The Dry Cleaner Chronicles: The Most Fragile Pants IN THE WORLD.

Hi friends!

This week may be a little lacking as the days all blurred together in my journal entries and in my memory. Next email might make up for it though because I don't know when my next P-day will be. You might get an email in one week, or in two weeks (meaning extra big email *sorry*)

Saturday

Haircuts were had today! Not mine, mind you, but my companion's. He decided to get a missionary to cut his hair and it turned out pretty well. I'm going to use the CCM sponsored haircut service though.

I decided to study the Christlike attribute of Patience. Guess what Christlike attribute I struggled with most today: Patience. It is painfully clear that I am far from perfect, but I will try my best to improve over time. It will only take Diligence and Patience.

Sunday

Fast Sunday! This was the perfect day to wear my family heirloom tie: The Rooster Tie. My dad bought The Rooster Tie when he served his mission and he passed it on to his brothers, and now me. I'm very proud to have this tie, and I might find my own Honduras tie (The Pig Tie or something) to pass on to my brothers and children to make a Grant family tradition.

I got to sit up on the stand with the Branch President today. His counselors had other responsibilities and he was feeling lonely so he called him up to be his friend. In all seriousness. His counselors are usually his translators, but because they weren't there he asked me to be his translator. Thank goodness today was a Testimony meeting, so I didn't have to translate a whole talk. 

I spent some time playing the piano today, but it was a struggle to even find a piano to play 'cause they were all taken! I managed to find an open piano in the reception building (called the Joseph Smith building), but that was also where the MTC Presidency was doing their business. Long story short, I now have to play the piano for next week's Devotional. Luckily, I know what the songs will be (Joseph Smith's First Prayer & Praise to the Man) and I have a week to prepare. 

Another bonus for the calling to play the piano is that I now know what my final devotionals will be like. The Sunday devotional I will play for will be Joseph Smith themed, and my final Tuesday devotional will be a live devotional from the Provo MTC where a speaker will be talking. 

Monday & Tuesday

We are doing a two-in-one deal here because I messed up my journal writing and mixed these days together. I'm not fully sure what happened on which day, so just know that over the course of Monday & Tuesday these things happened. And I will try my best to organize what happened in the best order I can.

Monday: Played Futsol with the district. FUTSOL IS DANGEROUS. One of our district members took a ball to the face and had to go to the infirmary. It looked like the impact hurt, but the missionary had been a rugby player and was somehow unphased by the hit. He was wearing glasses when he was hit and the glasses cut his eyebrow so we had him go to the infirmary, but I'm so impressed at how well he kept his cool.

I got a package from my family in the mail with yummy treats. Thanks fam! Somehow, they managed to buy me Costco muffins, though the CCM store doesn't sell those. I was able to share them with my district and share my appreciation for them!

My afternoon teacher, Hermana Flores, had a birthday today! I was so excited to share a muffin with her, but she took the day off so she could celebrate her birthday with her family (which I guess is better than spending the day teaching a bunch of teenagers how to speak in Spanish). I was able to give a muffin to her the next day (which is still today in this email because Monday mixed in with Tuesday in my mind)

Tuesday: Had this week's Helping Others Activity (Ayudar a otros). We met in the Thomas S. Monson building and met some young women from a local ward. Unlike last week's activity, this was in person, and it was cool to talk to some members in person (who was not working for the CCM).

The young women were named Valeria and Kim, and were each 13 and 15 years old respectively. They are friends in their ward and want to serve missions. They know a little bit of English from their school, but are not fluent in it (kinda like how me and my district are with Spanish). 

Ribs were for lunch again, but THEY RAN OUT!!! We had the last lunch of the day, so all the ribs were gone by the time we got there, so we had BBQ chicken instead. When the MTC President came for his lunch they pulled out a secret stash for him, but those ribs were dry and at that point I decided that I prefered BBQ sauce to ribs.

Wednesday

Plot twist of the week. We had ANOTHER Helping Others activity. Yesterday's was supposed to be the last one of the CCM, but we are special and had one other one. This time we met a recently returned missionary named Alejandro and a convert for 20 years named Julio (which translates to July in English). They were very nice and talkative, but I struggled to understand Julio because he had a strong accent (it seems the older a person is, the stronger their accent), and we were outside by the flagpoles meaning it was noisier around us.  

My companion and I taught a very short lesson about seeds of faith (quoting Alma 32:28) to Julio and Alejandro and concluded our final Helping Others activity of the CCM (hopefully)

Hermana Flores, our afternoon teacher, teaches two districts. And her morning district challenged us to an Ultimate Frisbee match. 

This was a declaration of war over our teacher. In order to preserve our rankings as the best class we planned how we would play and did the best we could. When the game started we found out that the other district recruited some of the best ultimate frisbee players in the CCM and had a numbers advantage (13 players to 11 players), but regardless we won 10-3. We are now the best district at ultimate frisbee (out of the two districts Hermana Flores has)

Thursday

I was given another motivational story to read. This one is called "The Fourth Missionary". It is very inspiring, and now I want to read "The Ricciardi Letter" again so I can have peak inspiration. I'm going to try to attach the stories to this email so you guys can read them yourselves if you wish. Be aware though, they are long. And the Ricciardi Letter is better if you want a story rather than a todo list of how to improve. Regardless, I will show you. 

We had potentially our last service project at the CCM. This time we did yard work, pulling weeds. This may have been the last thing I was wanting to do on my mission, because at home I HATED weeding. It was fun doing it with a bunch of missionaries though.

We had one of the hardest rains here in the CCM. Utah really needs this rain. An hour of this kind of rain would refill all the empty lakes in Utah, because a century's worth of rain would fall. There was rain, thunder, and hail in the span of 10 minutes, and everything and everyone was soaked.

Friday

Final temple trip. Special moment means a special tie (Rooster Tie). We did endowments again, but only endowments this time. I was pretty tired after the trip so instead of writing this email on the way home, I slept (oops).

I got a haircut today! First haircut of the mission, and definitely not the last. This is a slightly new hairstyle than I'm used to, and while all my district companions were telling me to get a fade, I never realized that my default hairstyle was a fade. I had to keep coercing the hair stylist to make my sides a little shorter so it was more like I was used to. Even now, It's not exactly what I'm used to, but I like the look and it will take a while before the hair grows too long and I need to cut it again.

The final thought of the week! I named my email the way I did because I visited the Dry Cleaners every day to drop off and pick up clothes to be repaired, cleaned, repaired again and cleaned again. The pants I got for my mission are not holding up to the expectations I have for them. Hopefully they will last long enough for me to make it to Honduras, then hopefully the clothes will be super cheap and I could just replace / repair pants as I need for $5 or less.

Scripture of the Week

John 21:17 - "He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep"

Spanish word/phrase of the Week

Tintorería - Dry Cleaning. This was my best friend this week.

Check out my photos! https://photos.app.goo.gl/g2QAHn4xdMnPx4JT8

Don't forget you can email me for any reason. I won't bite! mgrant@missionary.com

Until next week!

 - Elder Grant