Sister Riley Dorrance's California Arcadia Mission: Week 8 Halloween, hoarders, and spray painted bathrooms.

Yours Truly, Sister Arriola, Sister Allen in front of our ward building

Alright kiddies, settle down and buckle up because this week was a roller coaster.

Halloween started out with us waking up to a very very sick Sister Allen. We had interviews with the President and because Sister Gillman is the only other sister allowed to drive the car, she did a lot of driving back and forth because someone had to be with Sister Allen all day. It's alright though. Between the other four of us, we conquered the East Pasadena and Huntington areas, and stayed with Sister Allen. On Halloween we had to be inside by 6 and we had gotten face masks and balloons and popcorn so we were going to watch The Testaments and have a righteous party. It didnt really happen though because we were all exhausted and we didn't want to do it without Sister Allen so we all read scriptures and studied for 4 ish hours. Super cool, super not spooky Halloween, it was swell.

On Wednesday I was with the Huntington Sisters in their area and they have lunch every week with this lady named Eliana. I had only heard stories about this lady and let me tell you, she's straight up crazy. She's this older lady and she makes terrible looking floral arrangements out of fake flowers and what looks like things from the dollar store. It's a sight for sure. She speaks Spanish and English, but she says she has the gift of tongues which apparently means speaking gibberish and calling it the gift of tongues. It's hilarious. Get this, she spray painted her bathroom. I'm not saying she spray painted the walls or anything, no she painted her bathtub red. And she got tired or something because it's not even done. Then she painted the outside red and purple. And her toilet red, and the floor half purple. It's a sight for sure.

On friday, we had a couple lessons which was SWEET. We had dinner at a members house and I kid you not, her house loomed like four houses put together. It was so gosh darn huge. The dinner was great, but in her entryway she has this really cool looking thinking man painting and the thinking man is red and the rest of the canvas is this really vibrant yellow so as we were leaving I was talking to her about it and I asked her what it was painted with and where she got it stuff like that, it's an original and IT WAS PAINTED WITH URINE. She has some artists urine hanging in her entryway and she wasn't even a little weirded out. We had a good laugh about it on the way home.

On Saturday we were going to do some service hours for a member who really needed some help cleaning her kitchen and it was kind of our way to get to know her husband who isn't a member. She definitely took advantage of our service, we cleaned out three of her cupboards and we were cleaning for over two hours. She's a hoarder. We got her to throw away 8 trash bags of stuff from three cupboards and they were still full. But then we had a great dinner and then a lesson with the whole family. We told them we just wanted to practice teaching the first lesson (righteous lie?) So we had a fantastic lesson, he had a bunch of questions, it was golden. But he's not interested, so we'll just keep getting him and his wife to feed us and let us practice our teaching and it'll be great.

Sunday was a party, we were asked to teach gospel principles that morning, which actually turned out pretty well, we had us three and then two guys in the lesson. These two guys, one is Brother Sorenson who is a little mentally disabled and the absolute sweetest man in the whole world. He walks with a walker and he is so nice and his little hunchback and sweet smile will just warm your heart. The other one is another sweet old man named Brother Shoemaker. We visited him yesterday, he's a hoarder too. So nice though. His neighbor wanted us to come and visit him because he tries to get Brother Shoemaker to clean by reminding him that girls are coming over. He's not creepy, just old fashioned.

Last week we visited a non member named Moira and as we were talking she said she'd love to have us over for a little bit but she's not in the mood for the lessons, but if we wanted to come over and paint with her than we could! Shes an amazing artist so that's what we did this morning! I'll attach a picture next week maybe.

I think that's everything, it's been a crazy crazy week.

Have a good week!

Don't forget that Jesus Christ loves you heaps and bunches.

Love, Sister Dorrance