Hey,
Sorry to hear about Silas' rough week. Sounds like things will get better for him soon though (which is good). Plus with Ben and Dad hitting the track— that's awesome! Exercise is good! I don't know how it is in other missions, but in Portland there's an infamous idea that gets into elder's heads six months before they head home. The idea is you have six months to get in-shape so when you get off the plane you'll be good looking enough to get rights Ito the dating scene. "Six months to sexy!"
Needless to say, I'm coming up with a good routine in the AM to get there! Haha, it's rarely (if ever) actually accomplished and usually consists of elders drinking chia seeds and whey protein, but I figure I better try to step it up before I get home! We'll see how it goes!
With all the biking we'll be doing for the next while, I might not even need to worry about it though.. This past week was really rough in many respects. It's mostly centered on our car wreck though, and me getting my license back ASAP. I have the forms from the DMV (finally) and I've been trying to get them filled out, but we've had a ton of issues with it. The big problem is I have to get them notarized, but I can't them notarized unless I have some sort of photo ID. Well, I can't do that because I don't have the license! It's really, really frustrating... I've spent most of the day making phone calls trying to find a member nearby who can just stamp the stupid papers for me, but I've had no success with it..
Ideally, I will get the documents notarized in the next few days and at which point I'll ship everything back home. I need two documents to prove my Utah residency (letters addressed to me, recent bank statements, etc.) and the signed/notarized forms taken to the DMV in Taylorsville so they can issue a replacement license. A temporary would be mailed out to me immediately, which I just found out today. That was such a relief, since it will get us back on the road all the sooner (which we desperately need).
Since we realized very early on it would take some time before I'd have a car again we decided to get our bikes and start using those. It would take like three hours to walk from one side of our area to the other so it was more necessity.. We've tried walking, but it takes such a long time to get anywhere. Not to mention it's incredibly hilly in this area.
Well, we got the bikes from the mission office on Wednesday/Thursday (can't remember). The tires were really flat when we got them, so we went to a nearby member's house and got me filled up and ready to go. We hit the road for like 30 minutes, and as we're looking for an address one of Elder Viecco's tires makes a loud "PSSSSHHH!!" noise. His tire got a hole in it. He was pretty frustrated at this point. It being like 8:20, we decide to just walk the bikes back to the apartment and call it a night. Then at 10:40 after we get done praying, we here another "PSSSHHH!!". The other tire (as we found out earlier today) ripped open because of some issue with his tire so now both were flat. We just looked at each other and he looked absolutely discouraged. So we just rolled into our beds and went to sleep.
Talk about a rough week! Not only that but we had half our lessons fall through, and one of our investigators is going through some rough situations and, after having a bit of a breakdown, took off and nobody's seen him in days. It's been just one thing after another this whole week and we're praying hard that our investigator is doing alright and that we can see more success this week.
It's been very trying and taxing. I was good for like the whole week, not letting it get to me or weigh me down but since yesterday it's just been hard. There's all sorts of other little things, from a seriously outdated area book, other issues with the district, and just all sorts of crud that has made this past week very, VERY taxing. I'm just ready to get this car business over with, get my license, and get the work going in this area.
The area though, I really love! It's really spacious so there's a lot of places to contact, knock doors, etc. It's got a lot of beautiful scenery too! Not to mention the ward and members are great! They've been so helpful and kind through this whole week— which I am super grateful for. We've met all sorts of great people feeding us, giving us a lift around, and helping with our bike issues. Plus, Elder Viecco is pretty good as a companion so that's made it easier to go through the week the way we have.
Elder Viecco is from Miami, and he likes to dance, color guard, etc. He's pretty funny (half Peruvian, half Columbian). He actually wants to do internal medicine (he says he wants to be one of the doctors from Scrubs, the T.V. show), but he really loves to dance! He took quite a few dance classes (like clogging, which was hilarious) at BYU-I .(And yes, we've talked about it— no, I don't want to go there for school.) He's an interesting character, fairly quiet actually, but we get along pretty well.
President Morby has officially gone home, and the reign of President Ballard has officially begun. We have a mission-wide gathering on Wednesday in Lake Oswego where he's going to introduce himself (and his family) to all the missionaries for 2-3 hours. Just address us, I'm not quite sure what it will encompass. The week following they're doing one-on-one interviews to meet us individually. So far (from his email to us) I like him already. It was a really enlightening email, so I feel we're in good hands.
School wise- I think I'm just going to do SLCC when I get back. I figure it's going to save me a lot of money, and it seems like an easier way to get transitioned back into everything. So would I need to get my generals done completely before I transferred or could I transfer after like a semester or two? Either way that's probably the route I would want to go. I might want to apply for BYU and the University of Utah though. When's the deadline again?
Well, that's a lot of writing. I looked back and I wrote quite a bit. Hopefully it will be a better week for us. Our bikes got fixed thanks to this awesome guy in our ward, Bro. Foutz (his family is awesome), and I will hopefully get this license issue resolved soon.
"Thy afflictions shall be for they gain." It's definitely been really, really hard this week but I'm grateful for the small, simple blessings we've seen. We're healthy, we've seen a ton of support from everybody in this area, and (besides this some-what demoralizing email) I've been in much better spirits than I thought I would be. I think praying has been a big help in that.
Love you,
Elder Samuel A. Burge
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