It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Jesus' Birthday

Good afternoon, lords and ladies. *Bows really low*

Another week passes by in the timeless city (I mean village) of Wendell, Idaho! It has been an awesome week! Perhaps a rather uneventful one in the eyes of my beloved readers, but still very very good.

What happened this week? Well, not really much in terms of exciting stories about investigators. We have a few with baptismal dates that we're just working with to get to church and whatnot so they can decide for themselves that they're really motivated to take the step into the font, but not much has happened that's really noteworthy!

Now what I would like to discuss a bit are the awesome fun times that occur in the everyday life of Elder Slavens when he's not teaching the good people of Idaho about how to be saved.

Story #1: The other day we got a call from our Zone Leaders, who quasi-angrily told us that we had been butt dialing them like all day long and that they were sick of hearing our nerdy conversations about Lord of the Rings and Super Smash Bros. So I did some investigation on our phone; come to find that when I move my leg with it in my pocket, all the buttons on the phone get pressed at the same time, and it unlocks the phone and calls somebody, seemingly at random. To my horror, I looked at our recent calls to find that we had called a bunch of investigators too. Thank goodness they all speak Spanish! They'd have realized just how geeky Elder Wright and I are! Anyway, I was like, "Let's end this madness," so I went into the phone to put a lock code thingy on it so that this wouldn't happen again. So I go into the settings and find the 'New Passcode Lock' option. Sweet. It asks me for a new password, so I type in 5555. Easy enough to remember. It asks me to confirm the password. I do so. The phone then freaks out: "Uh-oh! That code is invalid! Now I'm gonna lock up like the Pentagon!" Which makes no sense because all I was doing was typing in a new code. But whatevs. So our phone is basically a brick now and we can't talk to anybody. It has been a very difficult thing to deal with, and I now appreciate phones so much. But not the one I currently have. At this point, nobody call me! I won't be able to pick up!

Story # 2: On Thursday we buried a member's dead wolf-dog half-breed. It was the strangest, most morbid service project I've ever taken part in.

Story #3: Two days ago I was driving, just like usual. We were on our way to the next city over to see a Christmas Cantata thing put on by the Church. I took a turn and, as is habitual for me, I sped up a bit to get some momentum. Then the lights go off behind me. Crap, dude. I got pulled over by the fuzz. So this cop comes up to me and asks where I'm coming from. As it happens, we had just finished another service project, and were dressed in our raggy service clothes. I probably looked pretty G. So this dude assumed I was just some snot punk kid. I subconsciously pushed my sweatshirt over so my tag was visible, and explained that we're missionaries from the Church, just heading out from doing some service for a poor old guy who can't walk. I hoped that'd soften his heart a bit. He proceeds to snatch up my driver's license and walk over to his car. 10 minutes later he returns. "I'm going to have to cite you for speeding,' he says. "Now get out of here, and watch your speed." Guess how fast I was going. 7 over the limit. Guess what my penalty is. 90 bucks. What a wonderful day.

Anyway, it's been a pretty fun week. Lots of fun things happen as a missionary, as I'm sure many of you are aware! Just too bad they all seem to happen at the same time. I hope you all have a wonderful week! I sure hope I do!

Elder Slavens