Hola Elder

Dear Family,

So this past week we made three hospital visits, I gave two blessings, and we saw one person die.

Long story behind that last one right there. In short, let's just say that it put us in a pensive mood for the rest of the day, and that the ward has done a good job with the whole "mourning with those that mourn" part of the baptismal covenant.

Curiously, later that day we taught one of the better Plan of Salvation lessons in my mission to a friend of one of the members in the ward, only to be unable to set up a return appointment to any (any) degree of specificity.

Tuesday was the first time I mowed a lawn as a missionary. I don't know how I got away with not doing that for so long.

One Friday we cleared some space out for a shed in somebody's backyard. This entailed the ripping out of some seriously overgrown tomato cage thingies (curiously, without a single tomato to be found), killing a domesticated cactus with a machete (yes really), felling a tree with a chainsaw (my role here was to hold the limbs in place so they wouldn't sprout wings and fly away after being cut off by the member with the chainsaw (don't worry it was perfectly safe)), and removing the remaining stumps (decidedly less awesome than any of the previous activities). Our reward was a Costco pizza (curiously, the next day our dinner was also Costco pizza (from somebody else)).

Yesterday we brought a member with us who is a WWII buff (it's quite literally his job) to a lesson with an investigator who is also a WWII buff. It was a good conversation for the two of them, but they hit off so well that it was really difficult for us to switch the conversation towards religion. The way we finally got the subject on track was when we asked where the investigator's 1948 edition of the Book of Mormon was at (he got it from his dad, who got it from some missionaries while being stationed in post-WWII Japan). After that things were more on topic.

Sincerely,

Elder West

P.S. Elder Halvorsen has been telling me about how the band he used to be in, Plaidipus Rex, is becoming famous in the ward he is serving in. Apparently a good portion of the ward is fans of it on Facebook. Also, he related to me the entire history of the band, the hundredth part of which cannot be contained on these plates.