It's been quite the week.

We got a LONG email from Matthew this week. Lots of successful street contacts, lessons, and non-teaching events. Some excerpts:

Elder Carman and I did some store contacting in Home Depot. We talked to a few people, including one (non-member) who's nephew had gone on a mission.

They asked the mission president about turning their area into a "hybrid" car+bike area, and he was all for it, but the mission's short on bikes so they're on a waiting list. In the meantime, he borrowed bikes from a couple of other elders, and bought parts to fix one of them. He was surprised at how often he had to swerve to avoid being run over by cars, even after being equipped with lights. Later in the week his comp. got a flat tire and they had a long walk back to the car and had to buy a new tube.  Matthew sent us a picture and video of him doing a trick on his bike. He also included a picture of some of the results of doing a trick on his bike. (it was a nice crash.)

They found an exciting new investigator: "He actually seems mentally all there, which is unusual for people we teach." They had a couple of great discussions on The Restoration this week.

The water was off at both the church (all weak) and their apt. (less than a day) due to leaks. Reminded him of the importance of water storage.

Matthew's music practice is finally being put to use. I didn't realize he'd been hiding:

...the Sisters had a baptism, so we went to that, and I played the piano. At that point my cover was broken, and several people asked me why I wasn't playing for Sacrament meeting. Thing is, they don't have a pianist or organist - they just play music off of their phone, and the congregation can't keep in time with the music. It's so bad it's really funny. So I agreed to play for Sacrament meeting until I get transfered out....the primary president, also came up to me and asked me to play for the primary program which was a couple Sundays in the future. I also agreed to do that....

Sunday:

Because I was playing for Sacrament meeting, people sang so much better! They actually kept on track with the piano.

also

we rode with Elder Wood to go pick up our friends and take them to church. When we got there, there was no answer at the door. The door was cracked open, however, so I pushed the door open farther and poked my head in. One of them was asleep on the couch. My guess is they partied too hard last night celebrating the Astro's win, and got drunk and passed out.

Every Sunday evening, the whole mission gets together and watches a conference talk or something, and discusses parts from it. Tonight, we watched VeggieTales instead. It was basically relating the story of the three little pigges to building our spiritual foundation on Christ. My most pressing question from that video comes from when Larry and the other yellow squash were fighting over the last delux hot tub. Larry was on a forklift, and the yellow squash was on a front-end loader. Why didn't Larry just raise the hot tub up until the front-end loader couldn't reach it?

They had a lunch appt. w/ a member, but it was less exciting because they had to buy some of the food themselves on the way and wash the dishes before they ate on them. The house was pretty nasty.

Finally, the weather report:

we're finally at that time of year where the weather can't decide whether it's going to be hot or cool. This past week has been decidedly hot. But it's supposed to cool off later this week and into next week.