A Week's Worth of Confusing and Unorganized Ideas with a Spiritual Thought and the End

Well folks, it's that time again.

You guessed it, it's time to read this week's chapter of "Memoirs of a Missionary: Two Years and Forever" which is the title of the book I have now decided I will one day write.

So this week was pretty good. We had a ton of service opportunities so that was really cool!

Thursday and Friday we helped a super cool guy from the Spanish speaking Ward move some boxes from a trailer into another trailer. It was just like a game of Tetris except heavier.

But yeah I got to practice my Spanish skills which was super cool. 

Also, real quick, I just have a question about cats. Why? I am not making this up, they actually know I'm allergic to them. They can sense it somehow. And I wouldn't say this if it's only happened once. But it's every single time. If there's a cat, it comes up to me, looks me in the eyes, and then proceeds to rub its mangy fur on my pants. It's ridiculous. 

So something that's pretty cool, there's like a professional hair cutting lady, or hair stylist as they are sometimes called, who goes to church here who gives free haircuts to the missionaries. So I got a free haircut last week. 

Oh, also, I've attached a picture of a cactus with Christmas lights that I found. I really like this picture because it is a cactus with Christmas lights.

So last night was the First Presidency Christmas Devotional and it was amazing! Now I know what you're thinking: Oh rats, I really want to watch that, but Elder Oswald said it was last night, I guess it's too late.

Well you're in luck, because you can go on and watch it on lds.org anytime you want!

Anytime I want?

Yes, anytime you want! Which I very much recommend.

Unless of course I'm totally wrong, in which case, my apologies. But I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Anyway, service has been really fun. So Saturday was a special day. And not only was it the day we get ready for Sunday, but it was the World Wide Day of Service that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints put on as a kick off for the Light the World initiative that is going on this December. 

So what is Light the World?, you may ask. Well great question. Light the World is something that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints does every December as a way to make the Christmas Season more focused on Jesus Christ and the gifts he has given us. Now this can often times be hard to do, with much of the worldly culture of commercialization and self-gratification that surround this season in many ways. But what the Church has organized for this month can help us. Every week, we are encouraged to serve in a different way. We aren't told exactly how or who to serve, but we are given ideas and encouragement to seek ways and opportunities that we can show love for one another, and to serve one another and to look beyond the natural selfish and self centered feelings we have, and look outwards as Christ did. Give as Christ gave. Love as Christ loved, and as He loves even now. And I can promise that this is how we can really experience joy this Christmas. So I would encourage you all, if you haven't already, go on to Mormon.org and you can learn more about Light the World, and then start serving!

Well disapointingly enough, I think that's all for this week my friends, have a wonderful week!

~Elder Oswald

P.S. - Random fact of the week:

I realized that if you add a 'B' and an 'E' to the beginning of Arizona, it becomes Bearizona, which I like to imagine is what the state of Arizona would have been called had it originally been populated by bears rather than by humans.

Also, an excerpt from Kendall's message to me with some pictures that Elder Bower's mom shared with me to go with the story:

So real quick, totally forgot this story from the week:

Elder Bower and I were on bikes one afternoon. And we had dinner with the Bishop and his wife. But his wife called and said the Bishop was out of town so she'd just drop off the food at our apartment. So we got back from biking at the same time as the Bishops wife. And so we got our bags of food at the entrance of the complex and then went to our apartment. 

Then we realized that the key pad to our garage was broken. We had a garage door opener in our car though so that's why we never needed to use the keypad. The car was in the garage though. Because we were on our bikes. 

Luckily there is a side door to our apartment though. Unfortunately the key is on the key ring with the car keys. And we didn't take our car keys because we were on bikes. 

So we were locked out of our apartment. So we just sat down on the curb outside of our apartment and ate our soup and grapes. She also gave us some awesome chocolate covered caramel corn. But yeah so then we had a meeting at a ward mission leaders house which we had originally planned on driving to. We couldn't drive to it though because our car was locked in the garage. So we biked there. Except it was far away and we had to bike along a super busy road. It was kind of sketchy. But yeah we made it to our meeting. Then we had the mission leader drive us to our lesson since we wouldn't have made it there on time. Then we biked back to the apartment, hoping to find the Spanish Elders inside since they of course had a key to the apartment.

Instead we found them standing outside waiting for us. Apparently they don't have a key. They thought they did but I guess it doesn't work. So we ended up calling some mission office staff and eventually someone came with a key and got us inside.

It was crazy.