Physically Demanding Weekend; News from Ammon West Stake

19 April 2010

Dear Family:

This week has been pretty good. We had a crazy weekend, though.

Friday night we took a nonmember family to the Idaho Falls Visitor's Center. We went in to see the Joseph Smith movie, and even now they still have one or two boxes of tissues on every row. The family looked kind of confused about that. But during the movie, the mother started crying when Alvin Smith was dying. She would cry periodically throughout the rest of the movie.

At the end she could hardly say anything. She was so choked up. Then she said, "Now I know why they have so many boxes of tissues here!"

Then on Friday night we went on exchanges in the Central stake with Elder Potts. On Saturday morning at 8 o'clock all four of us helped a nonmember family move to the South stake, That took until noon. (On Friday morning we had helped another family move, too."

Then on Saturday afternoon we helped one of the ward mission leaders in the Central stake do yardwork. Again, that was all four of us. Then we went to a dinner appointment. Just as we were walking out of the dinner appointment, the ward mission leader called and said his basement had flooded! He needed our help. We arrived at about 6:30. Every room in the basement had some sort of water damage. As we walked on the carpet, the water would just squirt. He had a ton of stuff down there. It took us until 1:00 a.m. to finish the night's work! Then we didn't get home until 1:15 or 1:20 or so. We didn't get to bed until closer to 2:00 a.m., and we had to get up at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday. It was the longest, most physically demanding weekend of my mission so far.

Sunday we were absolutely exhausted. But it was a very good day! The family that went to the Visitors Center with us came to church! We think they even bought their young boy some Sunday clothes. They had expressed some concerns about being accepted, but at church several people came up to them and introduced themselves, and the family was very excited. Then, after sacrement meeting, two or three boys came up to their son and asked him to go to class with them. That made the parents so happy. Then other people came up and helped the parents feel comfortable at Sunday school.

That ward had a girl speak who is going on a mission to Hungary, so there were a lot of people there from different parts of town, including one family from the Ammon West Stake. They had helped us reactivate a family. They told me that that family had just gone to the temple on Saturday! That makes me so happy to hear all that.

Thank you again for all of your letters and support.

Love,
Elder Call