Traffic laws are SO tiresome

Hello my friends,

This week was super good! And then bad in some other ways.....Let's
start with the bad news first, shall we?

So today we were just starting companionship study, when I got a call
from Elder Eklund, the vehicle coordinator. He told me that I have
another ticket for $113......now you're probably thinking that it's
ridiculous that I have another ticket, considering this is the third
one on my mission, but might I point out that I didn't have any back
home! Let me try and rationalize my mistake haha and give you my
reasoning. So in this particular instance, I was driving on a road not
much different than 185th ave back home. It's almost all commercial
with parts of residential. So the speed limit is 45 mph on that road
if I remember correctly. At least I think it was. Km/hr has me so
messed up haha. Anyways, so might I be so bold as to say that I
regularly did about 50 mph on that road? 5 mph over the speed limit is
not a big deal, right? Anyways, so for this ticket I was driving and
was doing 78 in a 60 km/hr zone. BUT it's only because I
sub-consciously want to do 50 mph on that style of road, which is
right around the speed I was doing when I got the ticket. So parents,
siblings, members of the jury, I think it is safe to say that I had no
desire to speed, but I only did it because that's what I was used to
back home, and these silly Canadians have weird speed limits. 60 km/hr
is 37 mph.....that's so slow I feel like I'm doing 25! But obviously I
need to watch the speedometer. BUT that may not even be an issue
because this is ticket number 3 and the rumor around the mission is
that you get exed (banned) from driving at 3. But it's not confirmed.
So I'm just waiting on that phone call from President. It would be
unfortunate though because Nabrotzky can't drive, which would mean one
of us gets transferred. Oh well! Anyways, I'm sorry I got the ticket,
I know it's not the best news to get haha. So I'll pay it off and
scrimp and save for the next little while.

Anyways, now that that's off my chest, we can begin! This week was
really good actually. We had a lot of good visits and some good
progress in the area!

La familia de Sukhu is doing super super well. Danielle lost her
Grandma last week, and so it's been a rough couple days for them. I
made them pumpkin cookies (the only other recipe I have ha) and we
stopped by and talked about the Plan of Salvation. She said it helps a
lot knowing for a surety that she'll see her again. Their baptismal
interview was on Friday and they all made it through! They were
extremely nervous going in, but I think they realized there was no
death penalty if they failed haha. So their baptism is set for this
Saturday at 2pm. We've been keeping daily contact, usually just
stopping by at the end of the day and watching a mormon message or
something. They're awesome! Keep them in your prayers. The week before
and after the baptism is always the hectic one. Also, Erika,
Danielle's mom, (the one you talked to, mom), was supposed to fly up
for their baptism. The ward surprised her with a plane ticket a few
weeks ago. But after Erika's mom died they decided to use the ticket
to go to the funeral in Pennsylvania instead. Which is totally
understandable. So no seeing Erika :( Oh well they only live in
Northern California I'll visit them some day.

Haha one of the members in the ward offered Elder Nabrotzky speech
lessons. He has a very prominent lisp and she was a speech therapy
teacher back in the day, so she offered when we were over there last
week. She taught Fifita for a little bit too and he improved a lot, so
it'll be good for Jablonski to get them. We went over on Saturday and
we're going over today after emails too. She's served a million
missions with her husband and it's always nice to go over there and
get missionary advice :)

We're hoping for a new investigator this week! One of the members in
our ward just married a guy named Dan. We ate dinner with him once a
few months ago when they were dating, and he called himself a "wannabe
mormon." Well "wannabe" no more my friend! We're going over on Sunday
to teach him the first lesson. He comes to church every week and takes
notes, and he even took notes during my lesson in Gospel Essentials on
Sunday! I was quite honored :) So yeah we're excited for that!

We've had sooo much rain in the past week. We went from heat stroke to
drowning! It rained non stop all Saturday and Sunday, and all of the
major highways around here were flooding it's crazy. The dry ponds
were all full to the brim and a lot of people had flooding in their
basements. Mostly just the older homes that don't have sump pumps. I
realized why we don't have basements in Oregon! We'd all die.

On Sunday after Sunday School, Brother Flexhaug, the Elders Quorum
President approached us and asked us if we could go and help one of
the members whose basement had flooded. So we drove home and changed,
then went over to the Gander's house and and found them ripping up the
carpet and underlay. We spent a couple of hours doing that and
scraping the glue off from the underlay. They decided to just let the
carpet dry then put it back down with no underlay, in case it happens
again. There were 5 other families whose basements flooded, but they
all had hometeachers that went over. So that was an adventure!

Today we did it all again, and went to the Hamiltons and helped them
clear out their basement and get rid of junk so that it could all dry.
They've lived in the house for 40 years and you can definitely tell
haha they've accumulated a lot of junk. So we helped them all morning
and we're going back tomorrow too. Service is nice though it's a
welcome change from the ordinary.

Transfers are this week and I'm curious to see what happens! I've been
here since February, so I wouldn't be surprised if I left. We'll see
though! I wouldn't mind stay in Spruce another one.

So anyway, that's my week. I'm glad the reunion was a success and that
Jim's doing okay, that looked like a nasty injury! You guys are the
best!

Love you guys,

Elder Read