October 21, 2019

I'm a snake whisperer?!?!

 What is up everyone? I hope y'all are doing well. I apologize for the short email last week. We had a lot of missionaries in our area to hang out on p day so I didn't have much time to email. However I have repented and can promise a better email. I'm actually writing this on Sunday night as we drive up to Salina because we are going to hang out with the Zone Leaders tomorrow for p day. I'm pretty stoked because Salina has a Ross and a Chick-fil-a so ya I'm pretty excited. Well where to start with this week. As you saw in my pictures from last week, we were busy playing board games all day. Once the day was over, I drove myself and Elder Noack up to Hays because we were going on exchanges. It was honestly pretty weird to drive again, and I never realized how much I missed it until I got the opportunity to drive again. Elder Noack has only been out a few weeks, so it was pretty fun to work with him. We're both still fairly new and still don't really know what we are doing, but we had some of the best success knocking I've ever had which was very cool. 

So I'm serving in Kansas obviously, and one thing I never thought would happen here, has happened. I've talked about a returning member we visit named Mark who drinks a lot of mate. Well he gave me a cup, a straw, and some mate, so I started making it for myself almost every night, and I'm not gonna lie, it is very good. When we're visiting him, we drink this stuff that's called taraqui, and he gave me some stuff different than that to take home. What he failed to tell me is that the stuff he gave is also a natural diuretic or in other words, it's a laxative. And that's all that I will say about that. 

I had a pretty crazy thing happen this week that I didn't know was possible. While playing games on Monday we were eating popcorn, and I got a kernel stuck in my throat. It didn't bother me too much, and I just thought it would eventually dislodge and I would be fine. Well folks I had this popcorn kernel stuck in my throat for FIVE DAYS. I didn't know that was possible. It didn't bother me too much at first, but man by the fifth day my throat was so sore and it hurt to swallow and to eat. Well I can tell I'm a missionary because my mind instantly thought of some analogy I can make with this so I'm gonna share this with y'all. Temptation is like the popcorn. Maybe you give into temptation a little and you eat some popcorn, and all is fine. You eat more and more, and give into more and more temptation, and then one time it doesn't turn out fine. A kernel gets stuck in your throat. At first you don't think much of it. When you first sin, maybe you don't think much of it. You think everything will work itself out. Well the kernel stays lodged in your throat, and the sin doesn't work itself out. After five days you're hurting pretty bad, but you still don't do anything besides drink water to get it out. After five days you can't handle the pain anymore. You have to do something about it, so you take your pinky and you shove it down your throat and you don't stop until that kernel is gone. The point is, you have to take action. I thought that I could just drink a lot of water and my problem would work itself out. When we do something we shouldn't we have to take action to make it right. Our problems are not going to magically fix themselves unless we take action. I hope that made sense because I'm typing, but also lowkey jamming out while driving to Salina, so there's that...

Honestly the title of my email is pretty straightforward. The other night we were walking around and Elder Grassi pointed out something that he thought was a worm, and he was like, Elder Nixon, that is the weirdest and fastest moving worm I've ever seen. I looked at it, and it was a snake. Honestly the thing is tiny, but ya he didn't want to pick it up so I did and got a picture! He was not receptive to the message we had to share. 

Also I've got an interesting question for y'all. As we were walking, we noticed that the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall doesn't have any windows... It was rather odd. I now know why they don't have windows, but I want to ask y'all and see what you think. Why don't the kingdom halls have windows? 

Well I hope everyone has a fanfreakintastic week. Make the most of the time that the Lord has given you!

Elder Nixon