Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

December 31, 2018

Last Christmas I gave you my heart, the very next day your body rejected it and you died.

~ the Palmer kids.

This week was kinda all over the place, but it was a good one none the less!

Glad to say that Christmas is over and life can go back to normalish for everyone, and we kinda finally catch people home when we knock doors.

Monday was an adventure out at the Palmers. The Palmers are a younger family in the branch here and they have 2 twin boys that are 4, Ben and Sam, then they have a boy that's 11 named Alex and a girl that's 12 named something French that sounds like memory code... I don't know what her name actually is, I should probably figure that one out though. Also had the grandparents of both come so it was a party. At one point the little dog that bro Palmers parents were dog sitting for their cousins ran away and was gone for a good hr or so... That kinda broke the party up for a bit as we tried to find this thing, but to no surprise shortly after Ben (one of the 4yr old’s) said a prayer Nuala the dog turned up at their door freezing to death from being outside for so long. So that was our Christmas miracle!

Watched Fred clause that night with the family and had some good laughs so that was a fun time.

Tuesday, we got to sleep in! I lasted till 7:30, last yr. I made it to 8. Trickler he made it to 8:30 about.

We opened up gifts which I mean you can't go to wrong there so that was good. 

Got some good things from everyone (thanks by the way) 12:00 we made some calls home to the family, so it was 11 at home when we called. Looked way warmer there then it was here...! No snow and +1 against a foot a snow and -14 without wind-chill. 

Went over to the judges for dinner, gifts, and a movie. Bro judge he got us both smart watches, a normal watch, some chocolates, and Bluetooth gloves so now we can answer our phone with our gloves rather than the phone! 

With bro judge we watched some discovery channel type stuff in 3D so that was pretty sweet. Watched some fish swim around, and a guy do a river trip down the Grand Canyon talking about all its history as he went along. Trickler he got spooked when a sea snake came at him during the fish one ha-ha that was pretty funny, he tried to get away as it swam at us. 

Got home from the judges place about 8.40 so that was nice, gave us room to get to bed at a decent time. Bed times my favourite time of the day since the mission.

Wednesday was a pretty good day. Went and helped out at the soup kitchen like usual in the morning till about 1. Was a pretty slow day there due to it being pay day and the day after Christmas but that was fine with me, only had 8 people show out of the 15 we planned for so the last guys out left pretty happy cause they got all the leftovers from everyone not coming. 

After the soup kitchen what the heck did we do...? From what I remember we did language study then some stop bys / clearing driveways till about 4, then we went and tried to fix our area books at the church till 5 (we didn't get it fixed)

After dinner we did some more stop bys, mostly by La's and Rc's. We did catch a few of them home that we usually don't see so I’d say it was a successful night!

Thursday was a pretty good day! Got to do some service for a couple hrs which was nice cause it was not the nicest day out. Got lots a wind making the snow blow around and putting the temperature down to -26. We were don't service over at the prior center putting up new shelves for the kitchen storage room. Before they had cinder blocks and 1'' plywood as shelving, now they got some nice metal shelves that we put up. Took us from 10-2ish to get it all done, with a half hr lunch in there, they fed us so that was a nice bonus.

After service we did studies and a few stop bys till 5.30, and then we had dinner with the Borczuchs and a surprise bro Stewart at A&W. First thing sis Borczuch said to me when she gets out of their car was "I just hate it out here!" meanwhile the wind was blowing snow everywhere and making it hard to see across the parking lot. I don't know I just thought that was kinda funny cause she’s the sweetest old lady and even when she says she hates something she's smiling about it and then laughs afterwards, and just to see her out there in the snow and wind like that and saying what she did it was just funny. 

After dinner with them we went out and did a little tracting for a hr and only got 1 person "home". I don’t know if I’d a opened my door on a night like tonight if someone randomly came knocking on it, could maybe lose my door from the wind. On the way home however, we did come across a guy stuck in the back alley beside our place so we walked over to his little car and tapped on his window to see if he'd like some help, he told us he didn't figure he'd be able to move from where he is so he was gonna call a tow truck. We coulda moved'em had he lets us try, he was in a little Honda civic and the snow wasn’t as deep as he thought it was, but oh well I guess.

Friday was a decent day other then it was - 33, there wasn’t any wind though and the sky was clear so that was nice. 

Did our usual Friday stuff, weekly planning, and studies till 3...then we went out and did some stop bys to see who needed some snow shoveled, sadly our area seemed to be the only area that was drifted in really bad from the wind the night before so we didn't have much chance to shovel snow. 

Had dinner and poker with Eric which was a good time as usual. 

Did a little movie night over at the church at 7 watching the testament, sadly not a lot of people showed up but hey it was still good. 

Finished off the night with messaging a few people seeing if they could meet later in the week or what we could help them with around their place. 

Saturday, we started off the morning with a leadership call just to see how all the areas were doing and how we could help them out pretty much so that was alright. 

Did some work with potentials in the morning trying to get some new people being taught, and technically we did find someone but technically not at the same time! He was taught by Trickler and Tarwater a bit ago but they didn't set a return appointment with him so they couldn't count him as a new person, but today we set a "return appointment" and he has been reading, so depending on how you look at it he's a new person. 

Did our usual studies after lunch, and to our surprise we got a text from Aries saying he was around today that he could meet at 7 so that moved some stuff around for us which was nice.

After studies we went out to long plain reserve to stop by a few people out there seeing as we are at the end of the month and haven't used all our k's yet. Sadly we only caught one person home, and she didn't want anything to do with us. It was a nice drive anyway, got to take some back roads with a few good views.

*Just a little side note. Trickler he's trying to sing the song coyotes by don Edwards as I'm writing this out, and it's quite distracting listening to his off key coyote howls, but it's also kinda funny. Gotta love those companions that aren't shy to scratch the chalkboard for a little fun. 

Anyway back to our day. On the way back from long plain at about 4.40 the judges texted asking for some help painting their room so of course we said yes! We ran home first and changed into some service clothes then went over there to help out, which by the time we got there we painted for maybe an hr before bro judge called it good and was ordering us all our own pizza!

Once we got done at the judges we had our appointment with Aries. The lesson/reading with him went well, he seemed to like us reading along with him and explaining as we went. I think he's finally making some connections with the Bible and the book of Mormon, and how they talk of each other. 

After our lesson as usual Aries fed us... Tonight was super bad for us cause we had just ate a full medium pizza each at the judges only a hr before, and then he comes out with way more food then he already usually cooks us! It was bad. Really good food but bad for us cause as missionarys we can't say no to food. So we put down as much as we could to make him feel like we weren't being rude by not eating any, then we went home and died. Trickler he seemed to have it the worst, before we even started eating at Aries he was lookin at me like I'm gonna die if I have to eat this. It was kinda funny.

Sunday was a interesting day but good.

Our 5th Sunday lesson went well on the joy of unselfish service, even got most the branch crying during it...I'm not sure how we did that by talking about service and showing a video called enduring love but we did. Must have been something we needed to share with the branch I guess. The spirit was there that's for sure. 

After church we had a "quick" branch huddle that turned into a 30min huddle. Got pretty warm in there due to some of the conversation on who was doing what and why someone was doing other things. Bro Stewart got told about what he did to bro judge when he told everyone to stop cleaning cause it was bro judges job, so big walls of defence came up in front of bro Stewart as sis Jensen kindly explained that we need to fix that problem rather then just let bro judge leave our small branch. I won't go into much detail but that's what most of our branch huddle was dealing with and it ended good, but boy was it warm at times in there.

Once we got done the huddle us and the Jensens went over to the judges for lunch which was a nice time. The Jensens got the judge experiance with the strawberry drink bro judge makes for all the missionarys that serve there, and the tour of the man cave and little clip of a movie he shows you so you can get the feel of it all. They thought it was amazing, and to tell the truth they very well could be the only senior couple to go down to the judges man cave and watch a part of something with him. We told the Jensens now they can tell all the missionarys back in the city that they got to see the judges man cave and everyone'll be jealous because of it haha I dont know why but getting the chance to have "the judge experience" as its know in the mission is like winning the lottery for missionarys. 

After we got done with the judges and Jensen's we came home and did some studies till dinner, then we went out and tracted in what was said to be -14 but when you really look at the weather it says it feels like -26 with the wind. We think it was colder then that out there, our faces in the first 10min were frozen but by the time 30min rolled around we couldn't feel anything so it wasn't to bad. Found a couple potentials that said to come back tomorrow afternoon, so we didn't freeze for nothin!

Drove out to a little place called Oakdale about 15-20 away from portage to stop by a guy out there, but sadly he wasnt home. By the time we got back to town from out there it was 8 so we went back to the apartment for language study to finish off the night. 

And that was our week!

Love ya all talk to ya next week!