Week 2

This week for service, we:

• Painted a laundry room for a family moving into a new house
• Called bingo at a retirement center (Bingo is the single most mind numbing game. Why do people like it? Because it's simple and you can adjust for group size easily?)
• Cleaned up a yard belonging to that old woman I mentioned last week who thought chewing gum was a way of patching a tire. We brought by a man we've been teaching named Joseph because he likes doing service. He is the nicest guy. He was raised in India by a devout Christian mother and wandered into our church one Sunday because he was looking for a church to attend. 

This week for teaching, we taught a married couple who haven't been attending church in a long time. Then we had a lesson with Joseph where the topic was chastity. Awkward teaching that to a man. Then we met with an elderly lady who would come to church if she could but she and her husband and are old and have health problems, so we gave her a New Testament Come Follow Me manual so they can do church at home.

On Sunday, we went to see another old couple who haven't been attending church. I thought it was just old age and health problems like the other couple, but it turned out to be more than that. Ten years ago, their home burned down and all their money and time, including Sundays, became devoted to building a replacement. Since they weren't attending church, they became estranged from their friends in the ward, which became a vicious cycle. Tithing is supposed to relieve the poor, but they weren't paying tithing because they were the poor themselves. The husband asked their bishop for a temple recommend and he was denied it on the grounds that he is not paying tithing.

I was moved to tears when I heard that. I shared with him the story of how I was barred from a mission for three years for similar stupid reasons and how I didn't leave the church. He listened and said afterwards that he knew I understood him. 

They feel rejected and lonely. They didn't go to church for many years because they thought they wouldn't be well received there, and as they kept not going to church, congregation members kept forgetting about them and not checking in on their needs. The wife wept when we came to the door because she said nobody from the church checks on them. They said they still believe in God and everything but they won't go back to church until someone shows them some kindness. If I do nothing else while I'm here, I want to help these people. I want them to know God loves them and get them set up with people in the ward who love them and will take care of them. 

My companion broke her phone on Monday, claimed mine as her own, and needed to get into her old, broken one and transfer stuff onto it. An elder who is good with technology said he could access the phone despite its shattered screen if we could get to a computer. So we walked down there only to find that our church keys don't open that office with the computer. I thought there was nothing we could do about it, but then one of the boy missionaries who came with the one who knows a lot about phones said, "I can get this lock open." 

He took a gift card and slipped it between the frame and the lock until he worked it open.
  

Before that moment, I didn't really respect boy missionaries at all. I thought they were just dweeby eighteen-year-olds who never lived on their own or went to college and then act like they're all righteous and important when they're twenty year old freshmen. But when he got that lock open, I thought, "Hey, there is good in these people."

I got a new phone on Saturday. It feels good to finally have one again. I feel like a fifteen year old again with no car, no curfew, and then no phone on top of everything.

I've never been impressed when former missionaries say that their missions were the hardest thing they've done in their lives. I endured a great deal of hardship before my mission and every step of the way I had people telling me I ought not to serve because it would be too hard and I wasn't capable. But if this is what a mission is, I'm not scared. The hard parts are happenstance things, like not having any phone at all for six days. I feel capable and confident.

Thank you for caring about me and following my stories.