Billy May's Ghost

This past week was great and I was really really really happy to see and talk to you on skype. Only six months to go, then we can skype again! 

Aaaanyhow, we went to the Ward Mission Leader's house for Christmas dinner and it was divine. Their children are the sweetest and I had so much fun! The WML works for McCain, and so he gave us a bunch of coupons to get free stuff. Also, the place I bought my coat and boots at gave me a 20 dollar gift card, so I bought a shirt for free! Woohoo! Life of a missionary, you always have to budget and look out for free stuff. But it's great and I have learned to appreciate what I already have so much more.

This week it was below -40 again and it snowed A LOT. So we drove around with our snow shovel and just helped a bunch of people by shoveling their snow for them. One family hadn't shoveled their snow in quite a while, so it was so dense and icy underneath, that it was pretty much impossible to get rid of...not even the Elders were able to clear their pathway...and then along comes the crazy German. I got rid of ALL the ice and Sister Day and Sister McPhee were able to shovel it away. It was fun. Buuuut the next day my knee was really swollen and stiff and my shoulders hurt like crazy. I'm fine now, but those two days were really rough.

Even though this week was the coldest I've experienced so far, we did have one day where it warmed up to a toasty 0 degrees! It was soooo nice! We were seriously considering not wearing jackets, but then our brains started working again and we bundled up before leaving the apartment. Yesterday it was absolutely freezing again. It was so bad that we were told not to go outside for too long. We walked from the car to the church (about twenty steps) and my shoes froze. I wasn't wearing my boots because of church, but I might wear them next Sunday. Also, I breathed on my hair and it froze. So I couldn't touch it until it defrosted, because I didn't want it to break off. We had originally planned to go looking for this one former investigator, but we had to cancel that. Instead we dropped off some chicken noodle soup at the house of another investigator, because her daughter was sick. That was fun.

I already mentioned the snow...there is so much that ALL the cars just slip and slide around...so far nothing has happened, and I am positive that nothing will happen, but the streets here are just one big ice-rink. Thor would love it, he could just whip out his ice skates and skate around the city of Brandon!

This week our car got stuck twice. So funny. We've always managed to get out just fine, but only because the people here are so nice and willing to help out three girls wearing skirts and boots.

There's a girl in the ward here who loves science, so we always take about explosions and stuff like that and now apparently I'm her favourite Sister Missionary. That's a lot of pressure! Now I have to start being a good example as well?! Just kidding, I'm trying my best. So far nobody has complained about me. This Thursday the Elders as well as Sister Day and I were quoting Nacho, and Elder Schmidt said that his favourite quote is the one where Nacho is talking about how he knows the gospel...so I quoted it and said "People think I don't know a buttload of crap about the gospel, but I dooooo." That got me some weird looks and I apologised for using undignified language. Did I tell you about that? It has been quite hard for me not to say words like "cool" and "awesome", but I've been really good. Sister McPhee is the best at reminding me. Whenever one of those words slips out she'll say "what was that?" as if she didn't quite hear me, and then I'll correct it and not feel too bad.

On Thursday we got this giant box of pralines from "Billy May's Ghost". It was from someone from the ward who is just the sweetest person ever. We sent him a text message thanking Billy May's Ghost, because he didn't actually want us to know that it was from him. I love this ward so much. The people are fantastic and so willing to help and support the missionaries. The bishop is just incredible. He teaches Anatomy and physiology at the college here, so you two would really get along well!

I am glad that things are going well in Solingen ward. The ward finally needed to wake up and start helping the missionaries. It was no wonder we weren't seeing any success. I am glad Elder Ruff finally managed to get the members pumped up for missionary work. He is an incredible missionary! How were the pancakes?

I absolutely love being a missionary and this really is the best mission in the world!! I know I tell you that every week, but it's true! Thank you so much for supporting me and being amazing.  Have fun with Peter and I will write to you in 2014!