An interesting week

This has been quite the week down here. For starters, we had the storm pass by. We really didn´t get hit too hard, just a bunch of rain. The bulk of the storm passed to the south and west of us. Then after that, this whole past week the power has really been on the fritz. The storm may have had something to do with it, but I doubt it. The power in general has been rather poor for the last month. This week though we have had so little power that we couldn´t even keep the battery backups charged. The power would come on and start charging the batteries, but it would go out again before it could finish. A few nights, Matt and I about baked in our apartment. One night, neither of us could sleep, so both of us are standing around outside at 3 in the morning, trying to find a little bit of a breeze. Anyway, the situation was bad enough that our little town mad the national news for the riot we had here 2 nights ago. Don´t worry, it wasn´t really I riot like we think of in the states. Its just that a bunch of people took to the streets in the middle of the night and started fires all over the streets. Not actually doing any damage, just blocking of the intersections and such. The main intersection in town had this big giant bonfire. And then they started breaking glass bottles all over the streets. I don´t think anyone really got hurt though. And yesterday we had power for a good long time.

There has been a bunch of good stuff too. Matt and I went to a neighboring congregation Thursday and basically ran the entire meeting. So that was a good experience.

Video

OK, here we have a little video. Actually, I didn´t make this to put here on the blog, I made it just for Mike. This is just a brief tour of the house where we are thinking of living next year. Right now there is just one brother in it, and two more are moving in this fall. Plus Mike and I would make five. Mike and I would basically have the downstairs, but as the video shows, the house, and especially the downstairs, needs a good bit of work.

Also note that in order to put the video here, I had to downgrade the quality a good bit. The sound doesn´t line up right with the video, but you can figure it out.

To The Campo!

One of the sisters in our congregation just got a pickup truck. So we have been making good use of it to head way out to the middle of nowhere (the "campo").
This little pickup holds just about our entire congregation. However, this takes "dusty" to a whole new level.
And as you can see, there is not much regard for personal space, or personal safety. Matt is actually riding pretty much on the bumper here.
Thats why I have my bike. =)

Hats

The brothers down here have a custom that I thing would do well in Central-PA. They all wear hats out in service. Most of the time it is just your basic ball-cap for their favorite baseball team. This brother here, however, was visiting our hall and sports the more traditional sombrero.
What really got me started thinking about all these hats though was when I saw our special pioneer and service overseer spend the day in service like this:
At first I thought he was joking and started to laugh, but he was serious. Of course, they are respectful of the preaching work. This same brother gave an entire field-service group on making sure we take off our hats at the door while talking about the bible, so as not to offend the householder.

It´s August!!!!!

Everyone who knows my parents and how they have taught me to pioneer knows why August is awesome for me. That would be because I only need 28 hours in service for this month. Yay!! And I think that I am down to about 12 or 13 already. Thats a big change from the 100 hour schedule last month and the 120 hour schedule the month before. So in theory, I should have all this free time to hang out at the beach and generally goof off. In reality of course I just have different types of things to take care of now, but at least my schedule is still easier.

I want to wish all the Pioneers back home the best on rounding their years out!

(cough cough) of course, the service isn´t just about the time. One of my studies is going rather well, and he tells me that he is going to show up at meeting tomorrow. We shall see.