area: Jennings Branch (Crowley, Louisiana)
zone: Orange
companion: Elder Kohler
This week was awesome. We were able to teach a lot more people and find some to add to our teaching pool. The people here are great, except for a few of the drunk ones, but I'm sure they're great when they're sober, if that ever happens... Anyway, I'm really enjoying the country now. I really love the other Elders I get to serve here. They definitely helped make the District Meeting this week spiritual and edifying. I love the people in the ward and the people I get to teach. Soon we will be able to go to Baton Rouge for the temple there with a recent convert. I'm so excited to get to see that part of Louisiana!
Quick story: Yesterday was about 110 degrees with the heat index in a little town called Iota. But we are trying to save miles and bike as much as we can so we got on our bikes and headed to find someone on the ward list but they lived along a highway with no shoulder and we didn't really want to bike on that. So I looked at the GPS and we found a little side road that led to some railroad tracks, and the tracks would take us right to this family's house. But as we were biking down the side road we realized that we must've gone too far. So I look at the GPS and it says we already passed them but it's way too hard too miss railroad tracks, and then the thought came to me, "the GPS lied to me..." I'm a genius, I know. (that last sentence was a quote from my little sister, Jessica) Anyway, there was a bend in the road a little ways up that took us the way we wanted to go. But then we see these "ROAD CLOSED" and "BRIDGE OUT" signs. But we are missionaries with faith so we keep biking and hope angels have enough time to rebuild the bridge before we get there. We keep biking and biking and biking and finally we get out from between crawfish fields and under some trees. Then a little while after that we see a mound of dirt and weeds in the middle of the road with more "ROAD CLOSED" and "BRIDGE OUT" and "STOP" signs. But we just keep on going towards it. When we got there Elder Kohler climbed up on the mound and said "Yes!" meaning the bridge is still there. So we get our bikes over this mound and cross this creek on 4x6's with some gravel on top of them (the angels came through) and hopped over another mound on the other side. Then laid on the gravel road for a while because we ran out of water a ways back and weren't feeling too well from the heat. After a couple minutes of rest we continued on our way and found the house we were looking for.
I know it was the Sabbath, but we honestly weren't planning on having that adventure. Hopefully we won't be held accountable.
I love all you. But I love the Lord more. And this is where He wants me. So this is where I want to be.