It has been and interesting week here in Mobile. I'll see if I can go over the highlights of the week and as always, I don't have much time.
On Tuesday I was on an exchange with Elder L, our district leader. We did some really good stuff and we also did a lot of tracting since a large portion of our appointments fell through. We didn't mind and we made the best use of our time. I got pretty good scores on my little exchange report thing so that was good. Not perfect fives, but fours and fives. So I passed! (Are you proud of me Mom?) For dinner that night I made a really good corn chowder and it was ridiculously cheap. It was about $5 for the pot and that fed two missionaries. It was really good too.
Our day on Wednesday didn't turn out as expected. I made some scrambled eggs for Elder L but he had already eaten so I had a large plate of scrambled eggs. We traded back and our plan was to go to Prichard. We usually go with a member since missionaries have gotten mugged in that area before and it's apparently the "crib of the 'hood" whatever that means. The member cancelled since something came up so we were back to square one. We did do some good stuff. We taught C the restoration and that went fairly well.
I ate something I don't think I ever have before on Thursday. I ate a whole chicken. We went over to the C's house for dinner and they gave us whole cornish hens! It wasn't as big as a chicken but it was still about the size of a football. That's a lot of chicken. There's a fun restaurant down here called Zaxby's that we went to for lunch. They sell chicken fingers. That's pretty much it. They sell milkshakes and fries as well but their main focus is chicken fingers. Elder O and I talked about how well a Zaxby's franchise would do out in the west. I think it would do well. We managed to see the B's who we've been trying to talk to for several weeks. They kept rescheduling on us and finally we got in. They're a really nice family and we had a nice chat and invited them back to church.
I scrubbed some pretty nasty stuff on Friday. It was gross. We were cleaning up some stuff and found petrified... something underneath a burner on the stove. I think it was mostly grease at one point but I don't think it was anymore. It was about a quarter of any inch thick and was about the consistency of granite counter top. It ripped paper towels to shreds and all purpose cleaner just got it wet. Elder O and I then decided to break out the big guns. We found a large bottle under the sink called "mean green". It had green translucent liquid in it. We poured some it on the grease and slowly it began to break it up. It took about 30 minutes to clean it all up. I had to wear gloves because the mean green stuff told me to wear gloves when using this product. For dinner that night we were taken out by the B's who took us to this place called "the shed". When we arrived it looked like a shed. A large shed, but a shed. It had corrugated aluminum siding all over the walls and just junk affixed all over the place. It was just really interesting. They had some really good barbecue and it was actually a nice restaurant inside. I had pulled pork. I grabbed a menu which was printed to look like it was hand scribbled on a piece of cardboard. It was cool. We had some really good conversation with Sister B about some of the less actives that she's working with and what we can do to help.
We were up bright and early on Saturday so we could be at the stake center in Theodore at 7 o'clock. The M's picked us up and took us to the bishop's storehouse and we helped out with distributing things (Grandma and Grandpa I saw the canned peaches and thought of you). It took a few hours but we got everything done. We went out for Subway after with the M's. We had some good visits with some less active members as well as some investigators.
I had to give a talk in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. I actually completely forgot about it until the morning of. Luckily PEC was cancelled due to the time change and I had some time to prepare. The topic was "my purpose as a missionary". I think I did a pretty good job so it went well. I'm still working on my public speaking skills. We went over to the L's (Sister L grew up in Corvallis) and had dinner which was really good. They made us fried fish and uber potatoes. I actually enjoyed the fish which was strange because I usually don't like fish. We tried to visit several other people but most weren't home. We did manage to contact a less active member that we've been trying to catch for a few weeks now so that was really good.
The pictures are from lunch one day. We had a large bag of roasted peanuts that a member gave us since she owns a peanut shop. We shelled the large quantity of peanuts into a bowl (first picture). It took about 45 minutes to shell all the peanuts. Then Elder O tried to spell his name with the peanuts but he ran out of peanuts (second picture). It was pretty funny.
Sorry I don't have many pictures. I didn't take many this week.
I love and miss you all.
Elder Matthew Carlson
