Week 39, followed by the earlier weeks I missed.

Week 39, June 18, 2018

Hey, what's up people?

I'm really sorry to disappoint you guys, but nothing out of the ordinary happened this week. I know I say that every few weeks but this time I mean it. It's kind of strange because I'm sure if I weren’t used to being a missionary I would have so many stories to tell from this week. It’s just that at this point I'm so used to basically every crazy thing that happens that it doesn't even stay in my memory.

For p-day this week we went to an "escape room."
We survived The Joker's Trap

I'm sure that a large part of that is the fact that I've been in the same area this whole time. I'm sure that I'll get transferred sometime soon... ish... And I'm assuming that when that happens I'll have a lot of fresh exciting stories, but right now I feel like I've seen basically everything this tiny part of the world has to throw at me.

Seeing as you're reading this I'm guessing you want to hear from me for some reason. So, rather than ending this weekly report here I will finish off with a totally non-gospel-oriented topic, that has nothing to do with the week I've had.

So I am happy to present to you "Eli LaFond's definitive list of the best animals!"

#7

The seventh best animal is the rhinoceros. Rhinos are awesome because they look like dinosaurs and their babies are adorable. There's a really cool sketch of a rhino that my favorite Renaissance artist did without ever seeing a rhino in person. 

#6

Number six is the cuttlefish. The cuttlefish is awesome because it can change the color, texture, and shape of its skin at will. It can change its color so well that it can literally turn itself into a strobe light to daze its prey. It's also amazing because it has some of the best camouflage in the animal kingdom, despite being colorblind. Modern scientists still don't know how the cuttlefish knows what color to change to if it can't see what color its surroundings are. 

#5

At five we've got the Colossal Squid. It's a forty foot long monster with tentacles covered in spikes. Enough said. 

#4

At number four, we’ve got twice as many feet with the eight foot, or octopus. The octopus is amazing because of how smart they are, especially because they don't have a brain. Rather than having one central brain they have brain cells all throughout their body that work together; this allows them to tear off one of their eight tentacles and have it swim away to distract predators. They also can change the color of their skin. Oh, and get this, the only hard part of their body is their beak, meaning that they can squeeze through any hole larger than their beak. And let's not forget that they can puke out ink. 

#3

Number three is the squirrel. Squirrels are great because they have giant fluffy tails, make funny noises, and can climb up trees really fast. Growing up in western Pennsylvania I would see squirrels all over. We even had one that lived in our yard that got pretty conformable with us that we named Squirt. Squirt had three babies that we would watch climbing up and down the tree they lived in. 

#2

The second best animal is the Caribbean reef shark. There are a lot of different kinds of sharks that are all awesome in their own way, but I don't want to make this list full of nothing but sharks so I decided to limit it to my favorite kind– the Caribbean Reef. They are extremely beautiful, they live in possibly the most beautiful part of the world, and are very friendly. You can look up videos of divers not only swimming with and feeding them, but also hugging and cuddling with them in the sand. 

#1 

The number one best animal in the world is the red panda. A red panda is basically like an Asian raccoon. They're the best because they're smart (ish), have opposable thumbs (ish), can walk on two legs (ish), are red (ish), have an awesome pattern, and are possibly the cutest things on earth. Also my favorite toy I had as a child was a red panda that my grandpa from my mom's side gave me. I named him Hershey because my mom pointed out that his underbelly was the color of chocolate. 

Stay safe and beautiful. 

From the man with a fresh haircut. - Eli

Week 38, June 11, 2018

Hey, what's up people?

We got to have our last interviews with our mission president this week. Once a transfer every missionary gets to have a one-on-one confidential interview with the mission president. Although it's called an interview it's not really anything to stress about, it's just a set-aside time to talk to your mission president about anything you or he wants. Seeing as he is going home in a few weeks he had all the missionaries sign his "Washington DC south mission" flag.

President Huntsman basically told me in our interview that he has no idea what he's going do with me this coming transfer. I will have been in this same area for nine months by the end of this transfer. He told me the mission president handbook says to give each missionary a diverse experience throughout their mission so that they don't get burnt out or fatigued. So he wants to transfer me, but Elder Roper will be going home. So if he transfers me he would have to put two missionaries who are new in the area together, and it's always best for one member of the companionship to have been in the area for a while.

So basically he wants to transfer me, but at the same time, he doesn't want to transfer me. He has yet to receive any revelation on it, so he asked me what I thought he should do. I basically told him I was ready to get out of here but that if it would be best for me to stay one more transfer to train the next missionary they could leave me here. But either way, I'll be really interested to see what happens.

Transition

The other day we went to go teach our first lesson to an Ethiopian we met named Ben. When we got to the house his wife, Ruth, answered and seemed a little skeptical of us. So she left us at the doorstep for a second to go talk to Ben, but she came back with a smile and told us to come in.

We walked into the living room, and there were at least five other people and quite a few balloons. It seemed we had crashed Ben's daughter Faith’s birthday. But apparently Ben thought it would be fun if we were there while they had a lot of family over, so we got to teach an entire extended family about the Book of Mormon. Once again Ruth seemed a little skeptical through the lesson but by the end, she asked if we could get her a Book of Mormon in Amharic.

They had a lot of Ethiopian food that they really wanted to share with us, which basically consisted of beef veggies and a kind of tangy, spongy, tortilla-looking bread. Ethiopians aren't fans of eating utensils, so the idea is that you rip off little pieces of bread, and use that to grab the meat and vegetables. It was really good, and they kept telling us to grab more. Next time we go over will do our best to have empty stomachs.

Stay safe, and don't skip leg day.

From Lexi the nobody. - Eli

Week 37, June 4, 2018

So a couple of interesting things happened this week. I'll start with the less interesting and less uplifting one.

The Less Interesting and Less Uplifting One

Elder Roper and I trying to cheer ourselves up after the loss
of Shadow Fax, by going to a Brazilian steak house. 

So you may know that Elder Roper and I were lucky enough to have a really nice car given to us by the mission. It was a White 2017 Chevy Malibu, that we named Shadowfax, the lord of all mission vehicles. I talk about Shadowfax in past tense because she is no longer in our possession.

You see Shadowfax has a hitch on the back for a bike rack and apparently our vehicle coordinator decided that our area did not need a car with a hitch as much as other areas in the mission. So we had to exchange our car with some other missionaries’. We now have a red 2016 Toyota Corolla. I feel bad because if we had been given this car before we had Shadowfax we would probably like it just fine. But that being said it is one of the oldest cars in the mission, pulls heavily to the right, and it is a little dinged up in a few places – but at least it's a nice color. 

The good thing is that when we name a car our vehicle coordinator officially puts that down as the car’s name on all of his and the mission’s vehicle information boards. So the name Shadowfax will live on until the car is retired and sold. And the even double good thing is that the car we received was unnamed. We decided to name the new car Sakura Chan. Sakura is the name of a character in the television show Naruto. We decided to name the car after her because it's the same color red as her outfit and compared to her teammates Sakura is slow and ineffective.

The more important, and uplifting one

So our mission president and his wife are about ready to get going home. A mission presidency couple serves for three years, and President and Sister Huntsman have been serving for two years and 48 weeks. We were lucky enough to be able to attend their very last zone conference this week. It was really bittersweet for all of us. Many manly tears were shed that day by basically every missionary there. They also showed us a video of the new presidency introducing themselves. They seem really sweet and really excited to meet us. So I currently have the mixed emotions of being excited to meet the new presidency, Brother and Sister Caplan, and also dreading to say goodbye to the Huntsmans.

Stay safe. Drink plenty of fluids.

From ya Boi. Eli