Insanity

This week was seriously insane. The most bizarre  stuff happened to us! It was so funny!

Monday: 

- Our toilet stopped working. It wouldn't exactly....flush. And when it did, it'd fill up to the brim. Sister R and I would stand there, flush it, watch it rise and say, "No....no! Noooo!" It never over flowed, thankfully. I tried plunging it a good hundred times and it didn't work. Finally our solution was to flush it over and over again until it worked. Somehow that managed to fix the problem. 

- We went to a super, super ghetto car wash. We pay our 7 bucks and start driving. Now, it wasn't on a conveyer belt, so we just had to coast on through. A few seconds pass. Nothing. 

Then it happened. 

It randomly spat water at us. And it startled us so bad that Sister R accidentally pushed the gas and sped forward a little. So now we're sitting in the soap section. Nothing's happening. So we move to the drying section. Again, nothing's happening. So Sister R's like, "This is stupid. We're going." 

We start to exit, when this screen pops up and says, "Stop." 

So we stop.

"Back up." 

Um....okay. 

So we back up. 

Then it tells us to stop, and pull forward. So we do!

Then it tells us to stop and back up again.

We did this process probably about...oh I don't know. Four or five times? Just backing up and pulling forward over and over again until finally Sister R said, "OKAY. IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE?!" And we left, with our car STILL sopping wet, and it looked a whole lot dirtier than when we first went in. 

Tuesday: 

- After a not-so-lovely chat with a less-active family, we went back to our apartment. As we're climbing up the stairs, Sister R stops and says, "Um....how hard are you praying right now?"

......"You left the keys in the apartment." 

"Yup."

Our door was locked. Fantastic. So we go to our landlord's door and bang on it, hoping in vain that he's still there. No one answers. We try the neighbors. Again, no one answers. So we call the Mission office and explain the situation and ask for our landlord's phone number. They give it to us, and we call to hear....

"This number has been disconnected." 

Fantastic. 

After leaving a note on both the landlord AND the neighbor's door, we decided to look at the list of local people that we wanted to visit. 

.......twenty minutes later we were done with that. 

(on a side note, I thankfully had taken my sunscreen with me!)

Well it was around lunch, so we thought, "Mine as well grab something to eat." 

And that's when we realized we had left our wallets in the apartment. I had two dollars and sixty one cents floating around in my purse.

Fantastic.

Anyway, I'm still not sure how we filled the time, but thankfully we did. Our dinner appointment called us and said she'd meet us outside the courthouse and pick us up for dinner. We start walking to the courthouse, and then....a downpour starts. 

By now the chorus of "dear to the heart of the shepherd" is running through my head. 

"Out in the desert they wander, hungry and helpless and cold." 

I was really hungry. 

During our dinner appointment, our neighbor calls! We answer it and she says, "Do you guys have a crowbar?" 

"Um...we could borrow one. Why?" 

"Well the other Mormons who used to live here locked themselves out all the time. But they'd use a card to slide through the lock. I don't know how to do that, but I can probably use a crowbar!" 

"...does the landlord not have an extra key?" 

"Nope." 

"Awesome."

Our dinner appointment loans us her crowbar and drops us off at the apartment. We didn't have time to run inside before our teaching appointment, so we sprint down the street, crowbar in hand (we even took one of the sketchy streets because we had said crowbar!)

After our lesson we get home....and somehow our neighbor had managed to use that card-through-the-lock trick and got us in! Hurrah! 

Lesson learned. 

Thursday -  

We carpooled up with the Elders to Utica for special training, where we got to see all my MTC buddies! This was the first time I experienced intense homesickness since getting to New York. Why? Because the ENTIRE thing was just farmland. And cows. And horses. And farmland. I was seriously suffocating in farmland. Finally I was like, "I miss living in a city.......SO much." But we played a game with the Elders where whenever we passed some sort of farm animal we'd stick our head out the window and yell, "HEY COWS" or "HEY SHEEP" or my personal favorite "HEY LLAMAS!" and however many turned towards you is however many points you got. 

I lost. 

Friday - 

After seeing all my MTC buddies, having an awesome special training meeting, eating ice cream,  AND spending the night at my MTC companion, Sister J, and her companion's apartment we headed back to Owego where we had a dinner appointment. We ate chicken. Said chicken may have been sitting out for a while.

Saturday -

My companion and I got sick from said chicken. We spent a lot of time in the bathroom that day. 

Our landlord also got married to the love of his life! Apparently they're moving to California....but they're still going to be our landlord....from California. Okay then. 

The best part was they had the reception in the apartment above us. It was curfew, so we're walking up the stairs to our apartment when our neighbor says,

"Oh hey, you can come upstairs and say hi to them if you want!"

"Oh it's actually curfew so...."

She just stared at us. And I was thinking, "why does she look so confused?" 

Then I realized that we're two adults living on our own....and we have a curfew. I didn't really want to take the time to explain this so I said, "Like your shirt. It's cute." and went inside.

Sunday -

Still sick. I was laying on the couch yelling, "CAN WE JUST CALL SISTER WIRTHLIN BECAUSE I NEED A MOMMY CAUSE I'M SICK!" then Sister R said no and to take a pill. 

So I did and I felt better.

And guess who came to church! Our investigator and the lady with the donkeys! We went over to say hi to the lady who owns the donkeys and she showed us a birthday present she got - it was that picture of Mary riding the donkey while she was pregnant with Christ. She talked about how pretty it was!

I love my mission :)

I'm sending a few pictures from Special training, including one of Elder Taylor and I. The story behind this is: the photographer timed it perfectly where we were both talking. We looked at the picture, looked at each other and said, "....and let's let it be."