Hello people of the email chain! It's a bit later than usual, but fret not! The email has arrived.
This week has been super great! God's love is truly all over San Diego, over all of his children. Why don't we jump into a few examples! We will start with our friend, Lance. He's super great and super curious about history. Unfortunately, his sources a bit all over the place, but nothing that a little scholarship can't fix. He has an open heart to listening to the missionaries. He's also hearing, in case you were wondering.
Our Vietnamese member, Tham, stood up and bore her testimony during our service yesterday. We all listened to her yack some Vietnamese into her Google Translate, and then I translated the returned English into ASL for the other members of the branch. Don't ask why there's a hearing, Vietnamese lady in the ASL branch, it's a long story. But seeing her testimony and feeling the spirit behind her words is an experience to say the least. Her testimony is so strong and her desire to come unto Christ is so great, despite her limiting circumstances.
As you may have heard on the news, Southern California is currently experiencing a torrential downpour from the sky. It happened last Weekend, and it's just starting back up again this week to continue to Friday. This brings two unfortunate consequences: bad drivers and floods. People from California seem to forget they're from California and start actually driving the speed limit. Or worse, they drive 10 under!! They also seem to lose all sense of which lane to drive in, as all the slow people clog both the right and left lanes, all driving 10 under. There has never been a bigger smh moment until I drove in California in the rain.
Problem number two is flooding. There hasn't been rain like this in living memory in San Diego, so nobody was prepared for how much water we'd get. Where I live, I'm on top of one of the plateaus called Kearny Mesa, so the water buildup has been minimal and flowing down into Mission Valley. Unfortunately for Mission Valley, there's a lot of flooding. The I8 had feet of water on the freeway, so much that they had people driving on the shoulder to get around. The Fashion Valley mall's parking garage had a foot of water on the bottom level. But the worst of the rain hit Chula Vista, south of San Diego. It's sporadically hilly down there, with houses all over. This meant that many peoples' homes were flooded, or worse, mud-slided. Yes, actual mud came rushing down into peoples' homes.
*moment of silence for the loss of property*
On Saturday, us missionaries and church members from the surrounding areas teamed up with a charity organization that helps with crisis cleanups. I forgor the name, but there were about 80 of us that all showed up to one of the southern church buildings. We organized into teams to tackle different projects and headed out. There were some groups that tore out carpet, others threw away rotting furniture. Many groups were shoveling mud out of kitchens, and a few were cleaning up yards. The group that I got put into went over to an older couple's home to haul away bricks. They had a head-high brick retaining wall that had cracked and fallen over in the flood, and we had to take the fallen bricks out to the road for a dump truck to come pick them up.
It was a blast, we got to serve just like Jesus would if he were here. Now, a few of you may be wondering what reward we received for volunteering in the community. And the answer is simple! Nothing The yellow t-shirts that you see in all the church news articles about the helping hands organization! I finally got my hands on the coveted service t-shirt. But in all seriousness, I am just grateful to help out in the community. Life is hard enough without mother nature throwing yolo's left and right at people. That's why I came out here to San Diego, for the yellow t-shirt to serve others and help everyone feel the love of our Savior.
Anyways, hope everyone has a wonderful week! Remember, charity is the pure love of Christ. Say your prayers, you could have mud in your kitchen tomorrow. Choose to be happy!
-- Elder Coxson
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