It's exciting to see everybody on the college campus- it's weird to see how different everybody looks! I mean, everybody just looks older!
It looks and sounds like everybody had a good Easter weekend. Weber State looks like it has a pretty interesting campus (I still won't go there though, sorry).
Earthquakes, isn't Utah supposed to be due for an incredibly massive earthquake? Like twenty years over-due? I remember some people saying things along those lines in high school but I never knew how much validity their comments had. We've had some small-scale quakes here the past little while (nothing above a 2.0 though). The Read's asked us if we moved anything around while they were out once, a lot of her pictures and plates were coming off the edge of her cabinet shelves, etc.
This week for us was... Slow, to say the very least. We had quite a few lessons planned and we managed to get members to almost every single one, but everyday we got cancelled on... It was pretty lame in that regard, but I did enjoy the week. I went on an exchange with one of my zone leaders, Elder Peterson. After I got transferred out of Wilsonville he was my replacement (he was trained by Elder Thomas), so we have lots to talk about with. He's just awesome- I love all the elders I'm serving around right now. Elder Peterson biking with me…
Elder Snow and I are doing really good. It's good to have a companion that you can get along with, I've always been pretty blessed in the respect. A companionship is what you make of it, I've learned that and so far it's served me well! An interesting door mat we came across tracting.
Snowbear and myself making phone calls, 8:30 at night in an alleyway! "I'm so hood!~" (Tell Silas I said that, he'll get it.)
Delicious tacos from the local food-trucks…
The sisters were in our half of the ward, so to keep them out of our turf we left them a little message...
Also, we went to the super Asian "Manila Market" on preparation day.
The highlight of my week though was I got to go back for a baptism on Saturday with Elder Schmidt to the Springville ward! Luckily I'm like ten minutes away so we were able to go see this girl we taught, Rayna-Maria get baptized! It was such a good baptism: a newly-ordained priest we visited baptized her and it was so cool to see him involved with the baptism and he did such a good job! It was a long-awaited baptism, we all knew it was going to happen but it just needed to be on her own time. It was a bit of throwback going back for the baptism.
A big thing we started with Rayna-Maria when we were teaching her was the "WOOT! WOOT!". We'd pump our hands in the air and say it whenever something was cool, they kept a commitment, or understood something really well.. It stuck, to say the least (all credit goes to Schmiddy [elder schmidt])
I was pretty irritated though about something. Elder Olsen, who was very close to the family, didn't even get wind that the baptism was happening. I was thinking about him the morning of the baptism and I decided to reach out and see if he could make it, but he couldn't. He was super depressed about it, and I kicked myself for not thinking to double-check and make sure he knew it was happening.
The spring season is here in Oregon and it's beautiful!
That was pretty much about my week though. So I have about college- when do I need to have applications finished for the spring semester of next year? I imagine it's probably coming up, but if you could get me some ideas for the deadlines (specifically for USU, U of U, and BYU). Also, is there any way I could possibly get like grants/scholarships this late in the game? Also, could you look into USC and UCLA for me..? It's kind of just daydreaming, but I have thought about those schools and I'm a bit curious.
Well, I love you all and hope that this week goes well for you!
-Elder Samuel A. Burge
P.S., So we had two funny stories that I almost forgot to mention- glad I took stupid pictures to remember them!
So while walking down the road we saw a friendly guy doing some gardening in his yard. I said "Good morning!" and to which he replied "Are you drunk, it's four in the afternoon?" He said it jokingly and it started a conversation with this guy. His Indian name was Haruman, but his traditional name was Robert. He had studied as a monk in India for like 40 years, and was a VERY interesting character.
He started off the conversation by telling us, "No need to worry about things, you have so many lifetimes after this!"
From there it was just a flaming spiral into the epitome of the phrase "Portlandian".
He started to share his tomes of spiritual wisdom from his years studying under a wise guru. He talked about finding peace, and how the envy, lust, and negative things were like clouds blocking the warmth of the "sun". He then shared with us something very interesting. He told us to "go into the bathroom" whenever we were feeling not at peace. He told us that even the camels knew how to find true, inner peace and that he'd also found it.
SO he puts us both side-by-side and tells us that he is going to demonstrate how to find true inner peace and what it looks like. He takes a second, and breathes deeply for a second, and then opens his eyes and looks between us with just THE STUPIDEST, SPACED-OUT LOOK on his face! We still are joking about it and so we took some pictures to demonstrate us finding true inner peace (hence the picture of me "meditating" on my desk).
Story #2
This past Saturday we're walking down the road and we had a fun encounter with a drunk man. He was acting exactly like "drunk uncle" from the Daily Report on Saturday Night Live. He's ranting and raving to himself as he's walking down the street when suddenly he sees us and shouts out, "It's the Mormons!". He, in disgust, crosses the street out into traffic to get to the other side of the road all the while saying "I'd rather drown myself than join the Mormon religion! It's rough but it's true!" Then he tells us that "you're all so miserable and you only doing it to yourselves, so f*** yourselves and f*** the Mormons..!"
Then he mumbled to himself and kept on walking. It was pretty interesting.
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