Scatter-brained

I'm learning that it's really tough to have a child in a hospital a thousand miles away. I'm having a little trouble concentrating on anything right now - except the fact that I wish I could be there, and that I wish I knew more about the condition Alex is in. 



...about your son...

 Yesterday, right after Danny and I got home from church, I got a call from Alex's mission president.  Umm...for those of you who haven't had a child go on a mission, it's a little like having the school counselor call you from the high school...sure, it could be good news...but it seldom is. Sure enough, it wasn't good news.  I felt bad for Alex's mission president - he'd never had to call a parent to tell them that their son was in the hospital with a fractured skull, jaw broken in two places and a possible ruptured eardrum.  All of that sounds worse than it is...I hope.  The fractured skull bit sort of threw me...but it's a hairline fracture (ha! hair...line...) and the doctors say it will heal up on its own without their help. The jaw fractures are a bit more serious - serious enough to need his jaw wired shut for the next few/several weeks.  The good news...yes, there is some good news...is that Alex will get to come home for those weeks of recuperation - possibly Wednesday. In the meantime, I'll be getting a bedroom prepared for him, digging out his casual clothes and shopping for things he can drink through a straw. 


Yes, this is where my imagination takes me.



Untidy little secrets...

Surely I'm not the only one who does this? I have between 20 - 30 recipes haphazardly taped up on the inside of my cupboard doors.  I use some of them quite often - but I just noticed that there are several that have been up for years (yes, years) that I've never made.  Will I ever?  Hmm. At this point, probably not.



Cookie recipes, pasta, soups, and a very yummy looking
carrot cake recipe (that I've never made...)



My most frequently used bread recipes - right above my bread maker. 
Oh yeah, also the recipe for pizza egg rolls.



Cheese puffs (savory cream puffs), crepes, pumpkin pancakes, beanland soup, cake mix cookies,
fresh blueberry cake, and a couple more unused recipes.

What I should do is take all these recipes down, type them up on the computer and then print them up - all nice and neat.  That's what I should do...will I?  Stay tuned.

Hola Elder

I bet you folks are surprised that I'm emailing today, but I assure you that there's a good reason behind it. You see, in this mission, we have the opportunity to go to the temple once every two transfers, and to do this we wake up early on p-day and get a ride from a member. The only problem is that the temple is closed on Monday or something, so we have to change our p-day. We went to the Los Angeles temple this morning, though the southern half of the mission goes to the Newport Beach temple. The LA Temple is very awe-inspiring, though I'm always impressed at how the spirit is the same regardless of the exterior. Anyways, after our session our zone was able to meet in the chapel with the temple president, where he talked for a bit. It was interesting.

This past week a general authority, Elder Choi (pronounced "Che") of the Seventy, went on a tour of the mission. For us that entailed a half-mission conference, where he and his wife and the mission president all took turns speaking about stuff. The prevailing theme of Elder Choi's remarks was "get married right after your mission", which my companion found rather timely since he's going home in 3 weeks. I, on the other hand, have somewhere around 85 weeks before I need to worry about such things.

A couple times this past week we had the opportunity to take a young man who's preparing for his mission out with us. He went out with us on Thursday night and made some really good contributions to the lessons we had, and yesterday he helped us do some yardwork-service. He's working really hard preparing for his mission, and I have to say that it really showed. He'll be a pretty awesome elder.

On Wednesday as we were trying to find somebody we street contacted, we ran into this one lady who was taking groceries in. We offered some help, she accepted, and was interested enough to set up an appointment Friday evening, to which we ended up being 50 minutes late. I kind of feel guilty about that, but I feel pretty safe shifting the blame to the member we had with us. In any case, the lady was waiting for us, and our truancy didn't seem to faze her interest. Let's just hope we'll be able to go somewhere with her.

The next transfers will be November 1, for those who are curious, but I kind of doubt if I'll get transferred.

Hasta Luego,
- Elder Oeste

Hola Elder

The Spanish word of the week is "surdo", which means "left-handed" ("southpaw"?).

Conference this weekend was really good, though I guess that goes without saying. It was kind of weird going to the stake center for the Saturday session and basically seeing nobody there, but I did appreciate the lack of distractions. I felt that I was able to get more out of it that way. I think my favorite two talks were Ted Callister's Book of Mormon talk and the talk by the Japanese guy that amounted to "Thank you, missionaries."

I'm not sure whether the Provo Tabranacle temple or the Congo temple announcement surprised me more. The first one was entirely out of the blue, whereas all the other elders in our apartment think that I misheard in the case of the latter (my notes don't lie).

Due to the distance between our proselyting area and the stake center, it was essentially infeasible to do much work between sessions, which was quite the bummer. During the Saturday afternoon break, we had the opportunity to eat at a member's house. It was nice since he was feeding all of the Spanish missionaries from our zone and the other zone, but it was not so nice since the other missionaries goaded me into eating a Chili de Arbol (bad idea).

I'd say my Spanish is doing pretty well, though I think I have some work to do with regards to comprehension. For instance, last night we were visiting a member and I had to sit on the sidelines because I could barely understand a word he said because he was talking so fast. Despite my best listening efforts, my brain was fried at the end of the visit. (Strangely, I understood practically everything my companion said.

On Thursday (jueves) we had the opportunity to provide service to one of the emeritus Bishops of the ward. We basically did a bunch of yardwork, which entailed using stuff like chainsaws and lawnmowers and such. I ended up with the rakes. In any case, I enjoyed the opportunity to sweat a lot (you see, with me being a car-elder this doesn't happen on a daily basis).

Just a note: The mission president actually allots us time each week to use mormon.org for some reason, so if you want me to see any of the profiles you make I can just look them up.

Hasta el Fuego,
- Elder Oeste

Hola Elder

This past week was my first real experience with transfers. My companion and I weren't transferred, but I still found it rather interesting to see how much anticipation people had for their transfer calls on Saturday night. For our district, 3 out 6 elders ended up being transferred. That meant one of the areas got "whitewashed". The new elders are pretty good. One of them served in the Cambodian ward for the past year, but somehow he ended up in our district (curiously, the English district in our area also got a Cambodian elder). All I can say is that it's a really weird sounding language.

Last night my companion and I were talking to a few really drunk guys on their doorstep. My companion ended up talking to the only non-drunk one, and apparently they had a good discussion. I was left with the drunk guys, and I'm not exactly sure what happened. From what I got out of it, they have been reading the Book of Mormon and really like it, and then for the next ten minutes it felt like the conversation was going in circles. Whatever the case is, we somehow ended up setting up a lunch appointment with them for the Saturday (I have reasons to doubt that they'll remember, though).

-Elder West

Hola Elder

I have been informed that in my e-mail last week I had a paragraph in my e-mail that consisted only of the sequence of letters "Speaking of w". I must inform you that the text was not missing, but rather was invisible. Any and all rumors along the lines of "The computer didn't send the email even though I clicked the send button a full minute before my time was up and so I had to use another Elder's time to fire off the latest (read: incomplete) draft which ldsmail had" are entirely false and should not be taken seriously.

For those without the ability to see invisible text, I will provide a summary of said inviso-text:

"Speaking of which, the members around here feed us really well. We're usually able to have a member feed us every night, which is pretty amazing when you consider that there are six of us ravenous beasts to feed. Really, the ward here is pretty good, though it's been a while since there's been a baptism here so the enthusiasm for the work could be higher, but I guess that it's just something we'll need to work at.

Also, I just feel like mentioning how weird the housing around here seems to me. I don't think I've seen more stucco, front-yard fences, and backhouses (with backhouses) in my life. I've started to get used to it, but it was all rather bizarre at first (Washington, this is not)."

Anyways, as far as this week is concerned, I'll just have to express my surprise at the fact that I'm basically done with my first transfer in the field. The saying "Time flies like an arrow" has never been more true than it is now (same with "Fruit flies like a banana.").

I've learned quite a lot in the past 6 weeks, and hope to be able to learn and do much more in the coming 6 weeks (FYI, the new training program lasts 12 weeks total).

Weirdest thing that happened this past week was having one of our lessons interrupted by the Los Angeles Police Department. I still have no idea what exactly prompted their visit (they said the mother of the house called them, but apparently she didn't), but they ended up waking up one of the other persons we were teaching from that home, which was good because that meant that we got to teach him too.

On Saturday morning as we were trying to contact one of our investigators (I'm not sure why we planned on stopped by so early), we ran across some person on the street who just wanted us to teach him. Apparently he was a member who had been inactive for quite a few years and has had some trouble in his life, and now he's come to the conclusion that he should come back to the church. I guess that's just an example of the Spirit guiding us to people we need to talk to.

So yeah, this was a pretty good week.
Cuidase!
- Elder Oeste

Hola Elder

This past week has been rather interesting. We've had temperatures ranging from 100+ to the low 70s (muy frio). It just so happened that for the hottest day this week I was on exchanges and had to use a bike. I'm not sure if I drank four bottles or five bottles of water that day. (Mercifully, the mission president said that bike elders could have an extra hour of study time because it was so hot.) Regardless of the temperature, I actually enjoyed biking around. The main problem with it (besides being slower than driving a car) was waiting for the other elders to pick us up for dinner.

Speaking of w (he just breaks off here...)

On Saturday I learned that I have superhuman cockroach-ignoring abilities (and that my companion doesn't).

Los vemos,
Elder West