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| This is a huge dog named bear. We saw him while spreading bark chips around the gardens by the church. |
On Wednesday, we had one of the guys in the Tuscany Ward named Boston go on splits with us. It made me think of when I was back home and I had the opportunity of going out with the Elders in our stake. I only did it once but that experience has stuck with me. We had a big list of people to go and visit but only got to visit with 2 of the people on our list. One of them was Mason. I have never seen him come to church the time that I have been here. We went up and knocked on his door and there was no answer and so we started walking away and that was when he pulled up, it seems like that is what always happens. We then talked in his driveway for maybe 15 minutes and he said, "I always take the new Elders out to eat" and we happened to have our dinner on Saturday open so we told him that he could take us out that night. I had a feeling that he was going to be taking us to Boston Pizza and I was super excited. While we were traveling in his Dodge Challenger, which by the way has a super low roof.. He said, "Well guys the place that we are heading to is a Japanese restaurant." I was a little disappointed, I'm not going to lie, I honestly don't like that kind of food at all, but it is free food so you know you can't complain. We got in there and started ordering. We started off with a bunch of sushi with vegetables, raw salmon, and crab. The crab and vegetables weren't that bad still not my favorite thing in the world. After we finished that up he ordered some pretty strange food. He ordered some deep fried Octopus and some Oysters. The Oysters came first and I wasn't going to touch the things but of course he noticed that we weren't eating them and said, "Come on guys, eat the Oysters." I told him that this is going actually quite far out of my comfort zone. But he put a little hot sauce and some lemon on it and then Elder Darrow and I decided to eat it at the same time. He told us to just swallow them down so that's what I did. I honestly thought that the thing was dead but after we had swallowed them he broke the great news to us. The things were actually alive.. He told us that they serve them alive because when they die they can be dangerous to eat. He said once they hit the stomach the acid kills them. The next thing that we got to try was baby octopus. I was determined to not eat this one. I had calamari in my first area and I did not like them really at all. But he ended up talking me into it and I ate it. It is so gross to me that when you eat those you are eating the whole thing. The only thing that they really take out is the beak. When I watch the video of me eating it I still have my gag reflex go off.
The other person that we were able to meet with is Ed. He is the guy that I may have told you about who came from England. He is 85 years old and a great guy. We tracked into him a couple weeks ago. While we were with Bosten we decided to stop by him and see how he was doing. We talked a bit about Joseph Smith, he watched something on the TV about him and I think that he is a little caught up on him. It's too bad but we will try and work things out. I think that what we are going to do is bring our Ward Mission Leader, Brother Melchin to his house because he seems to know every little detail about Joseph Smith. We got to play him in Snooker, which is a game comparable to pool but not really the same at all. I was getting so lucky on all my shots it was so funny. Boston and I were on a team and we just slottered them the first game, then the second game Ed caught fire and they beat us.
On Friday we helped out at the gardens by the church again and dug out some big plants because they were taking over some of the plants that were in the surrounding areas. We got to spend a lot of time with Bob and his wife. They are both non-members and honestly I don't know why they aren't members.
On Saturday we raked all the leaves at the church and in all the people's yards around the church. We had 2 out of the 3 wards helping us. The other ward got offended because they weren't given enough time to get it planned into the schedule so none of them showed up. Kind of irritating but whatever. We were raking from 9 in the morning to a little after 12. Our bishop then took us out to wendy's. We then headed over to Brother Blackwells' who is currently inactive and helped him out with some things. Our dinner was with Mason and all the weird food. Then we went over to Aaron's new basement apartment and helped him move a dresser thing into his home. Aaron is still super excited for his baptism that will happen on Saturday. We are going to have his baptism in the Cochran Building which is pretty close to Banff. Our building is going to have a wedding going on and the font is hard to get the right temperature. So it was decided that we were going to hold it in Cochrane.
On Sunday we went to both wards which takes up like the whole day. We had to wake up at 6 to get ready for everything and ward council at 7:30 and then go till 4. And then go to dinner.
On Monday we had our district meeting, helped a non-member lady move with a guy that looked like santa clause. I asked him, "So what are you dressing up for halloween? Santa clause?" He laughed and said, "No but I am actually going to be Santa Clause for Christmas at several different locations." We then went to dinner which happened to be Canadian Thanksgiving. It's kind of crazy because that is my second Thanksgiving while being out here. We had a good dinner with the Blackwells in Tuscany Ward. After that we had a correlation meeting with our ward mission leader in Tuscany.
Well That is a quick run down of some of the highlights. This week flew by so fast. Well I sure do love you all. l hope that you all have a great week!
Love, Elder Allred
