Dec 30th

December 30, 2013

Dear family,

I loved talking to you all on Christmas!  It was the highlight of the past few months for me.

Before I forget, if anyone is ever going to send me cash in the future beware - I've realized that someone has been making tiny slits in the bottom of all of our letters to try to get the money out of the card/whatever it's in. We're pretty sure that Edwards got robbed that way once or twice. So if you're sending something with money in it, tape up the card or something.

Second item of business: Elder Huaman has recently discovered a love for chocolate raspberry sticks that he didn't know he had, and thanks you for introducing him.

I think that free season passes are probably how they get you hooked at Park City. It's good to hear that Jess is going to start skiing.

Also, thanks for telling me about Sam's first date. I don't know if I would have heard about it otherwise.

I can't say I'm surprised that BYU is stinking it up. At this point I can really only muster a vague feeling of resignation.

This week has been fairly uneventful. We do have a new investigator now. His name is Alejandro. He's a former investigator and the father of three children. He's a really friendly guy, so we're excited to see where it goes. We invited our other family to be baptized and they said they would when they know that the gospel is true. It was a great lesson. 

We got dropped a while ago by one of our other investigators. Pretty sad. He wasn't ready to live what he was learning though. But maybe later. I like to think that even though I’m not having a ton of baptisms, what I'm doing will affect people in a good way in the future.

I spent Saturday morning preparing for my future career as a Lumberjack. We went way up into the "mountains" to cut wood at Brother Ramirez' house.  He's a member of the 4th ward from Mexico. We spent a pretty long time there splitting and stacking wood in front of his house. At one point I split a round of wood about the size of a stop sign. It took me a few good swings with the axe, but I defeated it just in time to see Brother Ramirez rolling out a pneumatic wood-splitting machine.  Now I know the pain that John Henry felt.

We're going to be having a New Year’s Eve dinner with the Mannings this Wednesday, so that will be fun.

By the way, Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!  We'd better be making a trip to Texas de Brazil soon after I get home.  I hear it’s goodJ

Love,
Jake