The Rake's Song

Transfer news says I'm staying in Estrella. That's good. It's a good ward. I've enjoyed my time here.

This week we once again knocked on a lot of doors. But we're slowly starting to find people. We started teaching this one kid who's been learning from the JWs. He just wanted to learn about Christ and so unfortunately the JWs were the first ones to show up. I find their doctrines really depressing. No birthdays or holidays, only 144,000 men go to heaven, and you have to choose death instead of a blood transfusion. We taught him about how we learn from the Spirit and he understood it really well and seemed to like it.

We also moved this week. Yes, I know, no more golf course living. But thankfully our new apartment is right in the middle of our area, which will be way nicer in terms of miles. We've been doing a lot of biking this week, which can be pretty miserable here in Arizona. Our new apartment is pretty nice and I like the Elders we live with. Elder Bartlett is from Colorado and Elder Burrows is from West Virginia. I've had fun wrapping myself up in Elder Burrows' large confederate flag blanket. He's also been telling me about how Abraham Lincoln was a terrible president. So my level of southern fun just got turned up to 11.

This week we went down to the southern part of our area in The Great Search for More Mexicans. The southern part of our area is mostly farmland. We found that there were quite a few rancheros (cowboys) living down there, so we'll definitely have to go back in the future and try our luck. The bad thing was, when we were riding our bikes down there, we noticed some ominous black clouds looming on the horizon. So we got caught in another haboob while riding our bikes in the farmland. It was pretty awful and yet cool at the same time. It picked up all the dirt from the fields and just flung it at us. There were a couple times where it felt like it was getting a little more difficult to breathe. Not to mention the gusts of wind that would stop us in our tracks.

After getting through the dust storm, then we got to ride back to our car while lightning bolts started striking uncomfortably close to us. I have to say, it made me more than a little worried. I said a prayer to the effect of "please don't let me get struck by lightning." After that I felt pretty peaceful and okay. Still, I was a little worried that I had titled my last email "Lightning Strikes the Postman" out of some sort of cosmic irony.

We also had an interesting experience this week during district meeting. Some people were waiting outside the Church to talk to someone. They started talking to the English Elders who then directed them to us because they spoke more Spanish. One of the first things out of their mouth was, "Someone from your Church has kidnapped someone." That was definitely one of those situations where you'd like to remove your nametag and pretend like you have no responsibility over things. So we asked them who it was and said it was the So-and-so family. Now, the So-and-sos haven't been to Church in probably about a year, which we explained to these people. We came to find out that Sister So-and-so was the sister of the lady who came to talk to us. Apparently the whole thing resulted from some family feud where Sister So-and-so wouldn't let anyone else in the family talk to their mother on Hispanic Mother's Day (celebrated on the 10th instead of Sunday). So here we were, embroiled in a Latino family feud. They started reading us the riot act of all the bad things that these inactive members had supposedly done. I felt like they kept expecting us to say we'd do something about it. I don't think they understood that as a religious organization, we can tell people that what they're doing is wrong and that's about it. They finally started scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for things that would I guess cause such fiery indignation in us that we'd march over to the house and throw them in Mormon jail. They ended with telling us that their son goes to a CATHOLIC SCHOOL (duh duh DUN) and asking us if that was okay for someone who is a member of our Church. We basically just told them that they really don't come to our Church and that if we can help in some way we will gladly do so. We gave them the Bishop's number and walked away. I feel sorry for the Bishop, but they were really dead set on talking to our "pastor" about all of the grievances they have against these members.

I hope everyone had a good mother's day. It was fun to call home. I can't believe that's the last time I'll talk to my family until I see them in person. Weird.

Love,
Elder Grasley
P.S. My new address is 9330 W McDowell #2101 Phoenix, AZ 83508.