September 28, 2015

NIACIN. SPIDERS. BEDBUGS. HOORAY.

My fellow Americans,

This past week was tremendous.

Much service rendered, many bedbugs euthanized, and many large spiders uncovered. 

The week went something like this

SERVICE: We cut a forest of a lawn, and used the whimpyest weedeater I have seen in my whole life to get the grass down. It was interesting. 

Here is a picture of us on the way to cut her lawn
​and, as you can tell, there is never an inopportune time to shave. My beautiful companion and I gettin' ready to hit the town or hit the yard, as they call it here. 

We also got to eradicate bed bugs from the apartment of some elders in our district. This included improving my plastic-wrapping skills. I got to wrap 2 mattresses, a beanbag, a couple of pillows, and we almost wrapped the gentleman in the red shirt in the back seat of our car. 

While going to visit other missionaries in our zone, we stumbled upon a rather large arachnid. This specimen measured no smaller than the palm of my hand. I have large hands. This spider was larger than a chips ahoy cookie. Straight up monstrous. 

Niacin time. So, this past week I was, well, tricked into taking a Niacin supplement. Niacin is a natural mineral that helps with bloodflow. For all of you gym junkies out there, you can probably imagine how this one went. I took my 2500% daily value of Niacin that day and pretty soon my whole body was on fire. It wasn't too bad, but then I decided to take a nice warm shower. I almost passed out and was dizzy for a little while. However, about 3 hours later, I was my normal pale self again and forgave my harassers. ​

This past week was a good one for missionary work. We played scripture Jeopardy with a young 10-year-old investigator, and she got up in church and bore her testimony of the gospel. She was very strong. There is a girl in our branch who is going on a mission to Yakima, Washington, and she is a really powerful influence on this branch. It was amazing to see how powerful her testimony was and how it changed the outlook of the branch. We have our spanish classes every week, and we have been getting a good number of people to attend regularly. This last week, we had about 20 people show up, and I taught the class solo again. It is pretty nerve-racking but super fun. We have made some new investigators out of the students in the class, so that is really exciting. 

So, cool spiritual experience this last week. Here we go.
 
So there are these eternigators (a.k.a. they have been investigating the church for an eternity) that we were going to visit, and we weren't being very optimistic. Like we love them and all, but they don't progress or come to church or do anything because they are kind of lazy. So, we get there and we are talking to them (small talk) and then he tells us that he died about two weeks ago. This man, Pedro, installs AC units and was killed with 240V of electricity coursing through him. It should have just blown him back, but for whatever reason, he held on to it and died. He was dead for 18 whole minutes and then was shocked back to life by a defibrillator after the 5th try. He has no brain damage, no effects, nothing. I asked him if he could remember anything from those 18 minutes and he went on to explain to us that he left his body and was flying out of the earth and he could see everything like the universe and all of that stuff. He said that it was pretty crazy and then it all just ended when he was brought back. He went on to explain that he was perfectly fine and then told us of a  car crash that he had been in two years ago. He had been going like 100+ in his truck on the freeway going through Texas and somebody t-boned him. His car rolled over 10 times and then he got out and walked away. I was sitting there dumbfounded. After the car crash is when the missionaries had found him the first time, and that was when he got really serious with the gospel. I asked him what his purpose was or what he thought it was. He was like hmmm I don't know, but I know that there is some reason that I am here. I asked him what he thought it was and he said that it was to spread the gospel. I then knew that I had to find a scripture, but had no idea where it was. It was the scripture that says "this life is the time to prepare to meet God." I wasn't sure where it was, but I prayed really hard in my head and just cracked open the scriptures to the very page that it was on. It was really spiritual. We are going back this week to visit him again. 

So, I thought that was pretty cool. Anyway, I love y'all and hope that you have a fantastic week. My email address is matthew.busi@myldsmail.net so hit me up if y'all want!

Have a BLESSED week!


Elder Matthew Busi