Voice Recording June 19 part 1

Well good morning, mom!

It’s been a wonderful week, so first things first, I got your email, you know, I really think option A is for me, I just kinda want to bum around, you know, maybe go on a backpacking trip around Europe, figure out my life, you know, really learn who I am.  Ummm, no, no, C is definitely what I really feel is the best.  Go to college, try to find a job, especially get a job.  I need to get something at least and I really feel like I need to do C is the thought that has been coming to mind.  So, yeah! I liked your other points to consider too.  I don’t know, like, I definitely want to do choir at the very least.  Tech…. I’d imagine I do have to take the tech class which…. I’ll have to pray about that one.  Is there any way that you could send me, I mean I’m going to ask my mission president, but is there any way that you could send me like a list of the classes and schedules or something so that I can register and plan?  I know that missionaries do that here, write up applications, or call BYU, and he understands we have to do stuff after this and as sad as it is, and hard as it is, I have two months left, I do need to figure this stuff out.  I’ll talk to him, or see if I have to call the counselor and figure stuff out.  Sign whatever crap… yeah.  I’ll do it.   Yeah, thankfully you were right, I’m not getting too trunky about it, it was more just like “Holy crap, I need to think about this.” Cause I can pretend it’s not going to happen, but it’s gonna happen.

Allergies have been… ugh.  They’ve been there.  I haven’t gotten anything which I need to get today. So I wrote a reminder to myself – “Get allergy stuff.”  

So this last week we did a lot of service, and one of the things we did was we went to, as we were helping people clean up, there was like a museum that had a yard sale or something like that, or a rummage sale, and we helped them take all the stuff out of the basement and put it away later,  and it was the same day that we were in the parade, I don’t know if I told you about that, I got to walk beside a float while other missionaries were on it waving, and I got to hand out candy to people. It was great.  “Go family history!”  We got pictures.  But while we were going through and doing service and pretty much just spending the whole day in town talking to everyone, trying to just be out there, there was a yard sale the Methodist church was having, and I found this little like, I don’t know a small wooden, (to Elder Hand) How would you describe that?  (Elder Hand)  It’s a Jesus sign.  (Nick) well, it’s not quite a sign, but its, yeah, a little desk thing that says ‘Jesus’ on it, and it’s in kindof a cool decorative way.  I’ll have to take a picture of it. I think it’s cool.  It was 25 cents. So, yeah. (Elder Hand) I got a backpack, and a grill for five dollars.)  We’re pretty excited.  We have a grill now. It’s an old propane grill, and it was free  because it doesn’t work, but he says he can turn it into a charcoal grill. So we’re gonna have some fun with that.

Yeah, this week we did a lot of stuff, especially for our apartment, we finally got rid of all that old crappy furniture we had. It was oily and stained and holey, and very, very old and wrecked and torn.  But the Corvalis Elders got new furniture, and they’re like, “Hey so our landlord just bought us new furniture…”, because apparently the neighbors moved and gave it all to the landlord, long story short, they had a full set of furniture that is still in really, really good condition.  Like, it’s amazing.  And they need to get rid of it, so we got brand new furniture and tossed our old stuff out.  So we got a couch, a loveseat, and a chair. And it looks like something that you’d find in like a great grandmother’s house.  The floral print is just awful.  But they are comfy.  And amazing, and we’re not one to really complain.  Beggars can’t be choosers.

Also picked up, got it for free, an old General Electric radio.  I was going to clean it up and see if I could get it to work.  It’s old.  FM only.  Awesome. See if I can tinker around with that for a bit.  Finally got some more fans, it gets really hot in here since there’s no A/C in Montana, at least where we are.  We had one fan upstairs, and it was one of those square box fans, and one of the blades was missing, and the others are kinda cracked.  But we picked up another box fan, which is actually in really, really good condition, It’s just missing the handle, and a little desk fan, one of those rotating ones, the front bracket? Brace? (Elder Hand- “Shroud”).   Trout?   (EH-“Shroud”.)  I’ve never heard “trout”.   (EH- SHROUD!!)  Shroud? Oh. Okay, I’m like why are you calling it a trout? The cage thing on the front is missing, so it was in the ‘Free’ pile.  They’re like “You don’t want any kids near that.”  And I’m like, “Okay, I just won’t touch it.”  And it works great.  I mean it blows and blows.  The apartment might finally be cool on the days that it gets hot.  And on the days that it’s not hot, we have to freaking start up our heater because it’s so cold in Montana.  Oh yeah!   And this week we also experimented with… So our apartment has two stoves.  We have the gas stove, it doesn’t heat up too much, it just kinda like, honestly just around the stairs.  It’s like right next to our stairs and it’s got a vent attached to it but I don’t know where that goes.  I just think straight up to the roof, because it only just heats up that area.  I mean it doesn’t work really at all for upstairs.  I mean it kinda keeps the whole house to at least like 60-65 which is nice, but then it gets really hot by the stairs.  In the corner, which granted isn’t too much better, we have a wood burning stove.  And that just heats up the whole downstairs super nice.  And so we lit that up this week for the first time because we found some wood by our house,  and that was great.  Apparently some others in the past tried to burn Mormon Doctrine by McConkie in it, but we’ve just been great.  We now have a place to put all our old newspapers.  Like Elder Hand just threw a bunch of old newspapers in there for kindling later, because you never know when it’s going to freaking snow or get down below zero even in the middle of June.

Our car is dirty, we need to wash it today.  We wrote LDS.org in the dirt on the back of the truck.  Yeah.  We’re those people.  Things have been going good.  Laundry is almost done, had eggs for breakfast this morning. (Elder Hand – She doesn’t care what you had for breakfast!)  Nick – doing his best Elder Hand Southern redneck impersonation – She don’t care what I had? Maybe she’s curious?  (EH – you had eggs for like the past four days!) They’re good eggs.  My companion bought, before he got here he heard that there’s no Wal-Mart, so he went to Wal-Mart and just loaded up on stuff, including a 48 pack of Poptarts, and so we just kinda munch on those all day.  Along with other food.  I’m not gaining tons of weight, although I have gained a bit. (EH- hey do you want these cookies? I don’t know how long they’ve been in here.) Toss ‘em.  Glorious Elder Hand is being awesome and cleaning. Gotta love Mondays. Oh!  All that stuff fell out.  I’ll pick it up. (Elder Hand – is this your brother?) No, that’s CJ. He’s someone I taught in Butte. Love him to death.  I had a little picture of him in my notebook here, and a lot of the stuff from my notebook fell out apparently. (sounds and random comments about things he’s cleaning out)  Oh… I need to sew that on.  Oh, funny story mom, you know those things that I learned, and I knew how to sew… yeah, I forgot all that since it’s been two years and I haven’t had to sew on anything before the last month or two. I’m sure if I were to sit down with a needle I could figure it out, but… random copies of the Book of Mormon… no, I did not put my name in the other one.  I’m hoping it will turn up.  I looked in the library this week and it wasn’t there.  The pilot light went out on our oven a couple of times this week, had to re-light it.  We finally got a fire extinguisher!  So now if it ever catches fire like in Butte, we got some way to put it out.  This week, our goal, our next thing to get for the apartment, we have two projects, next we have an old desk that we picked up, and we want to put some metal or wood shelving in for a shoe rack right by the door.  Yeah, so we have that desk right by the door, and we also need to get a trash can.  (Elder Hand – Oh man, for the love of the bitterroot.)  For the love of the bitterroot!  We have a…. Bless his heart, he’s an older guy that we go and visit every now and then, and he can’t read or write, but he wrote a book, by dictating it to someone.  It’s his life story about growing up in the Bitterroot (unintelligible).  But he gives all the missionaries a free copy of this book, which we can’t read on our missions.  Another thing he (Elder Hand) bought is two 24 packs of Sprite, that he’s been drinking like crazy and just leaving Sprite cans everywhere.  I honestly don’t think our truck’s been cleaned out in years.  So yeah, we have a signed copy of his book, “For the Love of the Bitterroot – Recollections of John J Stroud.”  So yeah.  Lots of history about the area.  I’ll have to go through it when I get home.  Really sweet guy.  He’s a shut-in.  We go and visit a couple of those out here.

I picked up a couple bottles of cider, Grape-apple and Apple.  I’m not a big fan of the Grape, but… Oh yeah, (laughs) we did service at the food pantry out here and I made the comment that I love grapefruit juice.  And apparently they’ve gotten just tons and tons of these things of grapefruit juice.  And he’s like, “Well go take one!”  And I’m like “Oh my goodness, you guys are so nice!” They have way too much to give out and no one likes grapefruit juice apparently, so I took one, and he’s like “No,no,no,no… You get two, and your companion also has to take two.”  So now we have these two giant things of grapefruit juice… (Elder Hand – Four....)  Four.  Yeah.  Four giant things of grapefruit juice that uh, well, they’re going to be in our apartment for awhile, cause he ain’t drinking em, and I’m still working on the one I bought at the store awhile back.

Trying to think… We’ve been teaching Mary still.   She’s still not progressing.  Every week we visit her… we have a great powerful lesson… she commits to come to church and to read… and then she doesn’t show.  I mean it’s getting to the point where we’re like…. Yeah.  Frustrating.  And I know like a big factor is that she works at this hospital, cause get this, the closest ER is like half an hour away from us clear over in Hamilton.  And with the horror stories I hear over there, I’d rather go to Missoula.

(discussion between Nick and Elder Hand about an SD card…) Bless his heart, I think I told you that his tablet is messed up.  Thankfully it’s under warranty apparently, so he sent that in to Samsung and it will get figured out in 9-11 business days. (Elder Hand – It’s already been two days) Today is day three since we sent it in on Thursday.  So yeah.  Bless his heart.  Picked up some wooden golf clubs…. Someone just gave us those.  “Here, take these!”  So we’re like “Oh, okay.”  So we’re going to try and see how much we can sell them for.  Just go to a pawn shop and, oh yeah, apparently missionaries here golfed or something because we had a whole golf set in our closet.   I’m like, Ok…  Apparently that’s a thing.  We also have sleeping bags, and air mattresses.  We’re keeping the air mattresses because you never know when you need to house other missionaries.

So Mary… I really hope she progresses soon.  Jacob we got a text from him with his address.  He’s doing great in Salt Lake.  Attended the YSA ward there, loves the missionaries and was really thankful for all we’ve helped him out with so far.  He gave us his email, wants to stay in touch.  It was just kinda one of those really bitter sweet moments.  I can’t wait to hear all that happens with him. Sad to see him go.  Love teaching him.  The mission is still going great though.  As hard as it is out here, it’s still going good.  Amanda, that referral we got, we supposedly have a lesson with her on Tuesday or Thursday, we’ll see.  Or I don’t know if we can do Thursday because we have a zone conference coming up, so that’s… (discussion with Elder Hand about an umbrella) How long has this been going?  19 minutes! Or 20 minutes!  I’m going to send this off real quick, hope you have a wonderful day, talk to you soon, bye!