News from CAM                                                                 August 29,2016

Dear Loved Ones All,

Sorry I didn’t get an e-mail off last week.  Can’t even remember why I thought I was so busy.  I have repaired six pair of pants, my nightgown, and made one of Elder Macbeth’s long sleeved shirts into short sleeves.  I made several cards, gone with the Sister missionaries to several lessons, and we served lunch for two zone conferences as well as Mary’s Kitchen.  It was nice when our turn for zone conference came so that we could be spiritually fed as well as eat chicken and steak dinner.  Elder Wong who is in charge of the lunches at zone conferences (as well as the person who changes the oil and brakes in the mission cars while the missionaries are enjoying the conference) is a master mind at frugality.  The steak and chicken lunch came out to be under $2.00 per person for two of the days, and $2.13 the other day because he couldn’t get enough steak at the good price).  I attended an R.S. enrichment night where we made 72 hour kits.  So now I have an up-dated kit that would lack water if I needed to use it.  I just threw out my plastic milk jugs that I could have filled so we would be able to have our 2 gallons each.  Really I think I should just go buy enough to put in with our kits. I wonder how long they are good for.

We have spent quite a bit of time at the hospital visiting K.  The ward and/or missionaries have had to go into his apartment about every 6 months to help him shampoo his carpets and to help clean.  Well, by the time he had been in the hospital about a week he asked us if we could go into his apartment and clear out the fridge and straighten the kitchen and bathroom.  One of the councilors in the bishopric came with us. OH-H-H-H MY!  When we opened the door the carpet moved, tons of bugs were scurrying up and down the walls, there were piles of dirty clothes and stuff everywhere!  Needless to say we spent the next six hours with me washing dirty dishes and clearing the counters.  Elder Macbeth spent the whole time emptying the fridge and washing it inside and out.  When he moved the empty fridge it was black underneath from all the bug droppings.  Brother Bodily spent the whole time cleaning the bathroom.  By then we took a much needed break and went home, had some lunch and went to a baptism at which I was leading the music.  Elder Macbeth and I went back at 4:00 and cleaned some more in the kitchen until 8:00pm. When we returned the keys to Keith in the hospital.  At ward council on Sunday we got more people to meet us back at K’s apartment, and for the next two mornings at least 5 (and sometimes 9 of us) worked trying to unbury the main parts of the apartment. He had so much outdated food, moldy bread, and stuff in every room under all kinds of piles.  We filled a dumpster and a half with stuff.  There were at least 5 jumbo bags of laundry, and 4or 5 bags of plastic to recycle.   We felt like we had worked hard, but in reality. It needs at least another 3 or 4 days to go through all his stuff that we didn’t even touch.  And something definitely has to be done about all those bugs.

The rest of our time between our normal duties were spent trying to plan a “Book of Mormon” Kick Off Social.  The bishop wanted a taco bar to start the evening which I turned over to the ward council.  I was in charge of coming up with things for little kids while Elder Macbeth worked on the presentation for the adults.  He enlisted the help of an in-active that has started to come to church to help him with making a presentation that could be projected up on the big screen.  They must have worked on that for 3 days, sometimes late into the night.  I’m sure that it must have been important, because all kinds of things kept going wrong - especially technology problems.  It took us all day to set up.  I’m happy to report that all of the problems were adequately worked around during the presentation.  I had 4 kids to deal with after the dinner…an 11 year old new convert, his 7 year old sister, an almost 4 year old boy, and his almost 2 year old little sister.  It was a little challenging, but thank goodness one of the member’s granddaughter was visiting and she volunteered to come help.  We traded off working with the younger kids and the older ones. The whole presentation seemed to be well received.  By the time I got home, though, I had a stuffed up head and a sore throat.

Saturday I slept in late.  I got up in time to go to the baptism of one of the sister who has been attending our Book of Mormon reading class.  She is an awesome lady.  After the baptism we stopped at Costco to gas up, did a little other grocery shopping. And I was done for.  Not a very inspiring 2 weeks but there you have it.

Hope this finds everyone well and happy.  I am looking forward to a much more normal missionary week.

Love you all, Sister and Elder Macbeth