Too short

So this week won't be exciting. Everywhere that we do email is closed so we had to go to a member’s house next door (we got permission; don't worry). I only have like ten minutes to email. I hope all is well. You will hear from me next week. We only have ten minutes a piece and have to email president. We also happen to be using the slowest computer in the world. It took like fifteen minutes to get on myldsmail. You will hear from me next week. I hope this will work since you heard from me yesterday! love you all so much and talk to you soon.

Best Christmas Present Ever!

We love Skype!

Goodbye Idaho "Legends" zone!

This is my 12/12/12 at 12:12 picture...The smile is weak, because I had a high fever and just got done throwing up all morning in this picture, ha-ha...the stress of all those 12's was two much for me.

Goodbye Idaho "legends" zone! I will be transferred to Mount Lewis Alpha in North Ogden to be serving as the district leader. (Right next to my greenie area!) I will be serving with a couple, or maybe one, visa waiter starting tomorrow.  I am not even really sure which companion I will have: Elder Jones, Elder Shumway, or Elder Bozarth...probably the latter, but I don't know yet. They are all headed to Spain except for Elder Jones; he is going to Argentina with Elder Ireland.

So this has been a different week. We have all three of us had the flu all week! We had had it the week before that, and it wasn't too bad. I woke up early on Wednesday and was feeling awful and went to zone study with a fever. I figured that Elder Masima wouldn't let a little sickness stop him, so we tracted in the 20 degree snow that day while I had a fever. It turns out I am just not as tough as Elder Masima; by Saturday we were all throwing up and had fevers. I pretty much slept on the bathroom floor all day Saturday. I kept feeling guilty for taking the "day off," but I wasn't enjoying myself at least. I am a little better now. Unfortunately we missed a couple lessons that night, but overall, it just made it an unproductive week this week. Luckily we are recovering.

It can really snow in Idaho! So we found a cool guy this week. We asked if he served a mission, and he said, “No, I was called to be a stake president when I was 19!” It was in 1950, but still it was pretty cool. He had some good stories to tell. So one thing I will miss about Idaho is how much people love the missionaries here. We were standing there in the church on Sunday waiting for our ward mission leader and there were a group of probably 8 to 10 year old kids standing about 30 feet away from us in the hallway. As we listened we could hear them daring each other to go and shake our hand, but they were all too scared, ha-ha. Eventually the teacher was brave enough to take the lead, and they all took turns meeting us and shaking our hands. We also had someone anonymously pay for us at Tapatio, Subway, and Chinese this week! So that is pretty cool.

That is EXACTLY what we wanted to hear

We pulled over in Soda Springs to play in the snow for just a few minutes.

Let it snow; let it snow! It looks like it will be a white Christmas this year. Everyone says that the amount there is right now is nothing, and we should expect a ton more. I personally think they're all talk, but I guess we will see. Driving in the snow for the first time has been quite the adventure, especially in a two wheel drive Malibu with completely worn down tires. The first day that it snowed really hard we drove 45 minutes up to Soda Springs. It was like 10 degrees up there. We turned into one house/driveway, and I kept sliding and came within probably two inches from hitting the mailbox before the car caught traction and turned. Pretty crazy. We looked at the tire marks, and it was soo so close; we got lucky. Then on the way back, it was nighttime and while crossing a bridge we started to slide out and almost hit the edge of the bridge (50 foot drop) like three times as we slid back and forth..but we didin't...so whoever is praying for us keep it coming! ha-ha. I don't get why they give the other missionaries up north trucks except for us. There are a lot of people in the hospital from wrecks; the roads are soo so slippery. WE will be careful though, sorry to scare you, Mom.

So we started working with the Ventura family this week. They are less active. We have been by just to see if they are home several times a week for about ten weeks and never found them at home (or never gotten hem to answer), but the ward wanted us to go by so we would always keep trying. So we went in and the mom was crying talking about how she needs to come back to church, and her kids (all older, 17, 18,20) don't want to go anymore. So we taught something and invited her back. They didn't come to church. I can't remember the excuse, but it wasn't a very good one. But the big change was her 18 and 20-year-old boys. We met them several times, and they were always kind of annoyed we were there and weren't at all helpful. But while we were there, I gave her oldest son a blessing, because his hemophilia has been pretty bad lately, I guess. So now the boys are really nice to us. We haven't had a follow up appointment; the mom has flaked out every time; but now her kids are nice to us. In fact they gave us a present after we left the first time...50 presliced pieces of American cheese, delicious.

The first member of his family...encouraging for my companions.

We have been very angry with Idaho this week. It has been raining all week! In December! We are mad that there still isn't any snow, This is a joke. It was 60 degrees outside yesterday, so I don't even get to use my jacket. Hopefully it will snow in the next couple weeks.

 So just something cool I was looking at this week. I kind of went down one day and broke down lesson 1 and studied just the first part. (Maybe I shouldn't do this, because it's like making my own doctrine, but I like thinking of things in a logical way.) Ok, so it says that the job of prophet is to teach the nature of god and teach the true gospel to get eternal life...that’s under the red box in 'prophets'. In 'dispensations' it says the two main distortions of apostasy are the nature of god and the gospel. The first two principles of lesson one are the two main restored "distortions" that we know of due to our modern day prophet. God is a loving father of flesh and bone who cries when we cry etc. The second heading being the gospel blesses families, hinting at the way to get eternal life, the second job of prophets. I just thought it was cool that it pointed it out that way in each section.

 So last p-day was awesome. We had a member bring us to Tapatio which is a really good Mexican restaurant in town, but it's expensive so we never go there. We were getting a haircut, and the uncle of half of our branch (he lives in Utah) met us and took us out to eat. While we were there, another member dropped 60 dollars on the table to pay for us, but we gave it back since there was already somebody else paying. Although my companions weren’t very happy I gave it back, ha-ha. Members are awesome. This guy (the uncle of all the Mexicans in our ward… who are all cousins) talked about how he was the first member of his family. They all thought he was crazy, but he did it anyway. Then he moved to the US (first one to do that, too), and once there, he got them all jobs and places to live in the US. They all ended up getting baptized here. He had to wait years though; it was encouraging for Elder Senn and Elder Ireland.

I sound like a Mexican now

This has been a pretty good week. We were tracting, and this man asked us if we wanted to go see his calves. They are everywhere here. I knew you would like to see them.

We went to Big J's finally this week. It's the place that they got the tots from in Napoleon Dynamite...not that great it turns out..haha.

I will give you more info about Elder Ireland. He and I get along really well. We talk too much about worldly things like movies he saw before he left or music that we liked before the mission... so we set goals to get more focused. He is pretty different from me, but we still really like each other. He really likes Elder Senn, too. His Spanish has already improved in a week. He had a pretty heavy guerro accent when he got out, and it only a week it has improved. (…a guerro is a white boy. I sound like a Mexican now, which makes me happy. People occasionally comment on how they like my accent. I still have tons of room to grow, but I am getting good at sounding Mexican-ish.) I spend a lot of language study now just teaching him grammar which kind of makes me review and understand it better, so that is good.

Elder Ireland was a wrestler and musical guy during high school. He likes boy bands and his favorite movie is high school musical.  We are debating this week if listening to Christmas music is appropriate for missionaries...meaning the Michael Buble Christmas album of which he is a huge fan. His girlfriend introduced him to the church, and that’s how he was baptized.

He is a greeny, so obviously he has this natural desire to go tracting, so we have done some of that this week. It usually isn't done here in the normal way by us because of how unproductive it is in town. There are really no Hispanics in town at all; they are all out on the farms which means to tract would be driving from house to house, but we have already covered all the ones close by. So we tracted in town a little bit to get him better at contacting people and just talking to everyone. Not too much practice with Spanish there, so that’s too bad. We tracted our one trailer park (10 trailers) in Franklin, but we have already done that twice. They still aren't interested, but he got to practice a little bit more. It's a different type of work here, lots of driving and seeing members to figure out where Hispanic people live.  Some tracting stories” "I HATE Mormons!” - door slammed…  "This is a Jehovah’s Witness house.” …*ten minutes later* “yes you can send the (English) missionaries by-Success! …lady on the phone while answering the door "Oh no, it’s the elders"...(they say something to her) "oh, don't worry I will"...some lady yelled at her when she was 16 and it’s the church's fault"...no other really interesting ones beyond that..tracting here consists of talking to lots and lots of members.

We had Thanksgiving at the Hatch's house, and it was awesome! We had a competition between them and all their family to see who could gain the most weight, and I got second with like 4.7 pounds (I think?). It was great. There is a police officer in town that asked me to slow down when I first got into this area. I got out of the car one day, and he pulled up next to me and said,  “Slow down in residential areas.” I guess it was a school zone, and I didn’t know it and was going like 30. Anyways, it turns out he is one of the Hatch kids…ha-ha. They started late and then planned on dessert later on…so we didn't get any dessert on Thanksgiving, because I wasn't going to stay for several hours on a proselyting day. I ate plenty though, so I didn't need it, and Jen and Sherm sent me pecan pie, so I had that. It was good to be in their home. Elder Senn and Ireland aren't as social as me, so they just talked to each other, but I talked to lots of people there when they weren't talking to the rest of the family.

Just in from the Weavers!

Terry: "Small world here in Preston, ID. Came to visit my grandparents and of all things needed potatoes and look who we find!"

Mark: "What a great looking missionary! You brought tears to my eyes."

Terry: "No kidding."

What a beautiful sight! At least we know he won't be starving.