July 1, 2013
Dear family and friends,
Wow this week went by in a flash. It goes to show how the harder
you work on your mission and the more fun you have, the faster it goes
by, which is kind of depressing. We have a youth from our ward, Sam
Y..., that will be heading out to report to the MTC this Tuesday to
prepare for his mission to California. We hope that we will be able
to reactivate the rest of his family while he is gone. We actually
had a great opportunity to meet with his father this past Thursday at
Sam's farewell party and got to talk with Brother Y... about his own
mission to Chicago. It was good to hear him talk about some of the
spiritual experiences and fun times he had on his mission. We also
found out while we were talking with Brother Y... that he speaks
Spanish. So hopefully we will be able to use him when we go and visit
the G... family.
So unfortunately I don't have very many spiritual experiences to
tell about this week. This is because we spent most of our time
serving this week. Now I'm not sure what it is like serving in other
areas but here it is super fun because Connecticut is all foresty.
This means that all the stuff we do involves either moving boulders,
doing work in a garden, cutting down trees, or other wood work.
Fortunately for us we got to do all of these things this week. First
we got to cut down some trees then cut them down to a reasonable size
to be carried and then stack them. This was funny because the most
important part of stacking wood is the ends of the pile. You have to
stack it with a bunch of pieces that are all similar in size and
shape, then stack them in a particular way. Luckily this family did
not put this on us and instead thought it best to do it themselves for
us. Then of course as we are about a little more than half way done
with stacking them, the end gives way and they all roll off. In
moments like those the best thing to do is just to laugh.
We also got the opportunity to serve the Nobles, a less active
family, in there yard. They have a horse, an
alpaca, and a bunch of chickens. We had to go help them because the
horse and the alpaca run across the ground and remove a lot of dirt.
This is all fine until the septic tank's pipes start to show. So it
was our job to shovel dirt back into their yard to cover up the pipes.
I got to be the one that went in and shoveled the dirt in under the
horse’s coral, with the horse in it. Luckily the horse was nice and
wouldn't freak out as long as I moved really slowly. Despite my super
slow movements, we still finished relatively quickly and my
companion and I got to go and chase some of the chickens around catching
them. That ended with me getting pooped on by one of them, I guess
they did not like being caught as much as we liked catching them.
The last service project I have time to talk about is when we
weeded this less active woman's garden, we call her Ma. We
help Ma with her garden sometimes when we have free time because she
can't bend over anymore and she told us that she will give us some of
her vegetables. So we were going to go and have her come out so we
could talk to her while we pulled her weeds. But she was asleep and
so we decided to do it anyway. The challenging part was not the size
of the yard nor the amount of weeks but it was a game of not to pull
the mystery callalu plant. Callalu is a special Jamaican radish, and
none of us knew what it looked like. So we started and decided that
when we pulled out something with a bulb in the root we would just not
pull anything else that looked like that. We found one that might
have been it and then continued being extremely careful not to touch
the supposed callalu plant. By the time we were almost done she came
out and was surprised that we had done so much and then she asked why
we left some of the weeds. We said we thought they were the callalu.
And she said that we did not have to worry if it was or not because we
had actually pulled it all out the very first time we went to help
her. My companion and I then got disappointed because now we will
never be able to taste the mystery callalu plant.
Well that is all the service stuff I have time to talk about this
week but we did lots of other stuff as well. The miraculous part of
all of this is that after all this time in the woods I have not gotten
a single tick. So knock on wood the Lord will continue to protect me
this way as well as in others.
Elder Erb
Wow this week went by in a flash. It goes to show how the harder
you work on your mission and the more fun you have, the faster it goes
by, which is kind of depressing. We have a youth from our ward, Sam
Y..., that will be heading out to report to the MTC this Tuesday to
prepare for his mission to California. We hope that we will be able
to reactivate the rest of his family while he is gone. We actually
had a great opportunity to meet with his father this past Thursday at
Sam's farewell party and got to talk with Brother Y... about his own
mission to Chicago. It was good to hear him talk about some of the
spiritual experiences and fun times he had on his mission. We also
found out while we were talking with Brother Y... that he speaks
Spanish. So hopefully we will be able to use him when we go and visit
the G... family.
So unfortunately I don't have very many spiritual experiences to
tell about this week. This is because we spent most of our time
serving this week. Now I'm not sure what it is like serving in other
areas but here it is super fun because Connecticut is all foresty.
This means that all the stuff we do involves either moving boulders,
doing work in a garden, cutting down trees, or other wood work.
Fortunately for us we got to do all of these things this week. First
we got to cut down some trees then cut them down to a reasonable size
to be carried and then stack them. This was funny because the most
important part of stacking wood is the ends of the pile. You have to
stack it with a bunch of pieces that are all similar in size and
shape, then stack them in a particular way. Luckily this family did
not put this on us and instead thought it best to do it themselves for
us. Then of course as we are about a little more than half way done
with stacking them, the end gives way and they all roll off. In
moments like those the best thing to do is just to laugh.
We also got the opportunity to serve the Nobles, a less active
family, in there yard. They have a horse, an
alpaca, and a bunch of chickens. We had to go help them because the
horse and the alpaca run across the ground and remove a lot of dirt.
This is all fine until the septic tank's pipes start to show. So it
was our job to shovel dirt back into their yard to cover up the pipes.
I got to be the one that went in and shoveled the dirt in under the
horse’s coral, with the horse in it. Luckily the horse was nice and
wouldn't freak out as long as I moved really slowly. Despite my super
slow movements, we still finished relatively quickly and my
companion and I got to go and chase some of the chickens around catching
them. That ended with me getting pooped on by one of them, I guess
they did not like being caught as much as we liked catching them.
The last service project I have time to talk about is when we
weeded this less active woman's garden, we call her Ma. We
help Ma with her garden sometimes when we have free time because she
can't bend over anymore and she told us that she will give us some of
her vegetables. So we were going to go and have her come out so we
could talk to her while we pulled her weeds. But she was asleep and
so we decided to do it anyway. The challenging part was not the size
of the yard nor the amount of weeks but it was a game of not to pull
the mystery callalu plant. Callalu is a special Jamaican radish, and
none of us knew what it looked like. So we started and decided that
when we pulled out something with a bulb in the root we would just not
pull anything else that looked like that. We found one that might
have been it and then continued being extremely careful not to touch
the supposed callalu plant. By the time we were almost done she came
out and was surprised that we had done so much and then she asked why
we left some of the weeds. We said we thought they were the callalu.
And she said that we did not have to worry if it was or not because we
had actually pulled it all out the very first time we went to help
her. My companion and I then got disappointed because now we will
never be able to taste the mystery callalu plant.
Well that is all the service stuff I have time to talk about this
week but we did lots of other stuff as well. The miraculous part of
all of this is that after all this time in the woods I have not gotten
a single tick. So knock on wood the Lord will continue to protect me
this way as well as in others.
Elder Erb
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