Email 18: Brrr!

Written by Charles Boling - - no comments

This week was exhausting for some reason, and Elder Beyeler and I were both more than ready for P-day to come.

 

On Wednesday, we were at Whataburger texting some people, and there was this one guy who kept looking at us. After we left, I told Elder Beyeler that we should go back in and talk to the guy. We did, and that whole exchange with him was a little awkward. I thought he might have wanted to talk with us. In reality, he was just looking to see if we were Mormons. He said that he has heard the mormon story and read the book, and decided that it wasn't for him. When he left, one of the employees, who turned out to be his grandson, and asked us how the conversation went. He said that his grandfather could really be not nice sometimes. Except he used more colorful language.
 
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You asked me when the first day that I would be able to get to Walmart was. It was actually Wednesday, but for some reason, I decided to tell you Thursday. On Thursday, Elder Beyeler and I got the feeling at the same time to go to Walmart right then, instead of going later when we were originally planning on going. In our prayer before we left our apartment, I prayed that the Lord would place in our path whoever we needed to talk to. I picked up my order, and we were going around picking up a couple of other itens that we wanted, when this young lady came up to us, told us that she didn't speak English, and used her phone to translate the rest of the conversation (she recently moved here from Africa and she only spoke Portuguese. She asked us if we were from the Mormon church. I said yes (because I really didn't feel like clarifying right then over Google Translate). She said that she had been a Mormon for a year, but hadn't gone to church in a while and she wanted to go back. We told her when church was, and she said she would be there We also gave her our phone number. Remember, all of this was over Google Translate. In the middle of this, her mom came up and was present for part of the exchange. 
 
The cold front that brought snow to Kalama went through most of the US. The panhandle of Florida was having lows in the 30s. Oklahoma city went from a low of 40 to a low the next day of 1. Here, the high temperature on Saturday was 81 degrees. When we went to bed Saturday night, it was about 70 degrees outside. When we woke up Sunday morning, it was 30 degrees. With the little bit of wind that was present, there was a windchill of 21 degrees. On Sunday, it only got up to 39 degrees. But the wind also went up. All day, I don't think the windchill got above 25 degrees. The problem was that President Larkin just instituted a thing for the entire mission called Weekend Warriors, where we have to be out of our apartment from 10am to 8pm on Saturdays and Sundays. So, we just did our studies inside the truck instead of outside like we usually do. Also, because we didn't plan our day well, there was a three-hour chunk of time where the only thing we had on the schedule was calling one person. And they didn't even answer. Fortunately they called back and we talked for a few minutes. Because of all that extra time where we had no idea what to do, we ended up wasting a full hour of it by sitting in the Walmart parking lot in mostly slience. Sunday wasn't the most productive day ever. In the evening, the wind calmed down, and the stagnant cold was refreshing. At home, when it gets cold, around 30 or so, it isn't usually windy. So in the morning and evening when it wasn't as windy, it was nice standing on our balcony just being cold. For the first time on my mission, I was cold all day. I didn't think that would ever happen. The low Sunday night was 27 degrees. And it looks like it will freeze again tonight. So that would be three nights in a row of below-freezing temperatures.
 
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Charles is a full-time father and part-time proxy missionary blogger...

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