The car is gone and we don't have our house keys.

I'm sorry this is being posted so late! My parents were traveling...

Today was a stressful day. So many problems that could've been resolved if we had just taken our car to McAllen by ourselves...But let's rewind a little until we hit those events

ALSO HAPPY BIRTHDAY GAIL PAYNE!!

Monday

We started off our day with a sick beach day planned and it was so much fun! Everything was awesome and the energy was high! We made a sick sandcastle and had a spikeball tournament. But I was forgetting something. Something very important.I'm a ginger. And the sun is my enemy. I burn worse than a rat in a KFC deep fryer dood. But I didn't realize it until now, how bad I was burned. When I put on my pants again and my collar and everything was rubbing. My goodness I was gonna throw hands with the devil it was painful. Anyways, we went from the beach straight to the first whataburger ever made which is a 2 story building with super cool paintings about whataburger and it was kinda goofy but we all had such a blast! Once we got home we were going through Walmart and some genius decided to give me a knife... that was me and now I have a knife rated 120 on the sharpness scale. Aren't you proud of me Mom? But I got it because I have a lot of fish to prep and I always want to have a knife with me for when I cook. So I don't need to worry about if the next apartment has any good knives. Then we get to family night (without the knife but all my sunburns) and we had almost 30 people show up! It was the most hype night ever! We got some MPLs (Member Present Lessons) and just started going!

Tuesday

We started off with ZLC which was pretty fun because we just went to the spanish ward in Corpus and just started celebrating the 4th. Lots of spanish contacts but we just booled. After this we went to someone's house to give them a blessing of health, but, when I started to give the blessing I couldn't do anything. I felt helpless. I wanted to bless this person with life and health but I couldn't do it at all because it just wasn't the Lords will. It was his time to go. It was kind of a somber note to go through the fourth of July but you know sometimes that happens. I was able to teach a super sick lesson with someone and she just seemed super receptive. And once night befell us we the fireworks started. At first I only saw one and I was gonna be mega depressed if I only saw one firework on THE day of independence. But fear not my children, the rich neighborhood in key alegro has some pyrotechnic people over there. And the show was insane.... we saw it from the driveway of our apartments and the booms still shook my soul.

Wednesday

This family bro. These guys are the embodiment of a Utah family and I love them so much. We have been teaching their daughter? I don't know the whole story about who is the parent of the child but anyways. She's epic and wants to be baptized but has split custody every couple of months they switch out. But we were able to get MaKylee her own book of mormon so that means I got my marked book back! What I am mega stressed about is this Friday we gon be going to McAllen to switch out our equinox we have right now for a brand new one. And when I saw brand new I mean like maybe 20 miles on it. Which will be so epic but there and back to McAllen is 350+ miles and that's gonna shaft everything.
ThursdayHonestly not much happend. We had exchanges but all we did was talk to 3 people and make sure they were coming to church. I did help give a blessing to a kid but he broke his toe and wanted to go to church so he called us up for a blessing. Smart kid and strong faith. Once we got home (in Sinton for the exchange) we played some Yu-Gi-Oh... It was Elder Bakers first time playing and we stayed up til 1 playing multiple games and talking everything out. It was so nice to have a feeling of just being legitimate homies and play some card games and stay up late. I miss that sometimes.

Friday

When we exchanged back to our normal companions. It had just rained so it was so MF muddy. But hey, I got a big ol box of oreos so I'll take that as a dub. Later in the day after all these super lit teaching appointments we come to this one house... don't worry this isn't a super motivation spiritual moment, but! I saw so many frogs... I caught prolly 10 of those doods! It was so insane! AND I caught a snake as well which was so epic but now my hands smell like snake. I know why my mom never liked me coming into the house after touching a snake now. Then we went on over to gospel principles which LouAnn came to and it was so cool to see her actively participating in these discussions! But the funny thing is, Brother Richardson never stays on topic and loves to interrupt. And everyone is having a competition to see who had the worst childhood and who couldn't do the most things or crap like that but it's so funny. Seeing people just slamming each other over things that happend a minimum of 40yrs ago. Goofy people man.

Saturday

Dude I thought my room was dirty with a small pile of old sheets in the corner. But wait until you hear about this room we helped clean for a service project. We come to this house. And it's a food friend of ours so we want to help them out and they said just throw everything away. I was expecting to just literally throw everything away and be done in 20 minutes. No. This was probably mid shin high of garbage, clothes, food, old toys and random papers including medical info. What the freak! This was just filthy and anything we tried to throw away the mom would say "no we still want that. What if we need it later" GIRL. THIS IS A BANK STATEMENT FROM 2005! I don't even know bro. But on the bright side we were able to continue our streak of MPLs to 7! 7 days in a row where we had a member at a lesson.

Sunday

I just took some muscle pictures and went to church that's literally it.

Monday.

So. We ended up not going to the McAllen trip because some of the sisters had a doctors appointment so they would be down there anyways. So they asked if they could take our car down for us because they were already headed down. Sounds like a great idea! I was a little bummed because I wanted to make the roadtrip and have some fun singing songs and chatting for 6 hours. Monday rolls around and we meet up and give them our car. Only for me to realize that I left my phone charger in the car. Which isn't to big of a deal because they'll be back by 5 and then we can drive home and still prep for family night. While we are chilling in the gym at the church the sisters call us. "Hey we just got your new car! We're on our way now!" Sweet! Awesome! Except one small detail. McAllen is 3 hours away. It's already 3 o' clock. And we are the only people who come to family night that have a key to the building. So we wouldn't be arriving until 7. So I make some emergency calls and get someone on it to unlock the building around 6 so everyone can at least get or maybe freestyle a lesson (which who knows that would go

) so I'm starting to stress out a little. My phone is starting to die and we don't have a car to get home. So we sprout this wonderful idea (after checking through with leadership) that we will take the sisters car and drive it to Rockport and switch it out tomorrow at ZLC! Awesome! Sick plan well still get home on time. So we meet the sisters and as we are switching cars, Elder Powell stops. He doesn't have his TIWI... for those who don't know what a tiwi is. It's basically a device that plugs into your ECU and tracks EVERYTHING your car does. And he needs his car to sign in or else he can't drive... I don't have mine because I haven't been out for 12 weeks yet so that just sucks. We call the sisters with our card and asked if they grabbed his card so he at least knew where it was. And they had no clue... shoot dude. Now what. We make the call and tell the vehicle coordinator what's going down and he tells us to unplug it. Which is also a massive no no so we are a little shocked. But we agree. We take the car to Rockport and get home with time to spare. Only for another thing to happen. We don't have our house keys either... so I had to scale the side of our apartment building to the second floor and break into our own house and get in. And LUCKILY BY MIRACLE, the sliding door wasn't locked. My anxiety all day has just been spiking. We get to family night on time and it all goes smoothly. Still processing it all but wow what a wild ride.

I love yall stay safe!

-the handsome ginger hunk