Hail Hydra

So to start my email, I’m gonna to just tell everyone that I can throw down when it comes to baking. I made these brownies in a quote “Bake off” against these other missionaries, and let me just say, they got riggity wrecked. So that was fun.

Let’s see… for my week I’ve been cranking out mostly the same stuff. We’re still calling and texting people, but we can go and try to see if people are home now, so we’ve gone on these manhunts to get in contact with everyone that leaves us on read, which is great because it’s starting to feel like regular missionary work again.

So something that was actually super cool that happened this week was we found this new family that we’re hoping to teach. The story is the cool part though. So we’re on our manhunt, and as we drive into this neighborhood, I wave at this kid on a bike. (I just wave at everyone, and try to get as many waves back as I can) So he waves back, and we continue down the road for a little ways. When we pull over and get out next to the house we were gonna try, we find out that the kid had followed us. So we start saying hi, and he just asks who we work for. I was seriously tempted to just yell, “THE GOOD LORD JESUS, WHY DO YOU ASK??” But I didn’t. And we just told him about being missionaries. Then he just says, “Can you come talk to my mom?” Bro, anyone that’s not a missionary has gotta understand: That doesn’t happen. Like EVER. Someone just instantly asking you to come meet their family is a straight miracle.

So we were like, “For sure, where is she?” And he starts to lead us to their house. Now the problem is, there’s this movie called “The Saratov Approach”, which is about these missionaries that get kidnapped, and this was kinda the same way it all started in the movie… So I was either about to get to teach an entire family, or I was gonna get kidnapped. And as I noted in a previous email, that is apparently very easy to do. But we end up getting to meet the whole family, and talk to them for a bit. They told us they had something difficult just recently happen in their lives, and were wondering if God even existed. So we were like, “Bro, you’re in luck, guess what we do?” And it was awesome. I didn’t say that exactly, but you know what I mean. Then we asked if we could come back and they said they would really like that. Oh man, it was so sick.

Then on another day, I tried putting on as many ties as I possibly could. Hope nobody gets whiplash from that drastic topic shift, but let me explain the whole story. So I started out by just putting on two ties. Nothing crazy– I just overlapped them, and tied it like a normal tie. Then you couldn’t even see the tie underneath, so I was all good. But like meth, one time wasn’t enough. So the question strolled into my mind: “How many ties can I wear at once?” I started just advancing, one tie at a time, getting them fixed up, making sure it worked, and then taking it off and adding another tie. I documented this research, because it’s truly one for the archives of history, and slowly the ties went from 2, to 3, to 4, to 6, and then to 8. I fit 8 ties around the girth of my neck. That’s a word to add to your vocabulary. But I finally called it at 8 because the knot made me feel like a smurf was choking me, and I really wasn’t about that. I also was using some of my less favorite ties, so in case everything suddenly went South, I would have only ruined those ones.

Then this other time while visiting people, I was standing right next to the window, and Elder Horne makes this startled look, looking into the window right behind me. Then I turn to see what all the commotion is about, and less than a foot from my face, was yet another face, with unblinking eyes, peering into my soul. My knees just about buckled, and I had to catch my soul before it made a mad dash for the light. Turns out it was a mannequin, but my question was: “What psychopath places disembodied mannequin heads on the windowsill, facing the front porch??” That wasn’t something I was ready for.

But yeah, that’s what’s been going down in my world, thanks to the real ones out there for reading this all the way through, have a good one.

Over and Out

SHOUTOUTS:

  • Naomi: She was a missionary here too, but the curtain’s been called on her time out here. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, it’s crazy. I know that some people in Oklahoma like to bash on the missionaries, but I literally can’t imagine anyone being mean to her, she’s rocking.
  • Elder Livingston: He’s playing the ukulele while I’m writing this email, and he said he’d like a shoutout. He’s pretty cool, and he’s good at the piano. Cool guy, he’s been out about one more month than me.

Pics:

You can see the progression of me increasing the number of ties I can wear at the same time. And the reason for the names of the pictures are because at some point I told Elder Horne to call me “The Hydra”, because you take off one tie, and two more take its place.

The face that almost killed me:

Forgot to share the pic from the lightbulb incident of last week.

So I was bashing on tie bars, talking about how they’re essentially just glorified paper clips to hold your tie to your shirt. And then I saw a common household item, and went off about how something as simple as this could accomplish the same menial tasks as a “$40 bobby pin”.