August 25, 2014

hot and wet and hard, but awesome

This week has been super hot, even for Florida apparently. Someone told us that it got up to 112, and I believe it. It's not fun. Everyone's AC is breaking too for some reason, like almost every person's house we've gone too. Ours is having trouble too. And it wouldn't be so bad if we were in the car all the time, but we still walk a lot, and bike sometimes. I thought we were done with biking, but Sister Rowland wants to start biking every other day. The other day we biked all day, all over our area, I nearly died. But I didn't, so that's what counts I guess :) We had to bike in the dark too, in a really sketchy neighborhood. We seriously couldn't see anything. So that was an adventure. But we made it home, and I know Sister Rowland is just trying to find people to teach, not trying to kill me so it's alright :)

We taught our new scripture study class for the first time, and it went really well! It was kind of scary because of all the ward members there, and one of them was the seminary teacher. I don't feel like I'm in any position to teach these people (or anyone for that matter), but oh well, whom the Lord calls, he qualifies :) And the class went really well, everyone loved it. We talked about the importance of having a soft heart, and how that allows God to make us into all He knows we can be.

There was another baptism in our ward this week and one of our recent converts got to baptize him! Him and his wife were baptized right before I got here and we're teaching his brother, so we see them like almost every day. He's our age, only 19, and he just got the priesthood last week. It was so neat to see him get to baptize someone. He was really nervous and he had to do it 3 times, but the final time he did it, it was super powerful. The spirit was stronger than I've felt it at any other baptism I've been too, it was just so cool. Him and his wife are working on getting sealed in the temple and they offered to wait until I get off my mission so I can go, even though I haven't even done anything, I wasn't even here when they were baptized. It was so nice, they're seriously so awesome.

We're also teaching this other couple and they're super excited to be baptized. We asked the girl if they wanted to come to church on Sunday and before we could even finish asking her boyfriend in the other room was like YES! Their friend "Pop" (that's what everyone calls him apparently) told us how awesome we were and how much he loved us right after we met him and we were like okay... It was a little weird, but people tell us all the time what a great thing we're doing and how happy they are to see us, and it really does feel good to know that we're appreciated, because sometimes it really doesn't feel like it :)

We met this really awesome lady in our apartment complex this week. We were outside of the gym using the wifi to sync or iPads and she asked us if we wanted lunch. We were like uh... sure. So we went to her apartment for lunch and now she wants to have lunch with us every week. She has 5 kids and most of them have Bible names, one of which was Boaz, which I thought was pretty funny :) She's a SUPER strong Christian, so she's not really interested, but she doesn't mind learning about our beliefs, and she doesn't mind sharing hers with us either, in kind of a rude way haha, she told us we were going to hell, but what can ya do :) When we told her that we only get to email our parents once a week and call them twice a year she started crying and asked for our moms' phone numbers and called them for us. We're excited to go back and see her but kind of scared that she's just going to Bible bash us. But she really is a super kind, awesome person, like who invites strangers into her house for lunch and calls their moms just to let them know their daughters are okay?

We met some other really awesome people this week too. This one guy we kept biking past and then we walked past him later and he was like how many times am I going to run into you?! So he ran across the street to talk to us and was like "so do you guys have a card or something?" That like never happens haha. So we gave him a card and he said he'd been to a Mormon church before with his friend and he really wanted to come on Sunday, but he didn't. Surprise. We met another great girl who we prayed with and she also said she'd come to church but she didn't either. We even sent someone to pick her up. We're not sure yet if she's an amazing person who's been through a lot of things, or a pathological liar, so we'll see :)

So on to some fun/funny/not so funny parts of the week :) We saw a peacock on someone's roof! Florida is so weird! I thought that it was fake but then I realized it was moving and I was like what in the world? Seriously though, how did it even get up there? Can peacocks even fly? It was pretty cool though, I've definitely never seen that before.

On Saturday, I think because of mosquito bites, my eyelid swelled up really bad, my eye was like half shut. It was so embarrassing haha. That's never happened to me before! I was like of course that would happen on my mission, when there's no way I can avoid seeing people :) One of my feet swelled up too, it was super weird. Who knows what's wrong with me :)

The days this week when it hasn't been super hot it's been really rainy. One day it rained super hard all day, a bunch of places were flooded. We had to wade through a parking lot that was more like a swimming pool, it was actually kind of fun :) Sister Rowland said that it's the closest we can get to swimming for 18 months, which is true. Driving in that was kind of scary though.

We've had some interesting experiences with drunk people this week. Danielle's boyfriend is this big super macho Puerto Rican man, but when day when we went over he was super drunk, and he was giggling like a little girl. It was pretty entertaining actually. He was using a weed-wacker though, so hopefully he didn't injure himself. Then there was this other girl that was the drunkest person I've seen in my life. She kept repeating things over and over and forgetting what was going on and running all over the place. But she wanted us to "make a prayer with her" and after we did she gave me a high five and told me "good prayer." That was entertaining too, it was really hard not to laugh at her.

So yeah, things are going really well, hot and wet and hard, but awesome :)