Monday, November 24, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving From Texas

Dear Family & Friends:
Happy Thanksgiving to everybody!
This week has been pretty good. I did get a few of the birthday packages, the UPS ones can't be forwarded, so I'm going to have to wait until somebody from the mission office drives up here. We have interviews on the 3rd, so I'll definitely get them all by then. I also got some cards numbered 1, 3, and 4, so hopefully #2 is on its way! Anyway, it was a great birthday. We found out that one of the guys we are teaching had his 21st birthday on that same day, too!
We had two pretty crazy things happen on Tuesday. We have a meeting every Tuesday morning with all of the Elders in our District, and so we decided to put our bikes on the bike rack behind the other elders' car so that way they could drop us off afterward and we wouldn't have to bike. As we were strapping up the bikes, this lady came up to us and said that she felt like she needed to talk to us. She had just been randomly wandering around our apartment complex because she was having a really, really bad day and saw us. Turns out her marriage is about to break up, and she was feeling devastated. We were able to get her address and go over to visit with her later and help her out with a gospel lesson about self esteem.
As we were loading the bikes on the rack, we put mine on first and then my companion's. As we were driving down the freeway, Elder Hartner, who was driving, said, "Oh no! We lost one of the bikes!" We quickly pulled over and got out, and Elder Veater's bike had popped off the bike rack and fell all the way off. One of the spokes on his front wheel had miraculously latched onto the pedal of my bike, so we dragged the bike with us as we pulled over. The other crazy part was that both bikes were 100% fine except that Elder Veater's bike seat got scratched up a tiny bit. It was pretty crazy!
After District Meeting we found this seafood place that has a $2.50 all-you-can-eat plate on Tuesdays only, so it looks like we're going to make that a Tuesday tradition from now on. We have already been invited by so many members for Thanksgiving, so are going to get pretty fat!
Ryan
P.S. The lady that came up to us on Tuesday is going through a super tough time, and we have done our best to find words of wisdom to help her. I was wondering what kind of advice anyone has for somebody in this situation. Does anyone have a favorite scripture or song or anything like that we could use to help her? Write soon and let me know. Thanks a lot!