Why is the Devil so Persistant Today?!

Well this week has gone by really fast, hard to believe it’s almost been a month out here already!

This week we did lots of service for people, shoveling snow out from their homes so they don’t flood, it was nice to get to use my hands for something other than knocking doors!
The few days we did tract this week we didn’t do so well, everyone seemed to be drunk the one day.
We were walking down Aspen grove to see how Shyann was doing and these two drunk Indians were walking towards us, I said to Elder Tippets, "here we go" and sure enough the one big Indian stopped us and was like, are you guys Mormons!?  We said yeah, then it was all downhill from there.  He went on about how we shouldn’t go around preaching to everyone about how the lord will help them get out of their addiction because he can’t, only we can help ourselves!! As he was talking he spills his beer all over the place from shaking his hands for emphasis on all his words.  The other kid behind him couldn’t even stand up hardly, he was tripping over himself standing still.  So we talked a bit longer with this guy and then somehow got away so we could do what we came down there to do.  We tried Shyann but as usual she wasn’t home... so we walked back up towards our place to see another person we thought we should talk to.  On the way back we saw those guys again, this time they were driving... and they stopped when they saw us.  The guy we were talking to leaned out the window saying, "we still have some conversation with you" and then they tried turning around in the middle of the road to come back to us.  While they were trying to do that we tried to sneak back behind a house so we didn’t have to waste the rest of our night talking to these guys, but we were to slow.  They called us back, and us being the guys we are, went back trying to use the excuse that we had others we needed to go see, but it didn’t work.  They were like "hey we don’t wanna hurt you, we just wanna talk." "We need your help, isn’t that what you guys do is help people?"  So we talked with them for a good 20-30 min about everything under the sun really.  They had us split up, because they both wanted to talk to us but didn’t want to get out of their car to do it.  Tippets went to the one side with the guy who didn’t like us preaching false things, and I got put with the guy who couldn’t stand up.  His thing he wanted help with was to stop his addiction of choking himself... but I never really got to say much cause he talked the whole time, which I was fine with ha-ha.  Everything I said, or he said, somehow came back to him demonstrating his addiction to me, and saying " you see how my neck is white on this side and dark on the other?  That’s because of my addiction.  You know what my addiction is called?"  That’s pretty well what our conversation was like for the whole time.  Tippets guy even got out of the car to talk to him, and when I saw that he was getting out I was thinking, oh no what did Tippets say... but he was just getting out to demonstrate stuff I guess.  So when we finally got away from them tippets called 911 so they could keep a look out for them on the roads.
After all that, we went to see Kurt who is always fun to talk with cause he's a little different, you can tell the whole time Tippets just wants to get out as soon as he can, but I love it ha-ha
John answered the door and said that they were in there celebrating Kurt’s wife leaving him, Kurt was a little out of it so he told us to probably try back another time.  Just as we were leaving Kurt popped out wondering who John was talking to, and seeing it was us, he insisted on us coming in to visit and wouldn’t take no for an answer.  So we came in and got talking, it didn’t take long to figure out how drunk Kurt was, all we had to do was look at the big target drawn across his fridge with butter knifes sticking out of it, and all the beer cans scattered across the kitchen table.  We have been there enough, that Kurt knows he needs it to be quiet when we come so he went to turn the radio off for us, as he got up he started to walk and then stopped, he looked like he was having some trouble taking the next step, then he turns around and says to me " ah you're on my cape!" then laughs and walks the rest of the way to the radio.  He thinks he’s pretty funny, and it doesn’t help that I laugh at all his little cracks at Tippets or John, or really anything.  He told me I should be the Brille Cream boy or something, looking so nice over there in his kitchen for the ladies ha-ha.  He always says something about me or my hair like that.  As we left he shook our hands and as he shook mine he got real close and then was like " oh no, no kissin!" hahaha he’s an interesting soul, but he’s pretty fun.
On the way home that night we were walking out about half way across the road and a little firefly car comes burning past us, missing us by like 3 feet.  Tippets yells out " Why is the devil so persistent today?!"  He was right, seemed like everywhere we went that day we couldn’t do anything because everyone was drunk or trying to kill us.  But it was a good day none the less.
Earlier this week we taught a guy named Michel on the front steps of a store on Main Street, it was kind of cool.  Little different setting but we felt the truth of our words and I think he did to.
We also had a fun encounter with a U-Haul truck this week.  We were walking down the road going to do some tracting on Queens, and we heard this loud truck coming down a nearby block, from the sounds of it we figured it was a big jacked up truck with the muffler taken off or something, but nope it was a U-Haul truck with a hole in the exhaust burning around town making as much noise as possible.  Later we saw them stuck in the ditch with 5-6 younger guys out trying to get it unstuck.  As we walked by some of them shouted out “oh the Mormons are here!"  and "here come the Mormons!"  But we didn’t pay any attention to them and kept on walking.  They were there trying to get that thing out the rest of the night from what we heard.
Well that’s about how my week was.

Love you all and I hope everything makes sense in the email.  Talk to you next week!

I’m about half way through the B of M now!!!

Do you remember that Costa guy from conference yesterday?  I shook his hand my last day in the MTC!!! He gave almost the same talk there too.

                                  Selfie in our small meeting house.