What's up? Glad to hear it.
So, this week has been
pretty interesting to say the least. On Wednesday our carbon monoxide
detector went off in our apartment. We're not really sure what the deal
was. We cleaned it off and did everything we could think of to
minimize the threat, but the dang thing just kept going off. It
totally freaked out Elder Rooney. Long story short, we've been living
over at the other elders' apartment for about the last week. That's
been fun, but I am very excited to get back to my apartment and not be
cramped up in their tiny apartment.
In other excitement from this week, I witnessed
probably the craziest rainstorm I have ever seen in my life on Friday.
Elder Rooney and I went out to find a less active lady and on the way
back we noticed that the sky was a deep shade of green. Humidity mixed
with increasing winds and rain started up. We found a trolley bus and
got on just in time to avoid the craziness of the storm. Rain whipping
around like nobody's business, lightning like crazy and trees being
blown apart. The trolley bus stopped because a tree had crashed down on
its power line further up the line. We just waited it out for 40
minutes then walked through the wreckage. It was awesome! I got some
fun pictures of that. Luckily, I think that most people were safe.
This is our district, soaked after a crazy rainstorm.
We have continued meeting with R and he has
really good questions. He thinks so deeply about the doctrine and
really tries to internalize it. I was really proud of one answer I gave
to him. I'll try to relate it to you. He asked how God can be a just
and fair judge if he loves us. He drew up a diagram of a courtroom with
God the Father as the judge, Jesus as the advocate and Satan as the
prosecutor (not completely accurate, granted, but not important for his
question). His point was that God shares sympathies with Jesus and us,
so how can he be completely fair? Can't he just repeal the very laws
that he set? I answered with relating it to the story of Daniel and the
lion's den. Just to recap, Daniel gets all buddy buddy with the king
and even makes it up to being his right hand man. Then corrupt men
convince the king to make a law that makes it illegal to pray to any man
or god but the king. These same corrupt men catch Daniel in the act of
praying and take him to the king demanding justice. Now King Darius is
in a bind. He loves Daniel and wants only the best for him, but the he
had violated the law. True, he could repeal the law then and there,
but that would not change the fact that Daniel had gone against the law.
The only just thing would be to punish him according to the law- no
more, no less. Relating this to God, God will not punish us beyond what
He has to because He loves us. But He will dish out punishment as is
required of the laws set in place. R was pretty blown away and
said, "Wow, good answer.." That's probably one of the best compliments
I've gotten my whole mission. I hope that soon R can be satisfied
with his current knowledge and accept to be baptized.
Life has been pretty good. I've been sleeping on a
couch for a week, but that's okay. My pre-mission life prepared me for
just such events. Oh, and Rooney and Hardy in my district are going to
Armenia this week, so I'm going to be temporary companions with Elder
Coakwell. Yeah! I'm actually pretty excited, he's a good guy. And we
will get to run two areas at the same time. Multitask, go!
One last comment- Rooney and I have gotten really
good at scheduling multiple lessons for the same time. A couple days
this week we have had four or so people planned to meet with us at the
church building at 7 PM. By the time 7 PM rolls around, enough people
have cancelled or just not shown up that we get just one lesson in. So
far it hasn't come back to bite us, so that's good, right?
Thank you for listening/reading. Enjoy your American Summer, everyone.
Love,
Below: I found the Beatles!
Me with my district from Lugansk
