This past weekend I had the first baptism of my mission. It was awesome. It was really wonderful. I don't even know what else I can say to adequately describe it. The actual baptism part was quite funny... Rose Marie had to get dunked a couple times and she was crackin jokes the whole time. I loved it. She kept calling herself the pregnant angel in her baptismal dress. It was hilarious.
After her baptism she was just beaming. She was so happy, and you could just see it in her. She kept saying how it was better than she even thought it would be, and that she felt so clean... like a brand new baby. Later that night Sister Tingey and I stopped by her house and she ran over and hugged us both. She started bawling and said in between sobs, "You saved my life, and you didn't even know it.... I'm so glad you weren't Jehovah's Witnesses on my porch!!" I feel extremely lucky and blessed by the Lord to have had the opportunity to find and teach Rose Marie, and watch her be baptized in my first transfer as a missionary. It was a great way for me to start my mission, and a great way for Sister Tingey to end hers. Just being a part of that made all of the really cold, miserable days here in Brunswick so worth it.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Missions are crazy
Missions are crazy. Wait... maybe it's just me. MY mission is crazy. The other day Sister Tingey looked at me and said, "I've been serving for 18 months now and I've never had stuff like this happen to me until serving with you! " There you have it. I honestly believe that God keeps letting crazy things happen to me to keep me laughing everyday. I LOVE IT.
Here are a few of this week's highlights...
The night before Valentine's day and we were on our way to contact a referral. Sister Tingey missed the turn off and so she pulled into a parking lot to turn around. What she didn't realize was that the driveway slanted downhill. Mix that with the incredibly icy conditions of Brunswick Ohio in February and we've got ourselves a little problem.... The car is now completely stuck in ice. We are talking six inches of snow/ice that doesn't break when you walk on it... wonderful. It's also 19 degrees outside, and the wind is blowing. I get out of the car and we start trying to back it up, etc. We stand there hypothesizing whether we can back the car up 30 feet and over the curb, but realize that we will undoubtedly high center the car. Not a good idea. I get behind the car and start trying to push. Pathetic, I know. This does not work either. The tires are now spinning out of control and we've got smokeeverywhere. Sister Tingey is frustrated at this point, and I think the situation is completely hilarious. What makes the story even better is that we are in the parking lot of Christie's Cabaret and the "Simply Explicit Adult Boutique". We call Elder Hedilious, who is over all the cars in the mission. He laughs when we tell him what happened, and where we are. He tells us to find a shovel, and someone to help us. We try on our own for a few more minutes and both laugh as we realize what we have to do....... actually go inside to find a shovel. It was hilarious. We decide we will try the boutique rather than the strip club. Please picture two missionary girls in long skirts and puffy, hooded coats entering an adult boutique. It was insane. It was straight up disgusting, and I'm pretty sure we both looked like dear in the headlights. Yuck. Luckily, the woman at the desk had a shovel so we got out of there fast. There were however, last minute McCreepster Valentine shoppers who I'm sure got a kick out of two wide eyed sister missionaries entering the devil's playground. As we are walking out of the store I am laughing so hard I can barely contain myself and I start to lose my balance. I'm holding this huge metal shovel that weighs half as much as I do and my feet start slipping out of control. Next thing I know I've landed on my back, and thankfully the shovel had managed to miss my face as it landed. This only made me laugh harder, and I was stuck for about 5 minutes before I could actually get up.Finally we get back to the car, and we start shoveling. Okay, Sister Tingey is shoveling and I am still laughing. Just as she had shoveled us out and we were ready to Rock and Roll out of there, some guys show up out of nowhere and offer us assistance. Perfect timing. Out of control.
We were visiting a less active ward member the other day, and when we got ready to leave she told us to flip our car around in her yard. We do this every time that we visit her. Sister Tingey turned the car around, and we are halfway through the yard when the tires start spinning. OH NO. We look at each other and realize we have a problem. I jump out of the car, only to find that the front wheels of our car are sunk about a foot in wet mud. I start sinking in the mud and now we're in trouble. We try everything.... backing up the car, finding cardboard to put under the wheels to give it traction... nothing works, and by the time we are done trying Sister Tingey is CAKED in mud. It was so funny, and of course I'm laughing uncontrollably at this point and she is half laughing/ half ticked off. So... we knock on Sister Moorman's door to explain to her that we've basically ruined her front yard. Luckily, she doesn't care at all and claims this sort of thing has happened before. She calls her son to come and dig us out of the mud. He gets there twenty minutes later, takes one look at the car, and tells us to call Triple A to get a tow truck. TOW TRUCK??? You've got to be kidding me.... At this point I am dying. Sister Tingey is mumbling under her breath as she sponges off her coat and I am laughing so hard my stomach hurts. A little stop by, turned into a 4 hour ordeal, as it took the tow truck over an hour to get there, and an hour for them to drag our car out of the mud. Priceless. LOVE IT. By the time the car was on the driveway again, the yard looked like it had been bombed by a crater. Note to self: NEVER ATTEMPT TO TURN AROUND ON THE GRASS IN OHIO!
I learned that Urine is the new cure-all.... just like Windex. Urine. I'm not entirely sure how the subject even got brought up... I think that Rose Marie noticed a little patch of dry skin on my finger and she told me to use urine to heal it. WHAT???? The conversation got crazy... she truly believes that urine cures everything... she claims that she washes her face with it mixed with soap every morning and its kept her wrinkle-free. She claims its an old mining town secret, and that it truly works. I almost wet my pants when she was sincerely explaining her theory to me. My challenge for all of you: try it. Stop spending money on expensive face creams.
Here are a few of this week's highlights...
The night before Valentine's day and we were on our way to contact a referral. Sister Tingey missed the turn off and so she pulled into a parking lot to turn around. What she didn't realize was that the driveway slanted downhill. Mix that with the incredibly icy conditions of Brunswick Ohio in February and we've got ourselves a little problem.... The car is now completely stuck in ice. We are talking six inches of snow/ice that doesn't break when you walk on it... wonderful. It's also 19 degrees outside, and the wind is blowing. I get out of the car and we start trying to back it up, etc. We stand there hypothesizing whether we can back the car up 30 feet and over the curb, but realize that we will undoubtedly high center the car. Not a good idea. I get behind the car and start trying to push. Pathetic, I know. This does not work either. The tires are now spinning out of control and we've got smokeeverywhere. Sister Tingey is frustrated at this point, and I think the situation is completely hilarious. What makes the story even better is that we are in the parking lot of Christie's Cabaret and the "Simply Explicit Adult Boutique". We call Elder Hedilious, who is over all the cars in the mission. He laughs when we tell him what happened, and where we are. He tells us to find a shovel, and someone to help us. We try on our own for a few more minutes and both laugh as we realize what we have to do....... actually go inside to find a shovel. It was hilarious. We decide we will try the boutique rather than the strip club. Please picture two missionary girls in long skirts and puffy, hooded coats entering an adult boutique. It was insane. It was straight up disgusting, and I'm pretty sure we both looked like dear in the headlights. Yuck. Luckily, the woman at the desk had a shovel so we got out of there fast. There were however, last minute McCreepster Valentine shoppers who I'm sure got a kick out of two wide eyed sister missionaries entering the devil's playground. As we are walking out of the store I am laughing so hard I can barely contain myself and I start to lose my balance. I'm holding this huge metal shovel that weighs half as much as I do and my feet start slipping out of control. Next thing I know I've landed on my back, and thankfully the shovel had managed to miss my face as it landed. This only made me laugh harder, and I was stuck for about 5 minutes before I could actually get up.Finally we get back to the car, and we start shoveling. Okay, Sister Tingey is shoveling and I am still laughing. Just as she had shoveled us out and we were ready to Rock and Roll out of there, some guys show up out of nowhere and offer us assistance. Perfect timing. Out of control.
We were visiting a less active ward member the other day, and when we got ready to leave she told us to flip our car around in her yard. We do this every time that we visit her. Sister Tingey turned the car around, and we are halfway through the yard when the tires start spinning. OH NO. We look at each other and realize we have a problem. I jump out of the car, only to find that the front wheels of our car are sunk about a foot in wet mud. I start sinking in the mud and now we're in trouble. We try everything.... backing up the car, finding cardboard to put under the wheels to give it traction... nothing works, and by the time we are done trying Sister Tingey is CAKED in mud. It was so funny, and of course I'm laughing uncontrollably at this point and she is half laughing/ half ticked off. So... we knock on Sister Moorman's door to explain to her that we've basically ruined her front yard. Luckily, she doesn't care at all and claims this sort of thing has happened before. She calls her son to come and dig us out of the mud. He gets there twenty minutes later, takes one look at the car, and tells us to call Triple A to get a tow truck. TOW TRUCK??? You've got to be kidding me.... At this point I am dying. Sister Tingey is mumbling under her breath as she sponges off her coat and I am laughing so hard my stomach hurts. A little stop by, turned into a 4 hour ordeal, as it took the tow truck over an hour to get there, and an hour for them to drag our car out of the mud. Priceless. LOVE IT. By the time the car was on the driveway again, the yard looked like it had been bombed by a crater. Note to self: NEVER ATTEMPT TO TURN AROUND ON THE GRASS IN OHIO!
I learned that Urine is the new cure-all.... just like Windex. Urine. I'm not entirely sure how the subject even got brought up... I think that Rose Marie noticed a little patch of dry skin on my finger and she told me to use urine to heal it. WHAT???? The conversation got crazy... she truly believes that urine cures everything... she claims that she washes her face with it mixed with soap every morning and its kept her wrinkle-free. She claims its an old mining town secret, and that it truly works. I almost wet my pants when she was sincerely explaining her theory to me. My challenge for all of you: try it. Stop spending money on expensive face creams.
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