Wacky Wednesday

Dear Family,

“It all began with that shoe on the wall. A shoe on the wall – shouldn’t be there at all….” That’s been the theme of the last couple weeks for me. I feel like if I can just find and count all the wacky, wrong, and out of place things, than things will go back to normal. I guess I need to start back last week since my letter got erased. Let’s see…

It all really began at 3:00 o’clock in the morning two Fridays ago. I’d developed a cough the last week or so, but that morning I woke up really feeling a lot worse and coughing up a storm. I go to use the bathroom and then flush it when the toilet starts overflowing. I try plunging it and flush it again, which only caused it to overflow more and I was only half awake and not feeling good anyway, so in despair I give up and go back to bed – leaving the bathroom floor completely soaked (and of course, to make it even better the bathroom is carpeted). So that’s funny how we both had a flooding experience about the same time! Anyway, so in the morning I hear Sister Bell getting up so I go to warn her about the bathroom, and so she decides to try to fix it and did the exact same thing I had done and it, of course, overflows again. And we don’t own any towels except our bath towels so we had nothing to soak it up with except an old blanket that we weren’t using. We can’t get a hold of any plumbers or our landlord and we have to be in Lynchburg for our interviews with our mission president, so we just put a fan on it, opened the window and left it. We ended up being gone all day because we had other appointments and what not all day long. When we get home that night our house stinks and our toilet still doesn’t work so we have to drive to our church building any time we had to go to the bathroom. In the morning we still couldn’t get a hold of a plumber or our landlord and we had a baptism we needed to prepare for that morning, so again we leave it.

The baptism went great! Satan tried really hard to mess things up and get to Will, but he didn’t let anything stop him. Once he had it in his head he was going to finally be baptized, he wanted to do it as soon as possible! We saw him everyday pretty much that week and seeing the happiness on his and his wife’s faces was amazing. I ended up giving one of the talks at the baptism even though I could barely talk and I almost boiled him and Bro. Hall in the baptismal font, but other than that it was great! You see, they told me that they had a problem with the water being too cold before, so didn’t even think to check to see if it was too hot. I just kept checking periodically to see that the water hadn’t gone cold while I filled the font, not even realizing it was a bit too hot. But they said it was fine, so all was well :)

We were able to go to the store and buy some extra towels afterwards and borrowed a shop-vac and we’re able to finally get most the water up. We plunged the toilet some more – and miraculously it started flushing again…go figure.

In the meantime I had been coughing up a lung (I think I had a bit of bronchitis) and it had been raining all day long (which was ironic because we put the rugs and blanket that we used to sop up some of the water outside to dry) but we still proceeded with our day and we had dinner with a member family and they were dropping us off that night, when I realized, we had locked ourselves out of our house. It was freezing and raining and no way to get into our house. But we remembered we’d left the window open all day hoping to help the carpet dry out, but really only succeeding in making it more wet. However the window is really high up from the back. So the members drive us back to their house to get a ladder and he climbs in our bathroom window for us and unlocks our door...

The next morning it starts snowing and after sacrament meeting they cancel the rest of church (just enough time for Will to be confirmed!) and everyone tells me to stay home the rest of the day and get better. But we have appointments that we don’t want to miss, so we go out driving in the snow and slide around a bit, but were completely safe. We ended up having a snowball fight with some people we just met at the apartment complex where our appointment was and had a great time. Then all throughout the night it snows and we have the worst snow we’ve had in a long time here – we got about 10 inches. I didn’t think it would be any big deal, since we were just able to brush it off our car in the morning and go, but most other people around here got snowed and iced in and some lost electricity for 3 days. But what it meant for us was 3 days of cancelled appointments and not being able to see anyone! Because every day it seemed to get worse, not because it snowed anymore, but some of the snow would melt and then it would freeze again in the night and make it even worse for getting around! Last p-day, was very frustrating because not only did my letter get erased, but we didn’t have time to do anything else we needed to, the dryers at the Laundromat were practically all out of order, etc., etc.

Of course, now the weather is in the 80’s and it is just mocking us…. It seems like there was a lot more that happened, but I guess it’s all not important. It just seemed like to counter the amazing experience we had with getting Will ready and baptized, that we had a really bad next couple weeks. Nothing just seemed to go right. Our other investigators all seem to be regressing and not finding many new ones.

However we did run into the funniest old ladies yesterday that just seemed to epitomize small town Virginia culture. When we walked up they were just sitting in the carport reminiscing on their lives. They invited us to sit down and talk with them and they proceed to jab our ears off – about all sorts of things! We find out they are twins, in their 80’s, named Selma and Thelma and they’ve lived in Gretna their whole lives. They sit in the 5th pew at the Baptist church on the corner (the one that the bells play church hymns throughout the day), and everyone looks forward to seeing how they will be dressed on Sunday :) They told us practically their entire life stories and their problems with their children and daughters-in-law and about how nobody keeps the law of chastity. But we did end up teaching them the entire plan of salvation, and they said we could come back whenever we wanted. So funny…

Good news, though, I’m feeling all better. And, I pretty much already knew this but, I’m staying here in Gretna for the rest of my mission with Sister Bell. I can’t believe I only have one transfer left! Just 6 more weeks! Crazy! All the elders I came out with keep giving me a hard time because I’m going home and they’re not.

Anyway, I had a really great talk with my mission president at interviews and had some good doctrinal discussion. Something I was talking to him about was faith and how to really exercise true faith. He told me something that really stood out to me. He was telling me that part of having faith and exercising it was recognizing the promptings of the Spirit, no matter how small, and having the confidence to hold on to them no matter what. So I guess I need to learn to better recognize those little answers and promptings and go forward with them and not doubt. Faith is just one of those things that even though it is so simple, I feel like I could study it for a life time and still have a ton to learn.

To answer your question, no they hadn’t started working on 52nd street when I left, so I got to miss the whole thing! Ha, ha! The pictures were great! Sounds like Kristi is having way too much fun- I’m going to have to come home and tag along after her :) Well, gotta go. All the pictures that we've taken are on Sis. Bells camera and she can't find her cord, or else I'd attach some great pictures. Oh well, you'll see them eventually.

Love you all! ~Melissa