November 12-18, 2012

Family:
It was good to get emails from mom and dad.That's good to hear
about Austin's surgery. Hopefully he will be better now. Have fun in
St. George for Thanksgiving. We were invited to a members house. We
are a bit nervous because they are really gross and sloppy and I'm
pretty sure they are hoarders. President and his wife and the Edmans
are doing a big dinner at the Visitors' Center. We are also going to
be able to watch a few church movies. We are planning on hurrying and
stopping by they members house and "eating" and then heading over to
the Visitors' Center. Tell the Bain lady that I'm at the Visitors'
Center Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Here's what went down this
week:

Tuesday November 13:
We had a Distric Meeting most of the morning. After we decided to go
tracting. It's not one of my favorite things to do. We went to a
really ghetto part of our area. Seriously Google Painesville, Ohio.
You will die. It is so sketchy. We tracted for a bit on the street and
then when we were walking back to the car we had a feeling to stop at
a random trailer. The guy's name was Donny Loonie. He was a less
active member (however, he's not on our ward's records). He told us
his whole story- He was a faithful member and then one day he just
decided that he wanted to be Catholic. Weird. He's in his 60's. He
left him with a Book of Mormon (he wasn't too happy about that).
Hopefully we sparked something in him. Then when we were getting in
the car two police cars pulled up to a different trailer and were
pointing their guns at the door and when a guy came out the handcuffed
him and off they went. Good old Painesville. Gotta love it. We had
dinner with this super cute family from Utah. We love them. They are a
young family from Cedar City. After that we stopped by an
investigator's house. His mom is a less active and he just never got
baptized. He's about 40 years old and still lives at home. His name is
Alex. He's one of the gems here in Painesville. He's only got a few
black teeth left. Yum. We had a baptismal date set for next month
until we found out that he's on parole for the next 5 years. As he
started telling us what he had done we both yelled "STOP!!" We did not
want to know what Alex had done. All we know is that he's on the Sex
Offenders registry. He was mad that he can't get baptized for the next
5 years.

Wednesday November 14:
Wednesday is our Sites day. Not a whole lot goes on at sites. People
don't come in during the winter. On Friday, when we were tracting, we
met a man named Rico. Did I tell you about him? He seemed super
interested but his wife not so much. We called Rico on Saturday and
his wife answered and said that they were not interested. Rude! We
decided to try and get a hold of Rico. We called him and he answered
and said his wife wasn't happy and they he hung up on us. Boo!! Then
like 10 mins later we get a call from a number we didn't recognize. It
was RICO!!! He said that he talked to his wife and they were really
interested in us coming over. AHHH!!!! I could not believe that had
happened. We seriously sat there for like 5 mins after the phone call
in shock. We set up an appointment for Friday with their family. They
have 4 kids. That does not happen in Painesville. Families do not
exist.

Thursday November 15:
This was a very interesting day. An investigator named Kathy needed
help moving. All of her things were at a friend's house. This friend
just ended up and jail and the owner's of his apartment were just
going to throw out all of his things. She was stressed because those
things were hers. She doesn't have a car to move all of the stuff.
(Why is this our problem? The people here in Painesville need to learn
how to take care of themselves!!) We called a guy from our ward that
has a truck and we helped her move. Picture this: me and my companion
trying to move really huge awkward items into a tiny truck- dressers,
couches, tables... It was not a good idea. It took us nearly 2 hours.
Kathy has COPD (which everyone has here) because she is a smoker so
she just sat back and watched us move all of her junk. After the move
we had some good solid appointments set up- Misha and Miracle was one
of them. Every single appointment canceled on us. Even the meeting we
have with our Ward Mission Leader canceled. It was really annoying. So
we just went home and made calls from home.

Friday November 16:
We had a training meeting with all of the new missionaries. It lasted
most of the day. After we had out meeting with Rico and his family. We
were so excited. When we got there she said that Rico was having heart
pains and was just taken by an ambulance to the hospital. She was a
mess. We aren't allowed to be alone with kids or else we totally would
have watched the kids so she could have gone to the hospital. We went
and grabbed the family a pizza and sat down and just got to know them.
She is a former J DUB (Jehova's Witness). Nice! It was good that we
had that chance to get to know her and the kids better. Now we have a
better idea what they need to be taught. After that we stopped by an
investigator's house. Her name is Marissa. She lives with her
boyfriend (she is 16 and he is 18) at their grandma's house. When we
got their I seriously could not go inside. Everyone here is hoarders.
There was crap everywhere and the grandma was in the corner smoking.
You guys would have died. Marrisa and her boyfriend weren't home so we
sat and talked with granny. Good times.

Saturday November 17:
This morning pretty early we got a call from Rico's wife Kristine and
she said that last night she threw out her back and Rico was still in
the hospital and she really needed help. We told her that on Saturdays
we are at Sites and we couldn't help her. I started to get a really
weird feeling about her. Ya we offered to help her but this was just
weird. We called the elders that are in our area and they said they
would go over and see how they could help. They stopped by unannounced
and said that her back was not thrown out, she was fine. What the
heck!!!!! She was seriously trying to use us and mooch off of us. Now
we don't even know if Rico is really even in the hospital. We were
super frustrated after that. We thought we had found a golden family.
This week has been really weird. We are trying to figure out how to
help these people the best way that we can. No one here is self
sufficent. It's weird. A 30 year old man asked us if we could call him
and wake him up for church on Sunday. He told us that he has an alarm
but that he needs someone to make sure that he actually gets out of
bed. Does he want us to come over and make him breakfast as well?
Haha. Anyways.. at Sites today we had a tour come in. I got to give my
2nd tour. It went really well. However, we didn't find out until half
way through that they were FLDS. Yikes! They totally were saying
things that made us think they were LDS. It ended up being a really
weird tour towards the end. Did you know that the women in the FLDS
church can have the priesthood? Weird. Hmmm... We set up our Christmas
tree when the 4 of us got home. It was so much fun. We blasted
Christmas music and put on all the ornaments. We also drew names for
Pixies! They were all stoked about that. We are even going to go to
Rite Aid and by 5$ presents on Christmas Eve.

Sunday November 18:
We were asked to do sharing time for Primary. It was so fun. We taught
them ways that they can be a missionary now. I had missed being with
kids. After church the elders asked if we could take home two of their
investigators that had come to church. They were both teenage girls.
They asked us where we were from. We told them Utah. One of the girls
said " How do you like the food here?" We were so confused. We both
were like "Uh.. it's the same." She then said "Isn't Utah by Brazil?"
BRAZIL?????? I thought she was joking so I started laughing. Nope she
was not joking. She had never heard of Utah. The senior missionary
that was driving us said she was from Idaho and asked if they knew
where Idaho was. The girl said "Oh ya isn't that in Hawaii?" You've
got to be kidding me. It seriously was so awkward. These are the types
of people that we get to work with here in Painesville. We seriously
cannot stop lauhging about that.

Well life is good here in Ohio. I love it. It's been a lot of fun.
Some people you can pray for are: Misha and Miracle, Rico and Kristine
and Kathy. Also pray that we will be able to find new people.

I love you all and I miss you a lot. I got all of your packages mom.
Thanks so much!!! I love the coat and the mittens! You da best!

Sister Frampton