First off, pictures, and then I'll see if I have the time to write down the story that goes with them.
I also have a few movies, but we'll see if it lets me send those somehow. (ed. Nope that didn't work.)
Well, I just have a little bit of time to write down this one story from the week.
So on Sunday one of the investigators, Flor Mancillas, from the other Elder's area was supposed to get baptized. She showed up late to church because her ride showed up late, and so she was feeling kind of insecure about it all. She didn't feel like she was worthy because she didn't get to church on time and had had a really bad week. So, she wasn't feeling that good about everything. I found her in the hallway on Sunday. I was talking to her and that's when this all came out. I started talking to her a bit and asked her about what in her week went bad. We started talking and she mentioned a few things. But the biggest thing that went wrong in the week was when a sick opossum (tecuache) crawled underneath her trailer and died. It had been rotting for a couple days and the smelled had forced her out of her house.
So, I talked to another missionary and we determined to go and remove it for her, but to help cheer her up, we were going to do it before her baptism.
We left church early, grabbing some plastic cleaning gloves before we left. Elder Pack and I ran over to their apartment. He changed out of his suit into some work clothes and we set off to get the tecuache. After getting underneath the cold, mudsoaked trailer, Elder Pack realized that the opossum wasn't just underneath the trailer. It had crawled through a hole in the plastic tarp that covered the bottom of the trailer after it had been raised up on cinderblocks. After feeling around the plastic he found a pretty solid heavy lump. He began to kick it with his legs and push it with his arms towards the hole in the plastic where it had worked its way in. After kicking it for a while the tail flopped out. He grabbed it and pulled the rest of it out. We put it in a trash bag and threw it in a dumpster. Overall this took about 30 minutes and the whole time the stench was HORRIBLE. All of the neighbors around her could smell it as well. It was just gross. When the tecuache flopped out of the hole all the maggots and everything came with it too, I'm surprised Elder Pack didn't barf.
Afterwards we ran back to his house. He took a shower and got ready to go back to church. Flor was excited to hear the news and she had a great baptism. Anyway, overall it was a pretty funny/gross experience that I would never want to repeat.
The week was good. Our investigator family came to church again. Frank, aka Pancho, is hilarious. He's the dad of the family and never stops making jokes. When I told him about the opposum story he said, "oh yeah, we have like 15 of those at my house. We've already named all of them. That one's Curly, that one's Carlos...."
We struggled with getting new investigators during the week, but we've been working with our members and giving them commitments to give out copies of the Book of Mormon, etc. So I think we'll see some success from that in these coming weeks. Also we should have some more success this week since we'll have more time to go finding on our own.
The week was really warm, hot even, up until Saturday. It was 80 degrees or so for a long time, sun and all. Then Saturday came in and we had a huuuuge rainstorm come in from the Gulf. It threw down a lot of rain for a good two hours with lightning and all. I'm not gonna lie, it reminded me of Virginia. I wish our apartment had a porch so we could go out and watch it, like the house in VA. We were lucky though, we had planned lunch right when the storm hit. Since the storm hit the temperature plummeted and I'm back to my sweater and rain jacket again, with my scrubs underneath my slacks.
Anyway, everything is going well and we're having a good time.
I was glad to hear that Levi's sealing was a great service. I really do love the temple, it's a wonderful place. I hope everyone has a great week!
Love,
Elder Wood
