Week 8 - January 2, 2012

Hi everyone!

Is anyone else weirded out that it's 2012, or just me? That's totally nuts. The other kinda weird thing is that for me, this whole entire year will be spent here in the Kentucky Louisville Mission. That is kinda trippy. But I try not to think too much about that.

The Christenson's. This picture doesn't do it justice either. Behind the house the hill slopes off and they look over a little tiny valley that is just amazing!

 Anyway, things have been really slow this week with Christmas and New Years. We did lots of service with members again, which is actually lots of fun most of the time. We spent two days with the Christenson family. They had us over for Thanksgiving (she's the one that gave us heating pads). They live way out in the sticks and have a gorgeous plot of land. When we come back to visit, we have to see them just for their place. It's amazing! Anyway, they have 5 acres, and a little stream runs along one side of their property. They want to build a picnic area along the stream, but the trees are too thick, so we spent two days using chainsaws and dragging tree limbs around. It was actually a ton of fun throwing the tree limbs has hard as you could into the giant pile. They fed us both days too, which was appreciated, and we played a scripture trivia game one night, which was lots of fun (only a missionary would say that, haha).

The stick pile where we threw the downed trees. This only shows about half of the pile, too!

We have some new investigators that are super cool! We met them on Christmas Eve when we were visiting with the Rojas family. Their names are Jorge and Yeny. They have been married for 9 years (we don't have to convince them to tie the knot! yay!!!), and are so cool. We have been by a few times to chat, and had a really good lesson on the Plan of Salvation with them. Yeny is especially interested, and has lots of questions. We are really excited to work with them. We swung by and saw them on New Years Eve, and she made the best tamales dulces ever (sweet tamales)!!! Wow. So good. The normal tamales were okay. I still don't love spicy food, although the anticipation and is kind of fun. The aftermath isn't. Also, I ate cactus and carne asada the other day with Jorge and Yeny. The meat was great, and the cactus was alright.

This morning I woke up and looked out and saw that it was snowing! Crazy! I wanted a white Christmas, but it's 8 days too late! Also, it didn't really stick, and it has stopped snowing now. But it's still super cold. The car said it was 30F, and the wind was blowing so that made it worse! But now I can put on all of my scarves and hats and gloves, I guess. Hahaha.

 Church was good yesterday. No investigators came, so no class in Spanish. :(  But that means we can sit and absorb more of the church meetings if we aren't worried about translation or explaining things that are a little too heavy for investigators/new members.

Things are good. I'm glad the holidays are over, because we've been really slow. Things should get moving a bit more now, so that's good. I'm learning and growing all the time. I know I chatted with Kyle pretty good in Spanish, but don't be deceived -- there is a lot of room to grow. Sometimes that freaks me out, and I put lots of pressure on myself. I just keep reminding myself that I can't do it all. God doesn't expect perfection right away, just the best that I can do with what I have. He fills in the rest.

I hope you all have a good year. Last year was great for our family, and I expect this one to be the same way, even though I'm not nearby geographically!

Have a good week!

Love,

Zac