Hola Familia y Amigos!
This week has been... well... adventurous haha and super good! So there's two main adventures and the first one happened Wednesday. We started out on our way to do some service at 11 am with some members that live pretty far out from the main part of Clearlake. We thought we had their address right... long story short, we didn't. And to top it all off, we didn't have phone service, so we went out there, found out it was a wrong address, had to drive 3/4 of the way back to get service to call and ask for directions in which the members told us "go to Williams and we're the second left about a block up on the right..." or so we thought we heard. So we start driving to Williams, even though the signs said it was 36 miles away. We just thought our ward boundaries went that far. We got there though and realized that it couldn't be the place in which we called the members back and realized they had said go toward Williams and it's the second left... So we may or may not have accidentally driven out of the mission boundaries... But it's ok because we really had no idea, and it was pretty fun because it was us and the english elders all together driving around for a while. So that was the first adventure of the week.
The second adventure is penned in the words of Elder Beeston, "The most interesting day of the week was Friday at 1:30 AM. I suddenly awoke in the middle of the night to insanely loud pounding and screaming outside. "OPEN THE DOOR" an man screamed furiously. All of the elders instantly jumped out of bed and stepped back. The smashing on the door continues "WE SAW YOU THROUGH THE WINDOW AND KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE. OPEN THE DOOR OR WE'LL BREAK IT DOWN." . Elder Foster pulls out the phone and calls 911 as we all retreat to the back of the apartment. At this point we can tell there are multiple men outside. Elder Foster tells 911 what is going on and waits for directions. I listen to the phone for a moment and finally the operator comes back with this advice: "open the door". Now I'm like 100% sure the world has gone crazy because we're about to get ambushed by some crazy ax murderer (or whoever is out there) and 911 is telling us to open the door. Suddenly I hear it. Our neighbors door gets smashed in. There's a bunch of commotion in their apartment and our neighbor gets arrested. So it turns out they were knocking on their door the whole time, but they were using a baton and so it was so loud we thought they were knocking on ours. It was so close to us too that we thought the voices that were just outside our door were talking to us. We must have been asleep for the very beginning of the confrontation and that's how we didn't know that they were the police. (And why we were so confused when 911 told us to open the door, they thought we were the people they were after)"
Needless to say that we had a hard time getting back to sleep that night, but now it's one of our favorite stories to tell.
One last funny story, we were teaching a former investigator and while he really enjoys talking to the missionaries he doesn't see the reason for going to our church versus other churches. He was talking to us in english, even though spanish is definitely better for him, and he kept insisting "There's only one cheese, there's only one cheese!" for why it doesn't make any difference which church you go to. Of course we knew he was trying to say "there's only one Jesus", but it is still one of the most quoted lines of the past week!
We had a good week and I wish I had more time to tell y'all about what happened this week, but it was a really memorable, fun week and we had some really cool miracles this week. And to finish really quick these pictures are what our truck looks like after a week of driving in Clearlake.
Love y'all!!! Til next week!
-Elder Whitaker
To see all the pictures, go to the "pictures" tab...
This week has been... well... adventurous haha and super good! So there's two main adventures and the first one happened Wednesday. We started out on our way to do some service at 11 am with some members that live pretty far out from the main part of Clearlake. We thought we had their address right... long story short, we didn't. And to top it all off, we didn't have phone service, so we went out there, found out it was a wrong address, had to drive 3/4 of the way back to get service to call and ask for directions in which the members told us "go to Williams and we're the second left about a block up on the right..." or so we thought we heard. So we start driving to Williams, even though the signs said it was 36 miles away. We just thought our ward boundaries went that far. We got there though and realized that it couldn't be the place in which we called the members back and realized they had said go toward Williams and it's the second left... So we may or may not have accidentally driven out of the mission boundaries... But it's ok because we really had no idea, and it was pretty fun because it was us and the english elders all together driving around for a while. So that was the first adventure of the week.
The second adventure is penned in the words of Elder Beeston, "The most interesting day of the week was Friday at 1:30 AM. I suddenly awoke in the middle of the night to insanely loud pounding and screaming outside. "OPEN THE DOOR" an man screamed furiously. All of the elders instantly jumped out of bed and stepped back. The smashing on the door continues "WE SAW YOU THROUGH THE WINDOW AND KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE. OPEN THE DOOR OR WE'LL BREAK IT DOWN." . Elder Foster pulls out the phone and calls 911 as we all retreat to the back of the apartment. At this point we can tell there are multiple men outside. Elder Foster tells 911 what is going on and waits for directions. I listen to the phone for a moment and finally the operator comes back with this advice: "open the door". Now I'm like 100% sure the world has gone crazy because we're about to get ambushed by some crazy ax murderer (or whoever is out there) and 911 is telling us to open the door. Suddenly I hear it. Our neighbors door gets smashed in. There's a bunch of commotion in their apartment and our neighbor gets arrested. So it turns out they were knocking on their door the whole time, but they were using a baton and so it was so loud we thought they were knocking on ours. It was so close to us too that we thought the voices that were just outside our door were talking to us. We must have been asleep for the very beginning of the confrontation and that's how we didn't know that they were the police. (And why we were so confused when 911 told us to open the door, they thought we were the people they were after)"
Needless to say that we had a hard time getting back to sleep that night, but now it's one of our favorite stories to tell.
One last funny story, we were teaching a former investigator and while he really enjoys talking to the missionaries he doesn't see the reason for going to our church versus other churches. He was talking to us in english, even though spanish is definitely better for him, and he kept insisting "There's only one cheese, there's only one cheese!" for why it doesn't make any difference which church you go to. Of course we knew he was trying to say "there's only one Jesus", but it is still one of the most quoted lines of the past week!
We had a good week and I wish I had more time to tell y'all about what happened this week, but it was a really memorable, fun week and we had some really cool miracles this week. And to finish really quick these pictures are what our truck looks like after a week of driving in Clearlake.
Love y'all!!! Til next week!
-Elder Whitaker
To see all the pictures, go to the "pictures" tab...