Saturday I woke up late, and me, Matt, and Rachel went to Walmart. It was one of those days where I looked like a mom of 17 children, the way my cart was mexi packed. I had been putting off grocery shopping for a few weeks, because my family was going to come up this week and take me grocery shopping... But they aren't coming anymore (Super bummed), so it was time. Rach met Matt and Matt met Rach for the first time, and it was good bonding talking about childhood memories and made-up languages. and Israeli politics. (Matt's classic response: I like Jews!)
Then me and Matt unloaded groceries and went for a walk! It was so nice out (but super windy)! For some reason I didn't think of flying a kite, because that's probably one of my favorite things in the world to do. Anyway, we walked down to the park on 4th and told each other stories about our families. We swung (swang? swinged?) on the swings and watched a little asian child go around on his scooter. It was kind of weird. And there were couples everywhere. And there were two precious children pushing the baby swings with no babies in them. Anyway, then Matt got motion sickness (hahaha) so we had to leave, and walked down to his best friend LJ's house, and I got to meet his wife and kids (but not him). They are so precious! One of them was eating a book and the other one played a little soccer with me and matt and jumped around on clean folded laundry. Then I went home to get ready for the adult session of stake conference.
It was so wonderful! It was entirely themed on missionary work, which was kind of weird, just because the majority of the stake has served a mission (kind of an older stake with lots of RM's). But it was neat to hear how we can be preparing to serve a mission, even if its just to uplift our lives spiritually. Then my stake president told one of the most bizarre stories I've ever heard, which is sooo worth repeating, haha.
My stake president, in his youth, used to go ride his four-wheeler across the sand dunes in California. One weekend while he and his friends camped out in the park, they awoke to a strange man with a long ponytail in a pickup truck nearby. As they started getting up and ready for the day, the man in the pickup truck awoke also, and pulled out a hot air balloon out of his truck. He attached it to the gas canister, hopped on it, lit the flame, and rose up into the air until the rope that tethered him to the truck wouldn't let him go any higher. (He didn't have a hot air balloon basket, he just held onto the metal gas container) Then he let himself down, and went back up again, and repeated this a few times. Eventually, he came back down and hopped off the canister, and approached the teenagers that were with my stake president. He said that he loved to go out with his hot air balloon on the weekends, but when he untethered himself to the ground, he drifted over several miles and then spent the rest of the day walking back to his truck. He asked if one of the teenagers wouldn't mind following him, and then giving him a ride back to his truck. My stake president agreed, and the pony-tail man lifted off, and started sailing. My stake president was getting his four-wheeler fixed up and ready when he noticed that the ponytail man was very far up in the air and he was losing sight of him. He quickly jumped on his four-wheeler and raced after him as fast as he could, but eventually the pony-tail man was too far to be seen. He came back to the park ranger to notify him that there was some lunatic wandering around in the desert, just so he would be aware. They went back to his truck and found the wallet in it, and learned his name was Leonard Peabody. (unrelated to the story, but what the weird name?!) They went along their way and started four-wheeling, cause there was nothing else that they could do about the situation. Later that evening, one of their friends came into the camp with his four-wheeler, having had to come late, and exclaimed, "You guys will never guess what I just saw!" He then proceeded to tell them how on the drive to camp, he passed a man, dripping wet and stark naked walking down the road towards the camp. When night came, Leonard Peabody walked into camp... stark naked and told them about his adventure that day. As soon as he lifted off on his hot air balloon, a jet stream caught him and quickly started carrying him at an intense speed across the dunes. The stream carried him over the boundary of the park and so he let go of his gas container and floated to the ground. He covered up his parachute with some sand and started making his way towards the campground again. The boundary line of the park was marked by a stream so when he got to it, he cleverly decided to take his clothes off before he crossed it so they wouldn't get wet. He started his trek across the steam but an intense current made him start to uncontrollably drift downstream, since he couldn't use his arms to paddle since his arms were holding up his dry clothes out of the water. When he finally realized that the current was strong enough to drown him he relinquished his hold on his clothes and let them drift downstream while he was barely able to swim to shore. He then made the rest of his journey, stark naked, to the campground. The moral of this story? (According to my stake president)
Don't do stupid things.
He even gave us a pass along card type thing with a picture of a man holding onto the bottom of a hot air balloon with the words "don't do stupid things" written on the bottom. Probably one of the most entertaining stake conferences I've been to.
I'm finishing writing this blog post almost 2 months later... And I can't remember what I was going to write about after that.. So I'll just end here ha.
