September 9th, 2024 - 55th Email - September snow

Hey

Bro members give us so much coke its insane like two days this week i drank like two cokes and then there were two other days where the cokes were after 8 pm so the next morning i woke up absolutely exhausted and i just could not do anything but its like i dont want to offend the members or anything and its just so good yknow i just cant turn it down

Also probably more important was the fact that the city was literally on fire all weekend

(It didnt actually snow that was just a lot of ash)

So it started thursday and they proceeded to be very unsuccessful in putting it out and theres still a ton of fire and smog after 5 days

But it was really funny cuz on thursday (we were doing exchanges) and elder godfrey was like "hey its a fire" and i was like "oh sick" (ive seen like two or three since being here so its like nbd)

But then we woke up the next morning and the fire was like

Still there

The smoke was massive it was actually lowkey sick

But we visited a family up in the mountains that evening and we kinda forgot about the fire and we ended up being at their house until super late (they fed us and were the source of a coke after 8 pm) and so we were driving home and it was hecka dark and so i was driving carefully (i also mightve gotten lost) because idk how to drive in pitch black mountains theres probably like bears or something and all of a sudden we see the entire fire from above it was insane and literally looked like a volcano it was only for a split second but elder pizarro and i looked at each other like "danggggg did you see that" and we pulled up at a turnout spot and took some pics and our phones are potatoes so the pics suck and we get back home and we dont know if we gonna get evacuated or not but we wake up the next morning and everything is like all yellow and smoky and the minute you step out the door you smell all the smoke and basically saturday and sunday are the same story the smoke was really bad and you could see the fire coming down the side of the mountain looking like lava and the missionaries living up in the mountains did get evacuated but down here most of the problems are in east highland (which is part of the redlands zone, they did get evacuated too) but we live in west highland so we chillin (at least faring better than them) and we are still alive so at least we have that it also made for some fun conversations with our friends

Two sacrament meetings yesterday got canceled because of the fire so thats crazy

Also this weekend was literally the hottest weekend of all time it got up to 117 degrees on saturday it was a historically hot and dry weekend like july and august are supposed to be the hottest months but it never got above 110 here but suddenly september comes around and the temps skyrocket and im like dang no wonder the fire started but it also probably lowkey was part of the heat problem i feel really bad for the bike elders

Elder pizarro had to give a baptism interview for the zone leaders on friday and there wasnt enough room in the lady's house so we just stood outside for like 20 minutes and i was dying just from that 

It did sprinkle a little bit yesterday but because of the smoke in the air now our car is absolutely disgusting

If im being 100% honest i dont really remember anything else that happened this week the fire was just such a disaster but we somehow still got really good numbers so we chillin but the fire is still like really bad over in redlands and even reaching yucaipa so thats pretty crazy and they still havent been able to contain it like at all so maybe we are gonna get evacuated this week idk but we have a baptism set up for next week with our friend william so pray that at the very least that happens without interruption because bro is reddy to get baptized

We actually have a lot of progressing friends and had some really good lessons last week so we chillin

Yeah i dont have much more to write about im mostly just surpised everyones just going on with their normal lives driving into very heavy smoke areas like nothings happening its literally like a giant live filter that makes everything yellow but we dont need a camera to make it literally just you go from highland to downtown san bernardino is like moving biomes in minecraft in the morning and evening theres just a lot less smoke there

The worst smoke is probably at those times during the day its mostly gone but you can definitely still see the fire

Cool little scripture real fast brought to you by the prophet alma from the book of mormon in alma 5:60 it talks about how Christ is a Good Shepherd which is cool cuz we're His sheep and it says He won't let a ravenous wolf enter among us we just have to listen to him

Alright bye lol

Pictures

-big dog

-me driving in the mountains

-outside our apartment friday morning

-more fire pics lol

-our car had ashes on the window when we got in it