I got my flu shot Saturday. My arm still hurts a bit. Weird.
We went to long beach again to a members house to help her non member
husband to clean out the garage. It was crazy.
Took a while, we had to be there at 7:30, which meant we had to leave
at 7, because it's really half an hour to get there. It's weird
driving for half an hour and still being in our small area.
It wasn't weird in my last area which you could drive from one end to
the other and take an hour, depending on the road and the time. Oh, so
we go down to the beach while we are waiting, and it was kinda cool,
as far as beaches go. Sand, lots of sand. There were some people and
their dogs. Then there was a couple that came from behind us as we
were leaving and they had a cute Dalmatian! He wasn't concerned with
us, but I told the guy he has a good lookin dog. He said: do you want
him? And I'm like: ....uhhh..  He sounded like he wasn't joking. But
it would be hard to do given our current situation. As well as it
being against the rules of missionaries. But it was a really beautiful
dog, the white was very white, and the fur was short.
   So we go back and talk with Ralph. We eat bagels. Then we get to
business. He is a motorcycle dude. He has an old rare Harley. He also
likes cars. He has two old cars. Ones a corvette and ones a big Chevy,
1955 I think. It's like a car, a big lumpy car, he recently had it
painted black with some sweet red/white pin stripes. It was red and
with a black top last year. I guess he races them or just takes them
to car shows and displays them.
His garage was cluttered and full of clothes.
   So we pulled everything out, including the bike, and organized it
from three tables of junk, to one. Oh, he has a dog, too. A bull
terrier. She's cool, all white except for a dark spot on her right
eye. Like the dog from toy story. And he has a cat, a crazy cat. A
rescue, and they're always crazy. The two get along well. Ralph's
wife, the [less active] member, she's the one who gives us hair cuts.
Sis Barone. She works out of our area, but it's close enough that we
can go. <every day our downstairs neighbors smoke some marijuana, and
now I'm smelling it as I write this at my desk, masked with some weird
cigarette smell> So we get the garage cleaned and elder Mortensen
finds a security jacket that he wants to wear, because Ralph was a
cop, as well as a guard for some prince from the Middle East. So he's
posing with a staple gun, and it's pretty funny. But then Ralph finds
a BB gun and has Mortensen use that to pose. And he says we wouldn't
believe how many pictures of missionaries he has posing with the gun,
or the car, or both. So we go over to the hot rod and Mortensen poses
with wright as of he was arresting him. It was funny. Then the sisters
got a turn. I didn't really think the car was that special, so I
didn't get a picture with it.
   We left and got ready then the elders wanted us to go eat with
them, so we were going to go all the way back for Thai food. But the
lunch price wasn't on Saturday. So we tried to pick a new place to
eat, I wanted gyros, but it was out of our area, and Mortensen didn't
feel like we should, so we went and got pizza at a place I've wanted
to for a while. It was super good, I got a spinach with mozzarella
slice, and a chicken Marsala roll, which was like an Italian chicken
pot pie, super good. (Something good about New York, if you don't want
a whole pie, you don't have to, you can get a slice or two, rather
like Utah, or maybe other western places, you kinda have to get a
whole pie of that flavor. I love the pizza here.) and I got some
snapple. On of the workers asked us who we were, what we were selling,
and wright said salvation, then the guy was like, I don't need it. But
he was nice, mortensen talked with him more about what we believe. The
guy was born in Italy, but moved here shortly after, so he considers
himself all American. I'm totally going back there. (Also the slices
are massive, none of this hand sized slices. I thought people thought
they were being cool by folding their slices. But then I got a hold of
one, and realized that you have no choice but to fold it, if you want
to eat it without it falling over)

    I think that I'm not saying enough of what happened but rather a
lot of a few things. Like I'm going into extreme detail about things
that might get to be too much. And not just going over what happened
throughout the week. Making a super long letter about cleaning and
eating, to a shorter one about a few things that happened every day.


    Monday: gave sis Maddox some music. Played foot ball on the beach
and played in the sand, made a sand temple. Found the top of a
jellyfish. It's firmer than I thought.

    Tuesday: mega zone conference, then the ZLs came to our area to
help us. Hart went with me and we did less active look ups. Talked to
a crazy man, and a nicer member who wants to go to the temple again.

    Wednesday: went to the dentist in queens for blackham. (I'm glad I
write things on the calendar, or I wouldn't remember anything.)

    Thursday: went to a buffet with a member. Ate a lot of different
things. The coconut shrimp was super good. The sushi was pretty good.
Baked scallops were good. Baked salmon was good. For some reason I
like seafood again.
          <they're smoking again>
    Friday: district meeting and a new thing- district inventory. It
was cool, everyone wrote on post it's about each other, nice things.
What they are good at and stuff.
  Makes me feel good about myself when I read them.

    Saturday: service and lunch and I don't know what else. Oh, we got
flu shots.

     Sunday: church. Nap. Now I'm here. There's a member who moved
from south shore to here, and he's supposed to call us so we can go
over. But he just moved in. So I guess we can go over another day.
   He has a French name, and I talked to him and told him I thought he
was Haitian, and that I love Haitian food. He said his wife's Haitian!
And that maybe she can make us some food! Woohoo!

     Monday: zone activity. And possibly we'll take our car into pep
boys before it dies.

Okay, I'm done. I'm tired and hungry. I wish I knew how to make good
food. Other than the easy microwave stuff. Like using the stove or
oven or actually cooking.

 See ya.   — Elder Peck