Squeamish be warned

October 27, 2014

May I first begin by saying that missionaries should never have pets of any kind for good reason. They are entirely too much of a hassle and we have no time. Plus they make your apartment stink.

May I now update you on the chicken.

It got maggots.

Okay, so Monday we were entirely too tired and lazy to try and introduce the chicken back to the others. That bit us in the butt, because the chicken was really noisy all night and kept Sister Magleby up. So Tuesday morning we try to put it with the others. It doesn't want to leave the box. So I put it outside of the box. It just sits there. Then the other chickens come over and start pecking it. It tries to stumble away, but keeps falling because it's really weak. You can tell it's just accepted death. We are very distressed and trying to figure out what to do. In the meantime I'm playing a real life "defend the castle" game trying to shoo chickens away from the sick one. They would just keep coming, from left, right, front, even between my legs. No mercy. So we put the chicken back in the box, and bring it inside. During all this, I happen to catch a glimpse of the rear, something I have not been able to while she was in the box. I see worm like things. Either worms or maggots.

So we call the D family, and before the daughter went to school they came over to help with the chicken. They take it into the bathroom, lift up her tail feathers, and... maggots. Lots of them. No wonder she was uncomfortable during the night.

And this is where you might want to stop reading if you get squeamish easy.

So it turns out they missed some wounds and maggots got them. There was another maggoty wound on her neck. They brought some heavy duty pink healing stuff that they started wiping on her bum and neck. This also means they had to pick maggots off one by one. We had maggots going down our bathroom sink. And then chicken got to take it easy in our bathroom. So we couldn't use our bathroom for a day because there was a maggoty chicken healing in it. Dying maggots would fall off her rear and then she would eat them. Oh yeah, and then she started having diarrhea (chickens pass gas too by the way). That bathroom REAKED. We thought the Palmers were coming home Tuesday (that day). Turns out it wouldn't be until late, late that night, so we were out of a bathroom all day. We had to use the Palmer's. 

The next morning the Palmers were home, and they removed the chicken and we cleaned up our bathroom. Hard core. The smell of cleaning products has never smelled so good. We also took the time to clean the tub because it had some mildew that may or may not have been affecting us. Oh it felt so nice to be in a clean apartment. It was only a few days but it felt like eternity.

Squeamish people can now resume reading.

Other things happened this week. Apparently I volunteered myself to be the official pianist for the Activity Days’ mother/daughter musical performance. This means I get to come help the girls practice. This time I also got to paint a "prayer pumpkin" for B, to remind him to pray.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I still get to use my piano skills here. For Activity Days (the 8 to 11 year old girls), for Primary (played for them this past Sunday), and for Relief Society sometimes. But never in the same day like in Ukraine. And I don't have to play for Sacrament Meeting.

Cool story: So we had this birthday card for a less active person who lived in a place we had never been before. We plugged the address into our GPS and it first took us to a road leading out of our neighborhood I had never seen before. It took us way into the hills/mountains by where we live. We get to a stopping place, and ask a lady where this house is. She points up. I'm feeling a bit nervous, because this is all private property. So we continue driving into the mountains. We reach a gate. You have to call for someone to open it. Not to be deterred, we call. No answer. Having gone through so much effort to get here, we decide to just stick the card on the call box. Just then a truck pulls up. Turns out it's the grandpa of the person we want, and he's all "follow me up!" Miracle! We drive, and drive, and we are way up there. And then we reach the house. It is the EXACT house Sister Magleby always used to point to and go "I want to go there." Yeah right, like we were going to tract there. But we made it! And then the grandpa takes us inside and we walked into a 1940s wealthy person mansion. Like the people who would just go on hunting trips to Africa. Because he did. Apparently he was a professional hunter. Horns, exotic animal heads, stuffed birds. I walked on a zebra skin rug. There was another one on the wall. So many dead animals. The grandpa points to a room and is like "go knock on her door and surprise her!" Uhhh..... awkward. Standing outside the bedroom door, Sister Magleby and I just gave each other a look like "well?..." and knocked. So terrified of what was behind the door. Turned out it was a really cool girl our age. Really though, it was her 21st birthday. We had a nice chat, we exchanged numbers. Definitely could not have anticipated ANY of that happening.

One more thing and then I have to go. Saturday morning we got to plant trees! And then our member ride wasn't done serving so we went to another service project and helped them finish mulching. It was one of those big service projects where you feel accomplished and ready to go home and sleep. Except we got to go home, change, and go back out and be missionaries. But it was great to be out serving the community.

Hopefully that is all for this week. Cooler weather is on and off here. Strange to think this time last year I was in boots, a coat, hat, scarf and now I'm wearing the same thing I did in mid-July. Sometimes I get to put on a light sweater. Oh southern California.

Well, have a great week! Love ya!

Sister Tanner

I forgot to include an update in my letter about investigators. I'm going to copy and paste my letter to president, and you can edit/add/whatever as you wish to my letter.

"This week investigator lessons tanked, but we were able to see some less active members we've never been able to see before.

As a quick update on C, after she cancelled her baptism again it seemed like she was avoiding us. She wouldn't respond to our out reaches to her, and stopping by her house is complicated because of the situation with her parents plus she never seems to be home. Things seemed bleak until we suddenly received a text from her. Apparently she got a new phone and it's been messing up on her, hence the lack of communication. Plus she has been extremely busy with work and school. And then she told us on Saturday night, the night of her scheduled baptism, that she was at urgent care for something probably stress related. So a baptism on the 25th was apparently not meant to be.

Dave D told us that he and Ty were not going to be at church on Sunday because he's swamped at work (construction) and Ty was going to help. But then they were at Sacrament Meeting! Apparently Dave told Christine that morning that they could at least make it to Sacrament meeting before going to work, which is what they did. Dave continues to impress me, especially since he was the most hesitant one. But then he started reading/listening to The Book of Mormon, and everything changed."

I love you! Thank you for taking care of housing and classes. I will definitely be praying.

I have to go. Again, love you!

Carving pumpkins with the Palmers