Epic Fail

Well, Sorry about the title, I think the word "epic" can be a bit tacky, but it about summed up the week.

So here I am in SANFORD! to give you a run-down of the town, there is a population of 750 people here. And there is also 2 wards. and one ward has 400 members (not all active), and i'm guessing the other ward is doing just as well. So I do feel a lot like I'm in Provo or Boise ID or something. It's pretty cool here the town is laid out perfectly in a grid so finding our way around isn't too hard. The members love missionaries and missionary work, (people have told us that their door is always open and whenever we want we can come in and make ourselves a sandwich or something, even if they aren't home) and so we do have some things looking up.

But to start the week. I said goodbye to everyone I could, which was pretty rough because I had a really good relationship with some of our investigators, and so it was tough to say goodbye but I'm going to keep writing them so that will be good. We got in a car and drove down to what most likely will be my last transfer meeting with President Pfile. There was only 4 missionaries coming in, so it was pretty quick and then I met up with Elder Palmer (From Lewiston Idaho, been out 13 months), we got everything squared away, and took off for the San Luis Valley. Oh how I missed the valley. See, the valley is where you get some awesome/scary experiences. That and Fountain in Colorado Springs. Fountain is where you see people get shot. But I digress. We arrived at our apartment. Now, remember me and Elder Palmer got flushed in. Or whitewashed,shotgunned, or whatever you say. Me and him walk in to the apartment and our jaws drop. The place was a veritable ground zero of messiness. I could go into detail of how messy and disgusting the place was, but i'll start with the door was being help open with a toaster, there was a big smear of poop on the windowsill inside from some unkown animal or person, and one of the rooms in the house was being used to hold rotting trash because they didn't have a trash service in Sanford, so I guess they'd let it collect and then get a member to drive a big load to the dump. So that room smelled pretty bad. There was a bottle of syrup that had tipped over and dried and basically gotten stuck in place in the cupboard. So yes, I could go on but the place was so bad. So with fire and anger and righteous indignation I whipped out the phone and called up President Pfile. Well the mission office was so upset that they got the mission housing coordinators to go pick up the missionaries who had been here and drive them all the way back to the valley. One was in Parker CO and one was in Springs. So that was a lot of gas and miles. So Tuesday night we spent in the La Jara Elder's apartment, and then they showed up wednesday to clean it up. To be fair, it was really just a kind of messy apartment that slowly accumlated all kinds of things over the years, and missionaries just got used to it. And we were aware that it was an old house but it was brutal. Well we went back and helped them clean everything and it took all day. President Pfile was so glad we stayed and helped that he personally thanked us in Zone Conference yesterday. So that made it kind of worth the sweat and toil. It literally took all day with 4 Elders working super hard to clean the place. BUT NOW it looks practically celestial. It's beautiful. We now take great pride in our house.

Now that that story is over, I hit my 9 month mark last week. That's...a halfway sister mission...the human gestational period...a pretty solid number. And also next time I write home I will not be a teenager. Woot! Puttin that behind me and bracing myself for the "big life change" decade. The decade I hopefully go to school, get married, and possibly turn my parents into grandparents. Ha. Good times.

So Elder Palmer is a sweet guy, we get along great and he is solid. The area books were a disaster as well, so it's nice we're kind of starting from scratch. We did have one person call us up with a friend of theirs that wants to get baptized. And we've been making some nice headway with some of the formers that the other missionaries had. So it's good, way different missionary work than I've ever done. Tracting is dangerous because old ladies will want you to come in to visit and you really don't want to offend them. But we've already taught a lesson off tracting.

Everyone lets their dogs run wild here, so when we ride our bikes we'll usually have 3 or 4 dogs following us around town. They'll follow us up to peoples doors and try and get in our house. So it's nice to have some pets. But one of them was following us and I guess it went into the wrong territory or something, and it just got destroyed by these 2 other dogs. We went back to save it but it freed itself. So ya. That's Sanford for ya.

Also, I laughed out loud at 6:00 on May 21. The World didn't end.I really want to hear some of the follow up on that guy. Talk about your major disappointments, I even started videotaping with my camera just in case something cool happened. And then I factored in time zones, but it's been 3 days and we're still here. So that was an Epic Fail.

And I think that's the week. Bye Bye

Elder Gibb