we get ourselves into the strangest situations

A couple of weeks ago at church we met this lady who used to teach English. She was really excited to meet Noemi and I since we both speak English. She promptly invited us to come over to her house after church, and we were really quite excited about this (free dinner, right?). As we're sitting next to her in gospel doctrine though, we realized that all (4) of the young adults had left the room. We asked her if there was a young adult sunday school class or something, and she was like, "Oh, I don't know, I'm Catholic."

Hmmm. Okay, cool. She wasn't sitting with the missionaries or anything, so we asked, "So have you been to an LDS church meeting before?"

"Oh yeah, I've been maybe 10 times. I stayed with an LDS family in San Diego a few years ago."

Cool, cool. Still finding it amusing that the first person from the ward to invite us over isn't actually from the ward.

After church we went out in the parking lot with her to get into her car.

"Hold on one second, I'm going to ask that strong looking man over there if he could maybe help me with something. I hurt my arm and can't lift things."
Hmmm. Okay, cool.
Turned out he's a security guard, works late, can't help her, much to her disappointment. We got in the car.

We started driving to her house. "Are there any rules about going back to the residence? Do you have a curfew? Would it be okay for you to get back around 10? (it's now 5:30)"
"Umm...no, we have keys, we're fine to come back whenever." (stupid, stupid)

We got to her house, she fed us really yummy fruit (it's fast Sunday however, we had 2:00 church, and we were STARVING), and we talked French for a while. She answered cultural questions, and it was sort of fun, except she kept correcting our grammar and pronunciation so much that 20 minutes into this conversation we were scared to say anything (I thought she invited us over because she wanted to speak English with us?). She was lonely and lives in this huge house by herself, couldn't afford a maid, kept apologizing for the mess. I felt sorry for her. I noticed cobwebs. Huge, huge cobwebs. On every ceiling, in every corner, on every light fixture.
Someone should clean those, I thought. Little did I know...

We started to get uncomfortable, and there was no freaking way we were staying in the cobweb lonely house until 10 PM. So I told her I had completely forgotten that we had to talk with our families on Skype at 7:30, so we needed to leave at 7:00 (30 minutes away).

"Oh, no. Okay, well...we've got a little bit of time...I hurt my arm and can't lift it very high...but I've got all of these cobwebs that need to be cleaned...do you think? I mean, I don't want to impose or anything, but could you maybe help me clean them?"

Uh.
Okay, cool.
Charity. It's a good Sunday activity.

Broom in hand, Noemi and I start tackling cobwebs. Surprise. These cobwebs aren't vacant. There are live spiders everywhere. Huge, live spiders, crawling around on the ceilings. She kept telling us how nice we were for helping her out. Pretty sure my smile started to get a little not so genuine at this point.

But on we went, and we cleaned all the cobwebs out of the kitchen, living room, dining room, library, study, entry way, hallway, bathroom, extra storage room. And then as we were leaving,

"Could you grab these [nasty, old paint filled, potentially bug infested] glass bottles out of the yard and put them in this bag for me?"

I was desperate to leave at this point.
Sure! Whatever it takes for us to get the heck out of here!

She drove us back to our residence, gave Noemi her number, and said to call her tomorrow and "we can have dinner!" So we can scrub your kitchen floor? Or polish your wood furniture? Sorry, but no no no no no thanks.

We did not call.

Oh, but it's okay because she came to the residence yesterday and left a message at the front desk (she doesn't know our names, "the blonde American girl and the Spanish girl?") telling us to call her.

AHHhhhhhHHHhhhhh