Moms and Pops,
Well, it has been quite a hectic week for you both it sounds like! I bet Max's little adventure was a bit stressful. On Saturday we were walking around and this puppy German Shepherd was playing with another puppy in a yard, of course I went over and started talking to them.... I love little German Shepherd puppies! I'm glad that you upgraded to the iPhone, mom. How do you like it? Whatever happened to my phone? There are so many new little phones and electronic things out these days, I feel so lost... Dad, you'll have to catch me up when I get home on all these new gadgets. Oh! Well, first things first I suppose... My "favorite" scripture... At this point, I'm not sure if I can choose one! Uhhh... I like a lot of them... I'll choose Philippians 3:13-14. I really do love that one though.
So, about my "tour." We went on 2 exchanges this week, back-to-back. We went up to McKinleyville on Tuesday for District Meeting and right after that we went on an exchange with the Eureka 2nd Ward elders. I went to Eureka with Elder McQueen (we were in the same district in Farfield for 2 transfers and have been on exchanges before). It was so cool to see how he has grown in the past 6 months. In Fairfield, he was just a greenie, now he's solid! It was good. Elder Carter took the car keys with him down to Fortuna so we were without wheels. We could have biked, but we decided to just walk. We walked all day Tuesday and all day Wednesday until we ended that exchange up in McKinleyville (President came up for interviews to the stake center) at 7:00pm. There are SO many crazies in Eureka. I've never seen so many homeless people in my life either. It's a pretty similar "weird" to Clearlake. We talked to a lady that called us over to "preach" to her. We got over to her and she was for sure on some kind of drug, meth I think. She gave us a "gypsie blessing," which involves her holding the back of her hand out to us and saying, "meditate" and then turning her hand and saying, "be blessed." That was a pretty weird experience.... She kept trying to get us to sit down too... Another guy came out of the house to talk with us, he was on something too. He talked to us about watching the big battleships go by, and how about he wasn't sure if they were Swedish or American. The whole time this man was talking to us, this lady kept saying that we were cute, handsome, that she liked our haircuts, she liked our suits, and she liked our ears. She said something about a cat and started making cat noises... When we finally left, after she gave McQueen a little bag of Taco Bell donut holes (did you know Taco Bell had those?), we just were dumbfounded at how crazy that experience was. It was nuts. Whew, people are weird! But, then again, drugs will do that. Then on Wednesday, we went up to McKinleyville for our interviews, I went last out of everyone. Since I barely just had an interview with Pres, it was pretty short. We didn't really talk about anything important, just chatted for a few minutes and I reported on my exchange with Elder McQueen, then we left. Right after that interview, we then started our exchange with the McKinleyville elders. I stayed up in McKinleyville with Elder Ellsworth (it can be a tongue-twister saying "Edwards" and "Ellsworth" together). Elder Ellsworth has been out not even 3 months yet, he's from Payson, UT. He is such a good kid, I like him a lot. He's a huge snowboarder and skateboarder, and we talked about the stereotype about "sk8ers." He doesn't fit that profile at all (obviously, since he's on a mission). We taught a crazy old guy that loves to talk. He has a bunch of 'stories" that he claims to be real, but I'm not too sure. He said he used to own a bunch of restaurants down in the bay area, and how Richard Nixon kept trying to come and eat at his restaurants and how he wouldn't let him come. Interesting guy. He was a football player back in the day too. He played against Woody Hayes team at OSU. He said that Woody would do anything to win. Funny old man. I finally got back to Fortuna on Friday morning... It was a long time spent away from my area. Although I didn't go up to Crescent City (not yet, that's next week!), or Arcata, I still consider it a "tour." It was good fun. It was good to be back with Elder Christensen. Things are going good.
So, Jeff, he should be getting baptized on Saturday. He's been interviewed (again) and he isn't smoking, so let's hope it goes through this time! Both Elder Christensen and myself will be in the font to baptize him since he can't stand or walk on his own. It should be pretty interesting. We're still working with our 14 year-old... She's coming along though! We also just picked up another SOLID 'gator on Saturday. We went to see a LA member and he pulled in right as we did, so timing was perfect. We planned on seeing him about 30 minutes earlier, but we got held up, so the Lord was holding us up so that we could have this experience. We had our lesson with Kalani, and it was a very spiritual lesson. Kalani said that we would come to church the next day for sure. We left and felt prompted by the Spirit, after we prayed thanking Heavenly Father for the great lesson, to go and try this guy named Al. We found him at home, with his BoM in hand and the pamphlet saying that he wanted to meet with us! But, his place was really messy and he didn't want to meet there, so we thought about Kalani! We went over and asked if it was alright to bring Al over and teach him, and it was all gravy. So, we brought Al over to Kalani's trailer and taught him about the Restoration. Al read what we gave him when we found him 3 weeks ago, it was great! We got Kalani to bring Al to church yesterday, which was awesome! Hopefully this will help Kalani be active by fellowshipping Al. We invited Al to be baptized and he said he wants to learn more, and then I extended a baptismal date for him to work for and he said "yes!" His date is for February 25th right now. It was awesome! We left that lesson and knocked on a potential 'gator's door and we picked her up as a 'gator too! Just a great day! We went over to see my favorite family, the Scotts for dinner. Sister Scott is recovering from a severe case of pneumonia that almost killed her; they caught it right as her lung was being filled with fluid and pus and gross stuff. She's doing well.
I have started trying to invite people to be baptized every day. It's awesome! That is what I am called to do, ya know? I've invited a ton of people to be baptized, of course most of them say no, but there is a spirit in inviting someone to come unto Christ. It's starting to be apart of my normal missionary work! It's great. I've definitely developed the skill of bein bold in inviting people to do things and especially be baptized.
Well, I think that I've rambled enough on here. I hope ya'll have a great week! I love you both very much!!
Love,
Elder Brennan
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