Tuesday, May 31, 2016

E-mail May 30, 2016: "I spoke too soon..."

I'll never again complain about an uneventful week. Last week I was wishing something out of the ordinary would happen and this week the Lord granted my request, but not in the way I was expecting. Although nothing ground breaking took place this week there were enough small quirks to keep me satisfied with for a while. Here's a few things that happened to us this week. 

Wet paint

We all think it's funny when someone sits on wet pain in the movies, until it actually happens to you. One day this week my companion and I ended up walking several miles to get to all of our appointments. As we were coming down I dirt road I was exhausted so I sat down on a cement drainage cap (like a raised manhole) and my companion came over to join me. As I tried to move over to make room for him something stuck hard to the bottom of my pants (I happened to be wearing my nicest pain too) and I thought "oh no." before I could warn him my companion had also plopped down next to me and after getting up we were both stained with bright yellow markings on our seats. Apparently they must have sprayed the drainage cover with lettering just hours before we sat down and since we were in the middle of nowhere there were no warning signs. WE're still working on getting the paint out.

Inspections

As we were getting ready Saturday morning our zone leaders called and informed us that we'd be having apartment inspections in the afternoon. My companion and I are pretty clean guys but by the end of the week we had a lot of clutter lying around so we came back for lunch a little early so we'd have time to tidy up. Imagine my surprise when I went to take the trash out and found our zone leaders standing outside our door and hour earlier than they'd told us they were coming. We felt pretty sheepish as they walked through our less than clean living room but thankfully our kitchen, bathrooms, bedroom, and cupboards were all organized so they were still pleased. Again it taught me to always be prepared.

Sick

Sunday I woke up with stomach pains and as I sat through church they got worse and worse until I developed a fever. We stayed for our meetings after church, had a short visit with a man we met who invited us to his home for lunch, but then we came back to the apartment and I was down for the count the rest of the day. As I was thinking about how I got sick I remembered the day before when a member had offered us some water before we left her home. She knows the missionaries and told me that the water wasn't filtered but it was hot and I said that I had a strong immune system so it wouldn't affect me. As I remembered that I felt pretty shameful and I determined to adhere to to "only filtered water for the Americans" policy more strictly from now on.

Prabhakar 

The miracle of this week though was when we were finally able to meet a less active man whom we've been trying to visit for months. I'd never met him before but for the two months I've been here his name has stayed at the back of my mind. We'd tried to see him several times but our calls and attempted visits were always in vain. On Saturday night after we finished our appointments we had a little extra time and we had the feeling to try one more time. To our astonishment when we arrived at his home he answered the door and warmly welcomed us in. He was very happy to see us and said he'd been busy for long time and that we'd caught him at the right time that night. As we talked with him we got to know the trials he's going through and my heart went out to him. We're going to keep working with him to help him build up his faith again. God truly does know all of His sheep and if we're worthy we can be the means of finding and rescuing those who have gone astray, I testify of that.

Until next time everyone, stay strong and rock on. :)
-Elder Flower

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