We are so busy taking care of housing! Here's how it goes. We were assigned to take care of housing and to give up our mission leader support (MLS is what we loved). But our friends in mission leader support all love us, and they know we still live here, and so giving it up is not possible. And that actually makes us so happy! We are trying to do both jobs.
So we stopped piano lessons, cleaning for our friend who hoards, teaching with missionaries (for the most part), and driving missionaries to the airport. We are still supporting both of our wards/branches as ward clerk and music people. We still speak and bear our testimonies in Spanish. We are still working with our friend to go to the temple in the next few weeks, and we had an amazing dinner with our friends last night (soup, chiles rellenos, salad, stuffed quesadillas, and more). It was so good! We are trying to help these friends we love; the wife wants us to stop her husband from drinking, and the daughter wants us to stop the wife from yelling. We feel the pressure to make it all better because we love them so much.
Two weeks ago, Rob and Tej paid us a wonderful visit. We were so happy to finally meet Tej in person, and we were delighted with him. We went to beaches in Santa Barbara and Malibu (Zuma), even though it was cloudy. We also found some fun restaurants. Our feet got stained in some weird brown oily tar on the beach and our clothes are permanently stained. But all in all, we had a wonderful time. The day after Rob and Tej left, we received our first eviction notice for a missionary apartment, which was a little traumatic. The housing records are completely disorganized and even mission. So we learned that we have to go through each of our 80 apartments and update rent amounts and contracts for the Elder who pays the bills and the auditors. Can we finish in the 4 weeks we have left? To be honest, probably not.
We also moved 3 sets of missionaries out of dangerous apartments into safer areas up in Paso Robles, which is about 250 miles from our duplex. Dad drives a huge truck, and we load up mattresses, furniture, and other stuff. We tell the missionaries not to accept giveaways like treadmills and couches because we do not and cannot move those. But the missionaries still have a lot of junk.
On Sunday we attended our wards. The members are very talkative. During the lesson, the teacher called on a sister who wanted to make a comment. The commenter was on the other side of the room, so I could not hear her very well, but she started telling a long story in Spanish. The teacher was so patient. She turned around and wrote out the lesson on the board during the comment. Then she went to her seat and got a treat out of her bag to give to a baby in the classroom. For about 10 minutes, the teacher didn't even look at the commenter. When the commenter was finished, the teacher just went on with her lesson as if nothing had been said. Then in our next ward, a sister who likes to comment raised her hand in Sunday School and tried to explain some conspiracy theory. Our teacher just said loudly, "No! I asked what ways we follow the Savior, and that's all I want to hear!" in Spanish of course. So I saw two completely different ways of dealing with comments last week.
Last week, a gringo friend who has lived in Camarillo and raised her children here invited Dad and I to a party. It was amazing! Her husband built a brick oven in their backyard. They have a gazebo and all sorts of beautiful flowers. We made our own pizzas and her husband cooked them in his brick oven, then we ate them outside in this beautiful backyard that they have spent 40 years building. Their children were married in their backyard.
Two days later, we flew to Baltimore for a wonderful residency graduation, and we loved congratulating Rob on successfully enduring a hard four years. The fellow residents voted on Rob as the "most likely to know the name of the patient's second cousin best friend's dog" because he loves to listen to his patients. It was a meaningful compliment. Also, on the program, Rob was listed for almost every award and the host just introduced him as, "well you can see that Robert won all the awards." The host was a little dry. :) It was so fun to see Carolyn, Laura, Andrew, Tej, Josh, and Emma there, too.
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