ELDER OLDROYD: PIGS MAN

I had an interview with President Vellinga and asked him for an extension. He won’t give it to me! I have asked him a few times now and he still won’t give it to me!

Well I have been nicely noticed about how I haven’t said anything about Casey and his accident over the family email! Also of how he became a Mormon! Casey if you read these, I’m super proud of you man! I truly just can’t believe it, I’m in aww. I read your testimony, and it’s powerful. I’m telling you that is seriously what makes the best missionary. It is when you have a powerful experience happen to you. We have something in common. We came to the true realization when we have had some really close calls and tremendously tragic stories. Being a missionary, is the most amazing experience I could ever dream of. Being out here to share the Gospel of what you came to know is true and to share your personal feelings, is truly the most amazing experience. In the scriptures we read that the Holy Ghost is the testifier of the truth of ALL things. Not just some things, but everything that is true. You have received truth, and you realized it. That’s a miracle man! It truly is a Gift from our Heavenly Father, called the Gift of Believing. I think the most important thing of all behind this is that you acted towards what you felt and know is right. My father always said, actions speak louder than words ha-ha. I’m sure your father has as well. With you decide to become better, you decided to repent of shortcomings. I truly know that repentance is change and that the Atonement is what makes everything possible. I could go on about all of this, but I know you already know it. That’s so great to hear that you have been baptized by proper authority and to feel the prompting of serving a mission. You will never regret it. Love you man! Keep up the hard work, keep being that example.

This week was another successful week for us! I kind of have a cool/funny story ha-ha. So we were on exchanges, and my companion Elder Shin went to the other Elders area which is Rootstown. And Elder Greenland came into my area. We had a crazy day. To start off we taught 8 lessons that day. I have never had that many lessons in a day before ha-ha so that was truly amazing! But previously a few days before that happened we received a phone call from a Utah number. Ha-ha I answered it and it was a missionary that has been home for a few months now and he said that he knows a guy from the Youngstown Ward that has a referral for us and so he gave this guy Kyle our number. We met him at this farm to help out with some service. Well at this farm there is 4 lamas, 1 horse, like 15 chickens. I thought that was it. But she took us to their closed up garage. We opened the door and the smell hit me. It was rancid ha-ha, there was two teacup pigs in there. She made some homemade corrals with some wood pallets. I’m telling you what the smell was really bad. She has a bad back or something and couldn’t shovel the pig poop for who knows how long. One of the pigs though, spilled the water on purpose every day and so all the poop was wet. I had a pitchfork and started picking up this poop and putting it into a big bucket and every time I would get a layer up a new rancid smell would form because of the more wet parts of older poop underneath. Ha-ha it was something! I had poop all over my hands, boots, pants and hoodie. So we cleaned up everything and made it look nice and come to find out that there are more pigs in the outside corral. Well there was one male and two females, one is pregnant and we have to get the female pigs in the inside corrals. The male was staying outside. We had a medium size dog kennel and we lured these pigs one by one into the kennel. When we would get the front hooves inside the kennel we would fling the door shut against its back end and shove it in the kennel. It was squealing and then remembered that there was food and it kept quiet. Elder Greenland and I were carrying these pigs in the kennel and would take it to the garage. The first one was inside the kennel backwards. I was where the gate was trying to persuade this pig to come out, holding the pig feed in my hands showing that it needs to come out but it wouldn’t come. Even tipping the kennel up it wouldn’t slide out. I grabbed a stick and started poking the thing to try and get it out but it wouldn’t budge ha-ha. Well after about 5-8 minutes of this pig being stubborn I wasn’t going to give up. I went to where the gate was and had a great idea to just pull the dang thing out with my hands. I grabbed the pig’s hips, just how you would grab your fat aunt’s hips… Being very intimidated. I grabbed it and this thing squealed!! I kept tugging and it would squeal even louder! Well it freaked me out a little bit, I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting that ha-ha. Well knowing me, it didn’t stop me from doing it again because it was kind of amusing. This time I was confident that I was getting this pig out. I grabbed it by the hind feet and yanked. By the sound of the pig squealing, you would have thought I was slowly stabbing the thing to death. It was squealing like crazy and it went to a very deep squeal by the end. I thought this thing would have turned its head to bite me but with a lot of tugging with the muscles my momma gave me I was able to get this pig out.

Well I gotta go help someone move and later help someone fix their roof. It won’t be much of a preparation day. Oh well, the Lord calls. Love you! Have a great week!

Love the one and only Elder Oldroyd