Lies

What a drag. I didn't have poison ivy. I was being eaten alive by the devil incarnate. Bed bugs. I didn't even freaking know they weren't a joke created by parents to get their kids to make their beds or whatever. The thing is it doesn't even matter if you make your bed every morning. They will find you and feast on your flesh no matter how clean you are. So we went and picked up a few bottles of alcohol and bug killer. We are nuking our bedroom because that's where they all are and we are cleaning our whole apartment again even though it is still super clean.

We got to meet with Darrell who is a older guy who comes to church late every Sunday. He isn't a member but he has been coming for at least a year I believe. He is a really quiet guy that always wears a really nice suit with powerful cologne and pearl strings that line his upper ear piercings. His house is so nice. I love the native American aesthetic. He has never been religious. In fact he has been through a really rough life. He says he's not like "all the good people at church" he has broken every commandment except denying the spirit. He was in motorcycle gangs and has been all over America. He fell off a 5 story building a few years ago and lived and he says he knows there is a God and that's why he comes to church. He had a lot of questions for us about God and religion and we taught him how to pray. He is a really kind dude.

We were sitting in his living room with about a dozen super nice guitars. After we were done he started handing us some really nice Gibson's to play on because he knew we liked to play. He let us play quite a few of them the cheapest of which was prob 1200$ and the most expensive was prob around 8-9000$ it was a white, gold plated, acoustic/electric Gretch. It might have been 10,000$ there wasn't a scratch on it. It was super dope and I had never played on a electric guitar so that was interesting. He said those dozen were only a few of his collection. He has a room full of guitars. 100,000$ in instruments. 

We got to help out with setting up a booksale for a library this week. Elder McCune and I had one other person helping us bring up three pallets of box's full of books. They each weighed about 20-30 lbs. We then went over the next day to work at the booksale for an hour and I got to read some sick WWII history books.

The grave stones are all right outside our apartment door because we live right next to a funeral home.

Hay is for horses

Hello everyone. I'm still doing well here in New York. The country out here is beautiful. Very green. Apparently there were some tornados in my area this week. I wish I got to see them. It reminds me of how much I love just exploring the countryside and contemplating. 

Anyways this week was fine. I met another recent convert who was out of town. Her name is Brittany. She is a single mother of 6 children, the oldest of which is 9 and is also a recent convert. She was out of town for funerals. She had three more deaths in her family in the past three weeks. That makes 6 this year so far. Its quite sad but she seems pretty upbeat still. Her children are super fun and excitable, a handful I'm sure.

We helped the Sternisha's haul about 210 bales of hay. We took it in two loads and used a conveyor to throw them in the top floor of his barn. It was a really wet spring so hay has grown very well this year. Brother Sternisha said it's about 100 bales per acre instead of the normal 75 per acre. Super nostalgic from my childhood with my neighbors horses. Parker Smith and I would make tunnels through their stack of bales. Its been a long time.

I ended up getting to go see pageant with Becky and her boyfriend Dave. Dave has never spoken to us missionaries but he agreed to drive us all up to Palmyra. Its was a really great way to share the story of the book of Mormon. Mormon came up and spoke to us before the show started which was cool. Some woman came up and asserted that she was going to take a picture of us and send it to our mothers. So that happened and of course I had some Dr pepper I was finishing up with me in the picture \,,/ we got home at about 1:30 am.

All the Jones' were in town this Sunday so almost half our branch were Jones'. Bill Jones lives in Heber Utah and is just in town for a few weeks during the summer. All the Jones' are so chill. There is Hook Jones and his family. Ira Jones and his family. And then Bill Jones who's family stayed in Utah. They are all brothers.

Sooo these are the only pictures I have this week. 

My legs are from last week so it's a little worse then that now.

The second picture is my last zone.

Miserable mysteries

So this week we did yard work for a recent convert named Bruce on Tuesday. At the end of that day I had what I thought were bug bites on my ankles and my wrist. I thought nothing of it. At the end of Wednesday there were more so I figured more bugs had gotten to me and that's fine, whatever not a big deal. When I woke up the next morning there were even more so I started wondering what this was or if I had bed bugs or something. When we were going home Thursday Elder McCune pointed out that it could be chicken pox or something. I said no because I had had that when I was a child so there is no way, but it made sense that it wasn't bugs because it was slowly spreading so it couldn't be.

I called the mission nurse and she said it was probably allergies. I know what hives look like and this isn't hives so I didn't think so but it also made sense that it was from something that touched my skin because it was on my ankles and wrist. The plot was thickening.

Time went by and it had slowed down a little bit but it wasn't going away. At a members house I was talking with sister Dragoo, who is the wife of a recent convert. She said it was probably poison ivy or poison oak. That made more sense, not completely but whatever. If it was then what had happened was I had gotten the oil from the plant on something and that is why it was slowly spreading. So When we went home I started washing everything I owned and that was that...

Nothing has changed. Its still slowly spreading and it's not really going away. But it's whatever I don't pay attention much. I figured it was something to talk about.

Elder McCune and I helped clean out a super nasty house this weekend for Becky. The house is filthy from floor to ceiling. Its probably not even worth cleaning because the frame work will still have the smell in it so I would just demolish the house and rebuild it to be honest.

The woman that invited us to the Wesleyan church last Sunday actually came to church yesterday. Her name is Jennifer. She got lost so she showed up a little late and then she had to leave early to get to her church service. 

That's what's going on with me here in Gowanda.

I hope everyone has a good week.

Side note from Mom - I'm 100% positive that he has poison ivy.  I grew up having poison ivy EVERY summer of my life (highly allergic) and it looks like he is going to find out how I felt.  I called the mission nurse to make sure that he gets the information on how to treat it (slathering himself in Calamine lotion) so that it doesn't continue to spread for the rest of the summer. Poor guy.

Sent from Seneca

I am now over the Seneca Indian reservation.

They have a rather small branch down here and all the town's are incredibly small yet I'm in one of the largest areas. Elder McCune, my companion, is from Hawaii. He has been here since he got out in the mission field. 

This week was sick. President Uchtdorf came to our mission on transfers. He is a very calm, humorous, dignified man. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him speak. It was interesting I had been talking to my companions about fireflies and things, and President Uchtdorf made the simile that we are like fireflies to the world. We give off little lights where ever we go. He covered a lot of things but one quote that my companion and I have been saying all week is "life is wonderful now". He told us not to get caught up in the goals of life and what you look forward to. It was cool because that is my perspective on life so it made me smile to hear it from him.

I have seen that we are on the Lord's errand this week, and that has been really interesting to see how it all works out. Multiple times we would pull up to knock on someone's door and they would pull in right as we were turning around to go back to the car. One of the times was with a man named Jim who works as a firefighter. Elder McCune said that he was interested in reading the book of Mormon but he didn't want to give his information to them when they asked. He said "we'll let God decide if we meet again" so when we drove up we joked that we will see what God decided for him. When we knocked on his door his wife told us he was at the fire station. Then he pulled up. We talked with him for a bit but he was super busy he was actually just coming home for a minute or two to do some yard work. We then went straight to another guys house who pulled up as we did. 

Sometimes you can't see the Lords schedule that you are working on but I know it's always there.

I met two people who were just like my parents. Becky is someone who wants to be baptized. She looks similar to my Mother and she acts just like her. Becky was going to be baptized in March but they found out she is actually still married to someone who she split with a long time ago. So she is just waiting.

Kevin was the guy who is just like my father. We were knocking doors in the small town of Gowanda and we saw him on his back porch. We said hello and asked him if he wanted to hear a message about Christ. He said frick no but we should come over anyways lol. We sat down with him on his porch. He said he respected us and what we did but he wasn't religious at all. He said he just wanted to help us stay in practice as he said. His girlfriend came out and joined us. Her name is Sally. They were both super funny and smart and we had a blast with them. They both got really into the discussion and learned a lot. They had very intelligent questions and we ended up teaching the restoration and most of the plan of salvation. Sally asked us for a copy of the book of Mormon before we could offer one and Kevin declined the offer. He is a design engineer and he is almost always busy. It was very lucky that we even saw him when we did. I talked to him a lot about his job and things afterward.

Today Elder McCune and I went on a hike and that's about it. It was actually the best hike so far. Most of the pictures will be from that.

I'm looking forward to this next area. Elder McCune and I are both really bad with taking pictures so I'm sorry if I never have pictures anymore but we will try.

The last picture is of me and Filo.

Sneak peek

Hello, this is the mother. :)  Call me impatient.  I heard something big happened in New York and a link was shared by a Church photographer.  I had to look.  I have no words for this.  I can't wait to hear from Erik about meeting a living prophet.

Lamentations of Lancaster

This week was my last week in Lancaster. I am going down to Gowanda with the Seneca Indian reservation. My new companions name is Elder Mcune, and he is pretty awesome. I've been on exchanges with him before. He is from Hawaii.

This last week in Lancaster was interesting. So last month the whole mission went over on miles and we all felt pretty bad so we cut down everyone's miles a little. Because some unusual circumstances we ended up getting a far lower cap then we were anticipating and it was already towards the end of the month. So we ran out of miles. We walked almost everyday all day. One day we ended up going 18 miles.we walked 8 miles to a members house and then we walked back in 2 hours. It felt good to actually work my legs but my companions were dying. 

I got to go on exchanges with Elder Nelson one more time before he left to go to Niagara falls. We taught Maddy while we were blitzing so it was her and our district so we jokingly did a mock district meeting with a opening song and prayer with a spiritual thought. We did a book of Mormon read as a district with her and it was a very enlightening study.

Later this week we got a text from Maddy asking if we could meet and that she had something to tell us. We met her at the church and she told us she wants to go on a mission. She said she was driving in her car home from the beach and her car audio went out suddenly. She didn't know why but she was thinking about school and wondering what she was going to do since she doesn't feel like the college she chose is the right one. So she was thinking about it and she said she could just transfer after one year at that school. Right when she thought this she said she heard a voice say "then you can go on your mission" and the Spirit hit her really hard. She was kind of stunned and then the car audio suddenly fixed itself....

We were really shocked as well because after the first meeting with her, when we were getting into the car elder Beardall said "she would make such a killer missionary" and we all agreed. It just felt right. That was almost three months ago now.

This weekend we were going to finally have a lesson with Kayla. Sunday morning we got a text from Maddy at like 1 am saying her mom was lecturing her on organized religion. So that wasn't cool, but then at like 8 we got a call from her and she said Kaylas mom was yelling at Kayla when she went to pick Kayla up. Then Maddy said Kaylas mom was yelling at her too, so that was completely inappropriate. We all felt really sorry for them both but Maddy and Kayla are both stellar. We called Kayla that evening and a mini lesson with her over the phone. We found out she fasted even though we didn't even think to remind her about it or anything. She still plans to be baptized on July 22nd ^-^

Anyways today I finally bought a lacrosse stick which I'm pumped for even though I won't use it much I have missed having one around. I hope everyone is learning and finding the things that make life a little sweeter.

Maddy Zmuda came over early in the morning to give us missionary cookies to celebrate the good news.

My mother sent me some sick U.S. socks and a tie

I got my mission lacrosse stick and now I'm working on stringing it :D