A Little Early This Week...

I won't be able to read much of your e-mail this week because were taking preparation day one day early this week. Tomorrow is our zone conference where Pres./ Elder Callister and his brother Elder Callister will be speaking so we will have two general authorities there and its going to be insane. We weren't really surprised when he was called to the seventy because we had heard that he was called down to salt lake for that week already. They had to shuffle a few meetings around and one of the councillors in the mission presidency lives in our ward so we heard about it. The only thing was that we thought he was going to be called as the new member of the twelve- not yet I guess- instead they are sending him to Fiji to preside over the pacific Islands.
In other news I've almost beat my way through all my shoes and am looking to get another pair. The only problem is everything is really really expensive up here. A pair of shoes probably costs about 40-50 dollars more up here than in the states even though the dollar is basically the same. But my nicer pair still works for now. By the way I am definitely going to be sending some pictures home this week- I am still taking more althoug i've slowed down a little bit as each week seems to be going by more quickly.

Everything else is going on as normal my companions still complain about my crazy driving- and they are amazed daily about how much food I eat.

The work is really picking up, in the last few weeks alot of the people we were teaching either became uninterested or got alot busier with the spring thaw. We've been teaching people everywhere from old people from the congo to punk teenagers. Everyone is outside and friendly now and we've been tracting alot and teaching alot in the past week- somehow we keep managing to get more done in each day.

The ward up here is really cool, we were helping one of the members a 30 year old guy finish his basement (doing alot of the framing) and then during lunch we took a break and took a bunch of pictures of us working and him hitting us with contstruction tools to make us work harder some of them are pretty hilarious- this is the same member who gave both my companion and I Mp3 players loaded with church talks for helping him.
We've been working alot with another member of the ward- shes about 30 and stopped going to church when she was 15-17 but realized recently that alot of what she had cared about for a long time really wasn't important to her. So she has started coming back to church with her two kids and since we've been meeting with her she has been the scriptures every day and really increasing in her faith. She has the coolest kids ever, one is
6 and is competely insane- every time we come over he is always actually riding one of their dogs around that is about as big as he is. He is like a tarzan that looks just like a young Macaulay Culkin, but without the creeeeepy.

Hope that everyone is doing well I miss you all and can't wait to hear from you twice next week- I hope you guys are camping and stuff this
spring- thats one thing I keep having a strange desire to do, sleep outside.

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Love Elder Olson