good times in the hood

SO...it appears that we have much catching up to do!

i apologize for the lack of posts...we have just been busy! brandon's birthday was on july 28th (a post about this will be coming, if i can get him to write about it) and we had a lot of fun that weekend. work has been busy (i have two events coming up, one this week and one in september for the launch of a new yamaha/star motorcycles chopper) and we were trying to get ready for our trip to colorado...and then we went to colorado...and now we are home. and gearing up for our next adventure. :)

so many funny things have been happening to us lately that i had to share.

today was one of those vintage adams ward days. our ward in LA is definitely interesting...we are in the inner-city ward with a ton of diversity and colorful characters, but we like it. today not only did our friend rosa (a little old black lady who was activities director before me until she walked into ward council after the christmas party and resigned) start talking about how we should forgive prostitutes if they join the church (okay, she didn't say prostitute, but she did say we shouldn't be offended if we see a girl on the corner in church the next week) but we also had the ward chorister banging on the podium during a talk about family home evening.

today we got out of sacrament meeting a whopping 15 minutes late for the second week in a row. the first time that happened i started crying i was so mad. everyone thought i was feeling the spirit, but nope, i was pissed.

we have also been driving investigators to church to help the missionaries. for a while we were taking a 14-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother as kind of a favor to their mom; they are all investigating the church but i got the feeling the kids didn't really care. between them telling us how they saw "knocked up," the girl bringing her friend to church wearing matching spaghetti strap tank tops and dickies (don't worry, she's never worn a skirt to church...the dickies were a step up from the usual jeans), and them asking "ain't got no rap??" when we had mo tab on in the car, i wasn't too sad that we didn't take them today.

today we brought a nice guy named paul to church. brandon has been going on splits with the missionaries to teach him; he's 20 and trying to turn his life around. i didn't mind him at all but he did start telling us about all the increases in gang activity in our neighborhood and blamed our recent shooting on that...good times.

then yesterday we went to the bank downtown and the street was closed off for movie filming. (we had seen bourne ultimatum earlier in the day in century city and saw a street closed off there too for a separate filming...and then we almost died when brandon slammed on his breaks to avoid hitting a car that decided to stop at a red light at the last minute...i think he was trying to be like jason bourne but i'm just glad we're not dead.) anyway it was pretty cool; here are some pictures. we didn't know what movie it was but some of the crew was saying it's a will smith/charlize theron movie so keep your eyes out and maybe you'll see it in theaters soon :)

it was this guy's job to paint the lines on the fake street...pretty funny.