Chapter 11: Houseburglars

9/7/2020

Today was a great Pday. We went to Walmart early in the morning and got our shopping done which was nice, then we headed off to play ultimate frisbee with our district. We had a blast playing, I was fast and quiet so no one seemed to notice when I would show up in the endzone and catch what had been thrown from one endzone to the other. I think short passes are generally better for that game, but no one could keep up with me so we did a lot of really great field-wide passes. Other than that we got to talk to our families, we finished our video and had dinner with a family, and that was our night. Everywhere we go for dinner blows me away, people give us their best here too, but my heart was filled with gratitude for the rice and beans families would sacrifice, as it was often the Widow's Mite, but here people's sacrifices are no less meaningful, even though they're better off. Their love to help the Lord's servants as they can is evident in their eyes, and they do all they can to make sure we're taken care of. These are some incredible families. Our video also did really well tonight, it was just a Come Follow Me video for our ward, but it turned out great, and got a good amount of publicity! At least now we know that some people are indeed watching them.

9/8/2020

Today was a great day. We spent a lot of time trying to contact members today. We only got a couple of responses, but hopefully we'll start getting more returned calls soon. We had a joint dinner with the Sisters tonight since it was raining for the first time ever since I'd been here. We're only allowed to eat outside, and our dinner appointment tonight asked if they could bring us all food instead of canceling like I was expecting, which was a huge blessing. We had an all mission meeting today where Morse and I got to do a roleplay, we were asked to set the example as... bad missionaries... We had such a good time, we got the call late last night about doing it so we were PREPARED. We did everything wrong imaginable, but truly there were too many bad things to count, I'll list some of them here, though:

We ate food throughout the whole lesson.

We called out to some imaginary friends to tell them we'd be done with our lesson in five minutes so we could play basketball with them, then cut our lesson short for an "important missionary meeting"

We talked about how annoying the rules were and how much we disliked them.

We were super distracting throughout the lesson (I was eating the whole time and taking my suit jacket off and putting it back on every ten seconds).

We had stalked the facebook profile of the "member" we were teaching and told her that we found a friend that we were going to message right then.

When the "member" expressed discomfort with the idea of us contacting their friend we were very pushy and said that we would follow up in a half hour to give her some time to think about it.

We also read some scriptures calling them to repentance to make them feel like they could be doing more.

We would cut each other off in the middle of talking.

We hit an incredible number of things in five minutes, and afterwards got so many praising remarks for having played the part so well. I don't know what they're talking about, we just taught a normal lesson... It was a lot of fun though, I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time. We also played pickleball with the Deacons tonight. It was a great chance to get to know some of the leaders and youth in our ward.

9/9/2020

Today we broke up the usual tradition of playing basketball to play pickleball. Apparently pickleball originated in Washington, so the Elders weren't very comfortable with the game, except for Elder Bott, who I got to really play against. It was a lot of fun, I was very glad that we got to do it, there's a good chance we'll get to do it another couple of times this week, too. We learned the cup song to participate in a ward activity, it took me forever to get the rhythm down, but now I can pretty reliably do it. We also had dinner with a Brasilian family tonight which meant that I got to spend a lot of time speaking Portuguese which was amazing. I especially loved that Irma because she knows a lot of Brazilian recipes, which means I have a lot to learn from her. Tonight she taught us how to make pastels which was awesome to learn, that was something I always wished I could do but was never good at, so to have this lady teach me so much was awesome.

9/10/2020

The most exciting part of today was probably when I broke into our Sister's home by climbing through the window on their second floor so that we could search their stuff and take their car keys. Wow! That confession felt so good, I guess that means that I don't have to worry about repenting of that now. I'm just kidding, now that everyone thinks that I'm a terrible person, I should probably explain our motives. It all started this morning when we were coming back from playing basketball. We were driving up the hill that leads to our house, and our neighbor's house, the Sisters. At about 7:40, Elders Bott, Davenport, Morse, and I were on that hill to our house, and saw the Sisters walking down the hill. After dropping us off, the Elders started back down the hill to go to their house when they passed the Sisters running back up the hill to their house. One of the Sisters had an existing knee injury, having sprained her knee two weeks prior. At about 7:50 We get a call from the Sister who hadn't sprained her knee, freaking out. She quickly hung up on us, panicked, and it wasn't until an hour later that we found out the knee injury Sister had re-hurt her knee, and was taken by paramedics to the hospital, where she's now going to have surgery. Those Sisters share a car with two other Sisters, and because the ones who got sent to the hospital had the keys, Morse and I were tasked with retrieving the car from their house and taking it to the other Sisters so that they wouldn't spend the next week biking in the rain. Easy task, right? We thought so too. We get to the house of the Sisters who are in the hospital, and the front door that they always leave unlocked (which breaks mission rules and is just a generally bad idea), is locked. Morse being ready for an adventure, suggests that he boosts me up to the second story so we could check to see if their windows were unlocked (very bad idea (climbing their roof to check their windows, not Morse boosting me)). He couldn't quite get me up, but we found a step ladder in their garage which was slightly taller and just barely enough to get me up onto the roof. I checked their room window which was not unlocked, and then saw their bathroom one. Missionary houses, for some reason, don't have fans in the bathroom, which means if you take a shower that the moisture will damage the walls, so we just leave the window open when we shower. That window, for good privacy reasons, is pretty high up and a maximum of one foot wide by two feet tall. Fortunately, that's the perfect size for me to squeeze through. using that window I was able to leave  lots of muddy footprints in their bathtub that's sure to confuse them when they get back, but more importantly, get inside the house and unlock the door to let Morse in. Then we began the search for the car key. Eventually we found their spare, but it didn't have a key fob, and since the cars don't use a physical key, just the presence of a fob to start, that didn't get us anywhere, so tomorrow we'll have to go get the fob from the Sisters. It wasn't a complete bust, we got the house key to make reentry easy, and the excitement of being houseburglars for a night.

9/11/2020

The only really good thing that happened today was that our Sisters came home from the hospital. They found some mystery muddy tracks going down the wall from the window in their bathroom into their bathtub which confused them, and a toilet seat that was left up by a couple of not-so-careful burglars who decided to use the bathroom of the house they had broken into. We got to be a part of our nightly devotional, and we got another person to start actively using our ward page, which were very good things.

9/12/2020

Today was an eventful day. We had a service project after basketball today where we pulled weeds that were bigger than I thought could possibly exist. The family made us an incredible breakfast afterwards, which I was very grateful for. Afterwards we booked it over to the church to show up for a training with the mission over Zoom. Morse and I had to do that thing where we just threw our white shirts and ties over our service clothes. We sat very still for the whole meeting so that we wouldn't ruin the facade by showing our shorts or how otherwise unprepared we were. Because the other Elders we share a car with had service after us, we ended up not showering and getting ready for the day until 2:00. By the time that we had finished lunch and were back on the road, we were just about ready to have dinner. After dinner we had to drop off a couple of member lists to people who had agreed to help us identify the less actives in our ward. When we swung by one of the families they also gave us a lot of eggs which was very kind of them. They taught us that eggs didn't actually have to be refrigerated, doing so just neutralizes the already low chances of an egg going rotten. I should say, they would have like to teach us that, but Morse and I both came from serving in third world countries where eggs were never refrigerated because fridge space was significantly less than what we have here and too precious to use on eggs, so Morse and I just smiled and nodded and looked at each other while  they informed us about these great revelations.

9/13/2020

Today was great! This was the first week we were able to go to church since I got here since the wards are on a three week rotation. It was wonderful to get to meet so many people, our interactions at church instantly doubled the number of people I knew, and gave us a lot of new options for working. A guy gave a talk today about the importance of doing missionary work by taking care of the missionaries. He painted us as all just being a bunch of struggling missionaries, which some are more than others, but the ward was way more outgoing to us afterwards, so maybe trying to get their pity was the right way to go. We did a practice lesson with Elder Whitesides in Spanish, but it was kind of sad because he's leaving for Salt Lake on Tuesday, so this was the last time we got to see him. We practiced the plan of salvation so I made sure to ask all the important questions like, "Who was Lilian?", "What's the difference between spirit paradise and prison?" and, "Do 'Mormons' believe in hell?". I shared all the great questions that I had received in Brazil, and while I asked these Elder Morse just smiled while Elder Whitesides looked confused. Elder Morse very masterfully responded to all of my questions, and we were able to prep Elder Whitesides for some of the more difficult questions that he was going to get in the field.

Today for a spiritual thought I wanted to share a verse that had gained new meaning for me, in Helaman 3:28 we read: Yea, thus we see that the gate of heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God.

The great event that inspired this verse was when the prophet Helaman witnessed tens of thousands of people uniting themselves under the banner that is Jesus Christ. Alongside Helaman I testify that heaven's gate truly is open to all, to access heaven, blessings, and God's love all we have to do is believe in Jesus Christ. As we exercise our faith, we will always have access to heaven's help.