Dear Mom and Dad,
Well, the craziest
thing that happened this week was that I had to
call 911 for the
first time in my life on Friday.
But before I get to
that I'll talk about all of the less interesting
stuff first. This
week was pretty slow, unfortunately. We didn't get
to have many lessons,
and we didn't get around to see everyone on our
list. I guess it just
happens sometimes, but it still stinks. We went
to Costa Vida to eat,
and you'll be interested to know that we're now
4 for 5 with people
paying for us. There are SO many Mormons who
aggregate there.
Probably because Costa got started in Utah. But yeah.
We've discovered that
all you have to do is go there in pross and
there will almost
always be someone there who will come up and talk to
you.
Yesterday (Saturday)
we went and helped someone move in 104 degree
weather. It wasn't
much fun.
On Thursday we rode our bikes out of the mission to go to
the
Sacramento Temple.
That was also a great experience. I love visiting
the temple. After
almost a year, I realized there was a lot I'd
forgotten, and I felt
the spirit really strongly there. I didn't mess
up nearly as much as
a I thought I would during the session. It was
great. We took a
bunch of pictures that I'll send later if the bullion
year old computer
here work. I might as well use an abacus to send
emails.
Anyways, now on to
Friday. So we were sitting in the church weekly
planning and all of
the sudden one of the guys who was mowing the lawn
outside runs up and
starts pounding on the glass door. We open it up
and the first thing
he says is: "Guys there's a huge fire going back
there, someone should
probably call the fire department."
Sure enough, there
were flames coming out of a dry creek bed running
behind the church,
tall enough for me to see them coming up over the
edge of the creek bed
from about 50 yards away. So I called 911 and
told them where we
were. Then I ran down there with two other guys who
had been cleaning up
around the church and started beating the flames
back with some green
tree branches dipped in water/trying to kick dirt
over the fire. One of
them grabbed a water cooler from their truck and
started hauling water
over from a spigot by the church building. Then
firemen showed up
about 10 minutes later and doused the flames with
some kind of
water/chemical mix that left big patches of foam down in
the creek bed.
Everything ended well minus the fact that my shoes got
covered in ash and I
smelled like a campfire the rest of the day. But
yeah. That's the
story of the time I got to be a firefighter on my
mission. I rewarded
myself with a Sangrita Blast Mountain Dew from
Taco Bell. It's like
Baja Blast but raspberry-flavored. It's also Taco
Bell's only redeeming
feature.
So far we haven't got
many new investigators. We talked to one lady
who seemed really
interested only to come back the next day and find
out she'd gone in for
an emergency operation on her appendix a few
hours after we talked
to her and is going to be in the hospital for
awhile. Another
interesting story: so we were talking to her friend
outside her house (in
Spanish). Her friend was in a car with another
older lady who was
driving, and clearly did not speak Spanish. We were
asking her friend if
there was anything we could do when this old
white lady just snaps
and butts in with: "I don't have time for this.
Get out of here.
Goodbye." I was pretty much lost for words. I tried
to explain that we
were asking if we could do anything for this lady
in the hospital, but
she wouldn't hear it. She just kept saying
"Goodbye".
So that was the time
we got kicked off of somebody else's property by
some old grandma.
Maybe because she thought we were insulting her in
Spanish? I'll never
know. Maybe she just needs to drink more prune
juice.
Anyways, I'm on the
downhill side, and it feels great. Our investigator
family came to church
yesterday minus the dad again, so the plan for
now is to have the
mom and the kids get baptized this Saturday because
they really want to.
The dad does too, and he know he needs to get
to church, but
they're basically living paycheck to paycheck right now
and he has to work
Sundays just to get by. He's a sincere guy, and I
know he has a desire
to be baptized. He also told us that when he's
baptized he doesn't
want to just do it and then go inactive because of
his work. He wants to
go all the way. So his plan is to work like
crazy for another few
weeks and save up some more cash so he can
afford to not work on
Sundays.
So yeah. Things are
good here in California, other than the fact that
it's over 100 degrees
every day.
But yeah
Love you all!
Jake
