Week 32

 I haven't done much this week since I've been down with the flu. Elder Levy, our district leader, has also been sick so he and I spent 4 days bumming around our apartment while our companions tried to manage missionary work in a combined 4-ward area. 

It's been a little boring, but some of you may be excited to learn that I've turned again to that time-honored sick day activity, studying the Old Testament! 

I read through the entire 1st and 2nd Books of the Kings (1/2 Samuel). It was definitely a wild ride.
I got to read about:

-Samson murdering a whole bunch of people with the jawbone of a donkey, and then him being betrayed by The Worst Wife of All Time 4 different times and never thinking that perhaps he shouldn't be married to her.
-the insane story of why the tribe of Benjamin is the smallest tribe of the house of Israel. Go look it up, I don't know if I can really do it justice over email.
-David winning the hand of the daughter of Saul in marriage by bringing Saul 100 foreskins of the Philistines
-The insult "son of Baalim," which means and idle and useless person, appears about 500 times in this part of the Bible (and nowhere else that I've read before), and is apparently an insult worthy of death. 
-King David marries a whole bunch of wives and steals all of King Saul's concubines, who are then stolen in turn by David's son Absalom when he takes over the kingdom. When David becomes king again he locks all the concubines in a house and never lets them leave until the day of their deaths.
-David leads a movement to regain the kingdom and Absalom dies, and David weeps over Absalom and is sad his traitorous son is dead instead of being sad about all of the other people loyal to David who died trying to restore him to the throne. 

I actually enjoyed it a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing what shenanigans King Solomon gets up to in the First Book of the Kings: Commonly Referred to as the Third Book of the Kings.

Sorry I haven't been great about responding to emails. I'll be better going forward. Merry Christmas to all of you, wish I could be with you. But we'll have other Christmases.

Yours Faithfully,
Elder Calder

We found a cat while we were on exchanges that had polydactyly. These "thumbed cats" are supposed to be good luck (or at least that's what sailors used to say during the age of exploration). He had no tags but he was very comfortable with people and came right up to us. We dubbed him 'Gunther.'

While we were sick we didn't really have much to do besides sleep, study the scriptures, and play board games. Elder Levy is a boardgame fanatic and he has a whole bunch of them that he totes around in a box every p-day. Generally speaking I've never really been into board games, but with nothing else to do they've started to grow on me. I especially enjoy this one game called "Horrified: American Monsters," which is a co-op game where you and the other try to save a little town from cryptids. 

Sick day photo


-Went outside the mission boundaries to pick up some new cars for the mission fleet. 

-here's the Bike Uniform I mentioned last time


-i cooked more delicious lamb






-Got some Christmas ties from home, I can't really wear them out proselyting due to mission rules but I can certainly wear them around the apartment if I want.









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