Week 24 Letter

Week 24 Letter 

(Sorry about the delay - sent 12/17/2012)

All,

This week has been fairly interesting. We have still been doing a lot of tracting and trying to visit people who are never home. We've come to the conclusion that people only sleep here. Most people work in Orange county or San Diego or somewhere other and have long commutes. I was excited when we found a "Vancouver Place". No one was home on the entire street haha.

 

However, we met with two of our investigators and had lessons (finally). 

Heather: She is the housemate of a reactivating sister in the ward. They are both single mothers and have crazy lives right now (reminescent of situations in Highland). We had a lesson with them about faith. Heather wasn't raised with a religious background, but she said that she has prayed and it's worked for her. We also helped them move some furniture and swap out a washer and dryer, those things are heavy!

 

Our other investigator, Oscar, has been investigating the church for awhile(2 years) now. His family are recent converts of about a year. They are a super cool family. He's been going to church for about a year solid. We had a really good lesson with him. I think he's getting close to being baptized, he want's a stronger confirmation, but he has already gotten an answer. He just hasn't recognized it yet. So we will see about him. 

 

Elder Plaster and I got to lead a bunch of primary kids in the Murrieta Christmas parade, we sang "Christmas bells are ringing" it was pretty fun. We did a lot of biking back and forth that day. Our apartment is out of our area, and we were doing service so we had to bike to and from several times. Of course it's uphill (depending on how we get there, it is usually uphill both ways). We were hurting that night. 

 

One of the ward members almost died on us this week as well. The bishop asked us to visit some of the older members of the ward. So we went and visited Brother Schow. We had visited him before, so we knew that we would need to get comfortable. We asked him about a photograph of him and his wife and he proceeded to tell us all about how they met, and then his service in World War Two (which naturally fascinated me). He was an electrician on the battleship West Virginia. It was sunk at pearl harbor, re floated  participated in a major naval battle off of the Phillipines (which unfortunately I cannot remember the name of it) and took two Kamakazies (one of which the Japanese pilot flew out of his plane and landed in a huge pot of beans. He was telling us about all of this when in mid-sentence his eyes closed and his head slumped down and he stopped talking. Elder Plaster and I froze, we didn't know whether he had fallen asleep or died right there. E. Plaster was sure he had died. Bro Schow twitched a few times ("dead people twitch!" - Elder Plaster) I thought for sure that he fell asleep and I couldn't help snickering silently a little bit. We sat there for almost a minute, not moving. At which point we were starting to worry. When Bro Schow started to breath heavily, sat up and continued where he left off as if nothing had happened. It was hilarious. As soon as we walked out the door I busted out laughing. 

 

Well, time's up. Alma chapter 7

Merry Christmas everybody!

 

Thank you for your letters (',8^/) and prayers.

Elder Johns