Elder Wride in California: Week 20

Howdy there

This week has been fine. It was pretty eventful.

1. Chiropractor

2. Homeless Guy II

3. Update on things

1. This week we went to a member's home to give a blessing. Before the blessing, the grandpa of the family points out my shoes are a little run down, (image below). And it seems that my feet lean outwards. He's a podiatrist and he asked if I had foot pain and other stuff. I said no. He said "Want to bet? Just give it time". I was like haha what? Not the best time to transition to giving the blessing because I was just thinking about if my feet are ok the whole time. But we gave the blessing and shared a thought. And after, he asked me to take my shoes off. I felt a little uncomfortable because before I knew it, I had my shoes off, with my feet on this 50ish year old man's knees. And he was feeling around using his podiatrist knowledge to figure out my feet. Basically, I don't know what it's called, but whatever I have is not good for my knees and feet, and he's a doctor who has these things to put in your shoes to fix it that are like a cast for your foot and all that. He said I have one of the worst cases that he's ever seen. But no, foot and knee problems are really scary. A lot of people down here have issues and it's really sad. So, I'll be talking with them to see.

2. I'm grateful to be alive right now. I talked about this homeless guy a couple weeks ago who got mad at me or something. Well, I said I was ready to fight him and I was, but I had another experience this week with a different homeless guy. While Elder Hayes and I were walking down University Ave we're talking about how we want to be persecuted like in the Book of Mormon videos. Most people see us and will kind of brush us off, but we wanted a little action or something like that. Anyway, while we were walking we saw a friend we met a couple weeks ago named Larry. We had tried to call him but he never picked up. He said his phone hadn't been working but he really wanted to talk with us. Larry is in his 60s and can't walk very well. He sits in this walker chair thing. So while we're talking there's this random homeless guy shouting stuff. We walked by him earlier but didn't talk to him because he didn't seem alright in the mind. Anyway, as we were talking to Larry the guy starts rolling around on the ground in the alleyway behind Larry. We're like Ok, that's nice. We talked with Larry for a while and when we were getting close to wrapping up, the guy stood up and started yelling at us. He's walking toward us, coming behind Larry and is shouting something about how we're Satan. Then he grabs Larry around his neck, not quite choking him, but almost. Larry deals with street stuff and starts to fight back. The homeless guy hits him on the head and we intervene. The homeless guy has an extension cord thing and is yelling at us. Saying we're Satan and to F off. So yeah. We're standing there with Larry trying to make sure he doesn't get hurt because he's a pretty old dude. The whole time I was just like I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to fight this guy, he was kind of a big dude. But, if it came to it I was willing to defend myself and my boys. Although we would've gotten hurt really badly. Some cops drove by, and we called them, but they didn't end up coming over. There are just so many problems here I guess. So, after a while one of the homeless guy's old friends, I think, came and was able to calm him down and we left with Larry. Larry met some of his other good friends so we were able to leave him with them. But man, that was crazy. I was shook for the rest of the day. That kind of hate and anger makes me sick to my stomach. It's just awful. Definitely one of the more crazy experiences out here. Larry said we need people like you out here which was nice for him to say. It's a pretty crazy world. Elder Hayes said that was one of his craziest experiences being out 2 years. To be fair, a lot of his mission was during covid, but still. It may not sound so crazy when you realize it was just some random homeless guy, but yeah.

3. Things are going fine. Our people struggle the most with keeping commitments to read the Book of Mormon, come to church all of that. Our main progressing Person is still Taryn. She hasn't been able to come to church but really wants to. Our next lesson with her is gonna be about the Word of Wisdom so that will be fun because she smokes a lot. Also, Isaiah, the guy I gave a blessing to, is doing a lot better! We haven't seen him yet but his mom told us he's been doing way better the past week or so. So that was awesome!

I think that's all for this week. Stay tuned for next week because it's going to be a good one. But I love you all!

- Elder Wride

Pictures

1. Zoom lesson didn't show up