August 20, 2013  The Benefits of Weed

So this week was a very interesting and busy week, we had mission tour which is why I am writing on a Tuesday instead of a Monday. To start the week last Tuesday I was running around Washington park for morning exercise while my comp sat in the truck watching and as I was running around I heard the gravel rustle and  look behind me to see a decent sized dog right behind me which kinda scared me, seeing as since I've been a missionary dogs haven't been liking me much lately. So I pick up my pace and he just sat there and finally ran off and in my head I'm thinking it was a tender mercy that I didn't get attacked, and that he stopped just short of me, little did I know.  Then as I am completing another lap around I hear a noise and look behind me a little sooner to see this same dog come running at me full speed. So I start running as fast as i can away from this dog which I was sure wanted to attack me.  In the brief moment I heard him catch up to me I braced for the bite and when it didn't come I in shock looked for the dog and there he was running right alongside me so I slowed down and he slowed down and now back at my normal pace I waited for him to get bored and leave but the dog ran right next to me for the next 10 15 minutes at which point I started back to the apartment telling the dog shoo.  He stayed right with me all the way back to the apartment and when I stopped he stopped and then Elder Johnson threw a stick and as the dog was running after it we ran inside. After a while he went back to where ever he came from. Then we helped a family of one of the recent convert families the vantassle family move in who are either non members or less active members move in on Wednesday and bro vantassle thanked us with a big batch of his specialty, no bake cookies! they tasted just like home. Thursday we helped a new family in the ward move in and the elders quorum president, bro vantassel and us were the only ones that showed up so that took a while. Saturday we helped the young mens president move out and by then I was getting pretty good at moving. There were so many people there that we made an assembly line and loaded really fast. Later we went to visit the  a part member family in the ward who we are focusing on right now and have been helping clean up after they had a kitchen fire, which was actually really good because Glen the husband has really been warming up to us. We're hoping he might decide to investigate  as he comes to church every week and his wife is even one of the ward missionaries, but any way we go over and he barely acknowledges us but as we are leaving after talking to his wife awhile she mentions she has some furniture for us to move from her parents house to their house . So we go and move two big dressers from the house to the truck to the house and as we pull up Glen starts talking to us more and then Elder Johnson asks for a match or a blow torch to stop the rope from fraying after looking and not finding anything elder Johnson mentions almost jokingly to use the grill and Glen goes “oh yeah I even have it lit” so we go over and he turns on a burner and starts spraying it with the cooking spray which cause a flamethrower effect. We were all laughing and so that was good.  Then we went over to the pluards, a less active members house to try and help her get her older boys back in the church. We show up and they hide from us and so we talk to her and her youngest for a little bit and then we go to leave and as we are getting in the truck the youngest, Luke, who is like 7 yells wait wait and comes running out and says you can stay for a little longer. So we go back in and talk to her and Luke for a little while and then left.Tthen we decided to do some ward list visits. We were going to go to the lewisons who we had never heard of but we finally find the apartment complex, which is looking really sketchy and we walk in the complex. It just stinks with smoke and we find their apartment number and the door is wide open and the keys are still in the door. So we knock and no answer we knock again no answer so finally we call out hello and we hear a hello back and then a very large man with  only a pair of shorts walks into view and tells us to come on in and sit down and so we do and I'm wondering what the heck did we get ourselves into his name is Smokey by the way which also described the apartment. Then his wife walks in fully dressed but in back health so we talk to her for a little and then he comes back in with a shirt now and starts talking about his dad who he took care of until he died as he had Alzheimers, who apparently was at the va clinc being taken care of and I guess he was losing a ton of weight and they couldn't get him to eat.  Smokey goes up he is saying your medicine doesn't work so now I'm going to try mine and then says "  boy he started gaining all sorts of weight once I started him on weed" and then proceeds to tell us how he saturated all of his food with weed and then continues to talk about his dad and his own heart attacks for the next hour straight Sunday we went to church and then packed and went to Bend for mission tour which is basically zone conference but with a general authority. We had Elder Richards of the second quorum of the 70.  Monday we went to that and talked to the mission president who told us that there were two ready for the gospel in Burns and that we needed to find them in response to our telling him that we only have one investigator who is basically a member he just can’t be baptized yet. We went home and we get home Monday with about an hour and a half of time left so Elder Johnson says who should we visit? The Pluards came to mind, so I say maybe the pluards? he says ok, but before that he had to unload the car and as we are unloading I'm think more about the Pluards and the better I feel about visiting them. So we go over and on our way we see Luke at a house we didn't know, so we stop and Michele it there too so we talk to them. She seems like she wants to talk to us so we set up an appointment for today and then go try and see a less active member named Madison who likes to read the BofM with us and we go over and her mom says she’s out walking her sheep, I then confused say a sheep? and she says yeah we have to exercise them. Then we leave and now we still have an hour and 15 min left and unsure what to do we call the wml bro Johnson and set up a meeting with him and Washington park and so we go there and on the swings is Michelle and Luke so we get out and talk to them more, while I entertained Luke and his friends. It was really good and then while we are talking to her I hear this loud bahh and look over to see Madison walking her lamb and she comes over and starts talking to us as well and then Bro Johnson shows up and now all of us are talking and it was really good.  Madison even committed to going to church on Sunday and then they left and we talked to bro Johnson about our trip and the plans for the week and then we had to go home so overall it’s been a great sore week.