May 17, 2010

On my way here a bug flew in my ear, and it was the creepiest/worst feeling I've ever had, ughhhh!

Soooooo, OOommmpa family.
It's been a long suck-tastic week!
So last Monday, the first ward's truck went in the shop and they still haven't gotten it back...so it's like....blah. We just kinda chilled last pday, played cards at a first ward member's house, it was good. We ate Panda Express and it was good.

Tuesday was uber windy. Imagine trying to bike with an anvil tied to your tire, along with a tank and a 747. Yea, that's like biking into the wind.
Then it decided to rain, and snow...again.....yea yuck! But we got to see a sister who really needed us. She was going through a lot and really lost sight of a lot of things. We reassured her that God definitely loved her, and that we all made mistakes, and we felt prompted to share the restoration, so we taught the first lesson and it went really well. Then the rest of the day we literally had like 80000000 appointment drops and changes, it was just nasty. Our dinner appt. ended up just giving us money, so we biked more in the rain (total time like 1.5 hours) to Qudoba and got some fat burritos. It wasn't very fun.

Wednesday morning we woke up to snow on the ground.....yea, whatever Colorado. We then had breakfast with our Stake president and talked a lot about finding people to teach, that's one of our area's main problems. We talked about how God has promised that He has prepared people to receive our message, and that we just need to have faith that we can find them. Then we had District Meeting, which is now on Wednesdays....it's weird having Sister missionaries in the district....they don't get jokes.....at all. Then i felt really sick...after biking in the cold rain, so I took medicine and it ended up putting me to sleep after the first ward ate at our house and sister stiefvater (adopted mom) read us part of "Da Jesus book" which is the bible in ibonics. It's so good, I felt like a little kid. Then an investigator missed her interview. It was a huge bummer, and that was wednesday, and we've stopped over and called a million times, and she won't answer. We're kinda sad/frustrated/scared, cuz we don't know what happened at all. But then some members took us out to Chili's and i ate like a enormous amount of their chips and salsa, and I got sad cuz I realized that that was the last food/place I ate at before I went on my mission! :(

Soooo Thursday..i was still sick and the First ward Elders were sick of being on bikes so we spent some of the morning discussing various finding methods/contacting approaches and making awesome beats with our member's keyboard. The rest of the day was a wash as we biked everywhere on our messed up by rain bikes and people canceled on us right and left...so fun. But we went out with a soon to be missionary in our ward, going to Chile, and saw a family that we're teaching and it went awesome! We talked a lot about pray and scripture study and how they're little things that add up to making us happy. But yea, then yea, it was good.

Friday, we did service at the food bank, had a feast of a red-vine lunch. Then weekly planning, walking home in the rain...again, getting flipped off by some like random dude. Ok this is a funny story, so one of our members dropped us off at 1st ward's house...and we had lunch, and then me and d-bron had to walk home. So it starts to rain, and it gets really bad, and we're almost at the light at 58th and ward, and we pass some guy with and umbrella and a trench coat and shades, and we're in like casual clothes cuz we just did service....so we were walking past him, we did have our tags on, and i was just like hey, and waved, and without missing a beat, the guy that was holding the umbrella just straight up flipped us off, no facial expression change, just a little bloop! and we were just like.....whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!??!? dbron starting dying of laughter and I was just like...did that really happen? We were like...ok, it's pouring rain, it's miserable out, and just was that really necessary?? Man I hope that just made everything better, like it was just like...what the heck lol, so we laughed and hoped that that dude's day got better...
then...our dinner dropped off pizza...and we finished out the night.

Saturday was also 0 fun. Well some of it was fun. We went to the bike shop cuz dobronsky had to get a bike, so we went and picked one out that we're gonna get this week or something. But while I was there, Colton, our friend who works there, and I were talking and I was like...my bike is so messed up, cuz we put them in someone's truck and things got jacked. So he fixed that for free cuz he's awesome and then he like hit my back breaks and was like...dude, holy crap, your break pads are gone, so he took them off and showed me and it was like.....flat, like it was almost metal on metal, crazy, if I had biked like one more day on it I would have shredded my tires...so he fixed it which was tight and i just had to pay for the break pads, he gave us free labor. They're so cool, but then again we give them a lot of business and lip service to other peeps, so it works. We're gonna have a Risk night with a bunch of the bike shop guys this week and see if they're interested in our message, but it will be a good time. Then we did some member missionary lessons.....had dinner, and just tried to talk to everyone. We talked to some really interesting people that day. One guys was like...hmm, nope don't know where i'm going after this life, and nope....don't care where, i'll find out when i get there... and i was like...that's like just writing down random answers on a test and being like...hmm, don't know what grade i'll get...i guess i'll find out when i get it back. So it really didn't make any sense, but he was cool. We talked to a lot of other really nice-don't-want-to-talk-to-you people. It's kinda funny how when we're in proselyting clothes people don't wanna talk to us, but if we're friendly in street clothes we're like the most cool people and everyone wants to talk to us...gosh, i hate stereotypes. We talked to one dude and he was like...man you guys aren't like other missionaries i've talked to, and i laughed and was like...how so. and he was like...well you guys are tight lol. So it's good to know that we're tight missionaries.

So that brings us to Sunday...which was just......interesting. So first we got up at 5:20 did our thing, got picked up by brother carrol for our 6:30 ward council meeting. Got there, set up chairs....6:45 rolls around, and i call bishop to find out that it was cancelled and someone called everyone but brother carroll and us.. so bro c. was kinda upset, i was too asleep to be upset, but i was when i woke up and actually realized that i could have had another hour of sleep.......yea, that was fun, so we fell asleep in the foyer on the chairs to wake up to...someone whistling their way through the hall telling us we must have stayed up to late partying and we should get more sleep, at which point if we weren't sitting down, some philly slicing would have happened. So then we woke up, church was pretty standard. The church is true, but people will always be flawed, and it's important to forgive, cuz we all will forever make mistakes and we want forgiveness, so it's something i'm working on is understanding that there are a lot of variables and we'll never know all of them. So we made it out of church alive....crashed for lunch. Went to an investigator lesson, who flaked... did some member lessons, had dinner. Then dbron had like his 3rd flat tire on hiatt's bike, and we've just been fixing them and it was just really annoying, but yea, not cool. I found out what a cotton wood tree is and how they make like wanna be "wishes" like we have on the east coast. Went to an investigator who once again dropped some things that we definitely weren't ready for on us. Some guy told us he was satan. And we biked home. It's amazing how much i've grown in 5 months just from dealing with real people. seeing things i've never expected or wanted to see and helping people work through them.

My admonition to anyone reading this.
Please, please, do not do drugs. Drugs will literally destroy you. I have countless countless stories from addicts and just people who've been there...just....ugh, stay away.
Alcohol....man, i think alcohol might be worse than drugs, because it's legal, and so easy to abuse it. We're teaching this old man, who's an alcoholic, chain smoker and man. it's so depressing to see him go to the hospital and they tell him something, he doesn't do anything about it, and just keeps killing himself. it's literally destroyed his body and his brain.
And i've seen it in so many other people to.

Alot of people think that Mormon's not drinking or smoking is a restriction. But what's the real restriction, having an insatiable addiction to something, or being able to run miles and bike across town without wheezing up a lung. Who's more free, the man in jail paying the price for his consequences? or the guy on the street who has no debt to pay. Free from addiction is just that....being free. being healthy. being able to go and play sports, or drive a car, which get taken away by some people's choices. Not trying to be self righteous or anything like that...just, I've seen too many people ruin their lives and not know what to do, because of smoking, drinking, and drugs.....ah.

But enough of that. It's been a good week. And no matter what we have done in this life, there is always hope.
God loves us right? and since he loves us, He wouldn't set us up to fail right? makes sense.
SO there will always be a way out, a way to improve and be happy.
We just have to find it, AND CHOOSE IT, is all.
SO
Much love unto everyone.
Keep pressing forward.

Love
Elder Allred