Week 23: A Crazy Sketchy Week!

This week was quite interesting. We went from having an amazing week last week to having 97% of our lessons fall through this week. I’m not quite sure what happened. Although, during the summer months the university students and staff go home and the locals tend to leave during the super hot times. This week is supposed to be up to 111 degrees. I’m basically already dying in this heat.  I’ve already had a 3 shirt day. Not fun!

Monday was good day, even though I didn’t get to talk to you guys very much. But this week I will have more time to email. Last Monday we had a good time running the streets of Tucson.

Elder Thompson and I muggin' the streets of Tucson

Tuesday:  We went to Beads of Courage. It is good service we do there with the other elders. We were able to give out several temple open house invitations, so it was also a good finding activity. After Beads, we came home and did studies and ate lunch. After lunch we went through the Part-Member family list. It didn’t yield any rewards…yet, but it will eventually. Anyways we worked away on that list until we had to go give a blessing, which turned out to be a really good spiritual experience. So that was good.  Following that we had dinner with the R____s, thay are very cool people. It was taco Tuesdays, so we had tacos. After dinner, we had an appointment, which fell through, so we attempt to contact a less-active lady and we set up a return date. There are so many single sisters in this ward who we are not able to contact because we can’t get members to participate in lessons. The mission president might pink wash this area soon.  Who knows?  (Pink washing is when a set of elders is transferred out of area and a set of sister missionaries are transferred in to work with a large number of single sisters)

Wednesday:  We had district meeting. It was good and it was hot.  Arizona in general just gets so hot and I strongly dislike that much heat. Anyways, we then worked on finding people to teach from the Part-Member family list.  As of Sunday, we still have 63 names to contact.  After lunch we had a lesson, which once again fell through. If you can’t tell this week was kind of upsetting. We had a dinner appointment with the F___s. We had taco salad and a quick visit. After dinner we had a lesson with Bro. S___. He’s a less-active member who just needs to have a talk with bishop and he will be reactivated. Then, we did some more finding and that was our day.

The Tucson Temple at night (I will try to get a better picture)

However, Wednesday night was the sketchy part of this week. We were not able to fall asleep for who knows why, but about 11:00 pm we heard what sounded like gun shots - super close to our apartment. At first we thought it was the complex maintenance man shooting birds with his pellet gun, but sure enough two minutes later - there were like 20 cop cars, more shots fired and a police helicopter chase. All this happened two blocks away from our apartment in a nearby park. It was cool seeing the helicopter with the big spot light, but dang, it was pretty scary!

Thursday:  We did service at Beads of Courage and afterwords we ate lunch. Then, we went to contact an investigator that we will probably have to drop, who knows, it’s not going so well. He has a cat that was basically Satan, lol.  He kept attacking us…Satan cat…is all have to say about that, lol. After a decent lesson we did more finding, then we had dinner with the W___s, again. They are awesome!  After dinner we went to our 6:00 appointment, which fell through. So, we invited some investigators to come play ultimate frisbee with us and the elders quorum. Only one showed up -  they are moving for the summer....grr so upsetting. We just keep losing this week. 

Friday: We woke up and went to Beads of Courage again. After lunch, we did our weekly planning at the Fort Lowell Ward building - where our ward meets. It is the oldest functioning church building in AZ. Its super cool and old - the Chapel has stained glass. But, the down side is a bunch of hobos stay there at night.  They either break in or ward members accidentally leave it unlocked... they also sleep under an overhanging part of the roof outside the church building.  While we were doing our weekly planning at 3:00, we heard the voices of 4 people shooting up who knows what kind of drugs. It was weird and scary because they had a gun....That’s Tucson for yah. After that we got to set up chairs for a funeral on Saturday. Then we had dinner on our own.  We went to Panda Express and got take out for diner.  Then we had studies and planning for Saturday.

Elder Thompson getting ready to do some Panda Express damage

After Taco Tuesday and Taco Salad Wednesday, you just got to scratch that Panda Express itch

Saturday was a weird day.  We went to the funeral. It was super long and sad, but it was good with lots of laughter. So that was good. Then we had an appointment at 1:00 that fell through. So we went finding again, until our next appointment.  That appointment fell through, too. After all the finding we’ve done all week we just needed a break. So we took an hour and read the scriptures until it was time to head out to our next lesson, which…you guessed it…got cancelled.  So, we went out to dinner with some other elders at a make your own 12 inch pizza place. It was good, after that, we did family history from 7 till 8.

Dinner with the parents of one of my favorite families in Duncan!
(they are in this ward!!!)

Sunday:  The block of meetings were good, The sacrament talks were about family and having spiritually safe homes and all that jazz. It was okay, but very repetitive. After church we ate a nice lunch of leftover funeral food. Then, we did studies and some finding until dinner. We had dinner with the A____s. She is from Tahiti and oddly enough makes some killer enchiladas, lol. Then we headed of to do some more finding.  That was our week...kid of bummer to be honest.

I can’t wait to talk to everyone,

Love you.

Elder Dickinson