Monday- It was a regular P-day except that Garrett talked me into bringing my sewing machine so that I could offer to fix things for the missionaries. He told me how much he would have appreciated that on his mission. I have hemmed pants for an Elder and this week was asked to fix two dresses for a Sister. Her Mom had sent her two new dresses that have hung in the closet because they are too long. Thank you Garrett for the idea. You were right, it is appreciated by the missionaries.
Tuesday- We signed up to help at the Mobile Pantry for the Veterans. This is held once a month and we helped once before but decided we would like to do some of these assignments ourselves. The missionaries hog the Mobile Pantry assignments for themselves and never invite us to help. We have picked a few in the mornings that we want to help with. The Veterans one is special to us. They are so grateful for the food they receive. We are meeting some wonderful people that help each week with the Pantries. One retired couple help twice a week, every week! They always tell us how much they love the young missionaries that come to help. We always want to say, “What are we? Chopped liver?” The young missionaries always make an impression. After the pantry we went to District meeting. It is always the highlight of the week! I think the missionaries saw us at the meeting and remembered that they could use us. We were asked by the Stead Sisters if we could drive them out to a person they were going to read the Book of Mormon with, way out in the country. (remember, their miles have been cut) This guy lives way out in the boonies and he was “out there” in more ways than one. He served in Viet Nam and is rather paranoid and maybe a little bit crazy. His house was a disaster area. We had to “find” a place to sit under piles of stuff. Reading with him was difficult because he easily gets distracted and wants to tell his own stories. He wears a gun on his hip and asked the Sister if she was scared then proceeded to tell us it was for the rattlesnakes on his property. : ) Oh, the life of a missionary! It’s never dull! We hurried home because we were feeding the Zone Leaders that night and the Sisters in our complex had also asked if they could come to dinner. Elder Hardman had to drive to pick up the Zone Leaders and had to drive them back. It all turned out nice though. We had a fun dinner and sharing, “Our favorite part of the Mission” stories. During the dinner our trio of Elders called to see if we could help with a lesson that night. We dropped off the Zone Leaders and went to a lesson. It was with the new convert that we help a lot. The lesson was about Temple Ordinances and we told her we would drive her by the Temple on Wednesday when we picked her up to go grocery shopping. Tuesday was a full day!
Wednesday- We took Leslie to see the Temple and to go grocery shopping. She was having a difficult day. Shopping took a long time. She also saw the Taco Bell and asked if we could stop and get her lunch there because there was something on T.V. that she wanted to try. After all of her errands we took her home and saw the Access (handicap) bus waiting for her to take her to a doctor’s appointment. She hadn’t planned her day well. The rest of our day was spent knocking doors. Little by little…… We also taught our ESL class in the evening.
Thursday- Temple Day! I hope I remember to be as excited to go to the Temple as these young missionaries are. It was extra fun for them because President and Sister Chesnut, and President Parry surprised them by being there with them. It was a beautiful cool morning. They love to have their pictures taken together. It was a fun morning. We then knocked doors until it was time to get ready to go to the Temple again! We had two Elders leaving to get home in time to start college. We were asked to accompany them for a session. We went to dinner at Sizzler’s with the Chesnuts and the Elders. It was fun to be with just two Elders going home. Usually it is a crowd of them departing and they sort of keep each other calm. These two were giddy with excitement. We had a nice Temple session and drop them off at the Mission home. We were the last session for the night so it was late. One Elder quickly told the other that they were breaking rules being out so late!
Friday- MLC. We went to help with lunch and were invited to stay and listen to the General Authorities that were coming to speak. Elder Pearson and Larkin from the Seventies spoke. It was very uplifting and also made us wonder what more we should be doing. This is missionary work, an up and down roller- coaster ride. They get everyone all pumped up and now it will be fun to see how the Zone Leaders pass their enthusiasm on at District Meeting. We left from MLC to teach our ESL students. See how well I’m doing with abbreviations now!
Saturday- We usually go to help clean the chapel but when we got there they were having a funeral and the chapel had already been cleaned. They don’t really use email or text in this ward to let you know things beforehand. I guess it gave us a jump on our day. We knocked a lot of doors and actually were able to finally close out several of the “hard to get” houses. We thought we would take a trip to Susanville in the afternoon. We learned several things on the ride to Susanville. 1. Doyle, California is over 40 miles away and we now feel really bad for those cows they drive from there to the rodeo. We will appreciate them more next year when they arrive from Doyle. 2. Susanville has two State Prisons and one Federal Prison close by. The Prisons employ the majority of the adults in Susanville. 3. There is a Susan River. 4. There is a random tree in the middle of nowhere that people have thrown shoes on. There is no sign to explain this behavior but the tree is full of shoes of every kind. 5. The shoe tree was the most exciting thing about the drive to Susanville.
Sunday- The day of rest, mostly because the ideas we had to visit people all fell through. Anyway, this was the first week we have had that I thought, “Wow, that went by fast!” It’s good to be busy.
The Gospel’s true and we love you!
Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman
Pictures:
Temple Day and the Shoe Tree
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