Wednesday,
we spent the whole day doing service. In the morning, we went over to a
member's house to help out in their backyard. We dug up some busted
sprinkler pipes, and put up a short fence to keep their dog out of their
garden. Then, we went to the stake center to help set up for a pageant
that the stake is putting on- the 10 virgins. Apparently, it's going to
be a huge production. The stage setup was designed and (largely) put
together by a Disneyland set manager, using massive 10 foot tall
hand-painted panels that we had been given by another stake. The panels
showed an impressively painted background of a city and garden from
around this time, and had been painted by a member for a different
pageant from another stake. They were painted on big slabs of plywood,
so we screwed them on to 2x4 frames and started setting them up. The
configuration that we put them in has a narrow hall in the back, and
rooms on either side that are largely open to view. They look amazing
with the painted backgrounds! Then, we got frozen yogurt as a reward for
helping.
The
next day, we did just as much service, at the same places. We went to
the same member's house, and finished up replacing the sprinkler pipes
and reburied them, before starting to sand her kitchen that she wants to
repaint. That took until dinner again, then we went back to the stake
center to finish setting up the pageant. We finished putting up all the
frames and securing everything down, so the stage looks just like it
will when the pageant is put on. It looks shockingly awesome! We got
more frozen yogurt after. That's the weird thing about members feeding
you- they all decide what to cook based on the weather or something,
because meals come in streaks, like getting Mexican food for a week
straight. Not that I mind, but I wouldn't have guessed it.
On
Friday, we went back to the same member's house and finished sanding
her kitchen. She wanted to get us lunch, and we weren't about to argue.
We walked her dog while she was off getting it, and then had a very
early dinner. It was at a really good Hawaiian barbecue restaurant.
After that, we just cleaned the apartment. Not a super exciting day.
Saturday
was when all the real thrills happened. We went over to the Wade's
house. I talked about it two weeks back, but here's the gist of that-
really old abandoned house that needs to be refinished and have loads of
stuff replaced. Last time, we cleaned up a lot of wreckage around
there. That's how we started, but by the end, we got to the fun bit-
tearing down the drywall. Do you know the fastest way to look for studs?
A double-handed sledgehammer. I used one of those to pound holes in the
wall in a line, then a huge crowbar to pry out large chunks of drywall.
The only problem is that once you are done wreaking havoc on the bits
that aren't directly attached to the frames, you have to remove the bits
attached to the frames. That is super hard work. The method I used was
simply beating it to death with the sledgehammer, then getting the point
of the crowbar under it to scrape off the remnants. It was hot, too, in
an unventilated room while wearing heavy painter's masks to avoid white
lung disease from all the plaster in the air. It was so totally worth
it, though. Unfortunately, the project came to an abrupt end for the day
when one of the guys working there, who was 64 years old and tearing
down a wall, hung from a beam to try and pull it down, and succeeded too
well. He hit his head pretty hard, and got taken to the hospital for
stitches. After the project was done for the day, we mostly just rested
from all the work there, and gave some other missionaries a ride to a
bike shop for repairs. One of the women working there told us how
desperate she was for religion in her life, and told us her whole life
story, including all her mistakes, right in the middle of the shop. She
was very open.
Sunday
was pretty tame. We went to church in the morning, and arranged a few
meetings with some investigators who came to church, which was awesome.
The lesson we taught in Gospel Principles class was on Faith in Jesus
Christ, which for missionaries comes pretty naturally after talking
about it with every investigator who'll sit still for the first lesson.
After church, there was a meeting for all the new ward missionaries and
us at the ward mission leader's house, Brother Grant. He talked to us
about our need to formulate a plan to find people, and a little about
what we should be doing. We have a whole bunch of really good ward
missionaries, so this should work out pretty well. Right after that came
dinner, where we talked a lot about education and careers. Right after
that came Persian, where we talked yet more about the same sort of
thing. All the missionaries I have talked to have said that going on a
mission has made them second-guess their plans for the future, but so
far I've just had mine get more and more clear. That's probably more
because I'm almost never thinking about them than anything else, but
I'll take that over uncertainty. Elder Wilding shared an insight that
spooked me a bit: after our missions, while we are in college or have
jobs, we'll be working 5 days a week, and spending another at church.
The last day will be our only leisure day, and we'll still have families
to juggle then. That means that if we don't enjoy what we do at work,
we won't have much, if any, time to do what we like. That's a powerful
incentive to get a job you really, really like.
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