6 April 2015

This has been the shortest "week" of my mission, but a lot has gone on still. On Thursday, right after sending the last email, we had zone activity- soccer. Elder Wilding was talking about how he felt a little slow, but no one took him very seriously. Then, we went to the library for wifi to email, and then he said that he had to get back to the apartment, because he felt sick. He was REALLY sick. After a while, I saw him curled up in the fetal position halfway into the bathroom. That was the point he asked me to call in some other missionaries to give him a blessing. We did that, and I got one because my stomach has been pretty uneasy ever since the nasty tamales a few nights back. I felt fine afterward, but all Wilding wanted to do was sleep. Which was unfortunate, because as he told me the next day, he'd stayed up dry-heaving till 6 the next morning. He woke me up once or twice, too, and I forgot to set my alarm clock. The net effect of that was that I was in bed for 11 1/2 hours. Elder Wilding also had a funny experience- apparently, at about 3 in the morning, he'd just given up on the thought of ever stopping throwing up, and was really hungry and thirsty, and ate a bunch of clementine oranges. He was fine after that, for whatever reason.

Friday, Elder Wilding was still pretty out of it, so we didn't do anything for the whole morning. Unfortunately, we found the most solid investigator ever while tracting a few days back, and the appointment we'd set up was for today. So I spent a lot of time on the phone trying to figure out exactly how we could have Elder Wilding stay in the apartment and have two missionaries at  the lesson. Then we had two consecutive miracles: Elder Wilding said he felt well enough to sit in on the lesson, and the investigator told us that he couldn't meet at his house. I suggested that we meet at the church building where all the other missionaries in the zone were doing a carwash/church tour thing. He agreed! What we ended up doing was meeting in a classroom with us, the investigator, his daughter, and the first counselor in the mission presidency. It was a good lesson. The investigator said that he was super excited about hearing more, but he was going on vacation all next week, so we won't be meeting for a little while. 

Saturday, conference started at 9 in this time zone, so we didn't have time to do anything before we went out to watch it. Do you know the real reason that conference is broadcast at the churches? It's pretty much entirely for the missionaries. We saw only about 3 non-missionaries there. A crazy thing happened too, but it takes some background. A few months ago, we found an interested guy while tracting, Albert. That is super rare, which is why we weren't too happy about passing him off to the YSA missionaries. Apparently, he took all the lessons, and was keeping commitments, and even showed up to stake conference and sat for all of it. We were thinking he was on the fast track for baptism, but then he sent the YSA a foot-long text saying how he was actually atheist, and was just playing them, and wasn't interested at all, or something to that effect. Then, he showed up at the church for conference, and once again watched it all. My eyes nearly popped out of my head in shock when I recognized him. By the way, does anyone know why President Monson didn't give the welcome to conference?

Sunday was more or less the same deal conference-wise. We went out to the church, and Albert was there again! After the session, we all went to a member's house for lunch, and Albert came too and talked to all the missionaries. I talked to him a bit, and would not have ever guessed that he'd just self-deferred on the YSA missionaries just 3 or 4 days ago. For second session of conference, we went to a member's house. The Shaw's treat all the missionaries like family- a little much so. Last time I walked through their door, I got shot with a confetti gun. This time, I just had about ten confetti eggs smashed all over me. Then, we had an easter egg hunt. That was super fun, with four missionaries and five Shaws searching all over their yard. Everyone got a load of candy, plus gift cards to Yogurtland and Chipotle. Then we watched conference, then got to watch their enormous tortoise, Turtle, eat an apple. That was really awesome to watch, because Turtle only swallows once for about twenty bites, so when she does, you can see an enormous lump traveling down her throat.