The Abominable Snowmormon (Dec 7)

Well, everybody, it happened.
Snow has come to the midwest.
With more to come shortly.
So now the freakish cold at least has beauty along with it.
I'm trying to focus on the bright sides of it:
1) Snow looks cool.
2) Sliding on compact snow, as you will inevitably do, is a fun feeling.
3) Lakes are freezing over, which means soon we can go join the people out on Lake Yankton with their ice holes.
4) If Elder McConnel does anything dumb I can chuck a snowball at him.
5) People supposedly get nicer when this time comes (Lies. We were standing on somebody's doorstep and it started snowing. Well, most people would let us in or send us off, two things that would have kept us warm, but instead he decided then was a good time to complain to us about his life. After 5 minutes of standing there freezing, seeing no polite way to leave, I just started laughing at the awkwardness of it all. I just couldn't help it; I just imagined somebody else's perspective of that moment and it looked hilarious. I tried to cover it up, since we were supposed to be sympathizing with this man, and i think I was successful at doing so. Thank goodness.)
6) Disc Golf (which we did this morning) has a whole new level of difficulty. Playing that game in leather gloves is hard. And painful. But fun.
7) It makes great pictures. We're going to take pictures of all these things, not to mention some other plans.
8) I'll have a white christmas.
9) No "MAKE IT SNOW" signs will be on my door.
10) I will appreciate warmth so much more.

That's good enough, I think. This week hasn't been too eventful in the way of work, other than the one investigator that had a baptismal date is now not progressing really and one that we picked up last week that just fell into our laps has received her answer from the spirit that the Book of Mormon is true and will be baptized (just no date yet) but is now currently in the hospital. She had a 22-pound cist removed from her stomach. Sounds farfetched? They showed us a picture. I nearly puked, but I don't think that our sixteen-year-old investigator would have appreciated being puked on. But she asked us for a blessing, without us offering, which is tight! She's way solid. We also found a man who loves to feed missionaries, and have eaten at his house twice. No idea how interested he is, doesn't seem like much, but we'll try to teach him as much as we can. Way nice, way lonely old man.

We also had our christmas zone conference in Des Moines this week, a nearly six hundred mile drive round trip. We stayed the night in Sioux City on the way down and on the way back, which helped. But it was snowing, not really sticking, a good chunk of the trip. But it was worth it. Zone conference training was really good, and then we had a talent show and a slideshow with pictures from all over the mission. Way tight.

Elder McConnel is helping to change things up in this branch in the way of seeing things get done and letting them know who we need to focus on and in what way. It's so cool to finally see somebody that's just like Look, we need to do this because it will actually have results.

Anyway, life's good up here in the fridgid tundra of the north!
-Elder Charlie Gates