Week 9 - Intense Parallel Parking

This week was crazy. Specifically Wednesday. Lets start with everything else first though haha.

The week has been very busy. We did 2 more logging trips with Bother Angel and got a lot more wood! I'm a bit sore, but I'm grateful for the workout haha. We also helped Brother Angel out with some other stuff around his marina. We did service for him almost every day I think. We also did a decent bit of snow shoveling for others, and we met a nice family who needed help moving some heavy concrete slabs. We also had an awesome games night as always. We actually had a good number of people this time! Mostly members of the church, but also some of our other friends like Laurence and Mamete (no clue if that's how you spell his name or not). On Sunday we had a lovely church service, and we went and visited our friend Rob later that day just to see how he was doing. He was really happy to see us, and we talked a lot about random things like how he painted some of his basement, and how he might need some help moving a rock he found in the future. I love Rob. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the library this week. We usually do that on Wednesday, but as stated at the beginning of this post, something else crazy happened.

So. What happened on Wednesday? Well, some backstory first. The library that we volunteer at is in a small town south of Flin Flon called The Pas. It's about an hour and a half drive, and somehow it's still in our area. So, as missionaries, it's our responsibility to serve there as well as Flin Flon. We try to visit every Wednesday, and we have a full day trip. So we drive down in the morning, spend the whole day there, and drive back. The library there is my favorite part of The Pas. It's pretty small, but all the people who work there are so friendly, and it's so well kept. It has such a charming atmosphere too with plants and other decorations. It's practically straight out of a fairytale. I've never been big on reading books, but if there was a library like this one in San Diego, I could spend days there. Maybe I'll look into finding one like it when I get home. Some added details for later, neither me or Elder Mendenhall have ever seen a cop on this stretch of road. Not once in our many trips going this way. Also, we have a little white box in our car called "Tiwi." It tracks our car, and has sensors for if we're wearing our seatbelt, how fast we're going, etc. It'll give an audio prompt when we go too fast, accelerate too quickly, or go over a bump too hard saying "check your speed!" or "aggressive driving!" We like to call the box Sister Tiwi, since she has a female voice, and we joke about always obeying the command of Sister Tiwi. Anyway, we were on our way to The Pas as usual, and we were about halfway. Since it had snowed recently, but then warmed up, and cooled down again, there was a good bit of ice on the road. Elder Mendenhall was being very careful though, and he's from Utah so he has some idea of how to drive on slick roads. But then the road became just ice. You couldn't even see the road anymore. We started to fishtail, and Elder Mendenhall tried to steer out of it, but it got worse and he panicked a little. He pressed on the brakes a little too hard, and we immediately began to spin out. We did a full 360, and then slid off the road into a ditch. Snow flew over the car like an avalanche. As the snow settled, and we sat silently for a moment to collect our thoughts, Sister Tiwi asserted "aggressive driving!" in her monotone robot voice. I BUSTED OUT LAUGHING. Honestly, all of it was so funny to me in the moment, and it still kinda is. As we were spinning, somehow I knew it would be ok. Something assured me that it would be. So my thoughts weren't like "oh no, that's not good." They were more like "this is fine. WEEEEE!!" Then Sister Tiwi reminding us that that in fact is not how we should be driving, was the icing on the cake. Elder Mendenhall wasn't as amused in the moment, he seemed a little bit shook, but I think my uncontrol-able laughter helped lighten his mood. The next thing we noticed after the snow had settled, and after I stopped laughing hysterically, was that there were two fallen trees. One a few feet in front of us, and one a few feet behind us. Had we gone just a few more feet in either direction, and we would have had some serious damage to the car, or even us. But instead we had somehow done a 360 parallel park between them. We got out to check if there was any damage to the car, none. Then, not 5 minutes later, an off duty police officer happened to pass and he stopped to make sure we were ok. He was so nice, and he helped us call the tow truck that would later get us out of the ditch. Also, thinking back, That was probably the safest possible spot to go off the road. There are a lot of stretches of this road that if we had gone off on, we would have gone into a rock wall, off a ledge, or into a lake. Overall, I think the experience was a huge miracle. I mean, it's not a huge stretch to say that we could have died in the snow after spinning off the road like that. But we were un-harmed, the car was un-harmed, and we were able to get out of the ditch (with the help of a tow truck) without any problems.

One added detail that was pretty funny, One of my friends emailed me "...Don't die in the snow either, that sounds painful..." Later that same day. Me and Elder Mendenhall had a good laugh over that.

All in all, it's been a great week, and it's a great day to be missionary!