Oakland Temple

Oakland Temple

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Week 12-Still in Turlock! Yay!




I AM STAYING IN TURLOCK WITH HERMANA ALCARAZ AND SO ARE THE ELDERS IN OUR BRANCH.  There is still work for me to do!

So near the end of the week things got crazy.  So starting from the end, this past Saturday Elder Smith was not feeling so hot.  Him and Elder Guzman are in the same branch as us so we had lots of meetings that day.  He was puking, green, and in tons of pain. He insisted on going to the first half of the meetings but then we got a call from the nurse Sister Gilbert saying he needs to go to the emergency room.  Me and Hermana Alcaraz have a car but President asked that they look for a ride first since they have bikes. After no success, the stake elder's quorum president- Brother Ross Day said to just take our car and go to the hospital. They rushed to Emmanuel Hospital and we stayed to finish up the meetings.  After the meetings we realized that he'd taken our car keys with our apartment keys and we were stuck at the church with a cello and their missionary bags. We couldn't get a ride home with anyone since we aren't allowed to ride with Brethren.  So we hung for like 40 minutes until the Zone Leaders came and got  the cello and we geared up for the hour walk to Emmanuel Hospital with the elders 20 pound bags.  It was awesome.  That is when I felt like a real missionary.  Well after we left, Elder Smith and Guzman spent all day and most the night in the Emergency room-Elder Smith found out he has appendicitis. They scheduled him for surgery the next morning and so they spent 2 nights at Emmanuel.  Most of our time since Saturday has been spent at Emmanuel running the elders food, goodies, clothes for overnight, blankets, you name it. He came home today at 2:30pm and before he came back, we went and decorated his house and made a cake to welcome them home since it hasn't been too luxury for them.  
Well I was supposed to play piano in sacrament meeting with Elder Smith playing the cello but since he was in the hospital I was left to solo it.  I luckily had brought some other pieces so I planned to play one of them.  Well I get there the music director was upset and likes to have it all in control so when I told her I would play this piano piece for the intermediate hymn she straight up told me in English- FORGET IT.  I wanted to cry... So I just played a basic hymn but it's okay.
We had a Noche de Hogar (Family home evening) with this member Karem and her crazy little kids 7 years old and younger.  We had planned to teach the new church campaign and how God loves the children.  We gave them a pass along card of the video that has a picture of Jesus Christ as a baby on it and the 7 year old boy straight up took it and said he hated Jesus as he tore it up into shreds.  You should've seen my face.  I couldn't cried I was in rage.  My Book of Mormon was open and ready to start teaching about it and I just slam it shut and say, "You don't know what you're talking about." We are working with him.  But he also dreams of putting bombs underneath the benches in the church and setting them off when the people start singing, killing them all.  We are working with him, lets just say that.  I will not leave this area with this kid acting like that.
One of the members Hermano Luna (a convert of 6 months and is the branch mission leader) made us some jalapeno cream cheese bread.  It was so good.  New favorite thing.  Try it out :) 
The branch Christmas Party was so much fun. It started 2 hours late due to us waiting on the costco chickens to be delivered but when they came, we all were in the kitchen of the church tearing them apart together.  It was a blast.  We finished cutting up all 30 of the chickens in 30 minutes.  It was the best part of the night.  
Funny story, a lady named Concha submitted herself as a referral so we went to go see her.  That rarely happens here.  So we go, and get talking.  She's a sweet old lady that lives with 10 cats alone.  We found out she has dementia quickly into the lesson when we asked her about why she referred herself.  She didn't know what we were talking about.  Then she told us the same story 5 times.  It was so sad.
We found out one of our investigators was trying to scam the church.  Martha... yeah apparently she does this with a lot of churches.  She is a drug addict and prostitute. She sales her food stamps for drug money.  3 of her 5 kids have already been taken by the government.  
It's been a crazy week but time is flying.
Shout out to Elder Jarvis who is reading this.  Creeper status. but esta bien.

Love you alllll

xoxo

Hermana Waters





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