Monday, October 31, 2011

Oh The Service You'll Do...


Dear Family,

This is a baby bullfrog.  And the pumpkin I carved of the Florida Fort Lauderdale Temple.  And a tree that fell over in a ridiculous rainstorm last night.  In the storm's defense though, the tree has little or no roots.  I honestly did not believe that the sky could hold that much water and dump it all down at the same time.  The entire parking lot was covered in 4 inches of water, which we parked in.

Lots of interesting things happened this week.  As a missionary, it is instinctive to offer to help people in any way you can.  Well, I never expected that I would get "can you break into my house? I'm locked out and if I could reach the balcony I could get in but I'm too short.  The office won't give me the key because I'm only 12.  I called my mom but she won't be home for another 2 hours and I've already been out here for 3."  I looked at the balcony...yeah, I can get up there.  And I did and then got out of there as soon as I could.  Just felt kind of weird breaking into a house.  We got a return appointment though.  And we also got to visit her downstairs neighbors, who watched us break in from their window.

We also had the fall festival/trunk or treat which was really fun.  We had several investigators and less active families show up.  It was really fun because it was the Killian, Sunset, and Coral Reef Wards combined.  So apart from the stake leadership, I think I knew more people there than anyone.  I do feel bad for the institute class that was going on at the same time.

We destroyed some moldy cabinets and walls,  put a giant tarp over an RV,  threw away a lot of garbage, and were generally serviceful people.  I also conducted a baptismal interview in arabic this week.  I don't speak arabic, so we had to have the interview questions sent to the office from salt lake city and then scanned and sent to my lds email.

Also Elder Hatch found a cockroach in his suit pocket as he went to put it on.  He screamed like a little girl.

I thought of a great halloween costume for next year when I can actually dress up.  Yukon Cornelius!  That's right, the prospector from Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting this week.  Yeah, that's the second one in the last 3 weeks.  This one was great because I had a day's notice.  Luckily, I've been on the spot for a long time now and it's hard to be put on the spot when that's your most comfortable position, so I think it went pretty well.  It was on forgiveness.

Well, that's about it.  Also the ward mission leader, Brother Plummer, is Jamaican.  I just think that's cool.  All my other mission leaders have been Mexican or in the case of Brother Flores, Ecuadorian.

Okay, have a great week,

Love,

Elder Fine






Monday, October 24, 2011

Thursday


This week has been pretty insane.  I was transferred once again not too far from where I was.  In fact, all three of my last areas border each other.  I'm still a zone leader of the same zone, and because of that, the truck came with me to my new area :)  It's pretty different.  A lot more english and a lot more african americans.  We live less than a mile from the ocean and the air smells and feels absolutely fantastic right now.  One of these days we'll ride our bikes over there and take pictures.  The zoo is also in the ward boundaries so I'll probably want to check that out if we have time on a p-day.  And my companion is none other than Flagstaff's own Elder Dillin Skyler Hatch.  He has cousins that go to Mesa High and if you can, you should try to find his family and say hi.

So, Dad, you weren't feeling great this weekend because you had a long thursday?  Prepare to be 1-upped.

Thursday night after a long day of work, we were just finishing up planning and we got a call from Elder Smith (my last companion in Sunset South).  He informed me that Elder Bjorling (Sunset North) was being rushed to the ER after being hit by a car on his bike.  We didn't really know anything about his condition, but we called the Assistants and were instructed to get to the hospital and inform them of what would be happening.  We drove 40 minutes to get out there, and he was in good spirits, telling jokes and stuff.  The only problem so far as we could tell was that he had been hit by a car.  They did an x-ray of his neck, for which he was required to stand.  Not only did he almost pass out and lost all the color in his face from standing for 15 seconds, they found a chipped vertabrae in his neck.  Not good.  So chipped vertabrae and he thinks his knees and wrist are probably broken.  These tests all took a long, long time, so at this point it was probably 1 AM.  He turned to his companion, Elder Rondo, who had only been out in the field for 2 days, and asked for a blessing.  He was super nervous and didn't think he could do it, but he did.  Short, simple.  A little while later they took him in for an MRI, in which they found that his neck, knees, and wrist were totally fine.  When he came back, he got up and walked to the bathroom with some difficulty, but no help from others.  By the time it was almost 5, he was released.  We brought him home, hit a 24 hour walgreens and got him some ibuprofen, and went home.  We got back at 6 AM.  We slept for a few hours and then went back out to work.  My Thursday wins.  He's doing okay now, thanks to the priesthood and a lot of rest.  Luckily, his last companion was transferred to Key West and the missionaries can't be in Key West this week because there's an abominable sin festival going on, so the Key West Elders will be helping him out in his area.  Woot!  Love you!  Take care!

Elder Fine







Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Columbus Day


Dear Family,

Today is Columbus Day so the libraries are closed.  Normally that would mean preparation day would be moved to tomorrow, but that would be too convenient, so for reasons unexplained, we're all taking turns using the one computer with internet at the church.  I know that God loveth his children, nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.  This is just one of those things.

I'm still a Zone Leader, I'm just in a different zone now.  By the way Dad, I could use a list of your areas in the Dominican Republic.  There are a lot of dominicans here and several of them say they talked to the missionaries back in the mid 1980's in their country.  I had heard about Steve Jobs and the Diamondbacks.  Most of the conversations about baseball are in spanish and the ones about apple products are in english.   Cubans just call the sport "pelota" or ball, while other spanish speakers call it "beisbol."

In response to whether or not I get enough sleep...there are some new training DVDs that are being used in which missionaries were filmed in real teaching scenarios.  In it, Elder Moreno made this comment.  "I don't get why I'm so happy.  It's kind of weird to me...'cause I'm tired all the time..."  I think I could say the same thing.  Every night I collapse from delightful exhaustion and sleep very deeply until the next morning.  I'm used to it, but I wouldn't do it for anything less rewarding than the gospel.

I've gotten a couple of letters from members of the ward that I don't know.  One was a counselor in the Deacon's quorum presidency.  Another was Jaylee Corral, who is a girl in the primary, I'm guessing between 5 and 7 years old.  I wrote both of them back, but if you could also tell them how much I appreciate it, I would appreciate it.

I haven't gotten the pictures.  I'm not really sure what's going on there.  Things usually don't take more than a full week to get here.  3 or 4 days usually does it.  I also pre-ordered general conference on cd but those aren't even available yet so they'll probably take a few weeks.

Yay, way to be good church members and invite your friends over!  You might consider having them review your profile on mormon.org and give you feedback from a non-member of the church point of view.  I'll be starting to make a profile this week as well.  Yay!  Here are some pictures.

Love,

Elder Fine