Hi Mom,
Just some humor, I'm fine, explain more latter.
This week was a really fun, crazy week. Monday through Thursday were according to schedule. We had two exchanges during that time, one with the Zone Leaders and one with the Assistants. They were really good and we saw a lot of cool miracles on them.
Thursday we had Zone Conference down in the Van Nuys. All the missionaries in the Spanish side of the mission were there and we sang "I'll never no never no never forsake" as a farewell to President and Sister Hall. It's a cool story. So this was Presidents last Zone Conference (they leave next Monday) and there's this song called "fear not" and the last verse of the song is the seventh verse of "How Firm a Foundation" so a district sang all of "Fear Not" and on a signal from one of the singers, we all stood and sung the last verse with them. It was pretty cool. After that we had lunch and then testimonies from all the departing missionaries and President and Sister Hall.
Friday's when things started getting interested. Before I go on, I want to reassure you that I am fine. No broken bones, no cuts, not even a head ache. One-hundred-percent fine. Now about the car crash. I was driving... not. They actually won't let me drive. So what happened is Elder Deyholos, Elder Tyus, and I are doing weekly planning (because we had to move it from Thursday do Friday for Zone Conference) and we get a call from Hermana Bedell and Hermana Salazar (they're the other missionaries in our branch). Elder Tyus answers the phone and starts a normal conversation. "Hi how are you" "I'm fine" sort of a thing, and Hermana Salazar is on the other end of the phone in a very normal, unstressed voice and says something like "Well.. we just had a car crash." We immediately drop our planning and grab the bare necessities, First aid kit, badge, camera, and run out the door, literally. The only hold up was praying for safety as we drove and going back once or twice for things we forgot in our rush. We get to the accident scene and the hermanas are just sitting there on the side of the road with all their stuff outside of the car. Elder Tyus takes immediate control over the situation., He tells Elder Deyholos to take pictures of the scene and I start working on the paper work for the church. Hermana Bedell got a little banged up, so he had Hermana Salazar do some first aid. My job probably took the longest and I kept having to interrupt conversations to get the information I needed. We'd also called 911 to get an ambulance and a cop on the scene, and that just added to the chaos. What had happened is the Hermanas were coming back from service at the Gibbons Center. They were driving down the road and were almost at the apartment when a Toyota van decided to turn Right onto their street without checking to see if it was clear (that seems to be a thing here). So the van T-boned them and another car was waiting to make a left and thought she could make it, but the hermanas flew across the road and the car rear ended them and pulled off a tire. After we got the accident scene figured out, we ran to the hospital to check on the hermanas. They were fine, but they asked us to give them blessings. They only allow two people to visit in the ER, so Elder Tyus and I gave the blessings. It was super spiritual. Later, the Sister Training Leaders (Hemanas Lopez and Jensen) and nosotros went to Food 4 Less to buy the hemanas some emergency supplies (oh, here's where we gave away half of the cocoa powder) and then we ended the day with the rest of Planamiento Semenal, or what of it we could do. During Companionship Inventory, I learned that I can't give feedback to save my life, so I'm going to work on that this week. Also, while we were at the Hospital, we met this English member who was visiting her grandpa (she lives in Utah). She asked us if we could give him a blessing, but he wasn't awake so we gave her our number just in case.
Saturday, we started by going to the house of President Mendez to do some service, but part way through the Hermanas texted us to see if we could get them an egg Mc-Muffin, so we left to fill that order and got them two shakes. We then went back to president's house to finish, but we didn't have much left to do, so we finished out and then they fed us lunch. It was really good. We then went straight to proselyting and ended the day with two new investigators.
Sunday was stressful. Elder Villanueva taught me how to learn a melody line on the piano and I still know how to play it with my fingers. The Branch found this out when I played for Elder Villanueva and asked me to play the piano for Sacrament last week. I told them I needed the hymns at least a week in advance and it took tell Saturday at lunch for me to get them. So I had 24 hours to learn and practice the hymns. on top of that the English sister form the hospital called us and asked if we could come to the hospital to give a blessing. So we took part of our pre-church preparation time to go to the hospital. When we got there we called her and she said that her husband was there with another priesthood holder, so we ran back to church to give the Sunday school lesson, which we only found out we were doing that day, luckily the teacher showed up and we had some free time to practice the hymns. I also spent all of the second hour, Priesthood, practicing and learning the hymns. Finally Sacrament came and I was so nervous. I didn't know what I was doing. I managed the first hymn pretty well, The spirit kept reminding me what to do. The second one was "I Stand All Amazed". I know this one. I played it for Elder Villanueva. This will be easy. Nope, I bumbled and fumbled my way through it. I then started looking at the hymns and playing them, in my head, while looking at the piano. Trying very hard to imagine where to put my fingers and what it would look like as I struck the note. I did alright with the next two. NOTE: PRACTICE PIANO NOW, NOT ON STAGE OR ON THE STAND AT SACRAMENT. It really would have helped if I'd know what I was doing. after sacrament, actually, during the last hymn (I know because I had the phone in my pocket and it was distracting) we got a couple hundred texts from the English sister asking us to come to the hospital one more time to give a blessing. Apparently they didn't get the chance before and so we ran back and gave the blessing. It was cool. We then went to dinner and called it a night.
Oh and Elder Tyus flooded the kitchen with soap doing dishes some day before Thursday (I don't remember which)
Love Elder Michael Blanding
Called to Serve my King
P.S. YES HE IS.
