pecan pie was to die for! It was a lot of fun. Their youngest son is nine, and while we were sitting there he said "So do you guys wanna listen to Michael Jackson? Or Tupac?" And it was the funniest thing ever, I laughed so hard. Sister King even said "I'm all jacked up on Mountain Dew!" They are great. And they have the two cutest pit bulls ever! He knows like so much from the scriptures and prophets its asinine. 

This week I also finished the New Testament in Spanish! The book of revelations sucks in Spanish and like every other verse has a JST to it, and if it doesn't there is a footnote to doctrine and covenants so it took me a while to get through it but it was still really cool. President Alba wants us all to read the 4 Gospels before Christmas so I'll be working on that in Spanish again. 

So there is this area in clearlake called The Parks. It's like dirt roads and spread out houses and it is SKETCH. Basically I've said I'm never going to pros walk there again because last time we were about a mile away from our car and then there was a turf war between some Mexicans and White Supremacists! Moral of the story- don't leave sight of the car in the Parks in case you have to make a get away. 

Onto the nicer part of our area. It's called Hidden Valley. It's a gated community from the Middletown Ward. We have to be on someone's guest list to get in so we usually call the members to get in. There are very few Hispanics and we can't tract, so basically we have to know where they live and have their phone number. It's weird. But it's on a mountain and there are deer everywhere. So we were turning right, Elder Hermann was looking to the left and was about to turn and while I was looking straight I saw a deer running towards us so I was like "DON'T TURN YET!" And we weren't even moving and the stupid deer ran right into our truck! The deer was fine, it just ran off and it didn't dent us since we weren't moving but it made me think of King of the Hill. And speaking of TV, there are some English members in Hidden Valley and their dog's name is Bender and so I asked them if they like Futurama and with that we became best friends!

On Sunday at 830 we were waiting for our part in Branch Council and the ward clerk asked us "so are you guys ready for your talks?" And we laughed and he said "wait, this isn't a joke. You mean no one told you? It's the new ones that came that are speaking." So Elder Rasch spoke for about 10 minutes and then Elder Ford for about 5 which put me speaking at 10:40 with 25 minutes left to speak. So I gave my temptation talk from Crescent City, but instead of a 15 minute talk I dragged that sucker out! I told the story about snake island, I talked about the Diaz family, I talked about the Barrett family, and when the part that I had written ended I opened up to Moses 1:39 and I was all "This is what God gets up for every morning! This is his full time job!" And then I talked about how the ward can help us and oh man, I was ticked that no one told us. So I talked for 25 minutes. But anyway, the stake president was there and when the senior couple told him after that no one had told us we were speaking he was CHAPPED. I MEAN CHAPPED. So anyway, he said we did good jobs and it was just a funny experience. 

Elder Ford turned 27 yesterday. Throughout the day we spanked him 27 times (each) and the people that gave us dinner made us a cake! 

So this super cool (English) investigator gave the other Elders a key to her garage where she has a full gym in return for watering her plants once a week. So we are waking up at 6 every day to work out. I'm eating big to get big, protein shake and 2 hard boiled eggs for breakfast, pb&j for a snack, steak and brown rice for lunch, granola bar for a snack, and then dinner. I'll be like a Polynesian by the time I get home!

Love you guys!