Wednesday,
we tried to visit people in a Californian trailer park. This may have
been a mistake. Completely literally, every guy who opened the door, and
there were three of them, was old, shirtless, and had at least a major
head start on a potbelly. Then, we had a lesson with a part less-active
family, specifically the active daughter. Her parents weren't home, so
we ended up teaching her on her front lawn. She had been going to church
on and off, mostly on for just the last few months. The original intent
was to give a practice lesson, but as it turned out, she had only a
basic grasp on what we believed. That lesson ended up taking 3 1/2
hours, but we answered all her questions. Then, we tried to go to
dinner. The operative word in that last sentence was tried. As it turned
out, we were an hour early on accident. So, we just tracted around.
This was a very interesting experience. All the many, many people who
answered their doors were incredibly active Christians who all went to
one of two or three churches, all of which taught venomously anti-Mormon
classes. The net result of an hour of tracting was largely just having
10 people call us a cult, some of which offered to explain why, later.
We asked when we could meet up with the two that did, and one of them
made an appointment with us a year from now. Well, that's in the area
book, so the future missionaries will have the incredible pleasure of
meeting her. On the other hand, it was a refreshing change to have other
people tell us what we believe for once. Who would have guessed- we
actually don't believe that Christ is our Savior and we don't hold the
Bible as canon. Wow, I've been teaching false doctrine this whole time!
That night, we met with our ward mission leader, and he gave us a few
books to give to the ward missionaries to help them prepare for a huge
combined lesson we'll be teaching in a few weeks.
Thursday,
we had district meeting in the morning. After that and lunch, we tried
to visit half the less actives in a ward, with a shocking (shockingly
low) level of success. We met with all three ward missionaries we tried
to visit, and gave them the books our ward mission leader told us to
hand out. We had a very early dinner, then tried visiting more less
actives. We got several appointments for later, but that was about it.
Friday
was weekly planning. That took a long while, especially because we did
it in two sessions. We now have a solid plan for next week, though. We
then visited a bunch more people, again with little success, then helped
a family move. They were doing it as a last minute thing, and really
needed the help. They were both in their 60s. The wife had an artificial
knee, and the husband had COPD, so carrying boxes and furniture up the
28 steps and around a corner to their new apartment was not very doable.
At first when we put all the stuff in, we just threw it every which
way, but ended up completely reorganizing it later. It all worked out in
the end, though.
Saturday
was nothing but service. In the morning, we spent up until 1 helping
the same family as last night move the rest of their stuff over to their
new apartment. Funny story- the wife had a safe that she needed opened,
but had lost the key. I got it open (more or less legally) without
damaging it fairly quickly. Then, as we packed up all her stuff into the
U-haul, someone packed her purse in with it. That wouldn't have been a
problem, except that her keys to the new apartment were in there. When
we got there, I tried picking that lock too, but it was too stiff.
That's a little funny, that the apartment door was much harder to pick
than a safe. Eventually, they found the key and the moving commenced.
After we finished there, we immediately had to head over to a storage
unit and help another member of the ward do some last-minute moving
there. That was the impression we were under, anyway. When we got there,
she pointed us to the locker that had all her stuff in it. As we walked
closer, the pile of stuff didn't seem too bad. It was a lot of stuff,
but not a massive amount. Then we got to the opening of the locker, and I
saw the actual contents. It was the size of a one-car garage, and was
3/4 full of junk. There is no better way to describe it, because among
the various things in there that I noted: 3 huge trash bags full of
empty water bottles; 1 box full of empty baby food jars; 10 loose sheets
full of childhood art; and 10,000 miscellaneous pieces of things that
will likely never be used again. The sight of all that made me cringe,
until she explained that we weren't moving all that, we were just adding
another bunch of stuff to it. In the same storage complex, but on the
other side a quarter mile off, there was another (much smaller) locker
full of stuff, mostly furniture. Us, and two other missionaries, had to
haul it all off to the other locker and fit it all in, using nothing but
two Corollas and our ingenuity. We did it, but it was close: a matter
of inches, and it took hours.
Sunday
was pretty typical. We had church in the morning, which was pretty
average besides us not having to teach Gospel Principles because the
class had vanished. Then, we had a lesson with a less active family, and
talked for a while before planning when we could come over to do a
bunch of service for them, like taking down their Christmas lights.
Later we had dinner. It was an interesting situation, as between the
couple and their three guests, the average age in the room was 60 or 70,
us included. We heard a bunch of good stories, and had leftovers from a
wedding reception the day before. It was really good! Right after, we
had a lesson with a recent convert, then Persian.
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