First off, I would like to
apologize, my Pday got switched today
because we had interviews with our mission president yesterday. This
week has been crazy, and I'm very excited to write about it!
This week started out pretty exciting, I was reminded of how much I
hate cockroaches. Me and Elder Low went to the church building to
practice church tours, as we turned the corner, we saw probably one of
the biggest cockroaches I have ever seen crawling along the wall. I
immediately stopped and told Elder Low, "you better watch out man,
that things got wings" right after saying that the cockroach takes off
and flys to the other wall. I booked it to the other side of the hall
and found a custodial closet. I grabbed the heaviest cleaner I could
find and handed one to Elder low, It looked like it had to have
something that would kill the cockroach. Long story short we ran
around the church spraying the cockroach with this heavy duty cleaner,
screaming like girls. In the end, I crushed it with my foot and all
was well.
We have been teaching this man named Alexander, who is an African
refugee. He lives in a home where there are probably 14 other
refugees, they all refer to themselves as brother, sister, uncle,
aunt, but I'm pretty sure that none of them are related. They all
speak Swahili. Every time that we are over there it seems that there
is a new person that I haven't met before. They all speak really poor
English, and so lessons have been interesting. I don't know if they
know what an AC is, but it literally feels like they have the heater
on when we are there, I dread going to lessons for that reason, it
feels like we really are in Africa, the whole time during our lessons
me and my companion are wiping sweat from our faces, and they all seem
perfectly fine. He is moving this week and asked us in his broken
English if we could wire transfer him 200 hundred dollars before he
got to the airport, Im not even sure why he needed the money, but he
was pretty disappointed when we told him that we couldn't do that. He
always tells us that we are brothers in Jesus, and hugs us for abut 5
minutes at a time. I love that guy, but it is so hard to teach him, he
goes on random tangents about things we can't understand, it's a wild
time.
Let me just say, that Born again Christens are the worst. They always like to try and battle us, normally they like to start the conversation like, "did you know that Jesus Isn't the brother of Satan" what, okay. We normally just try and walk away from those guys. I have never seen anything like them before in my life, one of the weirdest things is when they think that they have the gift of tongues, and start rambling off in some sort of gibberish. They always say that they will pray for our souls. Normally if people start walking up to us, it's those guys. They seem to like to put their hands on you when they pray, and they get all crazy and start adding stuff to your prayer, and raise their hands, it's wild.
This week, I had a ton of bike problems. First off, I broke my left peddle off. That was not a good time, you may think that there isn't a way to peddle your bike if you're missing one, but there is, it's just awful. I don't think that I have been in so much pain riding a bike. I rode that for about 2 days before we could get to the bike shop and get it fixed. The day after that, my front tire got a hole in it. I don't know if you have rode a bike with a flat front tire at high speeds before, but it's terrifying. Have you ever had that feeling where you can't keep balance on a bike and you know you're going to fall? It's like that except constant, and somehow you don't fall, but there were some sincere prayers were offered on those bike rides. The day after that I still had a flat tire, but something even worse happened, not just my peddle, but the entire bar and peddle came off of my bike. If we were closer to the ocean I would have probably thrown my bike into the sea. A good majority of this week has been spent in the bike shop, but it's okay, because they have some good music, so that's awesome. On one of the days that I had a flat tire we were running late for a meeting. when your tire is flat it feels like it about doubles the resistance. I have never seen my trainer peddle harder than I have at this moment, neither have never sweated this much in my life. The journey was about 4 miles and I was cussing my trainer out in the back of my mind. When we arrived I was literally drenched in sweat, and I had to meet with our mission president. He looked at me and said "Elder, did you sprint here" my response, "yeah something like that" to top the week off, I ripped 3 of my pants. I'm going to get so good at sowing, you have no idea.
because we had interviews with our mission president yesterday. This
week has been crazy, and I'm very excited to write about it!
This week started out pretty exciting, I was reminded of how much I
hate cockroaches. Me and Elder Low went to the church building to
practice church tours, as we turned the corner, we saw probably one of
the biggest cockroaches I have ever seen crawling along the wall. I
immediately stopped and told Elder Low, "you better watch out man,
that things got wings" right after saying that the cockroach takes off
and flys to the other wall. I booked it to the other side of the hall
and found a custodial closet. I grabbed the heaviest cleaner I could
find and handed one to Elder low, It looked like it had to have
something that would kill the cockroach. Long story short we ran
around the church spraying the cockroach with this heavy duty cleaner,
screaming like girls. In the end, I crushed it with my foot and all
was well.
We have been teaching this man named Alexander, who is an African
refugee. He lives in a home where there are probably 14 other
refugees, they all refer to themselves as brother, sister, uncle,
aunt, but I'm pretty sure that none of them are related. They all
speak Swahili. Every time that we are over there it seems that there
is a new person that I haven't met before. They all speak really poor
English, and so lessons have been interesting. I don't know if they
know what an AC is, but it literally feels like they have the heater
on when we are there, I dread going to lessons for that reason, it
feels like we really are in Africa, the whole time during our lessons
me and my companion are wiping sweat from our faces, and they all seem
perfectly fine. He is moving this week and asked us in his broken
English if we could wire transfer him 200 hundred dollars before he
got to the airport, Im not even sure why he needed the money, but he
was pretty disappointed when we told him that we couldn't do that. He
always tells us that we are brothers in Jesus, and hugs us for abut 5
minutes at a time. I love that guy, but it is so hard to teach him, he
goes on random tangents about things we can't understand, it's a wild
time.
Let me just say, that Born again Christens are the worst. They always like to try and battle us, normally they like to start the conversation like, "did you know that Jesus Isn't the brother of Satan" what, okay. We normally just try and walk away from those guys. I have never seen anything like them before in my life, one of the weirdest things is when they think that they have the gift of tongues, and start rambling off in some sort of gibberish. They always say that they will pray for our souls. Normally if people start walking up to us, it's those guys. They seem to like to put their hands on you when they pray, and they get all crazy and start adding stuff to your prayer, and raise their hands, it's wild.
This week, I had a ton of bike problems. First off, I broke my left peddle off. That was not a good time, you may think that there isn't a way to peddle your bike if you're missing one, but there is, it's just awful. I don't think that I have been in so much pain riding a bike. I rode that for about 2 days before we could get to the bike shop and get it fixed. The day after that, my front tire got a hole in it. I don't know if you have rode a bike with a flat front tire at high speeds before, but it's terrifying. Have you ever had that feeling where you can't keep balance on a bike and you know you're going to fall? It's like that except constant, and somehow you don't fall, but there were some sincere prayers were offered on those bike rides. The day after that I still had a flat tire, but something even worse happened, not just my peddle, but the entire bar and peddle came off of my bike. If we were closer to the ocean I would have probably thrown my bike into the sea. A good majority of this week has been spent in the bike shop, but it's okay, because they have some good music, so that's awesome. On one of the days that I had a flat tire we were running late for a meeting. when your tire is flat it feels like it about doubles the resistance. I have never seen my trainer peddle harder than I have at this moment, neither have never sweated this much in my life. The journey was about 4 miles and I was cussing my trainer out in the back of my mind. When we arrived I was literally drenched in sweat, and I had to meet with our mission president. He looked at me and said "Elder, did you sprint here" my response, "yeah something like that" to top the week off, I ripped 3 of my pants. I'm going to get so good at sowing, you have no idea.
My trainer is really into the
idea of Jogging, and the last couple of weeks he has tried to convince me to
jog, but every time I tell him how much I appreciate our morning walks, 2 weeks
ago, before I knew the area very well, he walked us out to about the middle of
the area, and told me "Elder LeBaron I can't believe it, we only have 10
minutes to make it home, and we're really far away, the only way we can make it
home in time is if we jog" what a dirty dog, on that day I was reminded
that I have never been and never will be good at running. As we were on the
last street before our pad he looked at me while I could barely breathed, with
a smirk on his face "how do you feel?" "Terrible"
After that day I have made it my goal to figure out more about our area, and
Elder Low has tired to trick me a couple times, but I've been looking at the
map, never again my friend.
Anyways, I hope that everyone had a great week, I really appreciate all the emails, you guys are so awesome. I'm loving the mission, and I have a great trainer, even if he is a sneaky fox sometimes. Keep on keeping on, just another day in paradise,
Anyways, I hope that everyone had a great week, I really appreciate all the emails, you guys are so awesome. I'm loving the mission, and I have a great trainer, even if he is a sneaky fox sometimes. Keep on keeping on, just another day in paradise,
Elder LeBaron
Such great stories from Matt! Sounds like he is doing great, that is except for this day! Ha ha ha
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