Church attendance of our branch presidency this week: 1/3. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the marvelous Cottonwood Spanish branch. I really love this branch, but man, it needs some help. It's just a different experience here. We start Church with Sunday School. There were about 6 people there. Slowly more people trickled in until Sacrament. It was like watching the branch grow before your eyes.
We also went to Sedona this week. I am in love with that town. It kinda reminds me of Portland if Portland had more red rocks and stores that offer to heal you with crystals (there's one on every street corner it seems--all hail the crystals!). In Sedona they only allow certain colors on the exterior of buildings. So McDonalds has a pastel green logo instead of the usual golden arches. It seriously gorgeous in that town, though. There's these sweet red rock formations everywhere and it kinda has that kitschy downtown Portland feel to it. The Sedona elders also live in an apartment inside a mortuary. They always tell us how many people got cremated on a given day. Apparently the cremator gets up to some pretty hot temperatures. I'm going on splits there on Friday so that should be fun.
The only thing I dislike about Sedona is that the hotels and resorts there employ about every single Mexican here in the stake. And wouldn't you know it, but the busiest days for hotels and other tourist-y things are Saturdays and Sundays. I have never run into more problems with keeping the sabbath day holy than in this area. Most everyone in our branch who's less active works in a hotel in Sedona on Sundays. Plus there's a whole bunch of investigators who can't come to Church and when you can't get that spiritual boost from coming to Church it's pretty hard to progress in the gospel.
The work here isn't too bad. Aside from the typical problems with coming to Church, we've got a lot of people to teach. We've currently got a fair number of people on date for baptism. I'm starting to get the hang of the area, which is a good thing because Elder Scott has no sense of direction. He's more of a landmark navigator which is tough when you cover an entire stake. That's a lot of landmarks to keep track of.
I'm starting to run out of Seinfeld episodes to quote with Elder Lancaster.
I'm excited for Thursday. We're gonna eat dinner with a butcher. He's promised us some good stuff. I told him all the parts of the cow I haven't eaten yet and he told us he'd try to get us some of the stuff I haven't tried. So we'll either have tacos of tongue, brain, oxtail, or liver (hopefully not liver). I'm excited. I like to at least say I've tried the I dare you foods. Mexicans are really good with eating all of the cow. I want to try brain. I hear it's not too bad.
The wildlife here is also a lot more interesting. So far I've seen a skunk, a toad, cicadas, large beetles, and I've been eaten alive by mosquitos. I need to remember to put on bug spray. Apparently there's also tarantulas and other cool things around here. Also lots of red ants. I like destroying their holes and watching them scurry to undig them.
I like it up here. It's definitely a lot cooler. There's also a lot to check out for a change. Phoenix really didn't have a lot of sights to see.
Love you guys,
Elder Grasley
No comments:
Post a Comment