Monday, January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016 - Elder Biehn's Weekly Update

First I want to wish everybody a happy new year and I hope that 2016 will be an even better year! The past week was really up and down for me. As in some days our schedule was completely packed and other days we had absolutely nothing to do. For example, Tuesday we had a scheduled trip to go to the temple with some members. There's a funny story to that, but I'll talk about it later. Wednesday we had absolutely nothing to do. All of our investigators that we normally visit had gone out of town for the holidays, even the members we couldn't get in contact with. Then Thursday comes, New Year's Eve, and we aren't allowed to be out past 6. There's another really good story to that... Friday, was the same, nobody home at all. Tried to call investigators, no one answered. Knocked doors, no one answered. And it follows this pattern for the rest of the week. Now that the holidays have ended, hopefully things begin to calm back down and people will actually be in their homes.

Now, as for those stories. The one the happened on Tuesday was pretty funny. So me and Elder Castillo are running some errands and we had to stop by the mission office to drop off a few things and pick some other stuff up, no big deal. Well, while we are there, Sister Anderson (the senior sister in charge of the front desk) gets a call from one of the missionaries. Turns out it is the Spanish Elders from Old Town, the area just east of mine. They had called asking for the office elders or the APs, but neither of them were there, however I was! So she hands the phone to me. Apparently, these guys had locked their keys in their car and were now stuck and needed help. Since me and Elder Castillo were there, we got volunteered. At this time, it's about 4 in the afternoon and it would take about 45 minutes to get to where these elders are at in Old Town. We were supposed to meet up with the members to go to the temple at around 5ish. So I'm thinking, ok we can squeeze this in. So off we go with the spare keys. It takes longer than 45 minutes because of traffic and we get to their car but we couldn't find them. They had left their car and weren't answering their phone. I decide to just unlock their car for them and hide their keys somewhere they could find them (They had locked it inside of their trunk, I left them behind their GPS). So we leave because it's 5 and we are already late. Then they call us, asking where we were at. I wanted to mess with them, so I told them we couldn't wait around all day and we had to leave. He nearly flips out, like, "What are you talking about? You can't leave! We are going to get towed! Where did you go?!" And on and on like that. Finally, after laughing a little bit and making him sweat, I told him his car was unlocked and his keys were behind their GPS. He was a little mad, and told me I nearly gave him a heart attack, but it was alright. Now we had to get to the members house and it was 5 o'clock. I was certain it was going to take hours because of traffic and it is at least a 45 min drive, but a miracle happened. There was absolutely no traffic at all, in the middle of rush hour, and we were able to get there in 20 minutes. I don't know how but I guarantee you I wasn't speeding. The Tiwi in our car makes sure of that. So we were able to get to the members house and go to the temple to see the lights.

So now onto New Year's Eve. Our rule is that we aren't allowed to be out past 6 on New Year’s because of all the parties, and drunk people, and it's just overall dangerous. So we have a zone party in one of the church buildings nearby. All the missionaries within my zone are there and we are playing volleyball, eating pizza, and we even got permission to watch a movie. Guess what movie we watched. THE BEST 2 YEARS! I was so excited to be able to watch that again and it is so much funnier now that I'm on a mission! I can relate to a lot of things! I loved being able to watch this movie with the missionaries in the zone. Then, since we had to be home by 10:30, we did our own little New Year’s countdown and had some sparkling cider. It was funny because at the end of the countdown, the elders with the cider shook up the bottle and starting spraying everywhere, just like a New Year’s party!

So the holidays were fun, but now it's time to get back to work and focusing and the gospel. Everybody is back from vacations so now we can start working with them once again.

That's all for this week!

From,
Elder Biehn