"Beware of Pride"

Hola family,

So this week was awesome! Mon-Thurs we had the usual fun. We are working with some awesome people. One in particular, Bing, from China. He's awesome and came to Church with us yesterday. He gets along with everyone and is awesome. I forget sometimes what I tell y'all and what I haven't told you so I'll just assume I haven't told you anything just in case I accidentally leave something out. We go to a senior center and give service once a week there. We talk with the members there and then play some intense games of Dominos. I with y'all could meet the people there, they are so funny haha, one lady named Juanita always asks us, "are y'all being good still? cuz if ya aint im gonna pull ma switch out on ya!" then she does a very unique laugh that Elder Brown and I are still working to imitate to perfection. Another thing that I don't know if I've talked about is our "transportation situation"(-Uncle Rico). We are in a car area so... we drive everywhere. We don't bike ever because (I learned) it's just not effective in this particular area. But, we decided on satuday, "ya know, why not bike today?" so we did. Ten minutes into our biking it started raining a little. It started raining harder and harder until we were pretty darn wet. We visited some of the people we had planned on and Amne was one of them, I think I talked about her before. But she kept telling us "you come in! you too wet!" (But we couldn't because her husband wasn't home and out of respect and other reasons we can't go into someones home without another adult male with us). So by then we were as wet as we'd have been if we jumped into a swimming pool. In Houston the rain comes down so hard! it's like standing under a waterfall. My planner is just starting to be dry now from Saturday. So we went home after biking on saturday around 4 and had to change because there was a ward activity we were going to at the church. After we changed into dry clothes we went out and got in our car. The trip of like 15 feet from the apartment complex door to the car got us pretty wet even though we had a jacket and umbrella. Then the rodes on the way to the church were crazy. Everyone had to drive super slow and be really careful. (A lot of people accidentally drive in water too deep and their cars just stop and their engines flood. You have to be really careful not to drive in deep water) So a lot of the rodes were blocked off and a lot of cars were just on the sides of the rodes with their hazards on. Lucky--with a few detours--we made it to the church. I have some awesome videos of our drive to the church, I'll try and send them to y'all another time. I do have some pictures as you can see of us standing on a freeway exit in water to our knees. A lot of roads had water 2 or 3 feet deep so a lot of people just couldn't drive. The ward activity we went to was a fundraiser for the youth. They gave us an italian dinner and then they had an auction on dessert. After that we had to go help the Elders that stay in our apartment. They were stuck in a parking lot at a Jack in the Box. Finally we found them and had to find a way home. We ended up just parking in a parking lot by the 610 freeway and walked a ways to our apartment. It was a crazy night. Then to top it off our power was out when we got home and it was out until Sunday night at 8. We had to move some of our food on sunday to the Church fridge so it wouldn't go bad. And it got pretty hot in the apartment without AC, but it was an awesome weekend! Besides all the crazy things, it has been a great week spiritually, I'm learned a lot from the people we teach and my companion. I read an awesome talk this morning called, "Beware of Pride" by Pres. Ezra taft Benson. As well as y'all know me your probably thinking, "why in the world would he read that? He's the most humble person I know" but it turned out to be one of the best I've read, Y'all should definetly check it out. The work is going well. Christ lives and He died so that we can become clean through repentance and be able to live with our Heavenly Father who loves us so much again. I love you guys, have an awesome Week!

-Elder Russell