"Move if you wanna, if you wanna, if you wanna move" -Mims 3/5/2018

    First of all, for any of you that haven't heard or seen about the wreck in Spain involving 4 missionaries, Caden Randall from good ol DHS was involved, and I guarantee that just looking at the pictures and realizing that everyone involved is going to be fine will increase your testimony a ton. God is watching over us all, that's for DARN sure. 

      Second, people all over seem to think that missionaries are the ONLY people that can help others move. We have recieved over 20 calls from 3 people this week concerning moves. We get texts from members we've never met telling us that some family needs help moving. The first was on Wednesday, we got about a million texts and calls during a lesson asking if we could come help, sadly we had appointments, so we volunteered the Endicott Elders. They (less than) gladly filled our spot and helped, however we were pleased to hear that we would be helping on Thursday morning. We texted the member to confirm the time, 10:30, and we got there right on time. At 11 we got a call from the people saying they were on their way, they had crashed the UHaul into some dude's truck and had to take care of that. 45 minutes later, they got there. 23 minutes later they had successfully backed the truck into the driveway. To top it off, apparently they decided that putting objects into boxes would simply be adding an unnecessary step. So, as far as I can tell, they used snow-shovels and just plowed all their stuff into the UHaul. This is not a very efficient way to move, just fyi. However, the next move we had the wonderful opportunity to assist in, was definitely thee worst thing I have done in my entire life. And I worked at Bountiful Bike for a week. So it was bad. Paul, a member we go visit often, was moving. Or at least this is what he told us. Paul is a nice guy, but he's in a rough spot, he's got a rough life, and let's just say that sanitation and hygiene are not high on his priorities. And they haven't been for more than 5 years. Sooooooo his apartment is crawling with cockroaches, there's maggots on stuff, there's all sorts of interesting bugs on EVERYTHING, there's foods of all kinds left all over the place, and I don't think laundry has been done in that apartment since clothes were invented. To top it off, Paul doesn't have a driver's license. Soooo we had to drive him to the Uhaul place on Thursday to reserve the truck for Fridaymorning. Friday morning we got a text that told us that all mission vehicles had to be parked on Friday because of the storm. So we called Paul and told him we'd have to postpone, but luckily we didn't even have to tell him that because the entire county declared a "state of emergency" and all vehicles were ordered to stay off the roads. They don't mess around with storms here. Soooo we postponed the move to Saturday at 1130. We thought this would be great because then we'd have members available to help. And being the forward thinking, resource utilizing individual that I am, I emailed every man in the ward to invite them to come help us. Saturday morning at 10 Paul gave me a call and reminded me to pick up the UHaul. Now this was surprising, as I was simply recruited help, and not technically allowed to drive the UHaul. So we made a couple quick calls, and quickly realized that literally nobody was going to help us. Soooooo we called the Endicott Elders and had them pick us up, then we picked Paul up, then we went to the UHaul place, where I had the wonderful opportunity to drive the UHaul. I don't think I was technically supposed to do this, but we literally had no other choice. I've always been grateful for the impact Bret Frodsham had on my life, but on Saturday I was especially grateful for all the experience he gave me in driving large vehicles that I most definitely should not have been driving. We got the UHaul to his place, and went up the 2 flights of stairs to his apartment. Now I'd been in this apartment 12 times before, but always at night. I knew it was bad, but holy (profanity) I had NO IDEA. After 2 hours of digging through cockroaches, old newspaper, spiderwebs, and trash, we had his UHaul loaded. We drove over to his new place, and we waited for the landlord. This is at 1:30, we were thinkin that surely the landlord was maybe 20 minutes out. At 4:30 we told Paul we had to go see a few people and do a few things. We got lunch, contacted people, and then around 5:30 Paul called us and asked if we were on our way. We assumed this meant the landlord was there, so we hustled over. He wasn't Paul  Awas just bored. We told him that we had until 6:30 and then we definitely had to go, we had things to do. 6:30 rolls around with no word from the landlord, we tell Paul we have to go, Paul basically starts crying and begs us to stay and move around our appointments. We do, because we were literally the only help he had. By 8:00 we had to draw the line and definitely leave. We hadn't showered yet, and we'd cancelled our appointments to be able to help him. He understood and we left. Sunday morning we saw we had a text from Paul, at 10:40 he had texted us saying the landlord never showed up, and he was in a hotel. Sunday afternoon he called us and asked if we could help him move back into the apartment we had moved him out of literally 24 hours before. We straight up had to decline. But my goodness, this week's experiences moving people have convinced me never to ever volunteer for moving ever again for as long as I live.

     I don't remember much else from this week, as my memory has been clouded by the day from heck we had moving the cockroach breeding ground. I know that on Thursday night we went to the Church to ball out with the men in the ward and a group of non-members that play. And I had the best night of basketball in my life. I had 6 points. Take that Kobe. I did get stuffed hardcore by our ward clerk, but it's ok because someone decided it was actually a foul. But wowza, what a night, and we've become good friends with some of the non-members that come, and we'll be teaching them and baptizing them before you know it. 

     We also had some great lessons and we were able to start off our PDay by assisting a member from the Montrose Branch (just south of us in Pennsylvania) in a blessing at the hospital. I very much dislike hospitals, but luckily the only reason we are ever in one is for giving blessings, and those are always great to be a part of.

     The most exciting piece of news from the week is our transfer news. I will in fact be training. Me. The same dude who was doing donuts in an Equinox like 3 weeks ago. The same dude who wears a tan Jack Nicklaus sport coat that was $3 at Salvation Army to District Meeting. But hey, I guess someone, somewhere, sees hope in me. So apparently I've gotta be teachin some poor fella how to be a missionary, when I hardly know myself. I haven't even been out 8 months, and I'm training AND District Leader. So make sure to send some extra prayers to my Trainee, because he's in for some LIT times. Our first lesson will be with a member family pretending to not be members, and we're teaching the Law of Chastity. So it's gonna be great. Just great. 

(here's pictures of the super attractive outfit Elders Schindler, Hatch, and I put together for less than $11)