Crawling from the wreckage, the thin long hands all coalesced to be scrawny forms.

Those are terrifying.

The creature ticked its head, looking at me as I was helping a guy named Frank, because his leg was too injured to walk; so his arm was around my shoulders as the other was putting pressure on his leg to stifle the blood and possibly relieve the pain.

Its large bulbous eyes are pits as dark as the color black.

I shook myself. Wait, dark as the color black? Was that the best I could do?

The little creature let out a little moan which turned into a small pathetic screech. And then it stretched its frail arms and bony but lanky hands wide and as soon as it hit the apex of its stretch it ignited.

I looked over at Elder Pachu who was staring in complete shock as well. His eyes met mine.

"Elder, I think we have over stayed our welcome." His accent was so thick, had I not been his companion for several weeks now, I would have thought he was speaking another language.

I looked around, confused at what to do. Should I leave this injured man? How can I abandon everyone here? But if I get burned by those creatures I can't help anyone ever again.

I felt a pit in my stomach as I had come to my conclusion. Leave Frank.

The creature was almost as if it didn't know how to walk, like it was just born, it was tottering one way, then the other. Making small steps towards Frank and I.

"Wha- What are you doing? You can't leave me here with those things!" Frank sounded like he was about to have a panic attack.

"I'm sorr-" That was all I got out before Elder Pachu was besides us and resting his hand on Franks wound's.

"I can heal you." He said while on one knee and looking up at Frank, "But it is not by my power. But through the power of Jesus Christ." His voice had steadied and become more coherent as he probably had realized the little fiery gremlin wasn't just going to straight up charge at us like we all expected.

"Do you believe Jesus can heal you?"

Frank just looked at Elder Pachu with an incredulous look. His head recoiled so much that his neck fat had turned into a double, no, triple chin.

Anger filled Franks voice. "What kind of psychopaths are you? Using a terrible situation to your advantage? Trying to extort me when I'm vulnerable by spreading your fairytales? Leave me with the flame-ball toddlers, get out of my sight. No, you know what--"

The man was now cursing us out, he had pushed me away from him, grimacing at the pain when he fell. But shortly after he seemed to have numbed his pain by focusing on his anger. I tuned his voice out of my thoughts like I did every time I heard someone lecture us like this at stranger's doors that we knocked so often.

I sighed and Elder Pachu did too. Our eyes met, and we both had come to a nonverbal consensus, It was time to leave.

The wreckage had caught fire, there wasn't much more we could do anyways, but thankfully these buildings were pretty small, or just straight up trailers. so most people had wriggled themselves out of any situation they caught themselves in.

Man, I feel bad for people who live in bigger houses. They must have had it bad.

Jonny caught up to us but his eyes were still lingering on the teetering little flame-ball creatures, "What happened? Why is that man saying such vulgar things to you guys?"

The man was still yelling at us as he also crawled away from the fire. When I looked over my shoulder closely I could almost see the spittle coming out from his mouth, his face was red.

"Some people have a harder heart than others, and just hearing the name Jesus will sometimes send them into a rage." I said.

"Ah." Jonny nodded knowingly. "My brother is like that."

-

Travelling through the destruction was a little difficult, there were sections of the road we had to walk our bike over or carry our bike over, we helped anyone along the way that needed it, Elder Pachu even got the opportunity to heal some minor wounds, but nobody with serious issues. These people just looked wide eyed and thanked him, which he redirected their thanks to God.

The little fire creatures were everywhere, most looked like they were clueless. But they looked at people like they were food.

By the evening we finally reached the chapel. It was completely destroyed. A pile of rubble. surrounded by grass and trees and a large parking lot. There was no obvious sign that this was a church, no cross just a spire. There was no flashy sign either, but usually there was a nondescript stone plaque nearby one of the doors on the wall of the building that said "The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

But here, there was none of that. The steeple hadn't turned into the mess of brick, instead it lay on top of the brick, as if it was too compact to just fall apart, but had instead snapped like a twig.

"Elder Pachu, wasn't God supposed to protect the meeting houses?"

Elder Pachu just shrugged. "Perhaps he would protect the temples, but the churches aren't as important?" his voice piqued at the end of that sentence. I looked around, expecting the mission president to be here, along with all the other missionaries in our mission. Then I remembered that our mission covered almost a hundred miles and almost smacked myself for forgetting.

Instead, it was just our district. The sisters were sobbing and hugging each other, there were two pairs of sisters in our district, so four in total. There were six Elders around them who uncomfortably shifted as they did everything to comfort them but hug them. Some of them had red eyes as well.

"Have you called your parents to make sure they are ok? I called mine." Elder Samuels was saying to the sisters.

"Am I allowed to call them? It's not P-Day." She blurted out through her sobs.

"I think this counts as a time we are allowed to call them."

The sister missionary seemed quelled by this until the phone came up short, unable to reach the number she dialed. With that she burst out crying again.

Immediately I felt fear strike my heart as I thought about my family, but also... Jessica. Is she okay? I need to call her and make sure. I looked around, but Elder Pachu was right there, and I knew that calling my girlfriend wasn't something I should do while I was out here doing missionary service. So I called my Dad.

"Hello, this is Dave."

"Dad! This is Elder Todd."

"Elder Todd!" My Dad said with relief in his voice. "All of us are ok, The tremors weren't as bad here."

Wait, they felt tremors all the way in Utah?

"What do you mean tremors? We just had an earthquake here in Texas, are you saying you had one in Utah too?"

"Yes, Salt lake City was hit really bad. It's a good thing they got the Salt Lake City Temple earthquake-proofed so long ago. It's literally the only building still standing in Salt lake Valley. But out here in central Utah, it was a lot more mild."

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"Where else was affected?"

I was saying a silent prayer in my heart, listening for him to say that it was just these two states, and that Oklahoma where my girlfriend was at on a family Vacation was alright.

"You haven't heard? The entire world has been having recurring earthquakes all day."

My heart pounded at this news. I couldn't help but blurt out the question "Is Jessica ok? What about Oklahoma?"

"Oh, she's in Oklahoma?" There was dead silence, filled by my pounding heart. "I'm pretty sure that according to the news, Oklahoma doesn't exist anymore. The entire state's geography has been completely turned upside down. It was affected by the same earthquake that hit Dallas, Texas."

My heart's pounding no longer was audible in my ears. It was as if it stopped altogether. I stopped breathing.

"Oh, you're not supposed to be calling her while you're out there aren't you. Well if you give me her number, I'll give her a Call."

"Who's that?" A voice was audible on the other end. Which restarted my heartbeat.

"It's Elder Todd."

"MY BOY." My mother hopped on the phone and she was sobbing.

"I'm so glad you're okay!"

"I'm glad you're okay too mom."

But now that I knew both my parents were okay, my mind was elsewhere for this conversation. I had to know if Jessica was okay. I was praying for her and my four siblings.

Once the call ended Elder Pachu looked at me and gave me a hug. He obviously overheard the conversation before he had called his own family.

Time had passed and all the Missionaries arrived and were done calling their families, Elder Baker was the last to arrive. We all looked around at each other. Before Elder Baker broke the silence.

"Elder Pachu, who is that with you?"

"This is Jonny. He want's to be baptized."

"Wow. Miracles happening even at a time like this. Alright everybody, lets start this district meeting like usual. Share any miracles. I'll go first. On my way here, one of those little fiery creatures which was bigger than the others started coming at me and my companion Elder Crittenden, we were running for our lives because our car was crushed by a fallen tree during the earthquakes when we were at an appointment with a friend. Then we came to an impasse. A small cliff had risen breaking the road that we usually would take to get here, as we climbed it, about twenty feet tall, the creature climbed after us. This one wasn't too good at walking just like the little ones, but it was much faster at learning. And once it watched us climb, it started copying us. It was terrifying. We ran until our lungs were going to burst. I knelt down and prayed to heavenly father for a miracle. To save us. And then two loud bangs happened. At first I was scared, afraid it was the fiery monster. Then I opened my eyes, seeing Elder Crittenden on his knees right besides me. I looked up and it was a farmer with a shotgun, a rifle AND a handgun. The man had blasted that critter to kingdom come. The man walked right past us and downed the creature point blank until it no longer breathed.

Then he invited us in to his tent he had set up in his front yard.. We shared a message about Jesus to him. He laughed and joked about how he had just saved us, now we were trying to return the favor by saving him. And he agreed to an appointment and said he would read the first chapter of the Book of Mormon and consider it's message.

Elder Crittenden was nodding. "It's all true. Every word of it. The creature was not tiny like those other scrawny ones. This one was big and red, not grey. It had thick muscles. If it knew what it was doing with its legs running after us, it would have caught us for sure." He had some sort of north Dakota accent to his words, tears were crawling down his cheeks.

Everyone was silent.

Wow. That IS a miracle.

Elder Pachu bumped me "I know you got something to share." he whispered, but it was loud enough that eyes were drawn to me.

I thought for a moment, put on the spot I wanted to roll my eyes at Elder Pachu for volunteering me. "Well. I don't know about you guys, but after we did the confirmation that the prophet told us to do a weird display showed up. I think I saw Elder Samuels looking at his earlier." Grunts of agreement came from all the other Elders, but the sisters looked confused and interested. "But as I told Elder Pachu here, My girlfriend is in Oklahoma on a family trip. And apparently they got hit just as bad there as we did here. But when I calmed my nerves and steeled my resolve and let my parents call her instead of me after talking it out with Elder Pachu, my faith and my patience stat both went up by one."

One of the Elders chuckled. "What is it at?"

Another Elder asked. "Is she okay?"

"Well. My dad sent a text saying that she never picked up." I looked down as I said that. But then looked up and smiled, I pulled up my stat screen.

^The Holy Ghost^

Elder Todd - Level: 1

--Titles--

- Son of God -

- Disciple of Christ -

- Child of the Covenant -

- Tribe of Ephraim -

- Elder -

- Companion -

--Stats--

Faith : 6

Hope : 2

Charity and Love : 1

Virtue : 3

Knowledge : 4

Patience : 4

Humility : 0

Diligence : 1

^Obedience : 4^

"It says Faith is at 6 and Patience is 4."

Then I noticed something else.

"Oh wow! my obedience stat went up by two! It's at 4 as well!"

Elder Samuels snorted. And at his outburst, all the other missionaries chuckled.

"Those are pretty low dude." One of them commented.

I felt immediate embarrassment.

"Umm. What are you guys talking about?"

It was one of the sister missionaries.

"Right." Elder Baker cut in, "I can see all of your statuses in tabs on my screen, but the sister's read "Not confirmed Yet." So guys- Ahem. -Elders, lets get to it."

Everyone turned their attention to the sister missionaries who seemed completely and utterly baffled.

"Is this a joke?" Sister Smithfield said.

She looks and acts just like my girlfriend does.

Elder Baker smiled warmly and motioned to the grass in the middle of all the missionaries. "The prophet asked us to perform a confirmation on every missionary, remember? Lets get this done. Sister Smithfield, since you asked first, lets do you first."

She gave a curious eye to Elder Baker, who everyone in the district knew was known for being a great leader, he never messed with our feelings or used his authority unrighteously and took things very seriously.

She touched the grass to make sure it wasn't wet, then flattened her skirt as she sat down.

"Um, could you kneel up? We aren't that short." Elder Baker asked.

Sister Smithfield got onto her knee's and then all the Elders came around in a circle. Jonny just watched with curiosity.

"Do you have any preference? For who?" Elder Samuels blurted out.

Sister Smithfield smiled and looked at him and then said, "I want Elder Todd to do it."

Every Elder's eyes went wide and looked at me.

No, think of Jessica. Sister Smithfield doesn't mean anything by that. She knows I have a girlfriend. In fact it's why shy probably picked me. But I should probably still say no.

"Okay." I said.

NO! I meant to say no!

I rolled my eyes at the kissy face Elder Samuels made towards me.

"Alright. What is your full name?"

"Kassandra Lilly Smithfield."

I layed both my hands on her head, Elder Pachu rested one hand on her head, then put his other hand on my shoulder. And every Elder did the same until the circle reached back to my other shoulder. The other Sister missionaries just watched intently.

"Sister Kassandra Lilly Smithfield, by the Authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood..." I forgot the words again. Images of Jessica floated up to my mind.

Was she okay? I'm being loyal. This is just a confirmation. She didn't mean anything by asking me to do it.

Then reality caught up with my head. Elder Baker whispered, "Receive the Holy Ghost."

"Receive the Holy Ghost, and be baptized with fire." I finished, remembering the rest.

I opened my eyes and then she opened her eyes, a glow around her. The interface in front of her face. She was reading it using her finger to follow the words.

The other Sister missionaries gasped as the glow around her did not come from her interface.

Then I saw over her shoulder,

^The Holy Ghost^

Sister Smithfield - Level 5 - Prestige 2

^Rare^

That was all I saw before I started to think, Wow. She's cool.