Hotdogs and Jelly

Good afternoon and evening to your future self,

This week had a lot of unexpected turns. However, to spare you from unnecessary emotion, I have decided to pull out everything remotely interesting. Instead I will report on the utterly mundane, the entirely uninteresting.

Monday consisted of consuming food, walking around, and talking with other people.

Tuesday we had a meeting, a meal, a lesson, a meal, some lessons, and some visits.

Wednesday thru Sunday was very similar to Monday and Tuesday. 

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Alright, now I suppose I shall go into more detail, as those who are only lightly skimming the email have now departed. 

Monday was crazy, we had a lot of fun in Shreveport, went to lunch with the ZLs, and then went to some malls. I attempted to convince everyone to purchase Rayban's and/or Oakleys at the Sunglasses Hut, but unfortunately my efforts were fruitless. I got very close though! In the evening I went on an exchange with Elder Gwyn, and we went out with a soon-to-be missionary in the Minden Branch. We visited some people, including a guy named Ron who didnt let us say a word, kept on saying how he already knows Christ, and how he's too busy to read the Book of Mormon. But still expected us to come and teach him, which of course is a waste of time. We also had a lesson with a less-active member, and then went back to our car and started the drive home. As we drove on the freeway I noticed that suddenly the tire pressure on the driver-rear tire was dropping very quickly. So I pulled off to the side of the road, and sure enough we had a flat tsk tsk. At this point it was 9:15, but we had no choice but to change it. So we got under the car and removed the spare, and then figured out how to change it on a truck. We finally got it changed after much sweat and dirt, and made it home at 10:30 haha

Tuesday we had District council, and then ate at Subway. We drove around Minden after that from tire shop to tire shop trying to find one with our size of tire. Finally we found one, and they looked at our tire and said (as we suspected) that it couldn't be repaired. And the only tires that would fit our truck that they had were some nicer more expensive all-terrain tires. Which would cost about $500 to replace both the back ones (they couldn't just do one). We called Elder Jacobs though and he said "wow, only $500? Usually it's more, have them do it!" So now since I've started driving this truck, every single tire is new :)

After that we drove up to Springhill, and visited with Tawanna. Then we drove to Buckner for dinner with the Millers and Marchans, and it was super good! We had an amazing lesson with Quanisha in the evening, who is super elect, and had so many good questions for us!

On Wednesday we walked the dogs in the Rain, which was fun. I love the rain, until at the very end it started DUMPING on us. But it was worth it to see those dogs completely and entirely soaked haha--mine kept trying to shake itself off but had no luck due to the constant barrage of rain. In the afternoon we had some lessons, one of which was with Erik Russell. We read Doctrine and Covenants 59 with him, and had a super good discussion about the Commandments! In the evening we had a lesson with a girl named Tocarra, with the Millers. It was pretty good, but the whole time smoke, weed, and stoner music was emanating from within. And if you looked closely enough you could see that deep within the house a poker game was going on, among people that looked completely drunk. It was fun to see the characters that kept wandering out as we were teaching Tocarra! 

Thursday we drove to transfers, did I forget to mention that Elder Schneider is getting transferred to Allen 4/6? I will be training a new missionary haha--but since they don't come in until Friday, I was given a temporary companion (Elder Nelson), and spent a couple days in Rowlett working the 2nd ward! It was crazy to be back in my old stomping ground, I love Rowlett! Elder Nelson and I spent Thursday night walking around and talking to people at a cool Market event they had going on downtown. 

On Friday we did service for a friend, and helped trim some tall bushes, ate some amazing Mexican food at a Shell Gas Station, and watched an Elder at the 4 man apartment we were in eat an ill-advised pepper and suffer the consequences of trying to look cook for the next several hours. :)) Anybody who tries to show the amount of spice they can handle, WILL be humiliated by the laws of spice! We did service at LifeShare as usual, and I was in charge of handing out massive amounts of bananas. I gave 4 bunches of bananas to each person who came through, non-stop, for 2 hours. Then I took care of some agendas, and we went to Dinner with the Bonds. We had some amazing Sloppy Joes,  and then a great lesson afterwards. We spent the rest of the evening at a ward volleyball night that they had invited friends to!

Saturday I got my new companion, whos name is Elder Stroud. He's from Florida, and I think I'm going to like him a lot! We share some of the same interests, and hes a genuine guy. We drove back and had a great dinner with the Masses, and then had a lesson with Joel, then Tatyana, then Sonya. Our lesson with Sonya went super well, we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and her grandkids kept chiming in with good answers to our questions! We ended the night by shopping, and introducing Elder Stroud to the Flower's. 

On Sunday we had no bread when it was almost time to start church, so we had to stall for time until it got there haha--Also we had 14 of our friends come to church! Many of which were kids/grandkids. We had a good temple class with the Flowers, and a ton of good meetings too.

-Abe