Hello from sunny Southern California,
I think that all these prayers for my bike are working! I made it the
whole week without having any problems, what a Christmas miracle! I
have made it my job this last week to change my gears on a regular
basis, and to treat them gingerly. It's really funny to me how many
people emailed me and commented on the hashtag. Prayers changes lives
my friend! Thank you for all of die hard hashtagers out there, your
support means the world.
This week has actually flown by, it seems like P day was only 2 days
ago. We have seen so much improvement in our area, me and Elder Low
have been working off our bee-hinds. But we have seen such an increase
when it comes to investigators and progressing investigators. The Lord
really does see your efforts when you show him that you will not only
be exactly obedient, but also put in the work to back it up. We went
from having no one to teach to having 6 new investigators, 3 of which
are really promising.
On Friday a member and her son took us to dinner to this crazy
Peruvian restaurant. Everyone was speaking Spanish, and the waitress
spoke very broken English. Elder low can speak a lot better than I can
when it comes to Spanish, so he seemed to know exactly what he wanted
when he looked at the menu, which had maybe 3 words on it that I could
understand. The only way I could order was to just point to the menu,
I am so gringo, I could hardly even pronounce some of the food items
on that menu, let only understand what I was even ordering. When our
food came, both the member and her son looked at me with shock in
their eyes. "Elder LeBaron, are you sure you want to eat that, you're
pretty brave to get something like that" I looked at what I had
ordered, it seemed to be shredded chicken, with some kind of creamy
yellow sauce on rice. Confident, yet filled with fear, I replied "
yeah of course" I still have no idea what exactly I ate that day, and
I'm not sure I want to know what I ordered. I just remember the look
of horror on both the members faces as I took my first bite, they
looked intently searching for some sort of reaction. At first I
thought that they were both trying to freak me out about some ordinary
food, but I actually really enjoyed whatever horrible creature/body
parts I may have consumed that day, but I will never forget the look
of horror on both of their faces as I took my first bite.
After dinner that same night that member gave my comp new shoes,
because his were beyond destroyed, like I said people spoil us out
here. He slipped the bag onto his handle bars and we were off to our
next appointment. As we were riding the bag kept swinging and hitting
Elder Lows front tire, annoyed, he tried to readjust the bag farther
from the time. He gradually curved into the road (no worries there
weren't any cars) just before making the last adjustments the bag got
caught in his breaks, My comp swerved and plowed straight into the
curve. POP! His tire exploded on impact, and elder low flew over the
handle bars. I immediately slammed on my brakes trying not to throw
myself over the handle bars as well in the process. He skid across the
pavement and lay motionless. Not fully understanding what had
happened, it appeared to me that Elder low just tried to hop a curb at
high speed. I hop off my bike and looked down at my comp, "what the
freak are you doing man?" I quickly asked, no response, a solid five
seconds of silence. Elder low is dead I thought. I am so green and my
trainer just died, what am I supposed to do. Suddenly elder low Stands
up and busts up laughing, luckily the only thing that was hurt that
day was Elder lows pride. Well... Expect his tire, that got messed up
pretty bad. Just a lesson for you, if you ever want to try and ram
your bike into a curb at high speeds, you're going to have a bad time.
During the course of this last transfer me and Elder low have been
trying to work with a woman named Johanna, she is a recent convert to
the Church along with her daughter. She has a
husband/boyfriend/roommate (were not exactly sure what he is, but
we're also pretty sure he shouldn't be there) named Larry that lives
with her, he hardly ever wears a shirt and is literally covered in
tattoos, head to toe. We have been teaching lessons and trying to get
Larry more involved as we have been trying to help Johanna get to the
temple, which will probably be a complicated process. During one of
our lessons we were teaching them on there porch at their apartment
complex. Mid lesson this guy comes out of the middle of no where and
starts talking to Larry, I could hardly understand what he was even
saying, because he was talking ghetto, if any of you have experienced
it you know what I'm talking about. Suddenly Larry jumps over the the
makeshift wall separating his porch from the side walk. He begins to
chase down the ghetto man. Both the Ghetto man and Larry are sprinting
at this point, soon out of sight as they turn the corner. The only
thing I could understand from this situation was that Larry was
cussing the ghetto man out. There was so much swearing and screaming
it was hard to fully comprehend what was going on. Me and Elder low
both think that ghetto man said something about Johanna. We stood
awkwardly on the porch looking at Johanna's kids. We waited for a
couple minutes, but the screaming and cussing continued, slowly
getting diminished by distance. We told her kids to go inside and wait
for Johanna to get home. We looked at the time and realized that we
were running late for curfew, I'm not sure what happened that night,
but it couldn't have been good.
The area that I'm in is probably one of the nicest in the entire
mission, but it sure does have its ghetto parts, it goes from
mansions, to ghetto the lower you get from the foothills. It's got a
good amount of everything I think, but still nothing like Pomona, one
of the craziest places in the mission, or dirty p as they call it
around here. I was in P town one day on exchanges, and let me tell
you, my area is so incredibly nice by comparison. That's all I got for
this week, you guys can write me whenever you want, since I have an
iPad, I can read emails after 10 every night, I just can't respond
until p day. Thank you for all the support and emails, it's always
exciting to read about everyone's week as well. The Mission life is a
good life, and I'm excited for more adventures as they come.
Keep on keeping on,
Elder LeBaron
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