Fire and Water

October 24, 2016

Hi everyone!

We had a pretty eventful week.

It started off pretty interesting, with a wildfire of all things. I guess someone was burning some weeds and dead shrubbery on some property in the mountains just south of Cedar about three weeks ago, but it continued to smolder, and then last week, early Monday morning, there were 30 mph winds that just fanned it and blew it into a full fledged wildfire which has been burning in the mountains just south of Cedar. We woke up that morning and the everything smelled like smoke. And it's been pretty big, and firefighters say it is 0% contained. It's "under control" because if it spreads toward civilization, they can stop it, but it is not at all "contained" because the terrain that it is burning in is impossible to access. There's no way to get people or trucks on the ground, so they can't do much about it. It is accessible to helicopters, and every once in a while one or two would go out there and do what they could, but they didn't do much. At one point the fire was covering the whole of Cedar City with smoke, and one could actually see the smoke from St. George.

So that's kinda how the week started out. On Tuesday, Elder Reynolds went home. That was sad. But luckily I don't have to be stuck in a trio. I got a new companion, Elder Plauche. He's from Georgia and he's only been in the field five weeks now. He was being trained in St. George, but because of the situation with Reynolds going home, and because he wasn't getting along super well with his trainer, he's been temporarily assigned to Cedar West. He's called Spanish speaking, and President wants to keep him in Spanish work, so it's likely he'll get transferred in a week and I'll get yet another companion.

We've had a pretty good week for teaching. We taught quite a few lessons, and we picked up a new investigator! His name is Nathan. We knocked on his door actually looking for someone else, but we found him and he told us he wanted to join the church. That was pretty cool. We also found a couple other people (in different wards) who we talked to, and, if all goes according to plan, we should begin teaching them this week.

And of course, there was the baptism on Saturday. Leila and Mya got baptized, and it was an awesome baptism. And they had so many people show up to support them! Over 80 people came! A very large portion of the ward was there, as well as quite a few relatives from out of town. It was great. I think it was one of the three most attended baptisms I've had on my mission.

Backtracking a little now. On exchanges on Saturday, Elder Willis and I discovered a third resident in the Cedar West apartment. Apparently Mickey Mouse decided to get a cabin in our kitchen wall. We were doing studies when we heard rustling sounds, and after a little while, sure enough, we found a mouse. He lives behind our oven in a little hole in the wall. We tried catching him, but Mickey's too clever...that and our attempts at traps were kind of a joke. Our goal is to catch him alive and then release him into the wild far enough away from our apartment that he won't just come right back in. We still haven't caught him. We may invest in a live trap today, depending on how expensive that would be.

And that was basically our week. To end it, it rained Sunday night, which is always nice, and it may have helped put out the fire. I guess we'll see. At the very least, it's some nice moisture.

So the week started in fire, but effectively ended in water, between a baptism and getting some rain. It's been good. And this week ought to be pretty good too. Hopefully, we'll teach even more than this week and pick up a few new investigators. We're looking at possibly three fairly solid.

Well, that's all for today.

May the Spirit be with you all!

-Elder Oswald

After district meeting on Thursday, we all carved pumpkins. It was a lot of fun! I thought mine turned out pretty great. I think I did a pretty good job of carving Michigan into a pumpkin. But really everyone did a great job. It was fun to see everyone's personalities come out as we did this.

Here's some pictures of the fire by Cedar City. It's sunny so you can't really see any flames, but at night they're visible (too bad the iPad camera doesn't work in the dark). Also, look closely at pictures

3 and 4 and you can also see a couple helicopters.

The first three pictures are from Tuesday, the day after the fire started. Then pictures 4-6 are from Friday. Clearly the fire grew a lot. In the panorama, you can kind of see how the smoke is spreading

out and covering Cedar City. The last two pictures were also taken on Friday, and they were taken from Cedar City to show how much smoke was building up in the air. It almost looks overcast, but it's smoke.

Here's a picture from Leila and Mya's baptism.

From left to right: Elder Willis, me, Brother Griffith (Grandpa Stan), Leila, Mya, Elder Plauche, Elder Alquicira

Elders Willis and Alquicira weren't super involved, but they were a little bit because Elder Willis actually did the baptismal interviews, and we were on exchange for the day of the baptism so we all showed up. It was a good day!

No joke, this is a bathroom in the Cedar West Stake Center. I really don't know what they were thinking when they built this...