They should have told me in my call packet that I was called to the Kansas Wichita Mission backcountry hick English speaking, since it definitely is a different language then I grew up speaking. Anyways, this week...wow...take a few minutes to think of happy and good things in this world...and then, you can start reading what happened. I swear the beginning of this week feels like a month ago for me, it wasn't super terrible, it just was a lot to take in.
At one point this week, our recent convert as of last Saturday (Kevin) was on the lamb with 10k and a stolen car....Let us start from the beginning.
Tuesday morning: Sister Williams (a member who is married to Don who owns the manure spreading business Kevin worked for--she introduced us to Kevin) called and said, we don't know where Kevin is, but he has a check and we think the customer (they don't know who the customer was) put it on accident in Kevin's name. The last time we saw Kevin was in Sacrament Meeting when he got confirmed. He was crying and left and then came back. The talk was on the history of Thanksgiving and I was confused why he was so emotional over Native Americans and Pilgrams, when he whispered that his grandpa had just died and he was in Nebraska. So, he left in the middle of Sacrament Meeting to go to Nebraska....Well, that's where we thought he was this whole time....We texted him once, but he didn't reply, we just thought he was busy with family.
Well, Tuesday we also got a call from the Branch President's wife, who said a lady in Limon got our number and is wondering if Kevin had a stroke. We figured it was Debbie (his girlfriend) and we went to go see Debbie (his sister and our investigator he introduced us to) to see what was up. She said he was in Colby getting his foot fixed, because it was broken. We were like wait, didn't your grandpa die and she's like, no, he is in St.Francis (that's in Kansas in our area) and he just had a couple strokes, but he's fine and not even in the hospital.
So we called the branch president's wife and told her Kevin was fine. She must have given our number to Debbie (Kevin's gf) because she called us in the afternoon. She said she was in Denver trying to find the hospital Kevin was at, because he said he had a stroke and was there. I was like, well other Debbie said he is in Colby getting his foot fixed.
I decided to ask her a little more. I knew she was a member and she explained that she got baptized in 2003 and she was endowed. She said she met Kevin at a gas station in Colorado. (We later found out he drove the Williams truck with his sister there to get some pot) They met a month ago, which truthfully coincidentally is around the same time he met us. She said they talked a lot on the phone and when she came down for the weekend that was her first time spending time with him.
She just went on how they were supposed to ride horses together and she's like, "Yeah, I never even did see his house." I was like, "What house? He lives in the William's camper in Rexford, KS." She's like, "He lives there!? He said his hired man lives there." I was like, "He IS the hired man." She lost her breath. She said she also saw him put chew in his mouth. Delightful.
Debbie (the sister) said Kevin told her he was going to Larnard Mental Hospital. The Williams told us he deposited the check for $10,000 and said he had their truck.
Wednesday: We visited Debbie (the sister) with a member in an effort to get her to know the members in the ward. You bet your bottom dollar we were on her like Donkey Kong. I was like, "When did you last smoke? Do you have any coffee in the house? Alcohol?" (She threw away her alcohol, she has family coming in and out and a niece that lives with her so she claims it came from them) I flat out asked her if she had marijuana and she's like, "No, I don't have that anymore I gave it away." I was scared who she gave it to, so I asked her, "...Kevin...DEBBIE!!" Of course, the member is just wide eyed this whole time, because we were so blunt with her. Thankfully she was a convert herself. Debbie (the sister) also told us she saw Kevin drink vodka right before his baptism in the church parking lot and she was just what the! and he offered her some and was like it's cool! She said she was so mad at him she didn't want to go in, but obviously she did.
I just told her, you can lie through all of this and seriously it's no skin off my back if you are doing any of it, but it's between you and Heavenly Father, so it makes no sense why you would bother lying to us! She completely agreed, so hopefully we can keep that open communication with her. I know she know's it's true and she honestly wants to quit.
We found out that night from her calling Larnard Mental Hospital that he wasn't there.
Thanksgiving Thursday: the WORST proselyting day ever! We knocked on this one house and this old lady answered and talked with a Russian accent and with her hands and said I'm IN the MIDDLE of COOKING! and slammed the door. We obviously weren't able to make any appointments that day so it was a shot in the foot. We had dinner at a member's house and that was good. Later that night, we were going to start a fast with both Debbies and we got a couple interesting texts from Debbie (the sister): Are you coming over here to fast? Us: Yeah, will you be home at 8 tonight? Debbie: Yeah both my couches fold out. We were like wait does she think we are sleeping over? and then she sent another text Debbie: Or is fasting no sleeping also? We were cracking up so bad. Apparently, we didn't explain fasting very well...so we called her and set her straight. She told us Marshalls came to her house that morning to look for Kevin.
Friday: That morning we got a call from Debbie (the gf) She said that she had been sending texts to Kevin this whole time and last night at 8:30 is when he started sending the texts back! She was able to convince him to come clean and go to the Williams. Sister Williams called and said Kevin was on his way and will be there in an hour. We sent the senior couple over there, and they convinced him to go to a hospital to start detoxing. Apparently, he drinks vodka 24/7. So they drove him to Wray, CO. They took him for 72 hours and will kick him out after that. Meaning he will be out sometime today. It would be prime if he could go to a place to detox all the way, but he has no insurance and no one wants to pay for that, because he would just go back to it afterwards anyways. He'll probably just end up going to Debbie (his sister)
So that's Kevin for yeah. We also found out yesterday that he never was a marine. Sister Wiliams is convinced that he did it all to get with Debbie (his gf), but I don't know. I think he honestly wanted to change and he liked the support he was getting at church, but he just didn't have the mentality to know how to get there.
Our Branch President was less than helpful yesterday as he blamed us for allowing someone to "mock a sacred ordinance". Thankfully, our stake president must have heard about that from someone, because he came up to us (he's in our branch) and said he was going to talk with him about it, and to not blame ourselves. My companion had an emotional breakdown yesterday in the car, so that was also fun to deal with. We both just are emotionally and physically exhausted from the week. I can't imagine what would have happened if one of us did get transferred on Tuesday in the middle of all of this. Our branch president also was like, now it's all my problem to deal with, we were just like seriously?! Who has been in communication with the Debbies?...who convinced him to come clean?...who fasted for him?...who drove him to Wray?...who arranged for him to get a blessing in Wray?.... He didn't even know where Kevin was at the time. It was just a little bit frustrating, but I'm really not blaming anyone for anything. It just is a situation that we were all put in, and it is not meant to put us down, but to learn from.
This sounds like it was my entire week, but it was all intermixed with everything else and we ended with 12 lessons with less actives and 17 other lessons. We tracted into 2 different part member families who's records aren't in the branch, but they live next to each other randomly in a trailer park we never go to. They were super nice and had families. Whoop!... there it is.
OH ALSO, I got to slaughter a pig on Saturday! We got a call Thursday from a member who was killing a pig Saturday and needed help cutting it up. I wanted to get a picture, but by the time I thought of it my hands were literally covered in pigs blood. #sorrynotsorry My hands stank so bad afterwards, kind of like wet dog. Yeah, wet dog literally smells like dead pig.
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The elders in our area last transfer...
let's just say they aren't going
to be professional football players
and so we waited for transfers.
Then they send us another stick.
So Saturday, we decided to move
our insanely heavy and bulky hide-a-bed couch
ourselves it involved a lot of scooting and sliding.
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| There is this shrine thing this house puts up for the holidays, a different one was there for Halloween, so naturally I took a picture with it. |
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