Hi everyone!
This week has been good. Also crazy, stressful, and a little bit hilarious. We didn't hit Standards of Excellence this week because we just short a couple lessons, but it was still a good week, and we found three new investigators! Also, Bernie and Sherrie have completely quit smoking, and are still on track for baptism this Saturday!
I started out the week with a cold. I guess that's what I get for playing in the snow when a virus is going around all the missionaries in Cedar City. So I had that making me miserable for a few days. One of the hard things about being a missionary is that you aren't allowed to get a "man cold". We can't just lay around and be pansies when we get sick. For the most part, we just have to keep working. If it is the flu, a stomach bug, or something more serious, then we can get permission from Sister Center to take a day off to rest. But for a cold or something else minor, we've just got to keep going, resting when we can, but continuing to work like normal. So that was hard, but by Friday I was feeling mostly better.
Now for another thing that was cold, in a more literal sense. So on Friday I was on exchange with the Parowan Elders. I was in Parowan with Elder Mullen. Parowan just got its own missionaries a few weeks ago, so things are just barely getting started there. So it was a little bit of a slow day. We tried contacting some people who weren't home, and I had to push the car out of the snow a couple times because some people in Parowan live in the middle of nowhere, and Parowan's car doesn't have 4-wheel drive. So we decided to take a little break and go up the canyon, clear chill for a few minutes and then get back to work. So we drove up a little past the ski resort, saw some really nice scenery along the way, and then we past this really beautiful outlook that we wanted to get some pictures of. The snow on the side of the road looked like it had been packed down for the purpose of parking, since after all, it would be a great place to park and take pictures. Little did we know, however, that it had been packed down for snowmobiles, not cars, and only the top couple inches were solid. We went to "park" and ended up sinking our front tires about 8 inches into the snow. And as I mentioned before, this car did not have 4-wheel drive. So we just sat there, stuck. Some people stopped to try
and help us, but they couldn't get us out. Then someone called the Marshall at the resort, and he was supposed to come up and help. Some cops whose job was to patrol that road in the mountains stopped by to make sure we were ok, and they said they'd keep a look out for the Marshall, and if he didn't come they'd help us. Then some other people, with a big 4-wheel drive vehicle tried to help us out, and they got stuck too! At that point I knew that if their vehicle couldn't make it out, our dinky little car was hopeless. The Marshall never did make it, but thankfully those cops came back with a police grade tow rope and got us and the other people unstuck. All in all, we were stuck for about two hours! So that short trip to the mountains caused an unexpected change in plans! While we were waiting, I did get some pictures, which were harder to get than I previously thought because the scenic lookout was actually a lot farther from the road than I thought, and the snow was waist deep. But I got there, and it was beautiful. Anyway, by that time, we were freezing and very glad to be getting back to Parowan with the heater on full blast.
So yeah, fun stuff! Saturday was the stressful day. I won't go into details, but basically I was involved in helping a couple sets of missionaries, one of which is in my district, to work together better. There were some pretty cold feelings, the meeting almost ended in disaster. Thankfully, I was able to help calm everybody down, we had a prayer, and then I called Elder Phelps, the other companionship's
district leader, to help calm things down. It really helped to have him there, because he was kind of an unbiased third party, and he was also going to have to be involved anyway, considering the person we
were discussing, is technically in his district, and would need a baptismal interview from him. So this "coordination meeting" was saved. Holy cow I was so stressed after that. Thankfully though, it seems to all be working better now, and I think the people involved have decided that they don't hate each other.
Well, that's what happened this week. Crazy stuff. Anyway, guess what! Today is my 11 month mark! I'm almost halfway through! That's ridiculous. I still catch myself thinking that I'm new, but I'm really
not new at all anymore.
Christmas is almost here! I love celebrating our Savior's birth and life, and I'm so grateful for everything he did for us and made possible. I'm also super excited to Skype home! I haven't been able to see/talk to my family since Mothers Day. I'm super excited!
Pictures 5, 6, and 7 are from our adventure getting stuck.
Pictures 8 and 9 are the view from near where we were stuck.
Well, have a great week! Merry Christmas!
-Elder Oswald
Pictures 1, 2, 3, and 4 are from exchanges before we got stuck in the snow.
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| Our would-be rescuers who also got stuck. |
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| The officers who got us out of the snow. |
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