Checkmate, Atheists and Pizza

Love those Texas Ice Storms! Get the man an ice scraper!

Happy New Year-2018 (5:30 p.m.)

Warning: the man that spoke with me in this story used some awful words. I've bleeped them out but this still probably isn't something you'd want to read with your kids. Sorry in advance if anyone gets offended.  

Checkmate, atheists:

On Friday I was on exchange with Elder Cook and since we had absolutely no appointments we tracted all day long. We met a lot of cool people and most people were pretty friendly with us like usual. Then we knocked on this one door, it swung open for about .3 seconds a man let out a furious, "UGH!" and slammed the door in our face so hard pictures in his window shook. 

"ATHEIST HOUSEHOLD!" He screamed at us from behind the door. 

We stood there surprised, not because he slammed the door on us or yelled at us but because he was an atheist in Texas. An atheist in Texas is a lot like an American man in North Korea: he's there but that isn't really where he belongs and also everyone thinks he's evil.

We shook it off and walked away, we were already standing on the road when the door swung open again just as fast as it was shut. 

"THIS IS AN ATHEIST HOUSEHOLD! GET IT!?! THIS IS A [expletive] ATHEIST HOUSEHOLD! PLEASE DON'T [expletive] COME BACK!"

I turned to look at him and (trying to get a laugh in) sincerely said the traditional southern goodbye: "Haha alrighty we wont! God Bless you!"

 He didn't appreciate the sentiment.

"DO YOU REALIZE HOW [expletive] DISRESPECTFUL THAT IS?!? THAT'S [expletive]! [expletive]!" 

I'll admit when he started screaming at us again I laughed which was probably not the most respectful I've ever been, but I never considered that 'God bless' could be disrespectful I mean, that's what everyone down here says even President and Sister Whitney. I asked Elder Cook if I that was a disrespectful thing to say to an atheist, "I don't know," he said, "I don't think so, I wouldn't worry about what his definition of 'respectful' is because he did just slam a door in our face and screamed at us." 

I was happy with that answer and later that night I prayed for a long time sincerely asking for that man to be blessed. 

Pizza:

Saturday was a rough day for us and so when we got to the apartment for dinner Elder Petrucka exclaimed, "I am going to make a Totino's personal pizza!" 

"Uh, ok." I said. 

He dramatically grabbed a pan that I was pretty sure was made out of plastic and danced about about the kitchen in a whirlwind and sang songs from "Shrek: The Musical!" and "Anything goes" by Cole Porter (he's actually pretty good) until his pizza was in the oven. 

All that singing and dancing must've worn him out though and he turned to me and said, "I'm going to go take a nap. Please wake me up when my pizza is ready."

He collapsed on his bed with his shoes on and everything and was snoring about 45 seconds later. 

I proceeded to begin my endeavor of making 8 blueberry pancakes for my own dinner. As I was preparing the batter I cracked an egg and almost simultaneously the room smelled like a dead crawfish. At first I thought it was the egg but the smell was coming from somewhere else. I opened the oven and the pizza was popping but it didn't seem like the smell was coming from the pizza. 

Does the pizza normally make popping noises? I thought to myself, I can't worry about that now I need to keep making my pancakes... it's probably fine. 

I started cooking the pancakes and around pancake #3 the smell got worse and the popping got louder. I opened the oven and the hot air blasted out and burned my eyes so I only caught I tiny glimpse of the pizza, still cooking. 

At pancake #6 i thought to myself, the pizza has been in there for 20 minutes. It has to be done by now. 

I got an oven mitt on and opened up the oven. Alarming amounts of light gray smoke flooded the air, except it didn't smell like smoke. It smelled like a dead crawfish. I closed the oven and approached the still sleeping Elder Petrucka and calmly informed him that his pizza was on fire. I woke up and sat there for a few seconds processing what I said. "You mean like, it's done right?" He asked thinking I was kidding

"I mean, something's wrong," I said not kidding. 

He shot out of bed and threw the oven open he grabbed the pan and pulled it out. "This was not the desired effect!" He said, apparently his pan was actually made out of plastic and had melted all over the oven. Luckily he was still wearing his shoes so we sprinted outside and put it in a dumpster and then threw a couple windows open. Elder Petrucka felt so bad because we had to open the windows and make the apartment cold and also because I burned pancake number #6 in order to throw out the pizza. But, really I didn't care too much. I was just thankful the dead crawfish smoke didn't asphyxiate us. 

Spiritual thought of the week is brought to you by The Zoramites. Zoramites: "we're better than you especially if you't re poor."

In Alma 32:9-11 Alma is teaching the poor Zoramites and they are concerned how they can worship God if they can't get up on the Rameumpton like the rich Zoramites do so Alma tells them this:

 "9 Behold thy brother hath said, What shall we do?—for we are cast out of our synagogues, that we cannot worship our God.

10 Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only?

11 And moreover, I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week?" 

Moral of the story: pray to God always. Worship Him always and everywhere.  

Picture 1: yet again scraping off ice from the windshield with spatulas ... again.

Picture 2: A silly looking picture of me in a purple (probably woman's) trench coat

Picture 3: a blurry picture of us drinking Martinellis pretending it was midnight even though it was only 5:30