Pictures!!

His companion knows how to make balloon animals and is teaching Spencer. The bottom picture is how much it snowed in a couple of hours!! It's a good thing he likes the snow!

Here's the email from today, January 28th with a couple of pictures

So this week has been good. Missionaries have been teaching a guy for over a year now. He knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that D&C is true but some how he doesn't know if the Book of Mormon is true. He also doesn't know if Thomas Monson is a prophet. So last Thursday while we were teaching him we were able to come down to a conclusion, either this is the true church, the FLDS is the true church, the RLDS is the true church, or we have again fell into apostacy. We think this week we're going to be able to set a baptism date with him because he knows the FLDS and RLDS churchs aren't true and we are going to show him a revelation in D&C that Joseph Smith recieved saying that the church would never again be taken away. So that's pretty exciting. We have got a few other people that we are working with. We have a family that is doing good. We have a baptism date set for March with them, so that's pretty exciting. So sad news. The recent convert whom I met on my first day here, has like 10 kids. One of them got Shot in the arm last Thursday and the bullet bounced and is now sitting next to his heart. The doctors can't get it out without risking cutting his heart and killing him so instead they just left the bullet in. His friend though was shot in the head and they have already removed half of his brain. Hes now on life support and is completely brain dead. Hes going to die. So at 4:50 yesterday morning we got a text from President Clements saying that we were grounded, which just means that we weren't allowed to drive. A huge ice storm moved in and there was freezing rain. We had to have Bishop Seilbach pick us up and take us to church. It snowed a good 6 inches yesterday in about 6 hours! It was crazy! We ran out of toilet paper yesterday and since we were grounded, we had to walk to the church to get some. It took us about an hour to get there and back! hahaha I have got some gloves that I use already. They're ski gloves so they are nice and warm. I would like a pair of thin gloves to wear under them though that way when I take my gloves off, I still have a layer to protect me from the cold. As for a full ski mask, I don't need one. I have a nice scarf that I tie around my face when it gets too cold. It actually hasn't been all that cold here lately. Today is about 35 and the past few days have been above 20. Plus we have a car so we are never outside for very long. I don't think I told you yet, so church now starts at 9 am, which means our first meeting starts at 6 am, which means we have to get up at 5 am. It's not too much fun. So we had a couple of inactive members who decided that they wanted to come back to church. Mormon.org referred themselves this week. That was really cool. By the way, the new youth program is way cool! If anyone tries to say its a bad idea or complain about it, just tell them that it will prepare them so much for their missions! The way the new youth program is set up is pretty similar to the way that missionaries work. We create a detailed lesson play for every investigator that we have and we teach them the things that they need to be taught. We're not told what to teach people and when to teach them, we have to decided what would be best for them. If someone doesn't have any word of wisdom issues, then we might not teach them word of wisdom until the last lesson. But if someone has word of wisdom issues, then we would teach word of wisdom as one of the first lessons and we would spend a lot more time on it. Anyways,  So the first picture on here is how much it snowed after only like 3 hours! The second picture on here is the balloon animal that I made! I love you, have a good day. Bye.

I know, I know, I'm a little behind.  So, I'm going to post this email from Jan. 7th first!

Hello everyone!

    So this week has been pretty interesting. Sadly, most of our appointments have fallen through. But on the flip side, this has allowed us to go contact a few potentials! We have about 4 or 5 people that we are going to slowly start working with. Basically, we're gonna stop on by them in about 2 or 3 weeks or so. So this week we had 2 exchanges. Since Elder Pruitt is the district leader, we had to do an exchange withRredwing. That was on Wednesday. I stayed in Oakdale and Elder Pruitt went to Redwing. So for Wednesday and half of Thursday Elder Kadolka was my companion. He was a pretty cool guy. We were able to contact one less active and get a return appointment with them for this Wednesday! We also found a family that agreed to let the Hmong elders stop on by! So over all it was pretty successful. Because I am a new missionary, Elder Pruitt and I had to go blits the A.P.'s. Basically we had to both go to Bloomington and then we did exchanges in Bloomington. I went with Elder Johnson and we were able to get like 8 new potentials and 1 baptism! So twice this week we were walking down the road and someone from the other side of the road asked us to go teach them! So that was pretty cool! Over all it was a pretty good week. My boots are fine, I just have to wear two pairs of socks when we ride bikes. We got them from Kohls so we thought they would be pretty good. They're kinda starting to fall apart though and I don't have the receipt so I can't return them. Oh well though. So we were gonna drop one of our investigators this week because they haven't kept their commitments. We went over there and we were just talking and all of a sudden they said that they had started to read the Book of Mormon, so we didn't end up dropping them! Anyways, theres a ton of snow here! It's been oddly warm here lately. Its around 35 today, which is the warmest it has been my entire time here. Today we were making balloon animals in our apartment because we were bored and it was our P-day. haha I can now make a mouse that you can shoot through the air, a dog, a teddy bear, and a few other simple things. Thats to bad to hear about Dani. Get better soon Dani! I love you guys!