April 29, 2013 -- Starting Week 6

Wow, so the transfer is almost over! It's pretty crazy. So along the lines of missionary work in our area, this week was pretty lacking, and I'll explain why (get ready).

So everyone can understand, I am the District Leader for my District. What that means is that I pretty much look over the other missionaries. Also, I am the one who gives baptismal interviews for baptismal candidates who have been prepared for baptism. If the person has done something really wrong (like an abortion, or murder, etc.) they need to be interviewed by the mission president. Those are usually pretty rare cases.

Anyway, there are 2 companionships of sisters in my district which make up the rest of my district other than me and my companion. So they both had baptismal dates for the 28th of April. As such, these people needed have an interview with me to make sure they are ready for baptism (kinda scary to think that I am the one to make sure of that, and I have the say as to whether or not they're baptized!). So where I'm going with this, is one of the interviews was scheduled on Friday. That's the same day as District meeting. So we are with our district from 11 to 12:30. The interview is scheduled for 3:30. We live far enough away from where we do district meeting (which is where we were going to do the interview) that we'd be able to make it back in time for lunch and then like 10 minutes of work in our area and turn around and come back. If you didn't know, we are limited on miles, so the back and forth would be a waste. So after all this, 3:30 rolls around and the baptismal candidate's brother had broken his leg and so they were all at the hospital.

So we rescheduled the interview for Saturday. And that's when the other interview is. So the other interview was schedule for 4:30, so we rescheduled the one that fell through for 6:30. The one for 4:30 was at a different ward building even farther from the one where we have district meeting. So we had to do a lot of travel. Now interviews usually last from 20-30 minutes. So the gap was a bit frustrating as well, as we wouldn't even be able to make it back to our area before needing to come back. The only problem was that the other sisters couldn't get a hold of their investigator, and she didn't come to the interview. We waited as long as we could, but she didn't show up. So then we go to the other interview, and find out that the investigator had moved to south LA a few days ago, and needed to travel up to where we are to have his interview. Well, he showed up at 8:30. Not his fault, he had a long way to go. But because of that, he will have to be baptized in the area he lives in. SO, both baptisms didn't happen :(. That was what took up most of our time.

As for other exciting things, I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but there was this crazy guy who showed up to the Saturday Afternoon session of Conference. He rambled on some crazy nonsense, but then we got away from him and thought it was over. Then, a couple weeks ago he showed up to the library and gets on a computer. We evasively avoided contact with him. Anyway, so Sunday morning we had meetings with the Ward Council, and there was almost nobody there. So the ward clerk showed up a bit late, and had to make copies of the program. The copy machine was just outside the room of our meeting. And who shows up but "god" (that's what the bishop has nicknamed him because he calls himself "The Creator") The bishop has experienced talking to him too. So the Clerk is out there and just walks away from him  and we can hear him almost yelling "YOU ARE WALKING AWAY FROM YOUR CREATOR! ONLY THE TREE OF LIFE WILL ENTER INTO MY KINGDOM!" And a bunch of other nonsense, that's just what I can remember. This guy is literally crazy. I guess he moved in to one of the houses nearby, and the Bishop said if he comes back, we'll have to ask him to leave. That's California I guess.

Anyway, that's really the only big things that have happened lately. Hope all is well at home!

--Elder Huffaker

April 22, 2013

Hey all! Well this week was a bit hectic, a lot of things not missionary work happened.

So to start out, one of the sisters in my district ended up getting sick. The Zone Leaders were near by and so they stopped by and gave her a blessing. Well, a few days later, she was still sick, and had to go to the ER because she was extremely low on body fluids. So we made some calls and tried to figure out what we could do, but in the end we couldn't do anything. That was Thursday night.

Friday, Elder Ehninger had an appointment with the doctor at 8:45. It was a bit of a trip, but we were able to get there on time. When we get there, we find out that the appointment was for 10:40, and our mission medical lady was going to have him switch with another set of missionaries whose appointment was at 8:45. She kind of mumbled what she was planning on doing, and it was a bit confusing, but we ended up having to wait until his actual appointment.

Also, note that District Meeting is at 11. So if his appointment is at 10:40, and we are a ways away from the building where we hold district meeting, we are not going to be on time for that meeting. Also with one of the sisters home sick from the ER, her companionship would also not be attending. By the way there's 3 companionships in my District, ours included.

So we had the other companionship just go to the other district's District Meeting. Fun, right? So after all this, let's top it off by having our car mess up again. So we took it in to Pep Boys on a Saturday, and they told us they couldn't get it fixed that day. So we were told by our car coordinator that it would have to be taken to the dealership on Monday (today).

So Sunday we had to do a bit of biking to our appointments, not much, but we still needed to get there. Anyway, so now we are here at the library closest to the Dealership (which was 10 miles away from our apartment) and we had to walk here, about 3 miles away from the dealership. Then we get a call (yes, during e-mailing) telling us that the car is done, which is cool, but we are not close to the dealership, and we were told that it could be done in 4-6 hours. Anyway, that's what's been taking the majority of our time this week. Other than that, we had Stake conference, which was pretty cool and I was able to meet up with a bunch of the members from the North Hollywood ward -- the ward I was in the last time I was in the valley.

Well, that is pretty much our week.

-- Elder Huffaker