RATTLESNAKE ROUND UP

March 16, 2015

Well to start off, we didn't go to the Rattlesnake Round-Up. But, this place was poppin'. There were THOUSANDS of cars early Saturday afternoon here in town! Our church building is right down the street from where they have the Round-Up so there was just a huge line of cars on the main road that our church sits on! I literally just didn't know what to do Saturday. The rest of the town just felt dead. It was actually pretty normal for a Saturday, but knowing that there was a crazy even happening in another part of town just made everything feel dead. So that was interesting. The big attraction though was the carnival. That place was packed! On Friday afternoon the Round-Up parade went right past the church so we just sat on the lawn with our branch president and his wife to watch it. It was LAME. It was like 5 minutes long with nothing very exciting. Kuna's parades kick its trash.

We've just had beautiful weather the last week or two. It’s been right around 70 degrees every day and some days there is a nice pleasant breeze to enjoy as well! I am enjoying it while it last because it’s going to be scorching here pretty soon!

 

On Wednesday we were out biking for just a little bit before we went to Larry's when my back tire went flat because of a goat head. As we were walking the bikes back to the apartment (we were close luckily) we walked underneath a tree and a bird up in the tree decided that it needed to excrete some waste. So it decided to do it right on my head................. luckily I was still wearing my helmet though! I had thoughts of taking my helmet off but decided that I may as well leave it on so I didn't have to carry it. Looking back I can honestly say that the spirit was telling me that. My thoughts were def not normal thoughts when thinking about that. So thankfully I followed its impressions and didn't get bird crap on my hair/head!

One afternoon we rode past the track on our bikes. It looked like they were having combined middle school/high school practice. The throwers were right next to the road and one kid yelled over "Nice bikes!" in a sarcastic voice and then they were talking about us and laughing. I just said "Thanks dude! They are pretty nice!" and just laughed and thought, "Dude, you don't even know. Let me come to track practice some day with you and we'll see who's laughing then. I'll even throw shot put with you to make it fair...". Kids these days.

We knocked quite a bit this week. We tried to locate some areas where we didn't think had been hit very much by missionaries. We found some pretty good potentials that hopefully let us teach them later when we try back. We haven't had any success with any of them yet. We did run into some pretty interesting stuff though. We started talking to this one man, correction... he started talking to us, and he was nuts. He was going on and on. Well, long story short, I was working him for a period of about 10 minutes (we were standing there for like 45 minutes) just asking him some sweet questions and actually had him at a loss for words a couple times. It was pretty sweet. However, it got the a point where he started talking about conspiracy theories and crap and we just lost him so I got us out of there with some smooth escape skills. Escape skills are very useful and luckily I have gotten pretty good at getting out of situation where people are just talking and talking and talking and talking! Another cool knocking story... we were up knocking some more rich area houses when this lady came to the door. She was very nice and said she was familiar with our religion because she wrote a paper about it for school. I asked her what school she went to and she said TCU. So I naturally brought up how I am from Boise and a BSU fan and we had a nice quick chat about the rivalry we had for a couple years. Go Broncos!!!! Unfortunately TCU was really good this past season but whatevs.

Our new branch president has been great so far! We had branch council yesterday and it was a very productive meeting! We hadn't really had one of those since I have been here but good things are in store for the Sweetwater Branch! I am excited for the next 5 weeks and who knows if I'll stay longer after that. But it should be good!

On Friday we went out to the Patton's and we painted their little garage thing! I know that "little garage thing" isn't very descriptive... but whatever. It’s just a little garage that doesn't even fit a car in it. It is just made from tin but has wood finish and corners. So we spent about 2.5 hours painting and got it all done! It was great fun! I am a beast painter! One of the best around, I'd say. Sis. Patton's brother is in town visiting as well and he reminds me of Uncle Quin! So shoutout to Uncle Quin! You da man!

Teaching this week was slow. We did the usual people like always. We did run into this guy though that I talked to one of my first weeks here that we were never able to get a hold of again. He was super interested back then, but when we taught him on the spot outside he didn't seem very interested anymore. Which is sad. But we are continuing to find new potential investigators but we have just had problems with them opening their doors when they come back! Its been a goal to try to teach more on the spot but that is hard to do most of the time. But we have some real solid potentials that we can hopefully teach this week!

I had chicken fried steak for the second week in a row this week! This time it was at the Patton's and it was way good! Better than last week, and last week's was pretty dang good too! I love Texas food!

Well I hope y'all have a good week! And good luck to my boy Kevin as he departs on Wednesday for the MTC and then to TEXAS!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Reed Ericson