Ode to Oreo

Hey Mother and family!

    Oreo died!? Poor guy :( I loved that dog! That's too bad that he
went out that way, but I agree that putting him down was the best
option. He was an old man and it was his time to go. I'll miss him
though, he was the best! I still laugh about the time I walked into
the dining room and found him halfway down the heat vent trying to
crawl his way out hahaha. Senior moment for sure. Anyways he was a
good dog, pretty stupid, but that's why we love him! Haha I'll miss
him a lot.

    Okay, so this week was sweet, and crazy, for a number of reasons.
So far so good on the speeding tickets! I was a little worried there
might be more, but no calls so far! (Knock on wood). I paid it
yesterday, so we're good to go! We slid into a snow bank yesterday
pulling into the church, but it just popped something off of the
bumper, and it clicked back into place haha still good!

    Zone Conference was sweet. There were some really good trainings
given by President, the assistants, and the zone leaders. We played
Mission Jeopardy, and lunch was awesome. They made Cafe Rio (sp?) and
it was delicious! After the conference, however, was pretty crazy. So
the Barrhead elders were staying with us most of this week, and since
we're in our area, Elder Fifita and I split off with them so that they
aren't wandering around our area wondering where to go. So after
conference Elder Pinehault and I drove back to Spruce and Elder Fifita
and Miller stayed for a leadership training. After the training, they
drove the Elders serving downtown home, and then went into the
apartment to grab something they'd left there awhile back. So some
other missionaries showed up and they all ended up wrestling around,
and one of them jumped onto Elder Fifita's back and tried to wrap his
legs around him. Elder Fifita turned around, and the other elder
slipped off his back and hit his head on the corner of the desk. When
he took his hand off of his head, blood starting gushing everywhere,
and when the got it under control they realized he had split his head
open. So they laid him down, and he seemed okay, so they figured
they'd drive him to the ER. But then he got up, walked into the other
room, and lost consciousness and started having a seizure. The two
tongans in the room (pretty big guys) and another elder couldn't hold
him down, so Elder Fifita gave him a blessing and the seizures
stopped. So then they called 911, but while they were waiting he
stopped breathing, so they had to give him CPR. The paramedics arrived
pretty soon after that and revived him, and then took him to the
hospital. He got a pretty bad concussion, and his memory's erased back
5 months. So he doesn't remember anything between that time. He
recognized President and Sister Campbell because he saw their picture
in his call packet over 5 months ago. His left side was also paralyzed
for a couple of days. So he stayed in the hospital for a few days, and
then he was released on Saturday. They're keeping him on his mission
because medical care is better here than in Mongolia where he's from,
but he's basically starting over. I heard he's slowly starting to
regain some memories, but who knows if it'll ever fully come back. I
saw him yesterday though and he looked good, just confused. So yeah,
pretty crazy! Elder Fifita's felt terrible though, and he blames
himself for it, but I think after he saw the guy yesterday, he feels
better. So it's been a stressful week for him. We had interviews on
Thursday with President and so that helped him a lot.

    So other than that all that, it was a good week for sure. We were
able to meet with quite a few members this week, and we met with one
of our investigators on Saturday. His name's Blake, and he's actually
baptized, but not confirmed haha. I guess he was baptized when he was
young, but his family never came to church the next day, or at all
after that. So now he's married to a member, and so we teach him every
Saturday. He doesn't really have a huge desire to be baptized yet, but
we were able to give his sick son a blessing while we were there this
week, and I think it made a difference for him.

    We met with some other investigators, Dave and Carla. They're
living common law, just waiting to get divorced from their previous
spouses, but they both know it's true and consider themselves members.
Their divorces end in May, so once those are finalized and they're
married, they'll for sure be baptized. Carla's pregnant and lives
alone, so that's why Dave says he lives with her. They're awesome
people though, I hope I'm here to see them baptized.

    Hey random question! Where is Forks, Oregon. I can't tell you how
many times I've been asked that when I say I'm from Oregon hahahaha.
Twilight comes up almost every time! I always say I've never heard of
Forks, and they look at me like I just lied about living in Oregon. Is
it even in Oregon?

    This week we drove up to Barrhead, which is about an hour north,
to pick up Elder Fifita's camera that he left there on exchanges. It's
sweet, missionaries here have "line maps", which are basically just
maps and we color in the roads that we've traveled on. Missionaries
always try and serve in outlying areas so they can get "sweet lines".
Anyways, we got some sweet lines going up to Barrhead, and then took a
different way back and got another line! A lot of people get in
trouble for taking outrageous routes back to their areas after
transfers so they can get new lines, but the route we took home was
pretty much the same distance so no harm done :)

    Speaking of driving, yesterday we had to drive to the mission
office to pay off my ticket, and on our way to the North End of
Edmonton for basketball, we got completely lost haha. We ended up
downtown, crossing the North Saskatchewan River about 3 times, and
then finally giving up and going west until we found the highway we
usually take haha. It was an adventure! I don't know downtown at all,
and Fifita never had drive when we served down there was so we were
hosed.

    The weather is still the same. It's been snowing like you
wouldn't believe for the past couple of weeks, and it's everywhere.
I'm sick of it haha I'm ready for Summer! Hopefully some day it'll
warm up. I pray for it every day!

    Hey we're having a General Authority visit our mission in May!
Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita of the Seventy is coming to tour some of the
Canadian missions. I'm super excited, he's the one that spoke last
general conference about missionaries. It'll be sweet!

    Hey another random thought, I want to go and see the Hill Cumorah
Pageant and all the church history stuff! Some members were telling us
about it this week and it sounds sweet! Tell me that wouldn't be cool!

    Alright the end of the email rambling is over, I'm officially out
of things to talk about haha. You guys are awesome! I miss you all!

Love,

Elder Read

Still cold in Canada!

Hey guys!

    So I've got some bad news. I'd wait until the end, but I'd hate
to ruin an otherwise good email with bad news at the end! May as well
set the mood right from the beginning. I got a speeding ticket on
Yesterday. And by that I mean I heard about it on Monday. The ticket's
actually from the 16th. Elder Eklund, the senior missionary from the
office in charge of vehicles called and told me he had a picture of
the back of our car. So I asked him what that meant haha I had no
clue. They have this thing called Photo Radar up here.....it sucks!
They're these inconspicuous looking cars that they park by the side of
the road and a guy in there takes pictures of speeding cars! So I got
my picture taken.....and it's $175. Sorry about that. To be honest I
don't speed much, but out on the range roads it's hard not to go a
little fast! The place where I got it was on a range road coming back
into town. The speed changes from 70 to 50 km/hr and I usually just
coast into the change, but they got me for doing 75 in a 50. To tell
you the truth I was warned a lot by other missionaries about the Photo
Radar in Spruce Grove and I didn't listen! So I apologize haha
hopefully this is the only one! We haven't driven much in the past
week and a half though so we should be good. Anyways, the church will
cover it and then I have to pay them back at the office. They take
cash though, and my VISA doesn't work at ATM's (or at all for that
matter), so I think I'll have to pay for it with my allotment next
month, and then use my Mastercard for allotment. Is that cool? Let me
know. I'll be checking my email this week again to make sure. On the
bright side, you just wrote to me about that tax return I'm getting
right? Now there's no question on how to spend it! :) Maybe it's too
soon for jokes. So that's my bad news. Sorry I know that's probably
not the best news, I'll slow down haha.
     This week was another slow one. Haha We went
to a walk in clinic on Tuesday night after President told us to go,
and sat for 2 hours twiddling our thumbs. There was some old sitcom on
across the room, but I couldn't hear any of it. So I got pretty good
at reading lips. So after an eternity of waiting, we finally got in,
they checked Elder Fifita's breathing, looked at his throat and
declared him to have a cold! I'm so glad we spent 2 hours waiting for
them to tell us that he has a virus and give us some Advil. So that
was that! They did tell us to take a break and wait it out, so we did!
We spent pretty much all of our time together indoors. But it wasn't
all bad. We went on exchanges with Barrhead (area to the north) and I
stayed in Spruce so Elder Pineault and I went around and worked it was
fun. He's brand new out of the MTC, and he's from Quebec and doesn't
speak very good english. So there was a lot of talking from Elder Read
and a lot of smiling from Elder Pineault :) Finally on Saturday Elder
Fifita's cold went away, and he's pretty well at 100%! It only took 3
weeks! :) So this week will be good for sure. Elder Fifita wasted no
time in scheduling a ton of lessons this week so we should be busy!
     It snowed this week! Either Thursday or Friday night (all of the
days are mashed into one in my memory), it snowed all night long, and
then snowed all day the next day. There's about 2 feet of snow right
now, and while it was awesome at first, I'm done with it. I like
Oregon, where it snows, you enjoy it for a day or two, and then it
melts. Not here! On Sunday we stopped at a member's house and I got us
stuck. I HATE getting stuck, and everybody and their dog has to come
out of their houses and push us out. So I sat in the driver's seat and
everyone else pushed us out. I felt pretty dumb haha. Can't wait for
Summer! It's nice having all-wheel drive though, I'd have gotten stuck
a lot more than that without it.
    Hey mom I got the package! Thanks for taking care of that. And
thanks for the candy and peanut brittle! I love that stuff. Plus the
Sudoku book is sweet! I was actually thinking the other day how cool
it would be to have one of the those, and there it was!
    Hahaha you took the cat to the vet....I remember when we would
take the grey cat to the vet, and she would get so mad. I'm sad I
missed it!
    We actually didn't celebrate Family Day. It was a full
proselyting day, and it was Pday, so we didn't have to do much anyway.
Yeah that was the day of the fast it was well planned!
    So the pig roast......I may or may not have participated in the
killing of the pig. The white handbook doesn't say anything about it,
and my companion's Tongan, so I felt justified :) Yeah it was pretty
gross to watch it die and watch Elder Fifita gut it our and clean it,
but it was so worth it. It was weird to eat something that I'd been
watching walk around a few hours earlier. You'd be surprised how many
pig roasts Fifita's done. Once they find out he's Tongan they always
ask :)
    I'm so jealous Geoff and Nicole are going to Cancun! I want to go
to Cancun. Hey you guys aren't allowed to go on any cool vacations
while I'm here. I know we went on a cruise when Calista was gone, but
I know we all felt TERRIBLE and wouldn't want to inflict the same pain
on me.
    So that's all I have for this week! Tomorrow is zone conference
and we're combined with another zone so it'll be cool to see a lot of
people I haven't seen in awhile. Elder Atwood will be there I'm
excited to see him again! Anyways I'm glad to hear everything's going
well. Thanks for all you guys do, sorry again for the ticket. Enjoy
your week!

Love you guys,

Elder Read

Loooong week

Hey everyone!

    So this week........was. Haha it was pretty slow to be honest. Elder Fifita is still sick with a bad cough and cold, so we spent most of the daytime proselyting hours indoors, and really only left to go
to appointments so we could share it with the members! Haha I'm surprised they didn't kick us out of their houses. But anyways he's still sick, and so after we're doing emailing here we're going to a
walk-in clinic. Elder Fifita refused to go to the doctor, and so one of the members jokingly (or so we thought) called President Campbell and told him to tell Elder Fifita to go haha. So today after the
temple he came up and did just that! The members have given us so much medicine though it's ridiculous. It's nice that they care I guess!

    Speaking of the temple, we got to go earlier today it was sweet! They switched Pday to today and so we went with most of the other missionaries at 8 this morning. Only the city missionaries and the
ones serving relatively close can go, so we were lucky! I loved it, I miss the temple like you wouldn't believe! I can't wait to come home and be able to go more regularly.

    So yesterday, some members in our ward had a pig roast! Like a straight-out-of-Tonga pig roast! I guess they did one a couple weeks ago, and so one of the members has a pit already dug out in his
backyard, and so we roasted a pig in it. One of the many benefits of having a Tongan companion. So we went yesterday with some people to a Hutterite Colony about 30km down the road, picked up a 75 pound pig, and brought to a members house. Long story short, we killed it, gutted it, prepared the fire, put the pig in, buried it, and then waited for 2 hours. It was sweet! I think I like the stuff the Mcdougals made more, but we didn't have banana leaves. Only Montreal Steak Seasoning :) When I get home in a million years I'll show you guys the picturesand video of the pig! Pretty cool.

   Yeah there's a huge youth in this ward! There are a lot of older couples, young couples, and families with kids, it's pretty balanced. It's a huge ward though, something I'm definitely not used to haha.
Speaking of church, I got to speak on Sunday! To be honest I love speaking in church. I love getting up there and listening to the sound of my voice! But I hate preparing the talk! It's true you learn quite
a bit when you study the topic, but it takes me sooo much time it's ridiculous. I got to speak on Fasting and Missionary work in honor of the fast today. It went well I hope. I didn't collapse or anything and
nobody stood up in open rebellion during or afterwards so it must have been okay!

     You bet I've learned to drive in the snow! Actually it's been pretty dry until today. It snowed while we were in the temple, but other than that it's been above freezing most of the week it's been
nice. We're allotted 2500 km a month, which is pretty impossible to reach. On a busy day we drive 60-70 km so we probably will never reach the limit.

    Still no northern lights :( not since that time in October anyway. I'm hoping for some next winter when it's colder. I hear theylike the cold :)

    They actually do have Baskin Robbins here! But not any in Spruce Grove that I've seen. I saw a couple in Edmonton though. They actually get quite a bit of business in the Winter it's surprising. I guess
most people figure they're going to be cold regardless of what they eat :)

    Alright I'm out of things to talk about.....we didn't teach any investigators this week so I have no one to talk about, but next week should be good! I'm glad to hear life's going well back in P-Town. I
miss the rain :)

Thanks for sending the package mom! Hopefully it'll be here soon I'm running low on supplies, but it should be good. And tell Grandma Read and Grandma and Grandpa Hyde thanks for the package and the letters!

Love you guys!

Elder Read

Spruce Grove (not Spruce Goose) and Happy Valentines Day!

Hey family!

This week has been sweet! I love Spruce Grove! I keep wanting to call
it Spruce Goose though haha.....Oregon humor. Hey emailing will now be
on Tuesdays because the library is closed on Monday here. Lame. So
I've been running around a lot this week, and since I have a whole 2
hours to email now, I'll tell you all about it in detail :)

So Monday was pretty normal. Elder Wood and I had a lot of lessons
scheduled, so we didn't have time to visit very many members.  Which
meant Tuesday was the craziest day of my life! We were literally
running from house to house saying goodbyes, going to previously
scheduled appointments, packing, etc. Haha and we still didn't get to
everyone! We didn't get in until around 9:45 that night it was crazy!
I have so much stuff, I feel like a girl sometimes! I downsized a lot
of stuff though, so next transfer should be better.

    Wednesday was pretty surreal haha. Not only was it my Birthday,
but It was like leaving home again it was weird. I honestly didn't
think much about my birthday to tell you the truth. If it wasn't
transfer day, I don't think it would have been any different than any
other day haha. I actually forgot about it until I was sitting in the
apartment with Elder Fifita unpacking my things and I found the
package you sent me mom. Thanks for that by the way! Elder Wood and I
made the cookies and they were delicious. Elder Fifita and I still
need to make the cake. And I love Life cereal you're the best! We
filled all of the balloons with water and stuck them outside
overnight, then threw them at the trees in our courtyard it was sweet.
So yeah it was a good day!

    Anyways, transfer meeting was good though. I got to see a lot of
the people I came out with which was sweet! I miss those guys (and
sisters). So then Elder Fifita and I drove home. He doesn't have his
license anymore for whatever reason, and so I get to drive everywhere!
I am literally in Heaven. We have a beautiful little Subaru Impreza
and she's all I could have asked for. After a walking area though, I
would have taken a little barbie car, no joke. So this was a sweet
deal for me! I was honestly worried I wouldn't know how to drive
anymore haha it had been so long. But it went well :) So now we drive
everywhere it's sweet! Spruce Grove is one of the bigger areas, and
some of our members and investigators live out in the BOONIES. Like,
driving on a dirt road for a half hour type of boonies.
    It's an awesome area though. The ward is huge. We fill the chapel
and most of the overflow. Last sunday we opened the curtain to the
gym, but only because some dude was giving his farewell talk. The ward
is awesome though. They're super missionary-minded, and they love us!
We have an awesome bishop (who is also a body builder) and he does the
most missionary work out of everyone! When the bishop starts it, the
ward follows, let me tell you.

    So we've been busy this week! But anyways, Spruce has a LOT of
old people haha. They all retire on to a huge plot of land and sit out
the rest of their days. And they love having us over! We visited two
old couples this week that aren't members, they're catholic actually,
and they just visit with us, and they always feed us it's beautiful!
Plus they love to talk about God haha. Last night we went over to an
older couple named Alfred and Nancy (old people names), and played a
little game golf (card game) and they fed us muffins and orange juice!
PLUS at church the other day, this older couple brings the
missionaries goodie bags every week! We have snack time during
Sacrament Meeting :) We got a little bag of gum, candy, hot chocolate
packets, and other little stuff. It's sweet! Elder Fifita was telling
me that one week they brought the Elders a straight up Subway sandwich
and insisted they eat it right then and there! I can only hope it
happens again. I starve during church. Honestly I could stay in this
area my whole mission. Old people feed us muffins, other old people
bring us food at church like we're in Primary again, we teach lessons,
the ward does their missionary work, and I have a car. Woo!

    So Elder Fifita....he's the man. Like I said last week, he's a
big guy. He's only 6 feet tall but he's thick haha. Yessir Dad he
played for the Tongan National Rugby team, and he was actually offered
a 1.5 million dollar contract with England, but he turned it down to
serve a mission! Pretty cool eh? He's a spiritual giant (no pun
intended), and he works hard I love him.

    Haha so my past two companions, when they saw my pump they asked
a ton of questions and we spent a long time talking about diabetes. It
surprises me how little people know about it. But then again I knew
NOTHING until last year haha. Anyways, I though Elder Wood and Merrell
were bad, but Elder Fifita has beat them by a longshot. He has sooo
many questions about diabetes haha it's hilarious. His english is
pretty good, but still a little limited, so it takes me awhile to tell
him all of the confusing things. So the members here, like I said, are
a little older than most, and so they've really been harping on me for
talking so fast! I get scolded almost every day for it haha. "Stop
talking so fast our old ears can only pick up so much." I love it. By
the way, I've been told 3 times so far since I've been here that I
have an accent....? I never heard that in Edmonton, but now that I'm
out here it's different. They tell me that most of the American
missionaries have it too, but that mine is especially prominent. Cool
eh? I'm a true American.

    So setting aside the materialistic blessings of this area, it's
actually an awesome area for missionary work. Like I said the ward is
enthusiastic about missionary work, and we have quite a few
investigators here. I haven't met many of them though, but hopefully I
will this week. Elder Fifita has had a bad cold all week so we haven't
done much during the day. But this week we have a lot of proselyting
planned it'll be fun. We're planning on working with a lot of
part-member families this month and trying to get the unbaptized
members baptized. It'll be fun I'm excited. The mission-wide fast is
on February 20th at 6pm until February 21st at 6pm. It's basically a
province-wide fast, because our mission covers the entire province
besides Calgary and south of that. So all 6 stakes in our mission are
participating. I'm actually really excited because our temple day is
that Tuesday afternoon, so we get to fast and then go to the temple
during it. It'll be great.

    Bryant's phone went belly up? Like my old one? That sucks! Hahaha
mom. You tell me every week that you have something to tell me but
that you keep forgetting it. The suspense is killing me! How was your
guy's Valentines day? I miss those sugar cookies! If you happen to
send me some, I wouldn't turn them down :) Alright I'm going to end
this novel now. Sorry for it's lack of organization I'm not very good
at that and I'm very good at rambling! Haha. There was a lot to say
this week though, so next week should be a little easier on the eyes.
Hey I appreciate everything you all do for me. I love being out here,
and knowing I have support back home makes it a lot easier. The church
is true!

Love you guys!

Elder Read

Transfers

So I jinxed it. I said I wouldn't get transferred but we definitely got a call from good ol' President Campbell this morning! It was a late call too, we thought we were safe! But you're never safe in the world of a missionary. So I'm being transferred for my birthday! On Wednesday I head out to Spruce Grove! Which is basically like a suburb of Edmonton. Think of the difference (and the distance too, actually) between Portland and Beaverton. I'm actually really excited for a number of reasons. Elder Wood was trained there, and so he's told me all of the cool things about it. I'll miss that guy. We were hoping for another transfer together, but oh well! My new companion is Elder Fufita (Fuh-Feet-Uh), and he's from Tonga! He is also the former captain of the Tongan National Rugby Team. He's a very large missionary. I'm a little intimidated to tell you the truth haha he might eat me. But he's a super cool guy it'll be awesome. I've been hoping to get out of the city soon, and so this will be a cool change. Plus we have a car! Which isn't surprising considering every other area in the mission besides ours pretty much have cars. So that'll be cool. Other than that I don't know much about it, but I'm excited for Wednesday! You're right! Wednesday is my birthday! I wish I could say that I'm super excited for all of the festivities and everything haha.....but honestly missionary birthdays are pretty low-key. Plus Wednesday will be hectic enough! But that's okay we got donairs on Thursday after District Meeting because we had a feeling it might be my last week. So now the next two days are going to be full of packing and saying goodbyes. Honestly I wish we had a moving service. I hate packing! I liked when Elder Merrell had to pack and I got to sit around and putt in the living room. Speaking of which, I now hold the record in our district for most putts out of 10. But anyways, life is good here. It was a pretty average week. We went on more exchanges, and it stayed pretty warm. The groundhog saw his shadow! This is turning out to be a sweet winter. Only one more to go! Elder Wood and I went running this morning actually in -13 weather. It was surprisingly nice actually. We had planned on doing it every morning this transfer but plans have changed now! Haha. So thy read a letter in church yesterday about how on February 20th we're having an Alberta fast! The whole province (minus Calgary, nobody up here likes them anyway haha) is fasting for 24 hours for missionary work! It's gonna be awesome. It starts at 6pm on Monday and ends at 6pm on Tuesday. We're pretty excited. Also at church yesterday, we got to participate in a baby blessing of a less active girl that we visit pretty often. She's Chilean, which means there were a million people at church today, and we pretty much had the entire extended family up on the stand for the blessing. I've never been so cramped in my life trying to reach a hand in there hahaha it was hialrious. But super cool! Hey Mom I called for supplies the other day, and they said they'd bill me....? I dunno, I'm assuming you'll get a bill :) You're the best! Hey can I have a picture of the Portland Temple? Random I know, but I miss that place! Temple day is in two weeks, and they're switching pday to Tuesday so we can go. It'll be so cool. I miss the temple a lot. I can't wait to go regularly again! So other than that I have nothing else.....I got a letter from Gramma Read last week. She should get a letter from me in about a week. I'm so jealous Geoff, Nicole and Bryant ran that 5k! I wish I could have been there. Hey mom the Debit Card is still pretty lame :( it doesn't work at very many places. So I've been using the Mastercard. So yeah! That's life. It's going good here. I'm excited to go to Spruce Grove, and I'm glad to hear everything's going well there! Do work family! And anyone else who reads this!

 

 I love you guys!

 

Elder Read

 

PS - I love letters. Don't hesitate to send away!

Canada, eh?

Hey Mother and family!

 

So before I forget, I got Grandma Read's letter last week and sent her a letter a couple of days ago. This week was fast! We had two exchanges and those always make it seem like time flies. I left for the first exchange and went with Elder Albright in Meadows. He's been in the area as long as I've been in mine and they're just north of us so I see him a lot. We had a party! Not literally, but it was a lot of fun. Our dinner appointment that night took us out to Montana's which is a barbecue restaurant. They got us all-you-can-eat ribs it was delicious. Plus eating out as a missionary is always good. So then we went on exchanges with the zone leaders on Friday and I stayed in our area. It was pretty cool. They're way better missionaries than I am so I learned a lot.

    Elder Wood and I are completely out of money this month hahaha and cards don't replenish until Wednesday. So we're gonna live off of oatmeal and rice this week! We're pretty excited. Elder Wood sleep walks all the time it's awesome. I always wake up and he'll be roaming the apartment. Then he'll suddenly stop at some odd place (like staring at a wall), stay there for a little while, then walk around some more. He wakes up all the time with his head at the other end of the bed. It's so cool. When we were on exchanges, he was with the new missionary from Meadows, and he woke up in the middle of the night and Elder Wood was pointing and screaming at "someone" at the door to "GET OUT!!!" haha too bad I missed it. I'm keeping my camera by my bed from now on.

    So we're teaching this guy named Jason for the past 4 months. We started teaching him when I got here. He isn't a member and he and his LA wife were coming to church together earlier last year, but then I guess they both dropped off the radar until early October when he started coming alone. We found out that his wife left him and she's apparently living in Oklahoma now. So he comes alone because he said he always felt that coming to our church was the right thing to do. He's awesome. He comes to church every week on his own, participates in the lessons, he's incredibly smart (he's an analytical chemist for a pharmaceutical company developing a cure for hepatitis), and he loves meeting with us. Unfortunately he's pretty skeptical and he naturally looks for proof in the things that we teach him. But he recognizes that skepticism inside of him and he's working hard on developing faith. He loves the church though, and he requested that he be more included. So they just gave him a calling last week as a Scout Leader assigned to the 14-year-olds. It'll be a great experience for him. We've taught him all of the lessons, and he prays, reads the Book of Mormon, comes to church, etc. He's doing all of the right things but he doesn't want to be baptized until he knows for a surety that it's right for him. He's a great guy though and we really enjoy teaching him. He has amazing comprehension and retention and I hope I get to see him baptized.

    We're teaching another guy named Alex Mcleod, who came to the gym on Pday while we were playing basketball, and asked for a JST Bible. He's very religious and is really interested in what we believe. We've met with him a couple of times, but we always end up going off on tangents because he has some super deep-doctrine question haha. It's a struggle to stay on track but he's been reading the Book of Mormon so we're hoping he keeps going! He hasn't come to church yet though, which is super important. So that's our next goal. Other than that we aren't really teaching anyone else but we tract A LOT and we spend most of our day finding people. Hopefully we'll find some more!

    So this week was pretty good. This coming week is the last of the transfer, and I have this bad feeling I'm getting the boot. Yeah mom they live trainees with their trainers for a minimum 12 weeks now. I finished that last transfer though with Elder Merrell. I hope I get to stay here. I really enjoy the area and the ward, but I'll go wherever the Lord wants me! We'll find out next week. The weather this week has been pretty good. It sits at around -5 all the time which sounds colder than it is. No complaints!

    Anyways that's all I've got this week. I'm glad to hear you're all doing well! I miss you guys, and I'm glad to hear Geoff's birthday went well, and that the Ducks won! Keep me updated on the happenings back home!

 

Love you guys!

 

Elder Read

 

 

PS - My back's good now! :)

Hey fam

Hey Mom!

 

How are you guys! Man this week flew by, I can't believe it. And now it's week 5 of the transfer! I probably ramble and repeat things so bad in my emails haha so I'll apologize in advance. But it's crazy to me how fast time flies. This week was pretty good I suppose. We stayed inside most of Tuesday and Wednesday because it was below -40 C all day. We went out for a total of about 3 hours each day, but sat for the rest of it. So I learned to play guitar! :) one of the members here lent (lended?) me her guitar until I get transferred! Haha so I grabbed the "Mormon Guitar Songbook" that I found laying in our apartment and started learning chords. I can play a rousing rendition of "In The Leafy Treetops" and a very butchered version of "Do What Is Right". I love it! Haha but I found out the other day we're only allowed to play on Pday's :( so I'll have to play a bunch today! Hey I got your package! I'll send the stuff back to you today. I haven't used the card yet but I'll let you know if it works. Thanks for the Christmas letter! Elder Wood and I laughed for a long time when I read it. Dad you're a pretty funny guy. So Saturday I threw out my back! Haha I feel like I shouldn't be saying that for another 30 years, but I did! It sucked. Remember when I hurt it at Sky High a year ago? Well it basically went into remission since then, and only hurt a little when I would bend a certain way. But we were lifting a stove into this guy's truck and it didn't hurt at first, but as soon as we got it in there and I started to walk away my back exploded with pain! It was crazy. It's pretty much better now but I was walking like a penguin for the rest of the day. It hurts when I wake up but it stretches itself out. It'll probably be find, it gets better every day. I probably made that sound a lot worse than it was though, I'm fine haha. I'll be playing basketball today :) Hey random question: what're the chances of me getting a little "line of authority" card? A lot of missionaries have them and it's sweet! Is that a possibility? That would be awesome. I honestly have no idea what I want for my birthday.....nothing really haha. Just surprise me I guess! Something American though, I miss the good ol' states. Hey speaking of states, how'd the Ducks do in the Rose Bowl? I've had a million people talk about how they went.....but no one told me how they did! Hahaha I love hearing about Oreo. He's a dope! Hey I would love to get Kyle's emails! Bryant got a ticket! Haha nice! I can't believe how much it rains in Oregon compared to everywehere else. I miss the rain to be honest with you. Everything is so green in Oregon. Well other than that I don't really have much more. The weather's warming up again :) it was about -5 C yesterday and I kid you not it felt like 10 at least. We were walking without coats for most of the day. It's so cool how acclimatised (is that even a word?) you get. I love it! I love Canada! I hope everything is going well back home! Keep me updated on life :) Hey and tell Geoff happy early birthday!

 

Love you guys,

 

Elder Read

 

 

PS I want peanut brittle for my birthday :) I just thought of that and it sounded good.