Hurricane Irene!

Woot! I got to experience a hurricane. Well, I guess that's a lie cause when it got here, it was downgraded to a tropical storm. But whatever. It was still pretty cool. It wasn't as cool as I was hoping, or as bad as they said it was going to be but I guess that's ok. It rained the whole second half of Saturday and then basically all day Sunday. There was a point when the rain was coming down pretty dang hard. It was impressive. I got a video of it, but the video doesn't do it justice. The wind didn't really start until yesterday evening. It was not as strong as we were anticipating, but once we were allowed out of our apartments at 6 o'clock (we weren't allowed to be out before that. And church was cancelled too.) we were driving around trying to contact some of our potentials and we saw a pretty decent amount of trees that had broken in half or uprooted or had branches broken off of them. I didn't think it was blowing that hard, but apparently it was. haha. There were two really big trees that we saw that had fallen over. One of them just broke in half and fell right between 2 houses - it didn't hit either one of them! Then there was another tree that fell into the street that they cleaned up before we got to see it, but other people were telling us about it. So that was pretty cool. The worst part of the storm though, is that our power went out around noon yesterday and is still not back on. Don't know what's up with that. It's not too bad except all the food in our fridge is probably going to go bad unless they get it back on soon. I've never had the power out for this long before. At least not that I can remember. It's kinda funny too cause the other Elders that live in Lowell have power in their apartment and they live like 3 minutes away from us. But I guess we are on a different power grid from them. Our whole neighborhood was pretty dark lastnight, except for the few people that have generators. So I think that's about all the news from that.

The other big news is that we moved apartments this week! For anyone who cares, the new address is 71 Robbins st. #6 in Lowell, MA 01854. haha. Yeah, when we were told we were moving, they gave us a big list of things we needed to do before we left. It was basically a deep clean of the apartment. We planned on doing it all on pday last week, but we came nowhere near finishing in just one day. Mostly because it was a huge mess. I am pretty convinced that the Elders that had lived there the 4 years previous never cleaned it. I found a couple receipts from 2008 on the floor behind some furniture. It took up way more time to clean it then it should have, had the other Elders taken proper care of it and it gave me the motivation to always keep the places I'm in clean so that the future Elders don't have to go through that ordeal like we had to. Ugh, it was terrible. But, we are out and moved into the new place. I like it. It's a bit smaller than the old place and the office Elder that came to help us move told us we couldn't keep the big comfy couch we had because the only place we could put it was in front of the sliding door that goes to nowhere other than a 15 foot drop to the outside ground. I don't understand why we couldn't keep it but I'm over it. haha. The only problem with our new place is that there are only 2 lights. So we have to go get some lamps from somewhere. But other than that, I like the new place. It's cool.

Other than that, there is really not a whole lot to talk about. Not much happened this week with all the moving prep and the move and the hurricane. We did get to teach our investigator a few times this week. Sad news is that she told us she doesn't want to be baptized even though she knows she'll receive a remission of her sins and be able to live with God again. ??? Don't quite understand that, but I guess that's her choice. Sad.

Oh yeah, one more bit of news. About 5 days ago, I woke up with a sharp pain in my back. I rolled over and groggily reached behind me to find a scorpion....no I'm just kidding. I did wake up with a pain in my back though. But it was my watch. I guess I was having some sort of destructive dream or something cause my watch had been broken. The strap was in three pieces. The watch still works, I just can't wear it anymore. Cool, eh? I wish I knew someone that might have an extra one that he could send me.... :) haha. I also realized that I have a sweet tanline from my watch. Cool.

Okeydokeythen. I can't think of anything else to talk about so I'm not going to try. I hope you all have a great week! Love ya!

Love,
Elder Hammer


P.S. Oh yeah, and that CD I asked about last week? I was hoping I could get it asap from whomever wants to be the kind soul that gets it for me. I'm in a Christmas music mood, and I don't have any Christmas music! haha. Thanks!