3/4/2024 - Week 33 - Tornados 🌪, a Baptism 🌊, and 2 left brake handles 🚲

Whats good guys?

This has been a wild week! I rarely talk about P-days (because nothing happens usually) but last Monday was among many things, my Grandpa's Birthday! Shout out to him, sorry this is about a week late... However, on Monday we were knocking doors up in a neighborhood fairly close to where we live and it felt like every 4th person we talked to was a Turkish Muslim, I don't know why there are so many Turkish people in Huber Heights, Ohio (I haven't watched the news in a long while), but we've discovered where they all live. We also ran into Andy, who is a Vietnamese guy we ran into a few days before, but couldn't get back in contact with. But we just found him walking down the road we were biking on so we decided to talk with him for a minute then he asked "where are you going?" so we told him we were headed to the Walmart and he just decided he was gonna walk with us up there. And boy did he do that. He walked with us for the entire rest of the night (probably an hour and a half, with us prossing along the way) and we were just chatting. We are not positive he is all the way there too because when we asked if he was educated he said "yeah, I went to Kindergarten" and he said his favorite thing he learned in school was "the ABC's." He also told us that he has lived in Huber Heights for 10 years and that he moved when he was 8 years old from Vietnam; however, this is where it gets tricky, he also said that he was 23. So we don't really know anything. We did schedule a lesson with him at the church and asked who he could bring with him and he said he'd bring his family! When we asked how big his family is he told us 3000. We asked again in 3 different ways and we got 3000 every time. So we were pumped for this mega sermon we would be teaching to Andy and his 3000 family this week. Unfortunately (and not shockingly), he didn't show up. Neither him, nor his 3000 family. But we did get a good laugh out of it throughout the week.

Tuesday was weird. I accidentally tried to pross up 2 different members on two different occasions, one of which is a young woman in our ward so that was honestly good that she was in the ward because proselyting to minors is illegal in Ohio 😬. We also had a member meal fall through... I did cry about that one.

Wednesday morning we had about 3 or 4 tornados touch down in the area, but we slept through it all so obviously it wasn't close enough to disturb a good night's rest (although our members said one was only 5 miles away from our apartment). Unsurprisingly, the wind on Wednesday was horrible and as we tried to bike we had to plan our schedule so that we were biking with a tailwind to our destination and then we set up rides with our members to get back the other direction. We had dinner at the Bean's house and they are amazing and so was the food! Brother Bean was telling me about something his family does every year called SufferFest where they each meet up and have to do some really annoying or difficult task (this last year was doing a marathon [26.2 miles] on a rowing machine 😵‍💫), but I think its a really fun idea. So if you're reading this and also happen to be one of my siblings, we gotta workshop some sort of event like this (but probably more mild and less like a form of modern torture).

Thursday we had District council and exchanges with the Zone Leaders! We had a crazy call with our friend Heather that we understood about 10% of. We know that in the beginning she was angry, but by the end she was like "I love the Book of Mormon and I appreciate you guys so much and I hope I can be at church on Sunday, but I'll be at the baptism 100%" it was a wild call. Also, the ZL's are in tight with a rolled ice cream place like the one in the Boise Mall so they got us free Ice Cream which is pretty cool and an easy way to my heart. We met some pretty crazy people in Piqua, but nothing worth mentioning here.

Friday: I hated it. I was able to practice some Spanish and I was able to invite some Latinas to church and got them the address and I actually understood what they were saying to me in their 10000 MPH Spanish, so thats some improvement from previous attempts to speak Spanish out here. We spent about a billion dollars on dinner at a diner up in New Carlisle and the food was so incredibly mid I wanted to sue the diner for robbery. Nothing seemed to go right all day.

Saturday we somehow got all the rides we needed and were able to visit every city that could even be considered a city in our area. We got some really good Mexican food for lunch which made up for the awful experience from the day before. Not much else happened so I guess Saturday will just be a food review.

Sunday we had Lisa and Kelsie come to church and they loved it! Kelsie and Heather were able to make it to the baptism which was a really special experience and I'm glad they were able to be there! They're both excited to talk about it at their next lessons! David Silva, who was baptized a couple weeks ago, was able to bless the sacrament today which was amazing because he is just such a beast!

As for the last part of my title, I'm sure some of you remember that I was in an accident in October where I got hit by a car (not fun, don't recommend). Well, shockingly, the only part of my bike that was damaged was my left brake handle, so I've needed to get a new one of those. To make a long story short. I got one sent to me, it was delivered to the wrong address so I got another one delivered, I got that one, and then got the other one a few days later. I went to put them on this week and found out that they are the wrong type of handle and now I will need to either get really creative, or order a new one (sorry mom)

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

Well, I've been reading in the Book of Mormon again (shocker). The beginning of the Book of Helaman is very interesting to me. Right before this in the end of Alma, the Nephites are almost conquered by the Lamanites, but pull of the greatest comeback in history by relying on the Lord and getting rid of the contention between Nephites in their capitol and among their government. In the beginning of Helaman, they keep the peace between one another and preach the Word of God to the Lamanites and many of them are converted to the Lord! However, the beginning of Helaman demonstrates the destruction which comes from internal and external contentions. The Gadianton Robbers, which eventually overtake the government and persecute others with no punishment, start off as a small contention between the people. That contention grows into massive problems which lead to the pain and suffering of many. So my message today is to find ways to rid yourself of contention and to rectify all the conflict in your life. It may seem small now, but it can and will grow until it is out of control unless you put your trust in the Lord and love everyone else as Christ loves them! It is not easy by any means, but it is worth it. That I can guarantee to you.

Transfers are also this next week so we'll see if I can keep the transfer to an area every transfer streak alive (shoutout to Kaylee for getting transferred to Florida. That's pretty cool.)

Love y'all, would love to hear how you are doing (yes. that's right. You🫵🏼) Send an email and I'll respond asap!

-Parker aka Elder Hansen