Monday, July 27, 2015

Yesterday Elders Chee and Stevens were talking about a women they met who is physically incapable of taking out her trash and rats have gnawed through her trash cans. Because of the big holes in the cans dogs and cats get into it and scatter trash all over the neighborhood, which ticks the neighbors off and makes them mad at her.  Well, about 4:00 this morning I woke up to the sound of, what I thought was, a rat gnawing through our garbage can in the kitchen!  I got up with the intention of killing the thing with my bare hands.  The closer I got to the kitchen the louder the sound got. I thought: Oh, no! There's two or three of them in there!  Cold chills ran down my back as I got closer.
Remember I said it was 4:00 in the morning. By the time I got to the kitchen I was wide awake and somewhat coherent and realized that the sound was not coming from the kitchen at all.  No! Someone is trying to break into the apartment!
Talk about cold chills down my back. That was nothing to what I felt right then. Nothing to grab to defend myself so I just stood there waiting for them to come in. Then, I realized it was raining and the rain hitting the front room windows sounded, to a sleepy old man, like rats gnawing through a garbage can or someone trying to break into the apartment.  So back to bed I went; grateful that we did not have rats or someone breaking into the apartment.  When it rains here it really rains!
We got up about 6:30 for our morning walk.  We opened the door and it felt like a sauna. We checked the temperature:  72 degrees and the humidity was 93%.  That's enough to make an old man delusional!
We drove up to Pikesville, MD, about noon to visit with Elder and Sister Crane.  They have been here for 15 months and will go home in eight months. We wanted to get some recommendations from them on what they have been doing that has been successful for them.  Great visit and we came away with renewed vigor.
Irene baked some cookies, plated them up and we identified three people we were going to see; two less actives and the woman we met last week who found the bookshelf on the street and the same one we carried about a half a mile to her house.  All three were happy see us, or at least the cookies.  Jennifer (the bookshelf lady) was surprised, grateful and hugged us both.  We will be back to teach her.
Great day.