So anyways, this week was not bad at all. We got my 2nd and 3rd lesson in this area this week! Wow! Not that we haven't been working hard as heck, we have just been having people no show or cancel on us like there's no tomorrow. My favorite lesson was to an agnostic man and his Christian 6 year old son. It made me happy to see such a humble man who was willing to learn so he could connect better with his family. We taught him all about the Book of Mormon in particular and each shared testimony. Our member who came was also very helpful. That's what I'm talking about! Like, missionaries may be a lot more spiritually in tune and this and that and blah blah blah, but investigators listen to members a lot better than they listen to us.
It's been getting significantly warmer than the past weeks and I am so grateful for it. My companion called the sun "stupid" for shining in his eyes in the car, so I rebuked him, telling him that you must not look down upon things which aren't perfect, because they are working on it, and some day they will be perfect. Looking down and insulting things will do nothing but halt progress. Anyways, Mr Golden Sun achieved like 45 degrees this week and I couldn't be prouder of that man. Gonna grow up to be the best ray of light you've ever seen. Like Elder Herem.
This week, something incredible was accomplished. Your boy Elder Ruth knew that it was time to end mediocrity and set a new record. I threw on some serious priesthood pump-up music and got to work, hyping myself up. I threw punches and ducked under imaginary weapons as apostles shouted words of extreme wisdom upon me through the melodies of epic orchestrations. Once I was ready, I hit that floor and pushed the world down with 80 consecutive push-ups, shattering my old record. I kinda chuckled to myself as I flopped on my back and just laid there for the next 5 minutes.
Since I'm the district leader, I've been tasked with exchanging with every Elder in the district. This week, I got to go with one of my favorites into one of my least favorites, the city of Spokane. We didn't just go to Spokane, we went to the ghetto, known by the residents there as "felony flats". I definitely felt anxious as I stepped out of the car onto the icy pavement. After a few steps, I realized that it wasn't so bad and I perked up a bit more. However, no more than 20 steps from that sexy white Rav4 we drove, was a prescription bottle on the ground. Allow me to describe. This orange bottle appeared to be coated in red liquid, which I'm sure was blood. Not only was this son of a gun coated in AIDS, but it had a hole in it. In fact, it had two holes in it in a straight line. My imagination says that there was a drug deal that went wrong, so the customer pulled out a gun and shot the dealer in the hand, where the bullet flew all the way through and then burst through the prescription bottle and then probably hit a puppy. I couldn't believe it.
We paced past the ghetto place and marched onward, sharing the good word of God. I helped them get one new investigator and some good potentials, so that was nice. However, at the end of the night, we were at the church for a coordination meeting when I heard some firecrackers go off. I asked if it was a holiday today, and the adult leaders said, "Elder, those were gunshots." 5 bullets were fired in a matter of a few seconds, and I couldn't believe we were just sitting around, acting like there wasn't a dying man in the streets somewhere. "Don't worry, it happens all the time here." One of them says. If anyone questions my fear of Spokane, I rest my case.
The zone leaders have been looking at the history of my area, and for the last entire year, it's just been a suffering area. I have faith I can help flip it around, but I graciously accepted their offer to have all the missionaries of the zone come and work here for a couple hours. We were tasked with finding some places for them to go work in, and so we took the matter to the bishop. He asked us to pray for streets and he would pray too, and then we would meet up in a week. We met yesterday and discussed what happened. I was so surprised and grateful when I revealed the name of my four streets. Bishop had 3, and without any prior coordination, he chose 3 of my 4. We then looked at the map and saw that number 4 for me was a small break off of one of the streets which only has 6 houses. If you don't believe in revelation, explain this? Because there are probably over a thousand streets in this ward and we beat all odds and came up with the same ones. That was a testimony builder for me!
One last testimony builder I had was at my district council. I have to pray to seek revelation on who will share, and what they will share. I had revelation that someone should share, but God told me that he would know what he needed to do. I called him up and sheepishly explained the situation. He agreed to it and was kinda stuck all week. When I was with him on Thursday morning, I was doing my personal study while he was on the other side of the room and he just goes, "aha! This is it!" He was so excited but he didn't want to tell me what he was talking about. We then met the next day and he proudly presented his stuff, testifying that as soon as he came across the topic, the spirit smacked him saying "this is it!"
So yeah, that was one of my longer emails. I think I'll leave it right--wait! I just remembered something I forgot to put last week! So, we were at the air force base and they had a bunch of tea which had expired. I found out it was the kind we need, and so I asked if we could have them. I explained, "so if you take this kind of tea bag, cut it in half, and then light it on fire, it'll fly away just before the fire touches the bottom. We like to put them on our hands and light them off when we teach kids about faith, saying that if I have faith, the fire won't hurt me." So that was that. The next week, the manager confronts us, saying, "I dont know if it was you two, but I got a complaint that two teenagers were here last week, and they said that they wanted to take some tea bags so that they could light them on fire and smoke them." Ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the first times I have ever experienced our presidents bane, "fake news". I was just so surprised and blown away by what she said. She believed our side of the story once we explained that the eavesdropper blew the story out of proportion. Anyways, look out. Fake news is out there. So yeah! That's the week! This one will be even sweller.
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| Some art work I've been working on |
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| I made a crock pot dinner! |
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| Me and my companion |
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