Jan 29, 2012

Hey Dad,
That is so cool Jackson has the priesthood now. That is so amazing, he is going to love passing the sacrament on Sundays. Was he pretty excited about it? Him and Riley have both taken big steps in the priesthood, that is really cool. We really did have a crazy deacons quorum. I really do hope that Jackson's will be a bunch of solid guys that get on missions, I think that helps a lot. Finding is something that I have definitly improved in, but I still have a long way to go. There are some missionaries I have seen who seem to be able to strike up a gospel conversation with just about anyone. I have a long way to go to get to that point. I mentioned in the email to mom we had a really funny teach with Ernest.
We came to his house at the right time, but he wasn't in so we called him. He said he was at 'MoJeezy's,' a 'barbering' shop. We had no idea where or what this was, but eventually found it. It was this hair salon on like the 5th story of this run down building. As we climbed the stairs, we heard this really loud bass pumping. And the advertising sign for MoJeezy's said that it was open from 10am until 'late.' That was a bad sign right off the bat. Oh, and we had like our 60 year old ward mission leader with us. We get to the door of the salon and go in, and there are like 20 african guys in there. They all just stop and turn and stare at us. We are two white guys in suits with this other old, bald white guy. I just froze, I was thinking something along the lines of 'Oh no, I'm going to die,' but then Ernest called out from the back of the shop 'Steed! Whats up!' and I finally saw him and then everyone was cool. This hair salon was like nothing I have ever seen. There were like 6 chairs and barbers in this place, but like 4 couches around the outside of the room where all these african guys who weren't even getting haircuts were just hanging out. Once Ernest said hi to us, they were really cool and made room for us on a couch and talked with us a bit. There was this big flatscreen TV and music just pumping, like these crazy African electronic beats. The barbers were all black guys in their 20's, and they were all like dancing and singing along to the songs. They seemed to be mostly just talking to each other, like everyone in their must have been a regular cause they were all just like joking and messing around. It was like this weird hair cutting party. And no scissors were in sight. They all had clippers, and they were cutting all these guys' hair that was already like shaved off. Seriously, the haircuts took like 30 mintues, and by the end the hair looked exactly the same. They just ran the clippers over their heads. Me and Curran were just loving it, but our WML was a little bit uncomfortable I think, he mostly just stood by the door. Ernest finally got out of there, we asked if they would cut our hair and they said they can actually use scissors so yes they could, and we finally got to Ernest's house. On the way, Ernest told us that he really wants to be a prophet but he realizes how hard it is to become a prophet. By the time we got to his place, we didn't have a lot of time, so we talked about the Book of Mormon. I think Ernest might have been a bit confused by our last teach, as at the end of this one he said that he wanted the prophet to pray, and they pointed at Bro. Jolley, our ward mission leader. We were like 'What??' But just went with it. We will talk about that with him later. It was easily the best night in Slough I have had.
We also had a really great D.A. after church yesterday. It was with the Hitchens, they had like 3 kids in their 20's who were there so it was really cool to talk with them for a bit, as we had no YSA in Helston and it is nice to interat with people of the same age. The dad though, who is a solid member, kept trying to show us episodes of his favorite TV shows, and one of the guys just wanted to show us biking videos on youtube. It was pretty funny, we had a good time with them and they made a really great BBQ.
That experience with Ken and Chris this week really does make everything worth it. It is just incredible how it has all worked out. I hope your week went well as well. Are you working a lot or are you still getting pretty good hours?I am going to come home and be a big fatty and you will be in great shape. You are going to have to coach me when I get home.
Love Elder Steed