Week 100 (9/21/2020) Week 100

 Dear y'all,

This weeks highlight reel has some actual highlights, so buckle your seatbelts, make the big bar make the little clackety sounds as you pull it down, an attendant will come by and check.it for safety. 

On Tuesday we got to meet L__ H__, someone who got interested in the church talking to some members, who she is currently living with. The members are the B__'s, which sounded very familiar to me when I first heard the name. Indeed, when we arrived at their house, they called their brother down to join us for dinner...and it was a member I knew from the Jasper branch! He didn't specifically remember me, but it is crazy how small a world it is. Anyways, we had an awesome lesson with L__. Definitely a case of someone who has been kept from the truth simply because she didn't know where to find it. During our lesson, she kept exclaiming that we were giving her puzzle pieces she had searched for for years. 

We also had exchanges this week, which went fine. I am never a huge fan of exchanges, since they just break up the normal routine, so I wasn't sad when the virus made those unavailable, but they have decided that we can do them again. 

We are looking at a hurricane dumping through the next couple of days. It looks like it is slow moving and filled with rain, so they are anticipating a good amount of flooding in low lying areas. We may be spending the foreseeable future mucking out houses once it passes through. It certainly is a record breaking year for disaster. It really makes you appreciate all of the time when there isn't something catastrophic going on around you. Which is most of the time, really. 

I hear the smoke mostly cleared at home, at least for now, so I hope everyone back that direction breathes deep and clear.

Elder DeFord

Week 99 (9/14/2020) It's Been a Week

 Heyo,

It started out a week like any other. And pretty much stayed that way. Well, I mean, last week was transfers, so Elder Johnson has been settling in. I believe I already mentioned that he is from the Seattle area? Well, we are both glad we can at least breathe the air here. It looks like the whole #can'tbreathe movement took it a little far in the pacific northwest. 

We had a great lesson with L__, the right L__, for anyone remembers that fiasco from about a month ago. She is loving the Book of Mormon, and was going to log into our broadcasted church service, but slept through it. Next week!

We also got a call from a member here in the area, saying that they have a friend investigating the church! So we are going to teach them here this week. Sounds like she has a lot of interest!

Still working on Facebook, and by working, I mean making videos at a slow rate. But if anyone wants to like the page, it is Followers of Jesus Christ in Summerwood TX. 

Well, there we go, love from Texas

Elder DeFord

Week 98 (9/8/2020) Laura Continues

 Y'all,

It is still just incredible to me to see the destruction that winds can cause. We went out to help cleanup in Lake Charles again this weekend, and I just wish we could do more. While some buildings emerged completely unscathed, others have 50 ft trees through their roofs, or the wind just completely blew the roof off. We saw one house that had previously been on stilts, but got knocked down. The only reason you could tell that it didn't used to be a ground floor house is the car crushed halfway underneath it. And there is so little we can do to help, we can tarp roofs and process fallen trees, but so much of this work will have to be done by professionals, to get power back to these people. The fellow we were helping on Saturday said that they might not get power back until January. It is all tragic.

Speaking of the hurricane cleanup, yours truly is on the churches news article about it. You have to scroll through the pictures a little, and ignore the mask, but Elder Gregory and I are in there. And speaking of Elder Gregory, he is headed home tomorrow, so a big salute to him. I am staying in Eaglesprings, Elder Johnson is my new companion. It will be nice to continue to be able to work with the S__'s and the rest of the ward, I am looking forward to it. 

Oh! For anyone wondering, Elder Saftsen, my last companion, is currently on the airplane to Sweden, so he is finally getting to go to his original assignment! He stopped by yesterday to say bye on his way to the mission home. 

Other than that, we filmed some videos for Facebook, taught some repentance, baptized converts, well, not the last one. But hopefully here in the next month. 

Elder DeFord

P.s. we had to take another Elder to a doctor's appointment in Houston, so we got to stop by the Houston Temple and take pictures. 

Week 97 (8/31/2020) Laura

Does anyone else find it slightly ironic that we give hurricanes people names? I guess we can't imagine nature being so cruel, so we have to humanize it to justify the destruction?

In any case, for anyone worried about my safety, I think we got a single raindrop from Laura. She ripped up Lake Charles, which is in the mission, but didn't come as far west as us. All of our eastern missionaries got evacuated, so we had a companionship staying with us for Tuesday through Thursday. Luckily their area wasn't affected, so they were able to head home. Some of our missionaries won't be home for awhile, until power is up in Lake Charles and Beaumont again. We were definitely lucky to be spared from this one. 

Two days after the storm, we packed up for our first work crew. Arriving in Lake Charles was like arriving on the set of an apocalypse movie. Trees just snapped right in half, entire roofs torn away, electric poles and power lines laying in the street, street lights just gone. I mean, wow. It was tragic just to see the swath of destruction. It is lucky that is was moving as fast as it was...had Laura been a slow moving storm, there might not have been a Lake Charles left to go help. There was no flooding, so our service consists of tarping roofs and cleaning debris,  mostly. This is going to be one for the professionals to handle, in the long run. There are huge crews of electrical trucks ready to start working on the infrastructure. 

Sunday we were going back to work, so we had an early sacrament meeting in our grubbies, then loaded up for the long drive back to Louisiana. We had to rush back from that one a little early, because Saturday night I was asked to play at a fireside Sunday night, so we had to get back. We barely made it with time to change, no shower or food, but at least we made it. And the fireside went well, although my piano solos sounded like I hadn't played them in a month...which is true, I didn't even have time to run through them before the concert. So that was an exciting little trip. 

Other than that, Elder Gregory and I made another unsuccessful gator-hunt nature walk. This is his last week, so we will have to try again. 

I am sure there was more, but Laura definitely overshadowed everything else. What a drama queen. 

Signing out, safe but slightly burnt,

Elder DeFord