2011: The Prequel to 2012

Hello everybody! It's me, Elder Gates. I'm still here and ok and all that. Anybody who would care to explain why I felt like starting my email that way, please mail your explanations to me. Speaking of mail, sorry for all of you that have sent stuff and I still have not responded. It's been crazy here and hard to get caught up on much of anything. The trio ended on Tuesday, with us driving to Iowa City for Elder Wilson's new comp, Elder Cooper, which took all day. Then I got violently sick that night. Since we believe that extremely violent entertainment is not appropriate, I do not see why I could not have simply explained this to the virus and have it leave me alone. And I can't even sue the FCC for it or nothing. What a dispicable time we live in. Some may argue that the flu is not entertainment, but if SAW can be listed as such, why can't my virus? While I've never watched Saw, I'm sure it would have the same results. I apparently even puked so hard into the toilet that the toilet not only fought back by splashing in my face, my eye decided to burst a blood vessel. How my eye was even connected to this fight between me and the toilet is beyond me, but I still argue it was an odd way for my eye to try to get its point across. Even now, a week later, my eye still is bloody looking. My branch president, who's a doctor, explained the plethora of colors it will change over time. I turned to one of the Quincy elders and told him how straight that sounded. My Branch President laughed and told me that as long as I didn't go marching in any parades with my rainbow eye I'd be fine. I told him that I came out here to escape those parades in the first place. Anyway, speaking of Quincy ElderS, we lost Elder Wilson on Tuesday last week to a sad but not entirely unexpected case of New Comp Syndrome. The saddest part of the whole endeavor was needing to rush him to Iowa City to acquire this New Comp Syndrome. Luckily, he got a pretty good case of it, or so it seems, so that's a relief. When Christmas Eve came, we were finally able to step out into the light for District Meeting and a WEDDING!!! The wedding was great and simple and short and perfect. There was barely anybody there which is cool. I wore the pink tie I would have worn to Cari's wedding. But they're MARRIED! I was sick for all of the dress shopping and all of that jazz so I missed out on that...darn.... Christmas Day was great with breakfast with our Branch Mission Leader's family. It was so much fun to sit around a tree with a family and open presents. It felt like home. Just without the orange rolls. We then called home, and it was great being able to see my parents on Skype. It was also good to see that mom still hangs my photos on the wall across from the computer desk. But it was weird, yet necessary, to talk to them about going home plans. And while it would be fun to have a Gates Christmas Vacation in Hawaii next year if I'm there, we'll see if i even choose that for school. Not sure yet. I'm with yall, I'll probably end up at Provo. Then it was time for lunch at an investigator's and then dinner at the Branch Mission Leader's house again. We also went and said hi to Dena's dad that night. The baptism for Dena should be on for saturday, but we haven't been able to get ahold of them for a few days, which is kind of scaring us a tad. She'll be baptized, I know, but I don't know when. All in all, though, we're just happy to be free to do work again, with no more drama nor meetings nor sickness.
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"As for myself, I am an optimist. It doesn't seem very much use being anything else." -Winston Churchill
Elder Charlie Gates

Holy Night, Batman! Santa Brought Me Another Comp!

So, yeah, favorite quote of the week. An investigator was shooting his daughter with a nerf gun while we were visiting. As we left, she said "Hurry, shoot the Mormons before they leave!" Apparently not much has changed in the last two hundred years here in Missourah.So, here's the dillio, yo. One of the people in the companionship in Quincy needed to take off due to health reasons.So, currently, we are in a trio with Elder Wilson. We cover both Quincy and Hannibal, have two apartments, two cars, and two phones. We'll find out today at some point whether or not this is permanent. We, personally, hope it will be, for a few reasons. One, it's nearly Christmas, and it's a terrible time for a missionary to be pulled out just before he can do all of the Christmas plans he has been looking forward to. Two, the missionary who left will, in my opinion, need to be in a trio to make dealing with his health problems easier. Three, we're selfish like that and want to stick together. The three of us get along great and it's hilarious. While this will be the most insane planning I would have ever had to do in my life, I know we can do it and keep ourselves on track with everything.

Dena is still on for baptism. She wants me to baptize her, and is excited for it! We're still helping to make sure she is done with cigarettes for good. They're now on for getting married on christmas eve, which will be interesting getting arranged but we'll do it. All three of us missionaries, if it is three, will wear pink ties for it (mine from Cari's wedding). We also started teaching the children of our other major investigators. Well, actually, we started, and then our investigator took over, which is what we wanted anyway. That's pretty much all we really had in the way of missionary work, due to all the switching up and zone conference.

Zone conference was really good, but getting there was tricky. In the thirty minute drive just to Quincy, we saw three different accidents due to the freezing rain. Elder England was fine enough on the roads, he just went really slow. When we got out to help a person out of a ditch, we had to skate across a sheet of ice, commonly referred to as the road. It took us over an hour to reach Quincy, and then we had the joy of driving all the way up to Mount Pleasant that night going really slow, and then off to Iowa City the next morning. Conference was really good, including a talent show (our zone did the twelve days of christmas, changing up the words. Elder England and I decided that "on the sixth day of christmas our mission gave to us 6 more weeks with him....") and a cookie decorating contest. I, of course, lost that one. I thought I ingeniously turned a bell-shaped cookie into an angel.

But that's about it. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!! Remember who it is all about!
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"As for myself, I am an optimist. It doesn't seem very much use being anything else." -Winston Churchill
Elder Charlie Gates

16 MONTHS?? I LOST COUNT AND THOUGHT IT WAS 15!! Dang it....

Still no snow. Drat. Keep waiting for those Christmas cards, everyone, because they're not happening till there's snow.

Christmas goodies! I want wagonwheels, some divinity (not too much, I love them and all, but too much sugar and me is no bueno), frosted cookies, and whatever other amazing cookies we make that I can't think of. No bakes, while not particularly christmasy, are a must. As for SKYPE, I'll have to check to make certain. We're having breakfast and dinner (not the lunch dinner, but the supper dinner) with our branch mission leader and his family on Christmas, which is great because we love our branch mission leader and his wife reminds me of mom. I'll need to ask them about SKYPE, which will be tomorrow. I'm happy to know it will probably work on your end so I'll make sure it's good on this one. I hope it works!!

Dena and Casey are doing GREAT!! Casey even bore his testimony on Sunday and was participating class more than most of the actives and having awesome comments. I'm so proud of them!! Dena, as I put it in coordination, is, come hell or high water, getting married on the 26th. I'm still uncertain whether that was an appropriate use of the word hell, but it came out and I regret nothing. Either way, she's determined to get married and thus baptized on New Years Day. They're incredible, and are just bound to get more incredible. She wants to go dress shopping and wants some opinions, and since she's dropped a lot of her former friends due to their bad influence, she wants us to be there. Yep. Me. Dress shopping.... We also had to help her understand some things that apparently has been glossed over in the past. It's awkward coming in after somebody has been taught, supposedly, all the lessons at least once, and not knowing all they might have covered or not due to bad records. She accepts most things so well and easily, she's great.

I don't know if I remembered to mention it last week but Dena's dad is in the hospital, and she has had us come and visit him a few times now. And while she wasn't sure how much he'd like us, he, in fact, loves us and enjoys our visits of us sitting there quietly and being sarcastic. He actually corrected his girlfriend when she referred to us as Dena's friends and let her know we were friends of the family. Which, if the rest of the family agrees with him, opens up doors to about a quarter (hyperbole, but a lot) of Hannibal and the surrounding areas. Which is AMAZING.

Well, that's about it. Sorry for no hilarious stories, we've mostly just been working with Dena and Casey and trying to visit less-actives and our few other investigators this week. Christmas is coming! If you want to celebrate christmas right, invite the missionaries over. If somebody has offered them dinner already, that still leaves lunch and breakfast open!!
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"As for myself, I am an optimist. It doesn't seem very much use being anything else." -Winston Churchill
Elder Charlie Gates

The Levels of ADD: ADD, ADHD, ADBlu-Ray, AD3D and- SQUIRREL!

This was a realization from one of my AD3D conversations with Elder England this week.

I couldn't help but laugh at Mom's subject line for this week's email, hoping I'm still "All Right." I was just joking about that with my last subject title because I got my left foot ran over, so I was literally "All Right." So no, I'm not still all right in that sense! My foot's fully healed, and i know it's a blessing. But in the other sense, I'm even better.

Mom seemed to really want to hear about my investigators, which works out since that's what I want to talk about anyway. WE SET A BAPTISMAL DATE! All yall in other areas probably would get excited about this, too, but it's especially exciting for me. I hadn't had an investigator at church for the entire time I was in Mason City, and all of the baptismal dates I set there fell through pretty quickly with less-dedicated investigators. And when I came here we ended up with investigators with all sorts of things to overcome first, like custody battles and marriage and smoking and blah blah blah SO when Dena, one of our investigators, decided that she wanted to get married to her live-in boyfriend, Casey, a member, Christmas weekend so her mother would be around for it, we jumped on the chance! And for as solid as she was before, she's WAY solid now! I LOVE what baptismal dates do for people who really, really are willing! She is now trying to talk to us about planning a wedding and making sure she has a modest dress and all the stuff we'd tell her to do anyway! I do NOT know ANYTHING about planning weddings, though. Helping someone find a dress and all sorts of junk is WAY beyond me. While many missionaries have had to marry people on their missions, I've never had to do it before, so this is exciting but sort of scary, too. But Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, I'm getting to see my investigator married and...Happy Birthday! A Baptism two days before the anniversary of the day I entered the world. So, yeah, be excited. This should ring a bell with my previous emails and my belief it's a principle of the gospel that bad things and good things tend to go near each other. It took a long time of sickness and pain but now the Lord's sending blessings. Ok, I shouldn't get so excited, in case it falls through, but I have faith it won't and I'm praying hard for them!

Oh! Whoops! I completely forgot to mention this part, but you can probably guess already: transfers are this week, but neither of us are going anywhere. Thank goodness.

Oh, Thanksgiving! Well, this week was pretty lame in most ways of missionary work, but some cool things happened. We had both a Lunch and Dinner appointment on thanksgiving. I hate stuffing myself like a turkey but it was all just so good. Lunch was at the house of a couple of our investigators, where we also got to meet his parents, and the dinner was at a member's home.

Anyway, I gotta go! One last thing: I may be able to SKYPE home for christmas! I don't know how feasable this will be for you or even for us to get a member that can do it but i'm gonna try. Just so ya know!

"As for myself, I am an optimist. It doesn't seem very much use being anything else." -Winston Churchill
Elder Charlie Gates

I'm "All Right"

Last monday, I was being dumb as we were leaving the Library from writing you all and I stood too close to the car as I was backing Elder England. The car bumped me as I was planning on it doing as Elder England was checking the front end, but then it did something I wasn't expecting: the back tire decided to take a little trip up over my big toe and onto my arch on my left foot. It was there that Elder England parked the car and only moved forward when he saw my frantic gestures in the side mirror. I hobbled around on the foot the rest of the day just thinking I had bruised up my toe. The next day brought pain to more parts of my foot. Yet, in that same dumb mind that thought it was smart to stand close to the car came the new dumb thought of not getting it checked out and expecting it to just go away. By Wednesday night, when it had not gone away but had gotten worse, I called Sister Jergensen. She told me to get ahold of our Branch President who's a doctor and have him check it out. I called him and left a message, and by noon on Thursday he had arranged for me to get an X-Ray. But before I could go in for that I had to get approval from Mission Medical through Sister Jergensen. I called or texted Sister Jergensen a couple times throughout the day on Thursday, but due to meetings I didn't hear from her until that night. By that point she just told me to go in the next day, which I did as soon as I could. There at the clinic I walked up and told them who I was and they checked me in and soon had me X-Rayed. Yet as the X-Rays were finishing up a new person walked in, informing the nurse that there was some confusion at the front desk (they hadn't even asked for my insurance card). There at the desk they started asking me questions (more like an interrogation). They listed off an address and asked if that was mine. I thought for a second, as it was some foreign address, wondering if that was mission medical or the old Illinois Peoria Mission address or the branch president's address...wait, why do they even have my address...? Meanwhile, as I thought, the people got more and more curious looks on their faces. They then asked my social security number. I couldn't remember that for the life of me. They then asked our phone number, which I couldn't remember either. They quickly realized I was not the person they had signed me in under, and then asked me if i had even had an appointment with the Doctor that's our branch president, which I hadn't. Altogether, a plethora of red flags were raised to everyone present. The nurse or radiologist or whoever it was that checked my foot informed them that she hadn't yet gotten the X-Ray's processed. I quickly realized just how abnormal my visit there was, and how they must not understand in the slightest what was up. They had me fill out a new patient form and they got a copy of my missionary insurance card and I was on my way. I even offered to pay a copay but apparently I didn't need to. By saturday late afternoon I still had not heard from our branch president, and I was getting anxious just sitting around keeping my foot elevated to reduce the swelling that was going on, when finally I called him. He informed me that he had not yet received the X-Rays nor the Radiologist's examination of them, but to keep off my foot and keep it elevated in the mean time. This is also what sister jergensen had told me, and if you don't know already, keeping off a foot and keeping it elevated is nigh impossible as a missionary. But I got crutches on friday and have been using those since, and while I was uncertain at first, I'm pretty good at them now. Even sunday morning our Branch President still had not gotten the X-Rays, and I'm starting to think that it may be possible that due to the absurdity of my visit, the people in Radiology had either never done anything with them or chucked them. So, yeah, still not sure what's wrong with my foot. I can walk on the balls of it, but that starts to hurt over time, and my big toe hurts to use much, but my heal I can't use at all without considerable pain. It's all pretty much swollen, but not too much so, but the only place of good bruising is underneath by big toe nail.

It's crazy to hear that the weather is changing so much in WA. Here in MO it's starting to get a lot colder, and that all started as I was sick the other week. It's still not as cold as it usually is. Usually by now the first snow has come. Today is very windy, though. The fall here in MO was very pretty with all of the trees (yes, there are trees here, not just corn and soy fields).

This week we picked up a new investigator. She lives in one of the government housing areas here in town. She's one that we had tracted into awhile back but had only really tried checking up on her once before this week. She actually ended up being pretty awesome and during our first appointment just started reading the Book of Mormon on the spot and was too indulged to be much use to try to teach at that point. We've taught her three times now, the first time being Wednesday. Sunday she actually came to church! But she was so scared, being used to All-Black Churches, where apparently people spend the whole time gossiping about you and never care to actually be courteous and shake each others hands. She came in late to sacrament meeting, staying out in the foyer, and left early, but in that small amount of time it made an awesome impact. She got to see the sacrament, got warmly welcomed by the few members who came into the hallway with handshakes and whispered greetings and smiles, and the talks she heard seemed, at least to her, to be directed towards her. She couldn't believe it! We went over after church and she was still the happiest we'd ever seen her and all excited about this new-found, gregarious congregation! To all congenial mormons everywhere, thank you for making this church great. We tried to set a baptismal date with her on sunday but she was nervous about that and then got into one of those The Projects Yelling Matches you always hear about, so we left.

Another of our investigators ended up with her ailing father in the hospital, which got her reasonably upset. She invited us out to see him thursday night, and apparently it made his night, and he still talks about it. All we really did was come in and sit there and told him about my foot, but apparently that made a major impact on him, and our investigator has asked us to stop by again! Another door opens!

As for Thanksgiving, we have two meal appointments, one with a member in the evening and one with an investigator. It's incredible to us that we have four amazing investigators, all who love us and two of whom are personally working towards baptism and the other two doing great as well. No dates yet, but that will change shortly!

It's crazy to us how fast this transfer is going, and all the great things happening, despite all the things going wrong with me!
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"As for myself, I am an optimist. It doesn't seem very much use being anything else." -Winston Churchill
Elder Charlie Gates

And Then In-Flew-Enza... I Should Have Shot Her When I Had the Chance

Well, I really wish I had more to report on this week than what I do. As you may be able to tell from the title of this week's email, I got sick this week. It all started monday night and it's kind of wrapping up now...I hope. It's ridiculous. It all started off with cold symptoms, but just whiped me out. I couldn't understand why I was so tired from this thing. The cough began to go lower into my throat until sure enough I got bronchitis. And then sunday afternoon, after I had gotten drugs for the bronchitis, I began having diarrhea. So I officially had the flu. We had a dinner appointment that night that I did not feel up to, but went to anyway. After eating a little bit of my sloppy joes and using the restroom, the member kindly let us leave early so I could sleep. The members of this branch are so nice. When I called up Sister Jergensen to tell her of the newest update in my situation, she couldn't help but motheringly rub it in that I hadn't gotten a flu shot. I deserved that. After hearing her and President Jergensen talking about which drugs I should get (she, as a mother, recommended peptobismol since that would deal with the upset stomach, but her husband, as a pharmacist, recommended immodium since that would be most effective at killing that), we got permission to leave our apartment (at this point it was after 9:30 pm) to get what I now needed as a flu victim. I got both pepto bismol and immodium, but as the diarrhea was the most disconcerting of the symptoms, I took that that night. It worked, but I don't know if I should be happy about that or not. I still haven't gone number two. I know you all cared to know that, but, as it is a free service to all yall who want to know updates on my life, you get what you pay for. Yesterday we went to church, only really because Elder England had to give a talk. I sat down on a back pew and watched as everyone came in. A new move-in that loves missionaries kept talking to me and I really wasn't in the mood for a hunky-dory conversation, but I pulled through. Elder England did a great job of covering for me and getting everything done that we needed done. He informed our dinner appointment for that night that I was sick with the flu and she kindly said that she didn't want me in her house, but they came by later with food and chicken noodle soup, with chicken shaped noodles, made especially for me, with other things as well. Our branch mission leader also came by with some chicken noodle soup and crackers and gave us 7up. He and his wife asked us at church if there was anything they could do and when I said I wished we had more chicken noodle soup now that I was restricted on my diet they jumped at the chance to bring me not only that but other things as well. I love our branch! We got NOTHING done this week, though. Well, a little, but not much. We taught a couple lessons that we had scheduled, and we went to this branch activity where the men make cakes and compete. I had wanted to make a cake but, obviously, I didn't. Elder England did, though, and we put hotwheels on top for decoration. We also went to Carthage last Monday. By the time we made it to Nauvoo we only had a little bit of time before needing to leave again so we did nothing there, but carthage was amazing. We took the last tour of the day of the jail, and it was just us, so it was great. I loved being able to see for myself the conditions and what it was all like. Really, you should all be jealous.
That's about it!
"I am an optimist, it doesn't seem much use being anything else." -Winston Churchill
Elder Charlie Gates

Nobody Died. Except the Cowboy....

Remember how I talk about ups and downs? This week was no rollercoaster. This was more of one of those rides that shoots you straight up and down so fast you lose your lunch just to gain it back again. Saturday night we taught the stop smoking workshop finally to a part member couple we've been working with and it went really, really well. We were way stoked and so were they. We even helped them with their fear that once they got off of smoking they'd go crazy and potentially kill each other (both have psychological disorders to an extent with no meds due to the cost...besides tobacco). They also had overcome all of their reasons for not being able to make it to church. She had gotten a new job that no longer required her to work on sundays and they had gotten a new car so they had a ride. The next day, they weren't at church and later when we stopped by their fears had come to fruition. Yeah. Nearly everything in their house had been destroyed or damaged, he had had his bags packed ready to leave, and they had smoked. They had also apparently gone to church early, having forgotten to reset their clocks and had left when nobody was there. By the way, I do hate daylight savings time. Our other investigators had the flu ravaging their family and the people we had set return appointments up with and had taught lessons were uncommital in arranging return appointments. In our other pursuits for the week, we tried to check up on some referrals of people who had requested copies of the Book of Mormon, neither of which worked out. One was a home just inside a cemetery gigantodogs and never answered and another was way down south. We went to it, thinking it was it, asked for the person, wasn't there. We then went to another old potential investigator, just to realize I'd gotten the names mixed up and had gone to the house of the old potential asking for the referral and were now headed to the referrals house, not the old potentials. This was disheartening, as the old potential was a friend of a member who had re-referred us to them, and we had completely messed it up. So we went to the referral, knocked on the door three times and never got an answer, even though they were obviously home. We then tried to leave, and Elder England backed up, without me backing him because I figured he wasn't going to back up and didn't get out to back him when he did, and he ran into a ditch. I pushed him out, just to see something metal sticking out from beneath the car. It was one of those reflector things they stick on either side of a country driveway. But this was no cheapo one, this was one with little fancy things on it, including a cowboy design on top. Elder England crawled under the car and took awhile getting it dislodged. It was all bent out of shape. We went back, knocked again, still no answer, so we left it with a note offering to replace it. Still no call. We're not THAT scary. We did have some cool stuff, like getting in with a few less actives and having a lady say she'd always wanted to attend a mormon church and was way excited to get a copy of the Book of Mormon. We're also going to Nauvoo today for a Zone P-Day. It should be fun. So it wasn't all bad. It never is. I'm still staying positive.
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"But nevertheless, deep water is what I am wont to swim in." D&C 127:2
Elder Charlie Gates