September 9, 2013
Oh man. Missionary Work.
So this week we had some interesting experiences. I will let
you all refer to Hna Koch's blog for the K. L. story--for full
detail. Long story short: We are teaching this old lady. Had an appt. She didn’t
answer. Thought she had died. Called the cops. They broke into her house. She wasn’t
home. She had gone to church. The end. It was really scary, but now it is quite
funny. And Hna Koch and I always turn to each other and go
"Hey....remember how we thought K. L. died this week?"
Ohhhh life. But, on a more serious note regarding K...please...please
spend time with, visit, and love those widows in your Ward or neighborhood.
Just do it. Not only does our Prophet ask us to, but the Lord asks us to. They
need YOUR love. They feel lonely, I guarantee it. Please just love them.
Okay, onto more detail: E came to church for the first
time this week! He is so awesome you guys. He loved church. He participated
actively in Principios del Evangelio...and guess what the topic was? Word of
Wisdom. He loved it. Of course he did, because he is AWESOME. He could only
stay those two hours because...ya know...he is under house arrest. But Elder
Mondragon was talking to him after and shook his hand and whatnot and E
goes "Hey man, see ya next week." That means he is coming backkk!
:) Also, the kid, Henry Salgado, who gave him a ride to church this
week, E set up a permanent ride with him for the rest of all eternity!!
YES.
Okay, but are you ready for the funny story that will
explain the title? Ha. This was so great.
Elder Dias is a new Elder who came in this transfer. He is
in our Zone and serves in H3, which is the Ward that shares the building with
us. Usually between our hours at church, we will see the other missionaries
from our zone as they are waiting for Sacrament meeting to start. So Elder Dias
walks out to shake our hands. But, when we go to shake his hand he does one of
those "to slow" things and like dodges our handshakes. We just
laughed and he walked by and we didn’t think anything about it. Then later that
day we got a call from E and he was telling us how he was really upset at
Elder Dias because (at the time) he didn’t know if he was being disrespectful
or is he was joking. And he starts telling us how he almost beat up Elder Dias
right there in the foyer...for not shaking our hands, but the only reason he didn’t
was because he didn’t want to embarrass us – which is kinda scary because
E totally could have SERIOUSLY injured him—but so nice because he is just
such a respectful individual.
Also, it is a great example of how people watch
our actions! Even the little things we do that we don’t think about people can
interpret in very skewed ways. That is why, my friends, we watch our actions
and try to be like our Savior, Jesus Christ.
I love you
all! Hasta la semana proxima,
Hna Ba-ba-ba-burnham
Stolen from Hermana Koch's blog:
"K. L..... good ol' K. L. I love this woman to death.... maybe I shouldn't use that expression haha K is 89 or 90 one of the two and we absolutely love her. One day a couple weeks ago we were waiting for a member to get home because we had an appointment with her... and she wasn't there.... story of our lives haha love it. Anyway so obviously we aren't going to sit there and wait because we are missionaries and we don't do those kinds of things, plus I would probably fall asleep if I just sat, always happens. Anyways sorry for the tangent, so we looked at the cross road and had to decide which way to go, the way we chose was the way to the house of K. L. So we go knocking, and the first house we knock on, the one on the corner of the street is cute and has a little gardenish area. I can't really explain this so I'll give up trying. Anyway, we knock on this door. This glass door because the inside (normal wood) one was open and we wait and wait and suddenly we see a little person walking around into the hall to the door. She's wobbley and so adorable and she opens the door and we tell her we are missionaries from The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and she invites us in! So we go in and sit down on her couch and she starts talking to us about how she does family history...
OH THIS IS THE CUTEST PART ABOUT HER!!!
When she talks, her dentures pop up and down like they've got something to say too!!! ahhh I love her. Our talkin's are not important. So we visit K once a week usually. But this week we told her that we were going to come by on Saturday to help her clean because aparently the people who do it haven't showed up, and her house needs to be cleaned because she has 30 cats. We repeated, asked her if she would be here on Saturday, and she always says... Yes of course I will. I don't ever leave unless my neighbor takes me grocery shoping. I'm always here. So beautiful Saturday roles around, and we head over to K's and we knock on her door... no answer... we knock harder.. no answer... In this situation usually you'd be like, oh shes so cute and old she probably cant hear us... no no not K, she tells us all the time her ears are like radars and they are! its true.
SO we think about this and suddenly we realize. We might have a life or death situation. K L was NOT coming to the door. But really though we start panicking. She has no family, and never leaves her house, she's so cute and old and she lives by herself and she is not coming to the door!!! So slowly the knocking starts escalating. We start knocking harder... then we start knocking on her windows, then we go around her house to the back door which is always proped open and yell into it K.. its the Missionaries... we're just a little bit worried about you..... And so we call M who is the member we are visiting and she visits K almost everyday because M speaks english because she's young. And she says that K got her groceries yesterday! soooo thats out of the question, and she never leaves, so she has to be in there. So we start panicking and are like well we absolutely can't break into her house because that would look horrible!! and If we find her injured :( or even passed away! someone could blame us and we are like ahhhhh we just want to get in there and see if she is ok. so we keep knocking and we decided we need another opinion so we call little york to see if Elder Mondragon knows what to do, but he didn't answer, so we called A and talked to Elder Alexander (who by the way I dont think I've mentioned this, but he was in my district in the MTC he was the district leader for half the time, anyway we are buds and he is in my district here! so we've been in the same district for all three months of our mission... and he's the district leader again. He has been in the field for one transfer and on our second transfer he is already the district leader and a trainer and has to learn spanish! poor thing. but he can do it, he's awesome.)
He didnt know what to do either, so he said we should pray, and we all decided the question we needed to pray about is whether or not to call the cops. So we got in our car and asked and we both felt that we needed to call them. So we did so! and they said they were on their way. It starts raining of course and we keep knocking on the windows because we decided that if she was in there that we would want her to know that we were there and that we weren't going to leave her! So the cop shows up and asks us if we are family... we tell him no she has no one and he says, "well I sure hate to kick a door down without a family member" ay!!!!! I'm like oh no this guy means business. Then another cop shows up, super duper nice! and we tell them that the back is open and explain everything, so we all go around and we wait outside the gate because we didnt want to break in and they went in... b t dubs cops here are decked out in weapons galor all over there waist.. Don't mess... they"ve got all kinds of scarey gadgets... like a huge tazer in the front... his was yellow so if I had to get one I'd probably get the yellow one two, it only seems fitting since its my favorite color.... and if I'd tazer someone, might as well give them a spice of Lizzie with it. Anyways they go flash lights on, stepping over the tiny new kittens. At this point we start a new mode of panic called.
O MY GOSH THERE ARE COPS GOING INTO HER HOUSE AND IF SHE IS IN THERE SHES GOING TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK AND DIE.
#
Well anyway we wait and they come out and she wasn't in there... fewf! Shes ok... oh wait this is awkward... we had cops break into the house of K. L. and she isn't there.... Pretty soon her neighbor guy shows up and says to us, she's not home, I saw a big white van for her church come and pick her up and take her to church, sometimes she goes to church on Saturdays (not true she hasn't gone in forever) but I guess she went this time!... So there you have the week that K. L. went to church.
Now for the end of the story actually, that night we were driving not knowing what to do for the last like 15 minutes, and I say we should go see M and tell her we don't have a long time, but when we got there there was definitely some sort of hoorah goin on so we decided it wasn't a good idea. We both look at K's house. We both felt that we needed to go see her and tell her what had happened. So we pull up to her house, feeling rather embarrassed and also super nervous that this little harmless spunky lady was going to yell at us, and we walked up. Definitely the walk of shame considering the man from earlier was just sitting on the bed of his truck staring at us. We knock on K's door, and see her come around the corner (gave me so much peace) and she feebly pushes the door open and tells us to come in, fewf! not mad. So we tell her that we were so sorry and what happened and she had kind of already heard and her response back broke my heart. She said to us, "its nice to know that somebody cares" she wasn't mad, she wasn't annoyed, she felt loved because she knew that we cared. She repeated some things that she repeats a lot, but they hit me a lot harder this time. She told us that she doesn't have anyone, that no one checks on her, that the only family she has is her niece and nephew which told her a long time ago that they werent going to take care of her, especially because they dont get any of her inheritance. She told us that the neighbor who came over and told us she was gone never talks to her, that none of them want anything to do with her unless they can get some money out of her. and sadest of all the church she has been going to since she was a little girl, doesn't ever come to see her, that they told her they wouldn't pick her up anymore because she smells like cats, and when she does make it to church, she sits by herself, and everyone stays away from her because they say she smells like cats. My heart is broken. she says, "I try so hard, I bath and try to keep the house clean" it just tore me up. We shared with her Romans 8: 38-39 and she says that she knows that God is always there for her and watching over her, she always says, "its not your religion that takes you to heaven its your heart"...
Hermana B and I talked about in the car how we feel like our missionary work has been so different than all the missionaries in the zone, it just seems like we have been here to heal hearts, and to sit with people as Christ would and hold their hands. I love this opportunity, its difficult, its a lot of heart break, but I am so happy to be here to show someone that they are loved and that they are not alone."
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