Sunday

Today, I was sustained as the Branch President's 1st Councilor, and as the Elder's Quorum President's 1st Councilor.  Then I was invited to sit at the head of the congregation, where the branch president translated everyone's testimonies for me.  He is excellent, so I can't object.
   Strange thing:  An old man nobody knew came in at the last minute and sat at the back.  After the Branch President opened the meeting to everybody, this man jumped up and came forward.  The essence of it was that he is a Catholic and has been in lots of "temples", by which he meant cathedrals.  He's been in the one in Rome, and Paris, and London and many others and they are nice.  But we don't need a temple.  Our worship of Jesus Christ is in ourselves, not in a temple.  Well, OK.  So after he sat down the members gave their testimonies and they were awesome!  Nobody challenged the old man, but a couple of them did discuss the blessing of attending the temple.
   The singing was accompanied by the elder who just joined us this past week.  He is fairly good (although he played too fast), but he made a few mistakes and lost the tempo a couple of times.  So after the closing prayer, the old man jumped up again and sat down at the piano and started to play.  He made some chord runs and then tried the hymn we'd sung.  He struggled a bit, but he was obviously sight-reading so he did fine.   He sat at the piano playing VERY loud for a while until I motioned everybody to join us in the classroom.  He seemed a little deflated that nobody challenged him.  He joined us in the classroom.  He wanted to set the topic of discussion, but the Sunday School teacher took over and led us into the lesson.  He asked a question and had everybody take turns giving our take on it.  We all did and when the old man's turn came he had something to say (I wasn't able to follow it very well).  The branch president was after him, and again, just answered the question and didn't challenge what the old man said.  How awesome!  I thought it was perfect.  I think he wanted a confrontation, but he got a Christ-like response and a lesson on being led by the Holy Ghost.  Afterwards the elders talked to him for a few minutes and then he left.  I wonder if we'll see him again?  I hope so.

Another strange thing happened this week.  I walked out of the church yesterday afternoon and as I walked up to the car I noticed that two lug nuts are missing from the right-rear wheel.  I checked all around and only those two, and they are next to each other.  Odd.  We have a Hyundai I-30, and it does not come with a spare tire.  It is equipped with a tire pump (which is also missing) and no tire, no jack, and no tools.  If I had a lug wrench I could have taken a lug nut from another wheel and had at least 4 of 5 lug nuts on each wheel, which is fairly safe.  As it is, I don't feel safe with it at all.
  Tomorrow, I'm going to an auto store down the street to get lug nuts, wrench, pump, and maybe a couple of washers we need for a chair.

I should mention that we are very happy here.  The people are wonderful once you overcome their initial reticence.  They are friendly, scrupulously honest, helpful and generally exceptional.  They are also somewhat downtrodden by memories of the war:

This church is apparently abandoned.  It has multiple medium-caliber shell holes in the roof and spire, and small caliber holes throughout.  These reminders of the civil war have to be painful for people who live here.  I think it's why people don't make eye contact when we are walking.