Email to Elder Muir from mom (early evening on Monday, Feb. 3rd)
Howdy...
So about 2:00 pm on Monday, I finally resigned myself
to admitting that I was not going to get an email from my favorite missionary.
After scouring the PA news stations online that I stalk, I determined that you
and Elder B must be officially "parked" and for good reason.
Good heavens, you guys deserve a break. I've updated myself on all of the
weather, but I'd love to hear the story first hand from you.
Love, Mom
For anyone interested, below are a couple of links to news stations stations that cover Lancaster and the Susquehanna Valley. There are always lots of weather pictures and info regarding the crazy weather they are experiencing.
http://lancasteronline.com/
http://www.wgal.com/
Email from Elder Muir (February 4, 2014)
I can't believe it is February and my 8 month mark is tomorrow (Feb. 5th).
Friday (Jan. 31st) was the day that I have had my call for a year. It’s
still crazy for me to think it has been a whole year. It's amazing what
can happen in a years’ time. But really the weather has been the big story
and it is crazy as you know. Hence the reason there was no email in your Inbox
yesterday. To say it was a mess would be
an understatement. So now onto the questions and I’ll get you filled in on
the past week.
Here’s the rundown of what
went on yesterday and why you didn’t get your email. So we got up and had
studies and had a normal morning. We thought we could try and venture into
our normal pday activities, but that went south quickly. We found out that the libraries were closed so
we thought we would try and get to the church to do our emails. But we
couldn’t even make it out of our complex in the car. So we basically just
stayed in the complex all day. The ZL's sent a text to the zone saying
just stay in for the day. So we decided to build a snowman and we pretty
much just vegged all day. Last night when things were cleared enough so
we could get out we went and tried to contact a few people.
- How's your week been, what are the highs & lows? Well, I’m going to get my lows out of the way first. I think one of the biggest lows has been dealing with the weather all week long and it doesn’t look any better for the week to come. Another low is the golden family that I told you about last week (the family that Elder B found on exchange a couple of weeks ago) was not really interested in investigating and changing. They were just really nice and let us in to visit and get out of the cold (more detail on them below). Grocery shopping this morning was a nightmare. Apparently because there was a slight break in the weather and everyone thinks the Apocalypse is coming, everyone decided to go to the store today. They’ve got to stalk up since Mother Nature hates us here and there is no end in sight to The Winter of Our Discontent. Enough with the weather, on the up side and a high for the week was the lesson that we had with D and TP at theW family’s house on Tuesday. Also another high was testimony meeting on Sunday. Sister W was talking about her patriarchal blessing and she had been studying about Ephraim. She said she found a cool thing in the bible dictionary, it says, "Ephraim was given the birthright in Israel, and in the last days it has been the tribe of Ephraim’s privilege first to bear the message of the Restoration of the gospel to the world and to gather scattered Israel". Here’s a link to a New Era article regarding Ephraim’s birthright https://www.lds.org/new-era/2005/11/you-have-a-birthright?lang=eng I thought it was pretty cool hearing what she said and then studying and reading of the responsibility that we have as the tribe of Ephraim.
- How's the weather? Did you survive the bitter cold at the beginning of the week (Tuesday/Wed) Yes, I survived the bitter cold. Luckily we did not do much walking around when the temperatures were subzero and this weekend it actually got downright tropical…we were in the mid 40’s :) However, the snow has been the biggest pain. Our car doesn't have 4 wheel drive so it makes it a nightmare to try and drive. All we have is traction control and it seriously does nothing for us in bad weather. We usually make it around pretty good, but yesterday was plain old no bueno. We tried to make it out of our apartment complex but we got nowhere. The tires just kept on spinning, we were PARKED with no options. Also, in my humble opinion, PA is not so great at plowing the roads. But I guess I somehow need to keep on my toes and keep the tires spinning because it sounds like I have more coming tomorrow. Seriously, I don’t know how Utah and Colorado seem to keep life moving. Some places just shut down when Mother Nature hits (I know mom likes that kind of attitude…if Eubank is wearing the white coat she thinks we should huddle around the fire until the sun comes out). PA is one of those that shuts down. I feel bad for the school kids because they have already had 6 snow days this year and they have to make them all up into June. Two of the snow days have been in the last 3 days and the day that wasn’t a snow day was a 2 hour late start. Also another thing that is interesting, even if we could have made it out of our complex yesterday the libraries here close if it is super bad weather. So we didn’t have anywhere to email yesterday anyway, all the libraries were closed.
- Did your car get parked? Obviously, we did yesterday, but other than that we were not parked for the rest of the week.
- Have you done much service lately? Well each week we go to the city office in Manheim and help them with odd jobs. Lately we have been painting all of this trim another color. Last night we tried to go with Bro. F and help shovel for a lady in the ward before she got home from work but she had already done it. We were able to clean up a couple of spots for her and then Bro. F took us to Arby's.
- Do you have senior missionaries in your area/zone? We do not have a senior couple in the zone. We do have them in the mission, but the majority of them are in the western part of the mission.
- What town/area were you in when you did exchanges last week and took pics of the Susquehanna river? It was in Columbia, PA. Apparently it has some sort of church history to it with Orson Pratt or someone but I don't remember who exactly. Columbia is just across the river from York and is southwest of us.
- How are things with the investigators?
- New family (Golden) that Elder B contacted on exchanges (name)? Their name is the H family. But as I said above they really weren’t interested in being taught. They are a super nice family and were willing to talk to us. They live by the W family and are good friends with them. The W’s daughter and their daughter are friends and they have been to random church functions together. Sister W said it was a referral she gave past missionaries. So unfortunately we are not teaching them. The seed has been planted and they are just really good potential people.
- Puerto Rico guy (name)? His name is A. Things are going good with A. It is kind of hard because he does not speak English very well, but we bring a guy from the ward that is from Puerto Rico that has been speaking Spanish with him during the lessons.
- D ? Well we had a great lesson with him and TP at the W’s home last week. We had another appointment scheduled on Thursday with him but TP texted us saying he was not feeling good. So we have not seen him for a week now. The lesson went well but sometimes it’s hard to keep him on topic. We are still making progress with him, we just need to get him to church.
- TP, Mandy & Lee? Well we saw TP with D at the W family’s home. She is the same old same old…she just needs to come to church. She says she keeps trying to come but then she doesn’t show up when Sunday actually comes.
- Did you drop W ? Pretty much, we have not been able to contact and teach him on a regular basis so we basically have dropped him.
- M ? We keep trying to call her and set stuff up but she says she is always busy. So I am beginning to think that she is not really interested.
- Any new leads/investigators? We did find a new lead. We have started teaching a family in our apartment complex from Kenya. Their names are N & M. They are a young couple and she just had a baby about a month ago. They have another son that lives in Kenya that is about 2 years old. They are both super nice. We have been shoveling their walks when it snows and a couple of weeks ago they showed us the new baby. So we gave them a Family Proclamation and we went back a few days later and asked how it was. They said they enjoyed it. We started teaching them and got almost all of the way through the Restoration. We have had a couple of appointments with them but they never worked out. So hopefully with the appointment that we have today we can finish the Restoration with them.
- Any good stories/experiences that you haven't told me? I ate asparagus again when we had dinner at the W family. Also on Sunday I did my first split. I went with the J’s (husband & wife that are Tracy’s niece & nephew). Unfortunately the lessons that we planned fell through because no one was home. So I went with the J’s to give a blessing to a family in the ward that was sick.
- Can we do anything for you? Just keep praying for everyone.
- Do you need anything? No
Well, there is your email and you don't have to worry anymore about your
empty Inbox. I’m glad that you were able
to remain calm and didn’t freak out when you didn’t hear from me. All is good, we just need some mercy from
Mother Nature. Thanks for all you do for
me and thanks to everyone for their love, support, packages & letter. I love to hear from everyone.
Love,
Elder Muir
Pretzel that Elder Muir rolled on his tour at the Sturgis Pretzel Factory
Cow at the Turkey Hill gas station (a chain gas station in the area)
Elder Muir in front of the frozen Susquehanna River at the Columbia bridge
Kids sledding down the road in Lititz (I guess it's what you do when you have 6 snow days)
Elder M & Elder B's snowman...look closely at their creative way to make the face
(I think the eyes are frosting tub lids, the nose is a shoe polish brush and the mouth is a wrapper)
(I think the eyes are frosting tub lids, the nose is a shoe polish brush and the mouth is a wrapper)
The Ephrata District during February's President interviews
(Elder Muir & Elder B are the outside elders)
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