Finding Feces on the Fourth

7/10/17 Email:

Ya'at'teh' everyone!

Happy Independence Day!!!

Alright so last Monday, after emailing, we ended up getting lost again only in Gallup.  Then we played some basketball, which was pretty fun.

Now on Tuesday, the 4th,  it was a bit different for me than what I am used to normally doing on the fourth of July.  In the morning (this is where the title comes in)  we went over to our senior couple's place to do service for them.  Well we moved firewood, and fixed up their fence.  Then they told us that we needed to dig up their septic tank, because they needed it cleaned out or something, and when the person who was supposed to do it came out he said he couldn't find it.  So it was our job to locate their septic tank.  So we had to dig around and uncover it.  We eventually did, and it wasn't smellin' too great, but turns out they  needed some work done on it because there was some damage done by some rocks that were on top of it.  Then later we went to a family party for dinner, and we only saw about 5 minutes of fireworks before we had to head home.

Wednesday I was on Exchanges with Elder Adams, who has only been out for 3 weeks. He is being trained by our Zone Leaders.  It was fun, we did some service for this lady named Stanna, who is part Irish. We helped her with her garden, which I enjoyed.

Later in the week, I can't remember which day, we were headed home because it was time for curfew, and we got stopped by this group of drunks.  You can usually tell when they are drunks, because the Spirit just like completely disappears. Anyway they come out and they want to talk and they stop us, because we were walking. One of them looked like a shorter, older, meaner, native version of Jamie Fox, and he was getting all up in my face and cussin' up a storm and saying all sorts of stuff that was absolutely crazy, and like the spit is just flying from this guy and hitting me when he talks.  Anyway we tried to leave several times but they wouldn't let us, and the one that was in my face just seemed to get more mad by the second, and I was like, oh boy, something's about to go down! But luckily nothing did, and we were able to make it out of there. They did force a hug on us though, which was weird, but oh well.

Then another time we were talking to this other guy, who has some crazy beliefs. His name is Richard.  He just went on and on about giants, and about how we haven't made it to the moon because the sky is glass, and that the sun isn't very far away, and how the flood happened because we are in a bowl and God just opened up the glass bowl in the sky to flood the earth.  I was just trying so hard to not laugh.  Like he really believed everything he was saying, and I almost started laughing. But I shouldn't laugh. Anyway that was interesting.

That was about it for this week.  We are going to go play a softball game later today though, and I am beyond excited!!!!!  Like People coming closer to and following Jesus Christ is the most exciting thing, and baseball is second to that, but softball is a close third for me right now! :)

Love you all,
Elder Takis

Flat Tires

7/3/17 Email:

Ya'at'teh' everyone,

So first off there are a couple of things that I forgot to mention about last week that are kinda funny, and I don't know how I forgot about them but here they are.  So the day after we got to our area we got up and went out on a run.  When we came back we realized that we had locked ourselves out of our trailer...  The Elders before us were supposed to leave a key to the trailer behind but there wasn't one, so we spent like half the morning trying to get back in.  We went to the Post Office and borrowed their phone, and tried calling some people, but that didn't work. We walked to one of the member's houses, Brother Eby, who has a key to the trailer, but he wasn't home.  What is also funny is that while we were out we got lost trying to find Brother Eby's trailer, so we walked to this group of people to ask where he lives.  Well one of the people was this really rude lady, maybe she just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I don't know, but she was threatening us and stuff while one of the other guys was being nice and giving us directions, so that was fun.  But we eventually found his house, and he wasn't home, so we went back, and long story short we managed to get in.


Now this week.  Not much happened on Monday and Tuesday, but Tuesday night we found out that our tire had been losing air for some time, and almost got completely flat.  So we went and filled it up.  The next morning we had to go to Gallup for Zone Conference, and we were supposed to take our truck in to get it fixed before Zone Conference, but that didn't happen because we were late to Zone Conference.  But after Zone Conference we walked out to the truck and were going to take it in, but the tire was completely flat.  Now the only people around are missionaries in their suits and what not.  So nobody really wanted to change the tire.  So I did it because I really didn't care if I got dirty or not, my suit pants needed cleaned anyway.  So here are a couple pictures of changing the tire...

As you can see I am pretty dirty, haha, but I love it.  It was also really hot too, and I have some burn marks on my arms from touching the pavement, haha. Whoopie!

Friday we went out to try and find someone, got lost (again), and ended up running into this guy named Paul.  He is 18 and lives by himself, and is a pretty cool guy. Apparently we saved him from some drunks, because when we pulled up they left, haha.

Then Saturday we were out doing some service, and I was pulling weeds while a member was mowing, and out of the blue I got smoked by a rock!  It came from the lawn mower, and that sucker hurt.  Luckily it didn't break the skin but it did leave a nice mark.

Other than that I tried an interesting combination of food that wasn't half bad.  Pork Chops with applesauce.

Love you all, 

Elder Takis