Priscilla Preaches

"Basic burrito selfie (thanks to Dos Amigos) with a basic filter"

Hey Happy Monday people. This last week was basically crazy and I don't even know how to introduce it to you in a cute introductory summary so we are just going to jump right into the story of this week.

So there has been some debate between Sister DeWidt and me on when exactly the wackiness of this week started. Some may say it was Monday when we put the completely wrong address for the member meal we had Monday evening and headed the complete opposite way. Others will say when after service at the Thrift Boutique Tuesday it was snowing, the latest it's snowed this time of the year since the 1940's. We like to believe it started when at the beginning of the week we walked up the steps to our apartment to find a fish head sitting on our neighbor's side of the porch. Why there was a fish head, we knew not, and we weren't going to judge our neighbor and her interesting garbage so we went about our day until the next day the fish head sat in front of our side of the porch. We still think nothing of it but after multiple discussions with our neighbors, no one in the building knows where it came from.

So Monday and Tuesday went pretty normally and Wednesday was fine until the elders got lost trying to get all of us back from Sanford for District Meeting to Somersworth. That kinda killed their miles and we felt kinda bad. But we pressed on, went and did service at the clothes closet where I started to notice my throat getting sore and raw. I brushed it off, figuring it was the dust from the air of old clothes being moved. Wednesday night Sister DeWidt and I had a blast at the ward's YW Pie and Cake auction (with a full variety of desserts). We fully hoped we would win some sort of small treat, even if it was just cookies. Unfortunately, Sister DeWidt and I are on a missionary budget and most treats went for up to $50, some even over $100. But we would be enthusiastic in our small starting bids and some awesome members bought us pull-apart bread, apple pie, and sticky buns, all at no expense to us. That was truly a tender (and sweet) mercy haha.

I woke up Thursday morning feeling no better than I did the night before and could hardly talk, in fact it hurt to talk. So I didn't speak unless it was necessary and we prepared for our member lesson that afternoon. We walked to the member lesson and on the way back we had a former investigator we decided to stop by and see if he was still interested. He wasn't interested even though he was super nice to let us in, with his wife.... Who turned out to be another man and we aren't sure how accountable either of them were.... We fled that scene as quickly as possible, to say the least.

Due to illness we did what we could Thursday and we came back Thursday night the same time as our neighbor (around 8:40) and her kids. They walked in and then stuck their head out asking if our apartment smelled like sewer. I honestly couldn't smell anything as I accepted I had a cold due to allergies and Sister DeWidt didn't smell anything so we all suspected it was the washer in their apartment and suggested running a rinse cycle. By some miracle when the rinse cycle in her apartment started one of us was in the kitchen to see water starting to fill in our kitchen sinks. We panicked, I started dumping bowls of water from the sink into the mop bucket as Sister DeWidt ran to tell them to stop the rinse cycle. From there, chaos ensued. The other neighbors in the building started having plumbing problems and we alerted the landlord. We also decided to not use the water for the rest of the evening until a plumber could arrive the following day.

We woke up to the "no water rule" (we still went to the bathroom shhh but we didn't shower). Overnight the kitchen sink (with some of our dirty dishes, WE ARE BAD MISSIONARIES FOR NOT DOING OUR DISHES OK!) must have filled with our neighbor's water and had a layer of brown gunk over everything. So that was fun to wake up to. I was so sick and so confused by the mess that was the plumbing that I spent most of my personal time in the morning praying to understand what was going on. Eventually, the plumber came. And eventually his friend, another plumber came. And they started suspecting it was a sewer problem. And the problem just got bigger and bigger until they decided they needed to tear up the parking lot in front of our home to fix a pipe. The plumbers also asked about the fish head. We explained to them it was an anomaly of its own. Our apartment was the path to least resistance so we bailed, taking our dirty dishes in tow, to the church where we washed our dishes and finished weekly planning. The church is literally a refuge.

Because they were tearing a hole in front of our apartment we packed an overnight bag, hoping to find a members' home to stay in for the night, eventually finding overnight shelter in the Portsmouth Sisters' apartment (which is in our area anyway) and stayed the night, got showers, and just recovered from the plumbing madness.

Saturday we woke up, got ready for the day, and did what we could despite my illness. I insisted we get burritos because spice helps with sinuses. We had the all clear that our apartment was fine so we went to our home and followed the mission nurse's counsel to get some rest. So after a two hour nap (Sister DeWidt cleaned the post-plumbing mess) and realizing we didn't have "sick people food" at the apartment we drove to the Chinese buffet we had gift certificates for and had two bowls of egg drop soup. We went back to the apartment. And from there on we have assumed all is well.

So Sunday was relatively uneventful compared to the rest of the week. We had church and had an investigator show up which was awesome considering we hadn't seen him this week! Sister DeWidt also bore a powerful testimony as this was her last fast and testimony meeting as a missionary. Honestly, this last week has probably been the craziest of her mission. Happy second to last week Sister DeWidt!

Well, all is well that ends well. I'm mostly over the cold, still with the sniffles. And the Lord has definitely blessed us and kept us safe through this all. Maybe this is what I get for sending so many boring weekly mass emails lately haha. But I know we are loved by a loving Heavenly Father. May we all continue to notice His hand in our lives!

Love,

Sister Wright

"The fish head that started it all"