Maybe tangerine? Constantine? Loud and mean? Yah. The district is in quarantine, and that's okay. We're making lots of calls, setting up meetings, teaching people things. Over the phone. We only got into quarantine on Wednesday, so we were still out and about Monday and Tuesday. On Monday we pulled away from pickleball early to do some shop browsing, maybe a little bit of Christmas shopping. It was actually the first p-day that we went and did anything other than just stay at the stake center. Then after that we went to the stake center to talk to our families and play games.
The stake center is a great place to go to because it has plenty of room and internet. I never knew that apartment complexes, or at least a lot of them, don't provide internet access for residents. So we used to go to the church that is just a block away to get our internet, but the internet dropped there and has now been out for a month. I'd love to tell you that I had nothing to do with it, but I'm not so sure. See, I.T. workers are superstitious. We're worse than sailors. Computers are just so dang hard to work with, there are just so many variables and things that could go wrong with them, that we often believe pretty silly things about them. Along with this, a fun thing that a lot of I.T. workers like to joke about is curses, and how one specific thing will plague someone their whole life. One of my best friends was cursed with every cable he touched breaking, another with batteries always dying around him, another with impossible programming problems. The thing that always stuck with me back home, was the internet never working around me. Back home it was always sluggish, and would disappear for days on end. Often at school my computer would randomly disconnect from the Wi-fi. I joked about it a lot, just thinking it was bad luck. Then I come out here and a city church, one that has never had Wi-fi troubles before, suddenly drops from the network. They had company experts out here that could get it working for a day, but it would not stay up. the Wifi has been down here for a month now, and no one can get it working again. But the internet back home is working just fine now I hear. So we go to the stake center to talk to our families, because our phone hotspots are spotty.
On Tuesday, we had two dinners scheduled. First we went to the Becks, where we had five eggs on an English muffin. I can't remember what it was called, something like eggs benedict. It was a little too eggy for my taste. They had family visiting for Thanksgiving, their grandparents, who were really cool people. The grandfather spoke Spanish well and worked in a big law firm in Salt Lake City. He told me the name, but I forgot it. He said he loved driving through Logan a lot, so we both knew the area well. Then we got talking about old video games with Brother Beck, and he ended up pulling out his collection of retro pies, little computers that can be programmed to play the old SNES or Gameboy games. We talked a lot about them, and his family asked him to leave it all set up so they could play the multiplayer Tetris. After dinner with them, we went to visit a family that had been taking English lessons from us. This was a time when the father could meet with us, and he made us some delicious beef and shrimp tacos. okay I'll admit, I was hesitant about the shrimp, but it was okay. They preferred to speak Spanish, so I mostly sat quietly through dinner, and then a lesson, but it looked like they were taking it very well. One of their sons was asking about the apostles and Joseph Smith while we were giving the lesson on the restoration. We gave the father a copy of the bible and Book of Mormon in Spanish, and he looked very happy to have gotten such a great gift. We helped him find verses in the bible that discussed certain points of the lesson. From what I could pick up, he loved his family very much, and liked what the lesson was telling him. What the spirit was telling him. We ended up staying till ten, but it was worth it. When we finally left, smiles all around, appointments made for a week later, it was the best feeling ever. We then quickly went and picked up an exchange, and went home. The next day was district council, and we had a very good lesson on listening, and how Jesus showed listening through his ministry. Afterwards, we got a call that some of the missionaries were feeling sick, and so we entered quarantine. We got permission to visit Walmart, and change the exchange back, then back home.
Then, next day was Thanksgiving, and a lot of the other Elders were sad about that. It ended up okay though, with two families dropping of Thanksgiving meals. We have an entire pre-cooked turkey still in our fridge.
That night we used our outside hours to walk around the Gaylord hotel, a massive supercenter just down the road. It was all set up for Christmas and very pretty.
Just don't try and download anything. While we were gone, one of the families in our ward that we don't know super well dropped off a truckload of random groceries. What had happened is the other Elders had talked to them about an hour beforehand, and somehow let slip that Elder Markham had run out of vitamin C supplements. Lo and behold, we need another fridge. He got all kinds of fruits and vegetables, meal foods, mixes, and meats. Even some berries. This morning I made blueberry pancakes with some fresh blueberries. The members here have really outdone themselves, not allowing us to even eat anything from the fridge, giving us dinner every night and even some lunches. I can't believe this is even possible on a mission, its wild. We have been praying for them to somehow be blessed as much as they have blessed us.
We spend our afternoons just cruising through the ward list trying to set up meetings, and even on Saturdays giving Preach My Gospel lessons to youth who are preparing to go on a mission.
Honestly, everything is pretty great, even in quarantine. The weather has been the same, my plants are going into winter mode, not growing much, and at least I have our small electric piano to practice on. I think that about sums it up. We're doing okay here. Guess its time to work our way over to winter cheer now. Just need to find a tree and something to cut it down with.... Elder Peck
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