Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Do Arabian camels have one hump or smallpox?" - Elder Poffenbarger

If that isn't the most confusing, strangest email title in existence then I'm not sure what is. 
In this weekly email, we...
- Collectively decide on Avatar: The Last Airbender as best cartoon (well, sort of)
- Come to the conclusion that Welch's should pay Elder Hawkes for advertising
- Have people flake out on English class
- Add two people!
- Further confirm Basim is awesome
- Have a tough time getting to church because of runners
- Spend four hours building a wall
- Learn more about camels while teaching Mohammed English

This week isn't as action-packed as last week, but a lot still happened. First off, Zone Meeting! We had an icebreaker question of "Favorite cartoon and why". I chose Avatar: The Last Airbender as did several others in the zone. "Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses..." :) 

Also, in my trips to the grocery store I've taken a liking to the Welch's juice selection. They've got some interesting ones aside from the grape juice that they're famous for. I bought two varieties that were a little different: Dragon Fruit-Mango and Star Fruit-Kiwi. Not bad. I like the former more than the latter but now I know what a star fruit tastes like (sort of). You're welcome, Welch's! I'm expecting a nice paycheck from you all soon for the advertising I just gave you all! 

One of the things we offer is English classes on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. We pass out flyers like candy and usually have people say "Yeah! I'll come!" only to not have anyone call us. Well, two weeks ago we had someone call us and come to the Saturday morning class! She said she would bring her and her family next time (this past Saturday). So we went to the stake center. 

And waited. 

And waited. 

And waited. 

No one showed up, which was frustrating. I'm always sad when people don't show up when they said they would. 

On Sunday we had two investigators come to church: Muwfaq and Basim. Muwfaq is an older gentlemen who lives on one of several streets where all the interesting (read: crazy) people live. We don't walk there after dark. Anyway! We had a member bring him to church and he thought it was awesome. We're going to call him and see if he can come this Sunday. It's a little difficult getting in touch with him, but we're hopeful.
It was difficult getting to church because one of the main roads we take (Jamacha/Second) had cops directing traffic around runners who were participating in a St. Patrick's Day 1/2 marathon. We wound up having to take a more roundabout route to church, which took about ten more minutes than it would have had we been able to get on Jamacha. E. Poffenbarger and I joked that it was a perfect time to go street contacting because of all the people who were running it!

Yesterday we went over to a member's house to do service. This is the same one I mentioned a few weeks back that dropped the cast-iron sink on his thumb. We helped him lay bricks for a wall/walkway he is making in front of his house. There were two piles of dirt we pulled from, alternating which one we would pull from and when; one was a big pile of just normal dirt, and the other was a big pile of decomposing granite. We would lay down normal dirt, then granite, then pack it all in, lay the bricks, and repeat the process. Despite the 90-degree weather and the four hours it took, we had a lot of fun! He even told us a bunch of crazy stories from his time working in the Border Patrol!

Lastly, the context of the title. 

Mohammed is learning English and one of his final tests is on a story in his textbook about camels. It talks about what a camel's hump is made of (fat), where camels live (Middle East and Asia), some unique things about camels (they have a double set of eyelashes), etc. To help him, we formed answers based around the info in the story and had him write questions based on the answers and on the three types of questions he focused on: "Yes/No" questions, "Either/Or" questions, and "Who, What, When, Where, Why" questions. One of the answers was "Arabian camels have one hump." He turned to Elder Poffenbarger and asked, "What do I put there? 'Do Arabian camels have one hump or...?'" "You can put any noun in there," E. Poffenbarger said. He then listed some examples: "Do Arabian camels have one hump or two?" "Do Arabian camels have one hump or twenty?" "Do Arabian camels have one hump or smallpox?" It went right over his head, but E. Poffenbarger and I laughed about it for a little while!

That's all for this week! Thank you all for writing to me! Keep being wonderful people!

-- Elder Hawkes

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