Elder Adams in Yakima: Week 83 - In which we brunch with the Zone, clean windshields, and carol for Christmas

Week #83

(written 26 Dec 2017)

Hi everyone! To preface this, Elder Shoemaker is really good at doing tons of math in his head. He's a boss.

Today is weird, mainly because our P-Day is shortened today. Because of that, we're emailing a little earlier than usual so we can squeeze everyone in.

This week was pretty ordinary. We were with Elder Ruesch for the evening on Monday and most of Tuesday. It was good.

We kept trying to visit a less-active member of the ward, an 18-year old young woman named Lorna. We ended up starting to teach her dad, Ernesto! He's really nice and Catholic.

Honestly, Christmas was fantastic. We had a Zone Brunch with chocolate chip pancakes and eggs and bacon while watching The Best Two Years. Christmas Eve, we went caroling with and then ate with the Bergesons. They are really nice.

Not much else happened this week except it snowed a bunch and we scraped/cleaned off people's cars.

Love you all! There is really not anything else that happened this week.

Love,

Elder Adams

Questions from Editors Mom & Dad

What was your favorite moment on Christmas this year? - One of my favorite moments was cleaning off people's windshields from snow and ice. We have an amazing scraper tool that is basically a giant monster-destroyer. It's seriously huge, extendable to 5-or-so feet, and has what is basically a full-fledged broom on the end. It knows no fear for ice or snow. It even has a squeegee on the same end as the broom! Anyway, in order to make everyone's Christmas bright, we cleaned off most of the cars in our nearest apartment parking lot from ice and snow, just because we could. It was enormously satisfying. Afterwards, someone even made us some delicious hot pumpkin spice apple cider. It was awesome.

Do you have any thoughts on how you will carry the Christmas spirit throughout the year? How will you continue to light the world? - We'll honestly probably just do what we normally do. As a missionary, the Christmas Spirit is pretty close to the Normal Spirit. I guess I'll try to remember to do what, in the words of Elder Oaks in the last Worldwide Missionary Broadcast, was just to "keep on keepin' on".

Have you picked up any sports skills from Elder Shoemaker? - No.

What is the best thing about your current area? - There is a lot of support from local members, and the church is extremely well established here. It's one of the strongest Spanish branches I've seen, and could probably even be a ward. In addition, our side of Moses Lake is the awful side of town, so people are generally pretty humble. Either that, or drunk or high. Not like Toppenish, though.

Pictures

Me with a hook used to pull out turkeys from a giant box at the Food Bank.

My sweet voice recorder:

This is an interesting house in our area, in a neighborhood known as "The Base" because it used to be an Air Force Base. See if you can spot what is strange about this picture of an otherwise ordinary front yard. Hint: Zoom in and really SEARCH. I'll send you another email with the answer.