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