11/26/2018 Walking in Memphis

I think talking about biking jinxed me for this week, because now we're not even biking. One of Elder Paopao's bike inner tubes tore and we didn't have any patches and our attempts to cannibalize old inner tubes as makeshift patches failed. So since Friday we have been walking. And it rained Friday. It poured. And we brought no gear. We got drenched, and my bag got slightly damaged from getting that wet. The leather from the strap buckle bled onto my white shirt, so that shirt is likely ruined. Also the tie I was wearing is now all tattered and wrinkled from it. It's lost its silky smoothness. Whatever. We are likely getting a new tube today though, so hopefully we'll be back on bikes within the next day or so.

Walking in Memphis, however. Has given us the chance to take things more slowly and talk to people that we may have otherwise just passed by and said "yo" before. I like how much people here are open to talking about religion. Pretty much everyone loves talking about Christ. I've met maybe one person who shut us down and said "sorry I am not a believer." And when you are knocking on doors pretty much every day, you come to meet a lot of people. 

However, no one wants any service. We often try to offer free service as we would gladly help anybody who needs it, but nobody wants any help whatsoever. We were in a rather sketchy neighborhood this week and one man's lawn was littered with trash. Like cans, wrappers, takehome boxes from restaurants, and so on. I was so close to dropping down on my knees and begging for him to let us clean up his lawn but nope. "I'm fine" he says. Sure. 

For thanksgiving, we ate a more of a thanksgiving lunch (3pm) with a member family and their friends (also members). It was a fairly typical thanksgiving meal. One of those in attendance just got back from his mission in the Marshall Islands. He spent around half is mission in the outer islands of the Island nation. On those islands, you have no electricity. No internet or appliances. A letter would take over a month to get there and a month to leave from there, so essentially zero communication, so be thankful I get to send weekly emails and email back and forth as much as I want on P-Day. 

Speaking of thanksgiving and being in the spirit of thankful, I watched this video. Idk if you've seen it before, but it's a good video

https://mediasrv.lds.org/media-services/ML/size/5654173402001/1280/720/1924561

Also a couple letters ago I talked about having Japanese food with a family for dinner. Apparently there is a large contingency of people connected to Japan in the branch. 4 members of the branch served there, and one member is from Japan. We ate okonomeyaki (probably butchering the spelling) at another family's house one evening. It's like a Japanese hash brown. So yeah, in Midtown I don't get a lot of signature southern dishes because most of the ward are optometry students from outside the area. And when we are fed by other members, it's often at a chain restaurant. But on the subject of dinners, we're fed by members about 50% of the time. For example this week we only have two dinner appointments, and they are the two that feed us on an almost weekly basis. But another week, we'll have five or so dinner appointments. 

Have you all seen the Light the Word stuff for December? What are you all going to do for Light the World? 

Pictures: 

1) Walking in the rain. The worst had not yet hit

 2) Memphis has it's party district, Beale Street. I took pictures of Elder Paopao on it last P-Day. Apparently other elders have been some very interesting people there. Our branch mission leader took us downtown and we just saw some stuff that day. We didn't watch the ducks walk at Peabody because we had an appointment to get to, but we did see the ducks swimming in the fountain. 

3) a very cool mural. I really like this artist's cartoony style

4) on Saturday we went down to Southaven (in Mississippi) because one of the people he taught when he was there wanted Elder Paopao to baptize her. Was very cool. Other missionaries that taught her are also pictured. 

5) We really took a liking to the mural in the 3rd picture, especially this guy holding up a sign saying "all beef". What does it mean? We don't know, but good for him to stand up for what he believes in.

6) after the rain hit hard on Friday. The church building was on the way home so we are heading in to dry off a bit. We really should have brought coats/umbrellas

7) another mural by the same guy. I wonder how many walls he has painted here in Memphis.