"The White Night Knocker"

Greetings from Chino, CA!  Y'know, when I thought about California winter and fall I thought it would look kind of like our seasons back home, just a lot warmer.  I was wrong.  In fact, I don't think fall even happened down here and I'll be darned if you can call this winter.  The leaves are still all on the trees and it's about eighty degrees.  I'm not complaining though, haha.  It certainly makes biking a lot easier.  Also, since I was initially called to Brazil I pretty much only have ten white short sleeve shirts.  I certainly appreciate this California weather.

We continue to make good progress with the investigators that we have.  We've been teaching a lot and are looking at some baptisms during this transfer!  We're really excited!

Our ward had a dinner auction the other night to raise money for the youth and their camps.  We were invited to go but the entry price was $5.  As missionaries we really don't have that much money and so we were a little wary to spend $5 on a taco salad dinner.  When we walked up to the pulpit where they were collecting money I pulled off my name tag and placed it on the pulpit and said, "Put it on the card."  I then also told them that charging us entry would guarantee them an automatic place in the terrestial kingdom.  They didn't have a problem letting us through, haha.

So, this story happened a while ago but I haven't had time to tell it until now.  I think it must've been three weeks ago or so.  It was about 10:00 PM so Elder Wagstaff and I had finished the work for the day.  We were sitting in Bert's living room watching some church movies on his TV.  While we were watching I heard someone knock on our window three times.  I turned to look over and I SWEAR that I saw someone in a white shirt walking away.  Well, understandably this freaks us out.  Not knowing what to do we drew upon the vast knowledge of self defense that lies in our young Mormon brains and thought, "Hey!  Remember Tangled?  That frying pan they used seem to make a pretty good weapon."  So we went to the cupboards and grabbed two frying pans and patrolled the house looking for the mysterious assailant.  Bert got up and helped us but none of us were able to find him.  So Elder Wagstaff and I retired to our beds, laid the frying pans on the night tables besides us, and practiced some quick drills of waking up, getting out of bed, grabbing our flashlights and frying pans, and smacking someone over the head.  As we went to go to sleep I could have sworn that we heard someone walking around the outside of our house.  Freaked out, Elder Wagstaff suggests we call the police, if anything just so they can check it out and we can get some decent sleep.  So we did and they came.  They didn't find anything, but I'm convinced that the murderer was just REALLY good at hiding.  We went to sleep that night but ever since then we've been on high alert.  We call him the "White Night Knocker" and carefully watch for him.  It's now not an unusual occurrence for there to be a strange noise in the house and for Elder Wagstaff and I to come running into the kitchen with frying pans shouting, "Where's the White Night Knocker?"  For those of you that are thinking the shouting's excessive, don't worry.  We only shout cause Bert has, like, 10% hearing so we have to shout everything at him.

That's about it for this week.  We continue to move forward in the work.  It's good stuff out here and I'm glad I made the decision to serve a mission.

Your friend,
Elder Carter David Morgan