Email: March 26, 2018 - Outside the mission part 2, zone conference, feral cats, exploding soda, aliens
You know people say the mission gives you a ton of stories and funny moments. I've learned the hard way that those moments and stories come in often pretty awkward or terrible experiences. This week has been full of all these experiences so be ready to laugh at my pain.
Monday: Elder Harrison, Elder Gardener and I got to leave the mission again for p-day. I love the valley and I can’t wait to have it in our mission come July. I hope I get to serve up there soon after. I will miss my home of Torrance North though.
Tuesday: We gave service to a potential in the Adams 1 area. Her name is Ms. Lee. We typical don't come, but we did this time and helped her clear weeds from her back yard. I got a good dose of home for a bit. I had an interview with President Haynie that was super awesome and he gave me a lot of good advice and counsel. I also caught a quick glance at the transfer board, but not long enough to actually see any changes, but hey saying that you saw the transfer board suddenly shoots up your popularity. It was also Elder Patrick's birthday and we had a member take us out to Buffalo Wild Wings. As we were waiting to get seated the fire alarm went off, but nobody seemed to care because the restaurant kept moving along as usual. It was my first time going and it was super good. Elder Harrison did the blazin’ challenge that they had which is to eat 12 blazin’ wings (the hottest they have) in 6 minutes. Elder Harrison is from Spain and he cooks super spicy, so he was basically immune to the heat, so he just flew through the challenge. He won a free meal and t-shirt that is too small for him. He basically just shoved them in and didn't look back. We also got a 25$ gift card to Subway. I also got a new nickname of “Skittles” from Brother B.
I also needed a haircut really bad and with zone conference tomorrow, so I had Elder Taylor do it. Now for some reason I thought that with haircuts a 5 was the longest you could do. Since I wanted to trim my hair down I had Elder Taylor cut it. So, my hair is super, super, super short.
Wednesday: We had an awesome zone conference. It was almost entirely focused on the Book of Mormon. It was super awesome and spiritual, and we had pretty good food as well. It began to rain and soon it became a full on down pour, so traffic was even worse than usual. We finally arrived back in our area at 6 so we didn't have much time to do anything since we have to take public transportation. But a super cool thing is that our mission is the very first mission in the church to have Uber approved and available to use. It's meant to only be used in areas where parking is hard to find. So lucky for us, having Downtown, USC, and south central in our area we will have the opportunity to use it. So, potentials or even future investigators will be coming to us.
Thursday: We didn't have district meeting this week due to zone conference, so the morning was pretty slow and not a whole lot happened today. Did weekly planning but that is about it
Friday: We did a lot of walking again today and pretty much the only people that talked to us today were the homeless asking for money. We had dinner at the Pumfry's home and Grandma Pumfry (she said we are her grandkids) is the sweetest elderly lady I have ever met in my life. She refused to eat dessert because she was heartbroken about all the children in Africa that don't have food and she wants to help everyone she can. I wish I had that kind of motivation. She said we are always welcome to come to her home to eat since they cook every night.
Here comes the cat story. So, Grandma Pumfry has a cat named Silver Bullet that she typically keeps outside. But for whatever reason, it was inside today. As we were preparing to leave I decided to go over and pet the cat. Now cats don't like getting petted anywhere that they don't want to. So, I was minding my own business petting this cat on the head as it was falling asleep when Elder Taylor decides to come over to tempt me to pet this cat all over. He continued to tempt me, and I gave into peer pressure, and decided to do a full stroke pet on this cat. As I reached the tail the cat freaked out and began to bite at my thumb, its front paws grabbed into my wrist with its claws and its hind legs with claws out began to kick at my arm. So my arm got scratched up pretty bad. I decided to just play it off and leave but Elder Taylor decided to tell the Pumfrys. They felt super bad and kept apologizing over and over even though it was our fault (Elder Taylor didn't disclose that part). Tthey patched me up and it looks a lot worse than it was. The worst part is the cat is feral and hasn't had any shots. So, if I die next week we know why.
Saturday: we did service for the food bank again and we all got to grab a bag of almost expired goodies. On our way back, Elder Harrison handed me a Japanese soda and told me to open it. So the way you open it is there is a marble into the to the bottle by the neck. You grab a piece of plastic and press into the marble with it so it no longer seals the neck. As I did the soda basically turned into a champagne bottle and shot out half the soda in the bottle and it went all over me and my side of the car.
Sunday: Was great. We had 2 investigators at church and Elder Patrick and I gave talks in sacrament meeting on prayer. I have now spoken as many times on the mission as I have at my home ward. We ate the home of the Skeet family. They are from the Belize (hope I spelled that right) so we authentic food from Belize.
On our way back to the car we street contacted a man named Ron as he was getting off his motorcycle. Turns out he tried to be Mormon back when he was 14. He said he was on track for the temple, but things happened. So he is a long lost member I guess. Then he started to ask us of there was any Mormon doctrine on aliens. We the only thing I could think of was deep doctrine that I’m not sure would have even tied in. So we just talked about the plan of salvation. It was kind of strange because he started to talk about the Pope's secret library under the Vatican and stuff, so we decided it was best if we let him be.
That is all for this chapter folks. But man, this transfer has been flying by. Like transfers are next week and I feel like I’m still new here. I hope you all at home are doing well and enjoying every moment. Those moments come to an end so cherish every single one you have. Take care!!
Elder Kyle Barton
Monday: Elder Harrison, Elder Gardener and I got to leave the mission again for p-day. I love the valley and I can’t wait to have it in our mission come July. I hope I get to serve up there soon after. I will miss my home of Torrance North though.
Tuesday: We gave service to a potential in the Adams 1 area. Her name is Ms. Lee. We typical don't come, but we did this time and helped her clear weeds from her back yard. I got a good dose of home for a bit. I had an interview with President Haynie that was super awesome and he gave me a lot of good advice and counsel. I also caught a quick glance at the transfer board, but not long enough to actually see any changes, but hey saying that you saw the transfer board suddenly shoots up your popularity. It was also Elder Patrick's birthday and we had a member take us out to Buffalo Wild Wings. As we were waiting to get seated the fire alarm went off, but nobody seemed to care because the restaurant kept moving along as usual. It was my first time going and it was super good. Elder Harrison did the blazin’ challenge that they had which is to eat 12 blazin’ wings (the hottest they have) in 6 minutes. Elder Harrison is from Spain and he cooks super spicy, so he was basically immune to the heat, so he just flew through the challenge. He won a free meal and t-shirt that is too small for him. He basically just shoved them in and didn't look back. We also got a 25$ gift card to Subway. I also got a new nickname of “Skittles” from Brother B.
I also needed a haircut really bad and with zone conference tomorrow, so I had Elder Taylor do it. Now for some reason I thought that with haircuts a 5 was the longest you could do. Since I wanted to trim my hair down I had Elder Taylor cut it. So, my hair is super, super, super short.
Wednesday: We had an awesome zone conference. It was almost entirely focused on the Book of Mormon. It was super awesome and spiritual, and we had pretty good food as well. It began to rain and soon it became a full on down pour, so traffic was even worse than usual. We finally arrived back in our area at 6 so we didn't have much time to do anything since we have to take public transportation. But a super cool thing is that our mission is the very first mission in the church to have Uber approved and available to use. It's meant to only be used in areas where parking is hard to find. So lucky for us, having Downtown, USC, and south central in our area we will have the opportunity to use it. So, potentials or even future investigators will be coming to us.
Thursday: We didn't have district meeting this week due to zone conference, so the morning was pretty slow and not a whole lot happened today. Did weekly planning but that is about it
Friday: We did a lot of walking again today and pretty much the only people that talked to us today were the homeless asking for money. We had dinner at the Pumfry's home and Grandma Pumfry (she said we are her grandkids) is the sweetest elderly lady I have ever met in my life. She refused to eat dessert because she was heartbroken about all the children in Africa that don't have food and she wants to help everyone she can. I wish I had that kind of motivation. She said we are always welcome to come to her home to eat since they cook every night.
Here comes the cat story. So, Grandma Pumfry has a cat named Silver Bullet that she typically keeps outside. But for whatever reason, it was inside today. As we were preparing to leave I decided to go over and pet the cat. Now cats don't like getting petted anywhere that they don't want to. So, I was minding my own business petting this cat on the head as it was falling asleep when Elder Taylor decides to come over to tempt me to pet this cat all over. He continued to tempt me, and I gave into peer pressure, and decided to do a full stroke pet on this cat. As I reached the tail the cat freaked out and began to bite at my thumb, its front paws grabbed into my wrist with its claws and its hind legs with claws out began to kick at my arm. So my arm got scratched up pretty bad. I decided to just play it off and leave but Elder Taylor decided to tell the Pumfrys. They felt super bad and kept apologizing over and over even though it was our fault (Elder Taylor didn't disclose that part). Tthey patched me up and it looks a lot worse than it was. The worst part is the cat is feral and hasn't had any shots. So, if I die next week we know why.
Saturday: we did service for the food bank again and we all got to grab a bag of almost expired goodies. On our way back, Elder Harrison handed me a Japanese soda and told me to open it. So the way you open it is there is a marble into the to the bottle by the neck. You grab a piece of plastic and press into the marble with it so it no longer seals the neck. As I did the soda basically turned into a champagne bottle and shot out half the soda in the bottle and it went all over me and my side of the car.
Sunday: Was great. We had 2 investigators at church and Elder Patrick and I gave talks in sacrament meeting on prayer. I have now spoken as many times on the mission as I have at my home ward. We ate the home of the Skeet family. They are from the Belize (hope I spelled that right) so we authentic food from Belize.
On our way back to the car we street contacted a man named Ron as he was getting off his motorcycle. Turns out he tried to be Mormon back when he was 14. He said he was on track for the temple, but things happened. So he is a long lost member I guess. Then he started to ask us of there was any Mormon doctrine on aliens. We the only thing I could think of was deep doctrine that I’m not sure would have even tied in. So we just talked about the plan of salvation. It was kind of strange because he started to talk about the Pope's secret library under the Vatican and stuff, so we decided it was best if we let him be.
That is all for this chapter folks. But man, this transfer has been flying by. Like transfers are next week and I feel like I’m still new here. I hope you all at home are doing well and enjoying every moment. Those moments come to an end so cherish every single one you have. Take care!!
Elder Kyle Barton
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