August 10, 2015

Hello Mom!

This week:

leaking water heaters, more exchanges, teaching families, youtube captions and successful cooking.

This morning I'm doing fine. Good to know that you and Dad are active in exercise recently. And good to know you got Harley involved as well!

By the way, how's Smokey doing? We've run into few cats out here, mostly dogs. Small dogs at that. Holt thinks they're of the devil, and it's not that hard to see why. They're loud and they distract from the message. That and they just appear plain try-hard. 

As mentioned though, mid-week we noticed that part of the carpet was wet. It didn't take long to infer what the problem was. We opened the door to the water heater, and sure enough, there was a puddle filling the room. Fortunately, previous missionaries had placed rubber wall protectors along the bottom of the walls, so it could've been much worse. Still, called maintenance and they sent someone over to fix it. Turns out the guy, Jack was his name, had been contacted by Elder Holt while he was in North, but expressed no interest back then. Still, we actually ended up just plain replacing the heater, and soon another guy was there and they swapped the equip. with a new one. Pretty efficient too! 

So no damage to the apartment, but it did explain why we got a letter from HOA last week regarding water damage. Still, problem solved!

But on a more serious side, we were able to contact the Acosta family this last week. We had met the mother about 3 weeks back, and were finally able to catch her last week. Funny thing though, we were in the adjacent neighborhood when I felt like we ought to have gone to the other neighborhood. We went there, and met this one guy who decided for us to return to the next day. So the next day we returned, but he didn't answer, and so we walked around, and that's when we caught the Acosta's!

The family was awesome! The mother is a widow (her husband was baptized a member), and she had four other children, three in baptismal age. We had a member with us who connected really well. It was pretty dang cool how it all tied together! We teach them again tonight.

Had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. The guy's name was Elder Herrera, and he's a first generation convert. Day went well.

Also had a lesson with JR. He was doing ok. He did read his section we asked him to read in the Book of Mormon, and he still seemed interested. But he told us the next time he's open for visit is in a Month. We were kind of skeptical, but we hope that he's sincere in his interest in the Gospel. As PMG says, we are guides, they need to make that step. 

On a more humorous level though, we taught Rubi again, and showed her the Restoration video a couple of times. I say a couple because first we pulled it up on YouTube and put the English captions on. Don't know if you knew already, but captions can be pretty inaccurate. The scene at the beginning where the narrator says how "millions found renewed faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ," the captions said "millions found renewed faith in stomach pains." We got about halfway before Brother Simpson (Rubi's relative) remembered he had the DVD, and we pulled that up in Mandarin with English subtitles. It sounds like a really hard language to learn, but would definitely be helpful!

I would also like to confirm that I for the first time have successfully cooked meat other than jerky! One of the wards decided that they wanted less-actives doing dinner with missionaries, so we had some empty days last week. I know. But we got through, I just made some ground beef and Holt and I had taco's. We had to substitute scrambled eggs for most of the toppings, but I was feeling pretty good about myself afterwards.

Thanks for the care package too! Jerky was a real treat! I gave most of it to the ward mission leader, I felt like he would love it. He did. But the Rice Krispie (I think that's how you spell that) treats were great as well! Really appreciate your testimony as well. I took the time last Sunday to bear mine on the "divinity of the great and marvelous latter day work."

The only thing I can really ask for is the guacamole recipe. One of the members generously donated some assorted fruits and veggies, including avocados.

But thanks again for the love and support! Glad to hear everyone is doing well. When are you and Dad starting that exercise class you were talking about before I left? I've found that I work out more consistently out here now that I have a set time to exercise.

But anyhoo, take care and have another awesome week! I'm praying for you guys too ya' know!

Love,

Michael