4-11-11

Hello dear readers. This week in Manteca has been a mixture of highs and lows, per usual.

 

LOWS: Hardly anyone we tried to visit was home. The entire week. Bummer. And bad weather most of the week. WILL IT EVER STOP RAINING? I'm not convinced.

 

HIGHS: 3 categories of these:

     Gopher on a shovel. One of our investigators is named Henry. Henry has a sadistic cat who likes to catch voles and gophers and torture them for hours until they slowly die. Well I caught his cat messing with a gopher the other day and I shooed the cat away and then pet the little gopher for a few minutes (this did not seem to relieve her stress). I then decided that the gopher needed to be relocated, but I was afraid to pick her up because gophers have very long front teeth and I was afraid that I would be bitten and contract rabies. So I searched all around the yard until I found just the thing: an old rusty shovel. I scooped the little gopher up and carried her across the yard, where I deposited her at the base of a tree. I hope that she's safe from the evil cat.

     Member in hiding. One day we met a woman named Lici on the street. We scheduled a return appointment with her, although we got the feeling that she was probably not that interested. But we followed up anyway, and when we got to her house she was sitting in the front yard with a friend. Lici had indeed forgotten about the appointment and wasn't super interested, but we started talking to her friend. Her name is Dorothy and she's in her sixties. To our great surprise we found out that not only is she a member of our church, but she was one of the first black women to serve a mission. She served in Philadelphia in the 80s and she said that it was the best time of her life. She's been doing some "soul searching" recently and hasn't been to church in over a year. We really feel like Dorothy is the reason that we were there at Lici's that day. We visited Dorothy at her house a few days ago and were literally there for 2 and a half hours talking about her mission. She still hasn't really told us the reason she's not active anymore, but we're hoping she'll open up to us as we get to know her better. She is so so cool and I just love her so much.

     Unexpected potential. We've been meeting with two teenagers, Sialei and Leah. They are the daughters of a less active, and we weren't sure how serious they were. But they really are! And they are so cute and funny and sweet. They ask awesome questions and they actually do the reading we ask them to do, which is rare. They're praying about April 23rd as a baptismal date. I really hope they choose to go through with it.

 

So that's life in the big city. I must fly! Have a wonderful week.