Go Home, Elder Ruth. Take A Nap.

Oh hey everybody, it's me.

So this week, I got to go to the air force base. It really wasn't what I expected, not going to lie. We didn't have to turn in our phones, there wasn't cameras everywhere, there wasn't tons of people running all the time, and it almost just seemed like a gated community. We aren't allowed to just shimmy around which I thought was so sad. If we look like we don't belong, military police will inspect and then probably kick us out. We can only get in if someone else "sponsors" us on. So we got sponsored on and went straight to the 'thrift store we volunteer at. This thrift store was basically just a normal Joe place! There's no sweet knives everywhere, just a bunch of clothes and books and stuff. I was a bit disappointed at first, until I learned something important. They have just tons of sweet combat boots because the air force needs them to be in basically perfect condition. They have so many of these pairs which hardly have anything wrong with them that they just send most of them away to goodwill or something. Because of that, they allowed me to take a pair. I'm now the proud owner of a sweet pair of boots! These bad boys are nigh invincible. Not only do they look great, they are incredibly powerful. I barely tapped a very large brick of ice and the entire thing hit the ground hardcore. If it was in a normal pair of shoes, it would have really hurt. There is only one problem. I later found out that they are actually girl boots.. but it seems that there is no difference, so we're good! 

Aside from turning 20, I guess there really isn't much to talk about in terms of work. The mission nurse asked me to go see a doctor about getting some medicine. Let me tell you, I planted a heck of a seed in my doctors heart. However, this doctor listened to my story of sleep struggles and kind of sat in awe. She then asked me a couple questions which kind of hurt a bit. She asked if I had a hard time concentrating and remembering, and if I've done any dumb things while I've had these struggles. She explained that the reason I said yes to all of this is because of my sleep problems. I'm supposedly being very handicapped because of these things. My judgement isn't as good as it could and my focus and memory would be much better if I slept like a normal person. I told her that God's grace was carrying me and that despite my weakness, I was still able to go out and do amazing things. She said that even though I'm doing all this good stuff, I'm struggling for no reason and I could be so much more powerful. She then said I can't be the one my companion needs and the one my people need if I can't be the one that I need. After prescribing some medicine that is only somewhat working, she commanded me to take a three day break from work, even though I told her that I don't have a job. It made me feel really down to have her say the things she said, but I do know it's true. I just know that as long as I can do at least a little bit of good, then I'm doing the right thing. 

So I've just been home for half of the week, chilling out and napping. I've been doing 3-4 hours of naps a day, and its rather interesting to feel life come back to me. I've been kind of dead inside for so long, I'd forgotten what it was like to have energy that stays for more than a few minutes. Now I feel much more alert and hyper even. This must be what it feels like to be normal. I'll be returning back to missionary work this evening, and I'm curious to see just how well I'll fare in a reawakened state. Not that I'm totally back to normal or anything, I'm just a bit better off now. 

So anyways, that brings something to my mind that I've thought about a lot in my bounteous free time. There is a scripture that in my language says, "go to school and work, but don't ignore the important stuff while in the process." All throughout my life, I've heard people say, "I'm just too busy." I see it in my missionary work, I saw it when I was at work as a lifeguard or burger flipper, and I've seen it amongst family and friends. Work and college and this and that is really important, but we shouldn't let it own our life. The relationship we have with our family is far more important than any job or any class ever will be. I'm not saying we should quit our job or college, but I am saying we should make time. Our parents won't live forever. Our friends might not always stick around. Our pets will only live a fraction of our lives. To put it in a proverb, "too much of a virtue is a vice". Work work work, but don't let your work take you over. No meeting or class or job is or ever will be more important than a person to be loved. (Or pet. I love you, Miley and Athena!) 

So that's about it for this week. I'm about to slap that pavement and wrought miracles with my companion. We'll hear all about it next Monday. Gird up your loins, boys, we're going on an adventure.

My Boots

Exodus to Airway Heights

Man, I've been kicked out of Deer Park. I thought I might stay longer since I did 9 months of Coeur d'Alene, but God's got some other things up His sleeve for me. I said some difficult goodbyes, packed up my stuff and headed out. Now I'm in a quiet two man apartment and things just aren't quite the same anymore. 

So anyways, having not entered a previously inhabited apartment since February of 2018, I had forgotten how disgusting other missionaries can be. Normally, we would have hit the ground running, however, this was not a normally kind of situation. The new apartment smelled pretty bad and had trash all over the place. Moldy bread was huddling for warmth in a corner, food from 2016 sook shelter in the fridge, and a couple bags of overflowing garbage were trying to gang up so they could overpower me. I dropped my bags off on my bed and got to work, punching and head locking and using all means fair and dishonorable to establish dominance and evict the scoundrel demons which had entered the bodies of garbage. Three trips were made to the dumpster in the first 10 minutes of my public ministry of Airway Heights. It took a bit more than two hours before the front room was completed. Then I slopped myself into the kitchen and punched the grease monster in the jugular, disabling it long enough for me to administer a killing blow and drag its body to the depths. 95% of the contents of the fridge were instantly banished to the dumpster, along with the snarling bread and its friend, the brown canned soup given to missionaries in the year 2014. I suppose there's not much reason to narrate the rest of my apartment liberation, but let it be known, our apartment is now acceptable, boys!

When I was still at home, I noticed an odd phenomenon. It seemed that my dad would visit Walmart about twice a day, every day. What was even scarier to me was, if you went without him, you'd just run into him in the store! It was so odd to me that I've affectionately named going to Walmart, "Pulling a Paul Ruth." Anyways, one of the blessing of this new area is that we have a Walmart! It was a relief to return to the land of my father's inheritance. I couldn't believe it, as I walked through the brightly lit aisles of this amazing store. It seemed as if everything I bought here was 2-3 dollars cheaper than it was at Yokes--our only grocery store of Deer Park! I couldn't help but let a big ol smile line my face as I traversed around, grabbing the goods, living the dream and feeling like a rich man. I got carried away, I suppose, having walked out of there with $68 worth of groceries, the most I've ever spent on food. Anyhow, we needed it, since the fridge was just about bare. Speaking of food, the members here hate us :( they dont feed us. I shook my head in annoyance and strapped on my leather apron, prepared to whip up a storm. In a matter of 25 minutes, I had crafted a meal I named while still at home, "noodle surprise", and it was one of the best tasting things I had had in quite some time. 

In a leadership council meeting, I was surprised to find out that the wards I'm now serving in are the worst wards in terms of missionary work in the whole zone. This was something I simply couldn't accept. I started following Elder Muhlstein around in the knee deep snow (because these clowns in Airway Heights dont shovel the sidewalks) and trying to find people to teach. We got rejected a few times and then even received some texts from our lessons that day that they would be cancelled. Not sure what we had done to merit such rough luck, especially since a semi truck just hit us with a tidal wave of slush. I wiped the muddy bits of ice from my face and pulled us to a side road to recuperate. I didnt have access to the area book yet, so I borrowed my companions phone and felt very strongly about going to a former investigators home. He wasn't home, but his 30 year old daughter was. We had quite the conversation while sipping the coconut water she graciously bestowed upon us. She then decided she liked us enough that she would want us to come back and teach her even more gospel stuff on Thursday, and she'd make sure her dad would be there, too! That made me pretty excited. That was just one thing which will be followed by many more that will lead to our area not being the worst.

That about sums up the stuff for this week. I'm not quite in Spokane as I was afraid of. I actually have an Air force base in my area, and a lot of people in this town work there. I haven't interacted with it yet, but I'm sure I'll have the spicy details on that next week. Anyways, this'll be a good week. It's my birthday on Wednesday the 20th, so I'm totally making myself a cake. Since my love of cake is so great, I probably won't share it, just like the one Sister Bird made me the other week... ehehe

The Awesome Bird Family

Bye Ping Pong Gang

It's Elder Herem again!

Snow Mirage

Boy oh boy, and girl oh girl, because this week informed me of what the cold was. Most days were between 10 and 20 degrees and that wind chill came in like a wrecking ball. To top it off, we were almost murdered by a potential exploding microwave. Anyways, time to wipe that icicle from my face, for its time to get started. 

I guess we better start off with transfers. I've been taken from my land of Deer Park and sent to Spokane. If you know much about me, you know exactly how I feel. I guess I have little else to say of this. My one consolation is that I'm not sweeping into an area again. Hum. 

So there's this weird place in the mission called Chewelah. It has some kind of curse which prevents missionaries from finding new people to teach. We slopped our way down there last week to undo the curse and was greeted by freezing wind. There isn't much there to prevent the bone chilling cold, so we shivered our way violently down the forsaken dimly lit streets. We had to walk backwards to stop the wind from wrecking our face in the 10 degree weather. After a few doors of minimal success, I felt like we needed to go to 712 east where members supposedly lived to ask them for help. We slither our way down go to where 712 should be, but wasn't. It was a house lit well with Christmas lights. I really enjoyed it and we walked up the steps, and then I figured we shouldn't knock because it's not the members. I turned around and felt that this was the wrong idea, and I might as well just knock. I slap my fist across this door and a sweet guy welcomes us right in to thaw our faces out. We bonded instantly with a love of animals. Shortly after, his wife came and I bonded with my love of cows specifically. We became friends and shared a brief message, and they were very excited for us to return again. We handed them off to the other missionaries and then returned home to our actually warm apartment. We went the next day to another investigator couple we have and started teaching, then told them of our experience. To the shock of us all, it ended up being their friends who they were about to refer to us that day! I couldn't believe it. We followed a prompting and snatched up a referral before we even received it. God is good.

I might've had my last visit to the pig farm unknowingly. When we did go, the owner wasn't out and about yet. I felt so proud to realize that I had just gone straight to work without any instruction. I had assessed what needed to be fixed and put together and this and that. When I had first come, I was confused and didn't know how to do anything. It was really cool for me to reflect on the experience I had obtained. It made me feel great. But anyways, not much of interest really happened. 

It snowed a whole lot this week, and just about all of it was powder. It just dumped everywhere, and then the windstorm came. It rattled our windows and blew waves of snow everywhere. We could see dark shadows appear and disappear in the snow. As we drove, the snow slithered across the pavement like evil white snakes attacking the wheels of my beloved Rav4. Snowdrifts piled up as high as four feet further east. Many people got their cars stuck in snow. Not us, boys! Rav4.

For our district councils, we are able to have hour long lunches. Elder Larsen brought a big ol pot of spaghetti which he had made the other day. I didn't think much of it as I munched on my jelly sandwiches, daydreaming and just enjoying life. It was then that an odd smell wafted past my nostrils. Something definitely did not smell good. I looked back and forth, searching for anything which had caused such a putrid stench. I then looked at the microwave in fright. Elder Larsen put his metal pot into the microwave and had cooked it for over a minute. We hurried and yanked that microwave door open and I hid behind the fridge in case it exploded. Now I had never really put metal in the microwave before, but I was aware that it was extremely dangerous. I'm still not sure if it could have exploded, but I do know we are very lucky and then it smelled so bad we opened a frosty door to air out the appalling stench, as Elder Larsen made excuses. 

Now it's time for the good part of the week for me. If anyone I ever teach/have taught reads my blog, take note. It breaks my heart when I work so hard to get the people I teach to church, they commit to coming, then no show on us. Anyways, we went on over to this wonderful woman from Iraq's home with some members for a sweet lesson. Mini story! She takes care of her community, and there was a Russian man who bullies the residents. She confronted him, and so he switched from English to Russian and angrily yelled. This wonderful woman looks at him, puffs out her chest, then says "This is America! You speak English!" Man, I about died, especially with her native language being Arabic. Anyways, back to business, we were teaching the plan of salvation and it was going incredible. She participated a lot, asked many good questions, and even taught us a bit. She is a convert from being a Muslim, so Christianity is fairly new to her. She tells us a woman said, "I won't give you false hope. Your mother wasn't Christian. You will not see her in heaven." She had a hard time, but she accepted this heresy and kept quiet. The spirit told me to take a seat so that it could speak through me. I strapped on my seatbelt as my mouth was used to deliver like a 5 minute speech, starting with, "I have been set apart as an authorized representative of Jesus Christ, and I swear in the sacred name of Jesus Christ that that woman was wrong! You will see her again." And then autopilot just kicked in and wrecked the false doctrine while I just tried to keep breathing. The spirit isn't used to breathing, so. It was incredible, and everyone but me and Elder Larsen had fallen to tears. Eventually, I gained control of my body again and we resumed the lesson. The members then invited her to church at the very end, and she excitedly showed up to church for the first time with her daughter. The ward instantly loved them and supported them and made it an amazing experience. Its not often that I get to see the fruits of my labor. People never come to church. I was so grateful I was able to see one of my last miracles before returning to the land of Spokane. 

I don't have much else to talk about this week. Just shout out to my member families which helped make this area so good, the Birds and the Lims. Even if you don't read it, I love you guys. 

Haircut for the Birthday Elder

Celebrating my birthday early because of transfers

Wind chill? Chill, wind!

You know, I don't think I even know. The week was there. It existed. The majority of Deer Park got sick and it made things a bit more difficult. It's pretty cold and no one goes outside, but what can you do?

So this week, we asked bishop to pray for a street for us to find people to teach. A lot of the time, we tract in very poor parts of town because those people are much more humble and willing to listen, but they tend to never keep commitments and become a burden, and we wanted to try and find some people who have their life in order. Bishop prays and he sends us off to a street I had already had my eye on for a while. We bring one of our ward missionaries and start slapping doors. The first couple didn't have anyone home, but eventually, someone finally opened up! It was my turn to talk.. but it went well! We taught about the great apostasy and set a return appointment, giving us a new investigator instantly! Nice! Another person further down the road had extremely icy steps which could easily be taken care of. After they rejected us, I took the shovel and started fixing up the stairs. They came back out, all confused, like, "why are you doing this. I'm not going to listen." And I told the lady, "If you won't let us teach you about the Savior, I can at least serve you like the Savior would." 

Me and Elder Larsen both got sick this week. He got hit worse than me, so we were told to stay home for the day. It was nice. I got to study a bunch from the New Testament and watch videos of the Savior's life and stuff. I also whipped out a 1000 piece puzzle my uncle bought me for Christmas in 2017. It's mostly black or blue, and a lot of pieces seem to go together, but they don't. We can't even get the border done. However, it's been on the table for a few days now, and I'm enjoying seeing more progress be made on that monstrosity I thought I'd never do until I got home. 

There's not much to say this week. I guess I was able to bear testimony in church yesterday. I was fasting to strengthen my testimony and then realized that a great way would be to share. I stood up and shared Doctrine and Covenants section 100:5-6 which says that if you go up and have faith, God will tell you what to say. I then had the words come to my mouth again, teaching what I taught earlier in this email. I related to a different experience I had this week where an absolutely nasty woman bullied us and wouldn't let us share a scripture on service because it was from the Book of Mormon. (Mosiah 2:17) We may not have been able to teach her anything from our words, but we were able to shovel her entire driveway and taught by our actions. 

If we love Christ, we will search for the heavy hands and try to lift them up. Whenever we have done anything to lighten anyone's burden, we've also pulled it off the back of our Savior. I may be hated among men for the name which I have taken upon myself, but I'll be loved forever by the God who made all because of it. They may forget me, but He never will. After all, He left the scars in His hands just for me. (And you, of course.) The church is true. Jet fuel can melt steel beams. Oh yeah, we also threw another guy on date for baptism March 23rd. 

At my Grandma's favorite store

Happy Holidays