First
of all, Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! That's right, it's the
second most wonderful time of the year! Why schools don't take a full
week off for this holiday, I don't know. It's one of the many injustices
in this imperfect world.
But anyway, it's been another
awesome week since last P day. And it's been another awesome two weeks
since last time I emailed. And now it's time for another awesome email.
So
a lot of good things have been happening here. I might actually space
the stories out between the next couple emails to not overwhelm you. But
we've been having fun and working hard and it's just going really
well.
On Friday we did a lot of service. The first project was absolutely horrible, and we found out after the fact, that we could've died! What it was was cleaning trash out of this disgusting house with mouse droppings all over the place.
Okay I'm getting carried away with the italics, I apologize. Anyway
though, we asked for the guy to bring us masks and he said he would, and
then he didn't. So we helped him anyway, which was our mistake. And
seriously mouse droppings were everywhere. About 15 minutes in I was
having such a hard time breathing that I sounded like Darth Vader.
Luckily we only stayed an hour. We found out later though that the virus
in mouse droppings is called the hantavirus and it is actually
extremely deadly, and there's no cure, and we basically just got lucky
that we didn't get it.
Not too long after that though we got a
call from someone who needed help unloading a trailer full of hay
bales. So we dropped what we were doing, grabbed our service clothes
which we had just put in the dryer 5 minutes before, and headed out. Or
we baled you could say. But despite the wet jeans, that service
was actually really fun, especially in contrast to what we had to do
earlier. It was so exhausting though. I thought they were going to be 50
pound bales like we've helped with before. But this guy got 100 pound
bales. And let's just say the mind was willing but the flesh was weak.
It was a fun experience though.We had a couple close calls
there with almost dying too but I won't get into that. Basically it just
had to do with hay hooks and some nearly unfortunate timing of when the
hay hooks didn't hook properly. But all is well. I stay safe on my
mission, I promise. Besides, I got my flu shot so I'm like invincible
now.
Anyway though, I'll leave it at that for
this week. Before I go though I'll share a scripture kind of about
service since that's what I talked about today.
This is in
Matthew 25:40, and I'll let you read this chapter for yourself to get
the context because it's a good one, but here you go:
"...Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
I
like this scripture a lot, especially when it's read after the previous
couple verses to get the full picture of what's being said. But I just
really like that idea of all our opportunities to serve others being
ways to serve Jesus Christ and come closer to Him as well. And I've come
to see that that is very true.
I hope you have an enjoyable Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
Til next week,
~Elder Oswald
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