Bold as BBQ Sauce

The Longview Zone

A great week it has been.  Rainy, cold and festive.  My consumption of Egg Nog is increasing every day.  Castle Rock is one of my favorite places in the world (well, it has to be right now).  Here’s a few stories I would like to share about the week.  I went on exchanges with Elder Clarke the zone leader about mid-week.  It was interesting.  We received a call during companion study from a man saying "I'm dying you need to come give me a blessing".  Then hanging up... We called back and finally got his name to go visit or get someone to go visit.  15 minutes later, we hadn't found anyone to visit him.  We knelt to pray and felt the need to go ourselves to this man (he lived in another set of missionaries area who we could NOT seem to contact).  As we arrived, he forced us to drink soda (which was easy for me), had me feel his "wet back" , showed us his arrowhead collection in the basement next to the historical museum in his basement, had us call his sister to tell her he was okay, pray with him 3 times while holding hands and gave him a blessing which he instructed us to keep giving the blessing and not stop when we were going to.  WHAT a morning!   But this man was awesome and surely needed someone to be there for him.  Really cool to be there in his need!  After we let the thankful heart he expressed was priceless.  Elder Furlow & I decided to tract earlier in the week because, due to the rain, we haven't been out as much... So when a ray of shine came out we hit the streets.  Feeling bold as barbecue sauce we hopped a LOCKED fence to knock some apartment doors, when suddenly an old man (most likely the apartment manager) flew out the door and cussed me out like I killed his first born in the wilderness. I definitely deserved that... Don't do that on your mission.  Even if you're feeling bold & stuff.  We decided to join the ward choir this week and the sound of the choir has gone substantially downhill since that day.  Although I sing a good “Misty Mountains” rendition, I do not sing the hymns as well. The choir director is feeding us on Thanksgiving so we thought it would be appropriate to join. The Castle Rock Ward sings hymns kind of like that moment in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” when the teacher is calling the roll and no one answers.  But it's awesome.  Just this morning our stake president in the Longview stake decided to feed us some grub and do a get to know you activity.  After such a feast we decided to take a zone pic and Elder Winn jabbed my love handles at the very moment the pic was taken.  More egg nog = more love handles ( which is a sacrifice I’m willing to make).  The work is good. The church is true.    Miracles happen every single week.  No matter how hard one day is, there is always something good to come after. No such thing as a dead area.  Miracles happen when we exert faith.  Moral of
the story is drink Nog.