Called to Serve: September 30: Bike or Hike

Where to begin. Where to begin.

Too many funny stories.

This week was awesome though. My companion and I absolutely love riding bikes. We are still learning how to master riding a bike in a skirt/dress. But it is possible. And Mumma, I don't need a clip anymore. We bought "chip clips" from Wal-Mart and use those. (One time someone thought we said "Chic clips." When I get back from the mission, I'm going to design some and use that name and sell them to sister missionaries and become a millionaire. It'll happen.)

Let's start at the beginning.

Within the first two days, I managed to break 3 bikes. But not really, they all had issues to begin with. But my lovely first bike, is the one from the pictures. She was a blue beauty. With a basket (Very convenient for a sister missionary, because I could throw all of my things in it.) Tuesday was our first full official day on bikes. We had an appointment early in the morning. We prepared ourselves mentally to conquer the bike. We get on the bikes, not very gracefully mind you. Good thing we wear shorts underneath. Also, a very pertinent part to this story is that Tuesday was an extremely windy day. Seriously, the winds were probably blowing 20 miles an hour.

Currently, I am borrowing an elder's bike helmet. Sister Thorncok is borrowing one from the house we live at...and it is like a little girl's flowery helmet. (It only furthers people's suspicions that she is only 14 years old.) I hadn't fully adjusted the helmet to fit my head at this point. So we leave this lady's house. The wind is blowing so strong, that we are literally fighting to move forward in a straight line. We fail and are moving at a precise diagonal line. The wind is also whipping my helmet off of my head. It is slowly moving from the center of my head, to the side of my neck. I look in front of me and Sister Thornock's little girl's helmet's visor in continually flapping up and down in the wind. (See picture below for full illustration.) Please just try to picture this in your head. Two girls on bikes. In skirts. Wind is blowing so hard that the skirts are flying in the wind. Can't even bike straight. Helmet's flying every which way. It was literally so funny, that I was dying of laughter and almost had to pull off on the side of the road to recompose myself.

At another point of this windy day, I had traded the blue beauty for the green machine. However, the green machine was also not functioning properly. We were going uphill and the wind was pushing on us so hard that I think at one point I was going backwards instead of forwards. And I was pedaling my little guts out. I was petaling so hard and not going anywhere. It was so frustrating. Luckily, I came to understand that it was actually the bike.

Thankfully, people in the ward have taken us under their wing and let us borrow more bikes. I am currently using the black beast. He is a fancy and expensive bike from the Morrison's. Their son recently returned home from his mission and this bike is his mission bike. I've also learned, that I'm not in actuality a terrible biker, I just had bad experiences with terrible bikes. It was funny because Sister Thornock was worried the first two days that I was going to be the infinitely slow missionary on bike, until I got the black beast and she realized that I can bike. And bike fast. With a legit bike.

Sister Thornock and I are thoroughly enjoying our biking experience. We have shared so many laughs over ridiculous moments. I have three more that come to mind.

1. The first day of biking, she was talking to me and I thought I heard her say to me

"I look like a snocone." (It was fitting, because her helmet is very colorful.)

I started laughing and she was confused. Apparently she had really said

"I don't know where I'm going. You should ride in front of me."

I have no idea how I heard snocone in any of that, but it's become a funny joke. So anytime her helmet visor flaps up, she yells out "Snocone!"

2. As I was booking it up a hill one day, I looked around to see no one on the sidewalk. So I started belting out "I believe I can fly!!!!" (in the song version of course.) To my embarrassment, as we passed a gate, I look down to see a maintenance worker on the other side, fixing some mechanical thing. He looks up at me. My companion who was behind me told me later that he was laughing.

3. Sister B is the older widowed lady we visit every once in a while. I walked into her house, of course equipped with my helmet on my head, and her two dogs started freaking out at me because of the helmet. Sister B was really ill and lying in bed. I was trying to have a decent conversation with her, but the two dogs were yapping away at me. I kept giving them the death glance look and telling them to be quiet, all the while still wearing the helmet, mainly because I was too lazy to take it off when I knew we were leaving again so soon. As I turned to leave, Fluffy came up to me and took a chunk out of my leg. I was so mad. It actually started bleeding. If the poor older lady wasn't in sight of me, I probably would have kicked the dog across the room. In a loving manner of course.

Oh man. Too funny. Too funny. I've also enjoyed getting rides with members to church and meetings and such, because then we get to build closer relationships with them as we ride in their cars. I've gotten really close with people here in Southern Highlands. It's going to be really hard to leave all of these great people behind. Speaking of getting closer, a lot of people have recently found out about the zoo. And they are shocked and mock upset that I didn't tell them earlier. And they want pictures. Problem is...I literally only brought one picture out on my mission. And it is of the family at the beach. Could yall potentially send some cool pictures of the animals and me with animals? Supposedly, I was supposed to bring pictures anyways because you're supposed to show the people you work with that you're human? I don't think my investigators have a problem knowing that one, considering how much I mess up. Luckily, they still love me. I think?

I love being a missionary! It's so hard! And I love it! And I love being a missionary on bike!

I'm so excited for conference this weekend! What a wonderful opportunity we have to hear from God's chosen servants here on the earth. I'm challenging all who read this, to write down a specific question you have about life/and or the gospel and take it with you to conference. I promise that it will be answered!

I love you all.

I love missionary work. I love my Savior. I love my Father in Heaven.

Love,

Sister Andelin