Week 57

Dear reader,

I'm currently alive in Turlock, California.  There's lots of smoke but it's okay, because we're still mostly inside!  We did have a handful of appointments this week, and we met a bunch of new members.  I finally met the bishop yesterday, we had dinner with their family.  Come to find out, his brother taught my seminary class when I was a freshman!  What a cool connection that was!  I hope my old teacher gives me a good recommendation for his brothers ward.  Last Monday I went to a couple stores and thrift shops to find some cheap ties, along with my comp and the zone leaders.  We saw some cool old stuff, old Pepsi merch, guitars, cool shoes, and I found a few ties.  It was a good time.  We biked to district council this week, we got to meet in person at the church, but it was so smokey we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of us.  That evening we visited some members, we talked about sharing the gospel, and they gave us a bunch of Costco muffins.  Wednesday we helped a member of the Spanish ward move with some other Elders, it took us a couple hours, and then the member gave them some money to get dinner so we stopped by The Habit and it was awesome.  We had exchanges the next day, I went with Elder McArthur from Saint George, we made some calls, talked about music, and when we were walking around the complex some guy walked up and gave us his name and number and said he wants to meet some families from our church for his kids to hangout with.  Nice! We got a couple other referrals this week, a couple people asking for book of Mormons, and a member up in San Jose called us and asked that we visit a friend of his, they both work for a trucking company and spend a lot of time talking, and the member had given him a book of Mormon before.  We hope to start teaching him soon!  Saturday morning we joined almost our whole district in cleaning up this spot in town called "First Street" and it's super ghetto.  It's by a railroad track, and if you look farther down there's a tent city of a bunch of homeless people.  Lots of sketchy stuff over there, but it was cool to meet other people from the community and to do some service.  Sunday went as usual, we had a couple visits and dinner, as I mentioned earlier.  Bishops family gave us pork chops n stuff and a Klondike bar for the road, it was nice of them.  We're hoping to have outdoor church soon, but it's just rumors for now.  Life is groovy in California, man.  Hope you're doing well.

Elder Gneiting