The real Oct 18

October 18, 2006

Well once again the companionship split up. A lady in our branch talked me into driving her to Hon Dah, which is the casino, to an Apache Women’s Conference. Actually the conference was in the conference center. The problem was that it wasn’t free, as Cheryl thought it would be. So I talked someone into letting the 3 Apache women in even though they weren’t registered and I ditched the whole thing, parked in Wendy’s parking lot, ate my sandwich and had my first real conversation with Shawn in over 2 weeks. Other than the 50 min I talked to him the whole thing was a waste of time. Last night I had thought of calling Maxine Benito, the branch president’s wife, but talked myself out of it. Had I followed that prompting, instead of thinking I knew better, I would have known that you had to pay for the conference and also that there was a bus going from Cibecue to the conference. Then on the way home Cheryl had a few stops she needed to make, like KFC to get dinner for the fam, Safeway to pick up her year’s supply, and a relative in Cibecue to gather up baby Ricky who wasn’t there anyway. I was so glad to finally get home that when Robert said hey, let’s leave tonight, I was in the truck ready to go in about 30 seconds.

While I was gone, however, Robert had a super day. He stayed home and did the Mr. Mom thing. He cleaned our stove. This certainly must seem simple to the uninformed, but the stove and especially the oven were like a nuclear wasteland that we feared to the extent of trying to deny its existence. It took a full can of radioactive oven cleaner, the kind you need a license to purchase, to actually clean the guck off the stove. Now it looks, and more important, smells wonderful. I was certainly delighted. It’s like having a new stove.

He, too, was desperate for a jailbreak so tonight we’re at the Hampton Inn in Flagstaff and it’s time for bed.

One last thought…we’ve been on our mission one month today.