Bug Battlefield

This week wasn't as full of shenanigans as usual. We had a pumpkin carving contest, and I really think that mine should have won. Why wouldn't it? I carved the words "Student loans" into it. That's the spookiest thing anyone's ever heard of.

When we were headed to our dinner appointment, I didn't expect a fight.  "Elder Ruth, we're going to be late, we have to run!" We started to sprint along the sidewalk with vigor, determined to arrive when we should. The sun was beating down on us, streaming sweat across our foreheads. I gripped my bag to keep it from bouncing along.

"Why didn't we just ride our bikes?" I cried while hopping a bush which blocked the sidewalk. A low hanging branch sliced across my hairline, dropping a small blood drop across my white shirt. I kept running through the stinging pain, clenching my side to ease the achiness. We had been running for several minutes now. I had already tripped my way across several blocks, resting only at the stoplights. 

Something large blocked the sun. I looked up to see a sign of the second coming. Swarms and neighboring swarms of tiny blue bugs entered the area. They patrolled the skies, searching for intruders. We pushed on in the name of the Lord and breached through the first line of defense. Instantly, thousands of tiny blue bugs littered our bodies. I clenched my mouth shut to keep them from reaching my core.

"Elder Ruth!" My companion cried. He was covered in the blood of our enemies. The stains of bugs littered his white shirt. Their alive bodies crawled across his chest, attempting to identify the bodies of their fallen brethren. We picked up the pace, desperate to escape the area. The clearing was in sight.

"Hurry!" I demanded. We ran even faster. The end of the madness was 20 yards away. 15 yards! 10 yards! 5 y-- "AUGH!" I had been shot! I gripped my eye in pain breached through the ending. I had been temporarily blinded by a rogue fighter, now inside of my eye. We pushed through the pain and made it to the dinner appointment, sweaty, tired, and covered in blood.

Anyways, it says somewhere in 3rd Nephi that God knows what we need before we know. I had a really rough day on Friday, and I read the scripture on Saturday. After it, I prayed that God would bless me with what I needed to feel better. We then went to an appointment at a lady's house who had five kittens running around and playing. One of them loved me and let me hold it while I taught. Needless to say, my mood was completely changed and I felt much better. Well played, God. ;)

Remember the wine lady from last week? We taught her the Restoration and brought her two friends along with us. She absolutely loved it! She hugged my companion against his will after I dodged her slap happy arms. Every time she sees us, she tells us, "Thank you for changing my life". We brought her to church again and she loved it so much. She is making so many friends and is so happy to have found the truth. 

She has been a part of many religions and she says that ours is what was missing from her life. After all, we do have the restored church of Jesus Christ, so it does have all the pieces. We will invite her to be baptized this week and I am fully confident that she will gladly accept it and drop all alcohol instantly. She loves religion more than anything else. We also got someone else on date for baptism this week, but I wasn't there. We had companion exchanges, so. Yeah! There's the stuff of this week. Not too eventful. 

Balcony from a previous letter

In disguise, but the name tag kind of gives it away, eh?

Scary pumpkin because it says "Student Loans"

A Picture!

At a training and he now has a camera!  Expect pictures Monday!

What Really Happens

This is a post from Elder Ruth's mom. 

Elder Ruth talks alot about his adventures with food.  He seems to keep the heavy stuff out of his weekly letters.  I wanted to include a few of his experiences.  Please continue to pray for the missionaries.  They are young people suddenly thrown out to the big bad world.  I like a quote from Gary E Stevenson, "You have the Savior of the World on your side .  How can you fail?"  We all have Him on our side, but we still have life experiences and sometimes it's not fun one iota. 

At one point, Elder Ruth replies, "But know that things suck occasionally, I just remember that Jesus is with me and all of these challenges are possible to overcome. I know because Nephi told me".

"I haven’t had to use my happy light too frequently. I used it one day when it was the worst day of my mission. We went to an "emergency." At a couple’s house, where they yelled and swore at each other and their house smells like freaking crap and it was awful. We helped them calm down by just listening and helped them clean up the house. They are doing good now, but it was really bad and took a toll on us. We then went with the ward mission leader to a guy who is extremely depressed. His life is trash. He has MS and so his wife left him and stole the kids. Everything is bad for him, and he cried in front of us. He told us the only reason he hasn't committed suicide is because he doesn't want his kids to think that it’s ok. I went home emotionally dead. I drew a picture of me walking while kinda crying, and Jesus is walking with me, pulling one of my arms around his shoulder and His other arm is around me, and He is saying, "I'll carry you if I have to." And then the next day, the song Glorious, from Meet the Mormons came on, and it made me cry when I saw that picture while listening to it. But they were good tears, I promise."

Another time he wrote, "Literally everyone does drugs, even the kids on their way to school. Lots of drugs are legal here. There are cigarette butts all over the place. Way more than I would've ever guessed. There's also a street in my area with a sign that says the area is loaded with prostitutes and your vehicle will be impounded if you pick one up. There's a strip club not far from here. It's even advertised on a bill board. They found a body of a woman in a dumpster a couple streets away. That wasn't good. That was on Thursday. I think where we live is much prettier, looks cleaner and far more friendly. There is so much garbage everywhere. Our home is amazing compared to here. I miss clean streets and air.

He concludes with, "I’m being completely honest when I say that I am 100% good right now. I don't dwell on that stuff at all. I am actually kinda smiling right now because I love emailing everyone. But yeah, through reading the scriptures and listening to good music and seeing the light in the few people we do teach, I am pretty satisfied."

A Taste of Madness

This week has been loaded with tons of things that kind of just chip away at our sanity. Everything that can go wrong pretty much did go wrong, and weird things happened, strange people emerged from out of nowhere, and just everything was a bit odd. One day, we ran out of ketchup, and this was a very big deal. We both had two of those really good hot dogs from Walmart cooked up. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I tried to think of an alternative. There was a container of BBQ sauce in the fridge, but it was a beautiful lie, for it was empty. Stress rose as Elder Stewart shakily rose the bottle of mustard. The lid clicked, echoing around the apartment. I slowly shook my head while keeping my eyes locked on the hot dog. The first stream of mustard creakily snaked along the meat in an S fashion, slowly pulling my humanity away with it. The lid of the relish popped off, sinking me to my knees. It sloshed across the hot dog, smashing the mustard to its body. My breath started to fail me. Elder Stewart nodded his head and reluctantly raised the hot dog to his mouth. He closed his eyes and shakily brought it millimeters closer to his lips. Time stopped. I reached my hand forward to prevent the calamity. "No!" I cried. But it was too late. The deed was done, and so was my life.

After that moment, we were both incredibly broken. Grace makes up for the rest, but sometimes, it can feel as if you are abandoned by God, and thus unable to feel his grace. As a broken man, I checked the pantry for anything. I spied the honey and took a judgement call. Elder Stewart was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. "Hey, should I put some honey on my hot dog?" He looked up and I caught sight of his shattered face. "Oh have mercy." He trembled and dropped his head back down.

I feel like that basically sums up the madness of this week. However, I will continue to write. We volunteer at a food bank every week, hence the salmon loins of last email. This week, I was in charge of stacking carrots and loaves of bread in a freezer. Never in my life have I seen that much bread! But my stacking game was on point, in line with the people of ancient South America. Basically, you wouldn't be able to slide a credit card in the crack between the bread loaves. Thank you, Tetris. I never liked you, but you did me well.

My cooking skill leveled up again. After making us many meals, I tried to make an egg sandwich with three eggs. After summoning all of my energy obtained from previous levels, I took a deep breath and then flipped three sunny side up eggs at the same time. They hit the pan again like champions and I immediately leveled up! 

We bought some egg nog on Monday. I drank some for breakfast at like 8 AM. It was basically the best egg nog I've ever tasted. I was so surprised in my euphoria of good taste that I had to check the carton to see what set it apart from the other nogs other than the horrific price of four dollars. It says it has a hint of rum in it. I was shocked and incredibly broken to realize it, especially since we bought an entire gallons worth of it!! What am I, Jack Sparrow?! We kept it in the fridge for further questioning. It was decided that if I started acting really weird, it was not good. I never did act drunk or anything. The sister missionaries took a look at it and they said that I was fine, since I didn't have to show ID for it when I bought it at Walmart. I was so relieved, and we've been chugging that eggnog of lies ever since. 

Speaking of alcohol, it is a wonderful thing. Our downstairs neighbor came up to our apartment at like 10 PM, incredibly drunk. She had hiccups for 3 days straight, and she prayed to get rid of them, and once she thought of our faces, the hiccups stopped. We gave her a second Book of Mormon, because she gave her first away. She read it a lot and then came to church with us on Sunday. She is very knowledgeable in religion. She said that despite all these loud children, she has never felt the spirit stronger. Right after, she got her wallet and tried to give the bishop all of the money she had. She was so stunned that he wouldn't take it and is now just in love with our church. We will teach her the lessons soon and I have no doubt that she will be baptized shortly! Sweet!

So that's a fragment of my absolutely messed week. Enjoy it ;)

Gird up your loins, we're going on an adventure!

Shenanigans happened, but they are personal shenanigans

This week was a bit of a tough one! Our first three days of the week went by without a single lesson (except for dinner appointments). We also didn't receive any referrals or anything. We have to keep count of all these things, and I think that it probably isn't the best. It is a sort of thing that can cause people to worry that they aren't living up to what they should be. Those 0's we recorded does not display our good works. We helped some people move in, shared plenty of messages with member family at dinner and on the streets, volunteered and got ripped at a food bank (from hoisting salmon loins...?) and also helped at a bike shop. So we still did exactly what we needed to.

I've spent a lot of time reading the scriptures. Though it is important to help investigators feel Gods love, it is good to also grow your own relationship with Him. I have struggled a lot with things this week like poor weather conditions and rude people, but it only greatened my capacity to feel even stronger love and have a better connection with Him. I was so glad to meet with a trans gender 14 year old person. I did everything I could to help them know how much God loves her and shared a message on charity. I don't know the policy the church has with transgender, but I do know that God loves ALL of His children, no matter what. I felt really happy when we finished our message. She really wanted to give us a hug because my companion and I wrought a huge change in her heart.

We also spent a lot of time with a man who has lost everything. I am not very good at distinguishing between what is the spirit and what is my own thoughts, but at the end of our visit, I felt like I needed to give him a hug. Giving him that hug made an extreme difference, and I felt my heart explode with the love that God and I have for him. I hope that we can help bring him back.

While I was back at home, surfing through only the dankest of memes, I found an idea that could be incorporated into cigarettes. The idea was proposed that tree seeds could be placed into the butt of a cigarette, so that when a smoker carelessly litters poor Mother Earth, a tree could spring forth from it. If that idea came to be, Spokane would be the thickest rain forest to ever touch the earth, because good grief. Drugs! Drugs everywhere! Hide yo kids, Hide yo wife! I am convinced that the reason I am still coughing is because I have gotten lung cancer! That's enough of that ranting.

I'll leave you off with a fresh spiritual thought. I'd share through scriptures if I didn't leave mine back at the apartment on accident. So! We are all humans, and because of it, we all mess up all the time. Sometimes, we make a small mistake and don't even worry about it.  Sometimes we make a huge mistake and desperately beg for forgiveness. God will always forgive us if it is through a broken heart and a contrite spirit. No matter what, He will forgive. Because of this, we are eternally indebted to him. If one of his other servants have wronged us in some way, we owe it to God to forgive that person. What you do to someone else, you do to Jesus. God can not forgive you if you are holding a huge grudge against His child AND Jesus, so do what it takes to forgive everyone, and He will never fail to forgive you.

Have a great week, all of you. And more than half of you asked to be on this list. You're all my friends! Don't be afraid to respond to me ;)

Hymn

*Playing Hymn #251 for the first time at a Zone Conference*
Companion:  Play FASTER!
Elder Ruth:  I'm Trying!

WD-40 and Grandma

I left a wonderful story out of my group email that amuses me.  We got a brand new car the other week.  It is a 2017 RAV4 and it's really nice.  I like it a lot and I'm the designated driver so I've had fun with it.  Basically it's a great car and it's really nice.

When we back up in a car, it is mandatory to have your companion outside the car behind you, guiding you.  When I was backing out, I followed his command and started to turn.  The edge of the car grinded a pole leaving two large brown marks.  I was freaked out for a little while until the memory of an email Grandma Ruth sent me came to the rescue.  WD-40 gets stuff like that off of cars.  We found some the next day and I scrubbed the car real good.  Now, I can't even tell anything happened, and I can't find an indentation or mark to prove it did happen.  Thanks Grandma Ruth!

My quote of the week:
What kind of mad man doesn't deliver mail on Sundays!?

Random Noises

What a lovely week. On last Monday, I hurt my leg somehow. I figured it was either I slightly ripped or strained a tendon. I refused to go and get an MRI because I had a pretty good feeling that I would be ok. I spent two days walking in a weird fashion in order to relieve stress on that leg. I ended up being fully healed! Yes! On Tuesday, while it still hurt, we had to drop our car off to another companionship and walk back. After walking the half mile to our apartment, I realized that the key to the apartment was on the key ring for the car :( HOWEVER, I also remembered that everything in our apartment is kinda sub-par, and our back door doesn't lock. With a hurt leg, I jumped off some stairs and grabbed a ledge, then shimmied to the balcony, then pulled myself over and let myself into the apartment, then let my companion in. Level up.

I have met so many strange people. I made the mistake of saying to a conspiracy theorist, "Jet fuel can't melt steel beams." And then he gave me a high five and we were stuck for like 10 minutes listening to him talk about Corrupt America and inside jobs everywhere and all this stuff. For the record, I am 99% sure that jet fuel can easily melt a steel beam. Another man we met told us that because of the Supermoon, the end of the world would be tonight. (Like Wednesday). I told him that It's great that he's studied the Bible, but the Book of Mormon is pretty fantastic too. He said that that wouldn't have time to read it. I haven't seen that man since.

My cooking level has increased a few times while being out here. This week, I made brownies, cookies, and a casserole. My companion loves my food so much, he eats more than half of it and gives half to me. I tried to eat all that he gave me the other day. The thing is, these meals feed my family of six and then leave leftovers. He ate his half super quickly. I ate half of my half too quickly, trying to keep up. I then had to lay down for 20 minutes. I've also been sharing the desserts I've made with the sister missionaries across the street. They have fallen in love with my cooking, and any time they come over to borrow something, they ask if we have any desserts I made that I could let them have. They are also starting to bring me ingredients so that I can make more. It's pretty amusing to me. They once made the mistake of throwing a stick of butter to me. I have a tendency to smite flying things to the ground. Luckily, though very very smashed, the butter was perfectly clean.

We got me a new bike lock this week. It attaches to the bike, but I should have known better. When we were driving with the bike on the car, the lock fell into the streets somewhere. I spent the next few hours distressed because I had just spent 35 dollars on it earlier that day. After doing our service, I looked all over the roads on our way back to the apartment. We didn't find it. Then later, on our way to another appointment, we found it on the road in two pieces. I parked the car and ran to rescue my poor bike lock. It is a U lock, and the metal was bent inwards. The button on it wasn't able to be manipulated, and the dials on it wouldn't move at all. My companion somehow managed to fix all that up! Then later, I used my strength from not breaking the Word of Wisdom and bent the U back into place. I now have a fully functional bike lock which is pretty scratched up. Thank goodness! So that's the non churchy part of my week! All you need to know in terms of proselyting is, everyone around here has found Jesus, though seem to know nothing about Him, and don't want to listen to us. So yeah! I had an amusing week.

Also, the subject of this email is dedicated to my companion. He has noticed that any time I make a random noise, which I do frequently, it means that something has happened to me. Here's a few examples: Getting spaghetti sauce on my white shirt, dropping a pen, tripping, running into a wall, hitting my elbow, stubbing my toe, sneezing and losing my page in the Book of Mormon, getting hit in the face by a bug while riding my bike, etc.

I'll talk to you guys next week!

Elder Ruth

Gird up your loins, we're going on an adventure!

Note:  He hasn't gotten his camera yet, so no pictures from him.  I asked to borrow his companions pictures, but apparently he isn't taking any, either!  Regardless, I discovered the following picture so I am adding it to this post. 

Zone Conference 10/2/17

A Gem

I (Lori) was sick one day and decided to scroll through Facebook.  Someone wanted to be my friend and I did not know the guy.  Since I had nothing better to do I looked through his pictures.  Lo and behold!  A picture of Elder Ruth with others for Pday Breakfast!  Thank you for feeding our boys!  Thank you for posting a picture!

Pit Bull

One night I got a text from a number I did not recognize.  When I opened the text, I saw the words "son" and "pit bull".  It took me several read-throughs before I could process what I was reading!  This was the text.  "Sister Ruth.  This is Dave Stoddard, ward mission leader in your son's ward in Spokane.  I was with him teaching last week and he got up close and personal with the investigator's pit bull.  Thought you'd like a photo.  Your son is doing well.  Have a good night."  Later Jonathan told me the dog sneezed into his hair and scared him to death.  Here he is snuggling with said dog.

Level Up

Things are going really well. I've got a companion named Elder Stewart. He is half Samoan and has made me rice and eggs for many many meals. He thinks I am hilarious and is constantly laughing because of the things we say.

It isn't that easy being out here. Most of the people out here are very devout in their faith, such as non denominational or Catholic or whatever. There is a church on every street. I've never seen religion this much before. Most of the people are nice and tell us that they are not interested, but we've had a few rude people. I've only been flipped off once, so that's good. 

I've made a bunch of friends. I know a lot of the local homeless people, and I give them granola bars when I pass. We've also taught the restoration to one of them, and prayed with another one. I actually really like the homeless people. They aren't stubborn and they love the company. The actual people in homes or just walking around are the ones who cause me problems.

On Wednesday, we went to go clean up this guy's front weed. I'd say front lawn, but he has weeds instead. He has trees, too. He handed me a machete which was basically a razor blade, and so I got to work, hacking and slashing my way through several trees. I also ripped some of them out of the ground like Excalibur. We filled a trashcan and a half with just weeds. I slashed my way through so many weeds, it was amazing. I leveled up from that. The only problem is, when you level up, things get harder to accommodate your new skills. It is hard to talk to people.

I am having a lot of success with the first people I ever talked to. I love them so much. I am determined to flip their lives around. I've already helped the woman get a job, and we're working on getting the guy a job, too. Right now, I've been compiling a list of vocabulary words in the medical field. She needs help with spelling words, so I'm turning her into a literate woman. I love her children too. They're so cute! Its a lot of fun and people like them help things be worth it.

My apartment is less than great. It's habitable I guess. There are very few lights, and a lot of things are broken. One day, we found a lamp which wasn't there before. Now we can see in our room if one of us is blocking the only light we have. My bedframe is basically just a frame, and my mattress falls through it. I think it's kinda like a banana chair. Regardless, I've been sleeping better each night! 

We went shopping today, and I'm about to make our apartment smell amazing with food other than rice and eggs! Can't wait.

We go out and look for new people every day. Someone gave me a poetry book that their friend published about Catholics. I'm pretty sure I am not allowed to read it, so I later gave it to my drunk friend, Jeff, who seems to enjoy it immensely. One day we'll teach Jeff, he's just always drunk.

Its not that hard being out here, but one day I became kind of depressed. It was hard on me, because I have seasonal depression kind of. One day, we found a happy light in the apartment. I used it for the first time while watching a church movie, and then I felt even better than normal. Its good to know that God loves us enough to make random useful things occasionally appear in our apartment. I really appreciate Him. So that's my week! Lots of rejection, meeting hobos, leveling up, and eating rice!

Elder Ruth

Gird up your loins, Elders, We're going on an adventure!