Missionary Monday - Week 10 in DC

Hey!

This week went by super fast, Monday was good, went to the navy yard, turned out we weren't allowed to go in but it looked pretty sweet from the outside. That's the first time I could smell the river, grodey.

Tuesday was district meeting, other than that not much happened, just a lot of studies and finding.

Wednesday we had a service activity for the salvation army. We were assigned with a bunch of other missionaries to clean up after a Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless. That was a good time. After cleaning up the tables and stuff we had to box up apples from out in the hall I guess they were handing those out too by the bag. However they were no good so they still had a ton left over. While we were boxing them up some Asian ladies came up to us and started rambling in Chinese or something and we figured they wanted the apples so we gave them probably about 50 each haha.

Thursday was pretty sweet. President wanted it to be a normal proselyting day for everyone so we weren't looking forward to going finding, no one was out. BUT Alex called us the night before and said he had talked with his friend Melvin Barrera (who's the mission leader in Silver Spring, they know each other from playing professional soccer together in El Salvador) and had some questions. He said Melvin had told him about how we existed before this life and he didn't know that and wanted to talk more about it so we did. At the end of the call he said he wanted to meet tomorrow at his friend's restaurant who he thinks would like to learn about what we teach. His friend was Carlos, the restaurant was a Mexican/Salvadorian Restaurant and it was the only place open. They had a "Thanksgiving Special" that was deep fried turkey... I passed on that. The lesson with them was really good, Carlos was a little hesitant to talk with us, I don't think he knew what Alex was inviting him to😂 but by the end he had relaxed. After that we came home, did some studies and then had Thanksgiving Dinner. We were on our own for dinner since Hispanics don't really celebrate, and if they did it'd probably still be rice and beans. And since all the delivery places were closed, we didn't get delivery, we got digorno. It had a bacon and cheese stuffed crust, it was awesome. After that we went out to do some finding and there was only homeless people out so that was poor finding conditions but made for some good entertainment. But Gregory Gordon takes the cake. He saw our name tags and the first thing he says is "Jesus cristo..... You're my fans!" We were like, uhhhh what? Then he started to tell us allllll about himself. Basically he thinks he's Jesus Christ, he has his own website (Jesus.bio feel free to check that out for me) and he's in it deep in a pyramid scheme (he doesn't know that though) where he sells free houses in Florida. He asked to take some pictures with us so I'll include those. 

Friday was good, Alex called us and wanted us to stop by his future exwifes house and talk to her about what our church is all about. We went and she wasn't interested at all, she's "catholic" hasn't been in years but she acted super involved when we went, so that was kind of a bummer.

Saturday we were planning on teaching English in the morning at the Chapel but Melvin invited Alex to play soccer with him and some people from the Silver Spring ward and Alex wanted us to go so Elder Stolk got permission for us to go since it was out of our area. That was pretty fun, there were like 18 people so we played a full size game, that's the most exercise I've had since I've been out. Just wish Hispanics were more into basketball or something, beggars can't be choosers. It was cool to see Alex and Melvin play, it's been like 20 years for them but they are still super good.

Yesterday was good, we were up for ward council this week, I understood a lot more than I did the first week that we went. Alex came with his two girls, it was a lot for him to take in but overall him and his girls liked it. In gospel principles the topic was temples and family history, and he thought that was awesome, he made a profile on family search before the lesson was even over. Right after church Hermano Dimas asked us to help him move some mattresses for a sister in the ward. We went with him to do that, he strapped it to the roof of his mini van with a short ratchet strap minus the ratchet, and an extension cord😂 It was ugly but impressive. After that during studies the zone leaders called and said someone that the missionaries in the Olney area are meeting with are in the hospital in our area and need a blessing so we went to do that. It was a little 10 year old girl with epilepsy problems, she was miserable, shes been in the hospital since Monday. Their last name is solís and it's pronounced the same way they announce Jett Sollis at Alta games😂 We gave the blessing and then got home suuuper late, relying on buses is rough. 

Today Elder Stolk wants to go to the Washington DC ping pong club, so we'll probably do that and then some grocery shopping.

Elder Beck

Melvin took a bunch of pictures at soccer so I'll try and get hold of those. But so far these are the only pictures...

Crazy Gordon and Thanksgiving dinner/dessert

(Seeing the broccoli brought a tear to his mama's eyes)