Prospero Año Y Felicidad

The time has come for yet another beautifully structured email by Elder Slavens!! Woop! Woop!

This week was awesome possum yo. We had such an great time running around and sharing messages about Christ, considering the season. We read Luke 2 like a bajillion times, and I've just come to love that scripture.

La Navidad was completely wonderful. All of the elders in the district got packages from their parents with Christmas presents inside, and we put them all down below the tree in our house and anxiously awaited the 25th. When it finally came, all the guys in our district got together and opened presents! It was so much fun to have everybody there; it was almost like I was back at home!! Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to talk to my family that day 'cause they're on a stinkin' cruise in Hawaii without me! But I suppose I'll live. It was really cool to see Elder Wright get to talk to his family though; he seemed really happy and it refreshed him up pretty good, methinks! Get back soon guys, so I can talk to you!!

We've done a lot of member strengthening this week; doing service and sharing messages and all that kind of stuff. There are some people around here who are going through tough times and truly need our help. Even though it doesn't show up in the form of numbers for us to report, I know I'm doing the right thing when I see a family come even just a teensy bit closer to Christ through our presence. It's really cool to see.

Other than that, there's really nothing too specifically exciting that happened this week! Just a lot of member visits and things like that! hopefully I have more exciting stuff to talk about next week!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that the new year treats you all like the beautiful children of God that you are!!

Elder Slavens

WUBWUBWUB My Mission!

Hello there, my lovely friends and family!

This week has been very good! Although to be honest with you, not much has happened that's too exciting to talk about! Let's see, what can I exaggerate to make this week sound awesome...?

Oh! So transfers happened this week! Elder Wright and I are sticking together for the next transfer, so that should be awesome! We're getting along well, and I'm excited to see where this new transfer will take us. However, basically our whole entire district got ripped up and stitched back together, which was fun to watch, I suppose. Every other pair in our district was separated, and they're all training now. Hopefully that goes alright! There's a couple missionaries in our district that have the potential to do a lotta harm to a brand new baby missionary if they're not careful, so Elder Wright and I are gonna have to be on guard so that doesn't happen!

My area has been split and I now just cover three little towns, whereas last transfer we covered five. The new missionaries covering the other half of the area are a couple of sisters, who are just on fire! They're a little insane, yet they are on fire, and I have no complaints there.

This week we had a mission Christmas party and a talent show! I borrowed a guitar from a member and played the song "Hallelujah" for it. Is that how you spell 'hallelujah'? Anyway. It was so much fun being able to get up in front of people and just jam out! I miss that kinda stuff a lot, so it's good to get the chance to do so every once in a while like this. We also had a lot of awesome talks about the Savior and His birth. Being on a mission really puts into perspective the reason for the season, and it's been so much fun to learn about Christ and His life as I've studied and prayed.

The day after the party we had another Christmas activity for the Spanish group! It was way fun, and we had tons and tons of nommy Mexican food. Elder Wright and I also played a song for that! We sang "Cantan Santos Angeles", which is "Angels We Have Heard On High" in Spanish. It was so much fun!

Anyway, that's basically all that went down this week. I actually didn't end up having to exaggerate too much! I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and I'll catch you on the flip-flop!

Elder Slavens

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Jesus' Birthday

Good afternoon, lords and ladies. *Bows really low*

Another week passes by in the timeless city (I mean village) of Wendell, Idaho! It has been an awesome week! Perhaps a rather uneventful one in the eyes of my beloved readers, but still very very good.

What happened this week? Well, not really much in terms of exciting stories about investigators. We have a few with baptismal dates that we're just working with to get to church and whatnot so they can decide for themselves that they're really motivated to take the step into the font, but not much has happened that's really noteworthy!

Now what I would like to discuss a bit are the awesome fun times that occur in the everyday life of Elder Slavens when he's not teaching the good people of Idaho about how to be saved.

Story #1: The other day we got a call from our Zone Leaders, who quasi-angrily told us that we had been butt dialing them like all day long and that they were sick of hearing our nerdy conversations about Lord of the Rings and Super Smash Bros. So I did some investigation on our phone; come to find that when I move my leg with it in my pocket, all the buttons on the phone get pressed at the same time, and it unlocks the phone and calls somebody, seemingly at random. To my horror, I looked at our recent calls to find that we had called a bunch of investigators too. Thank goodness they all speak Spanish! They'd have realized just how geeky Elder Wright and I are! Anyway, I was like, "Let's end this madness," so I went into the phone to put a lock code thingy on it so that this wouldn't happen again. So I go into the settings and find the 'New Passcode Lock' option. Sweet. It asks me for a new password, so I type in 5555. Easy enough to remember. It asks me to confirm the password. I do so. The phone then freaks out: "Uh-oh! That code is invalid! Now I'm gonna lock up like the Pentagon!" Which makes no sense because all I was doing was typing in a new code. But whatevs. So our phone is basically a brick now and we can't talk to anybody. It has been a very difficult thing to deal with, and I now appreciate phones so much. But not the one I currently have. At this point, nobody call me! I won't be able to pick up!

Story # 2: On Thursday we buried a member's dead wolf-dog half-breed. It was the strangest, most morbid service project I've ever taken part in.

Story #3: Two days ago I was driving, just like usual. We were on our way to the next city over to see a Christmas Cantata thing put on by the Church. I took a turn and, as is habitual for me, I sped up a bit to get some momentum. Then the lights go off behind me. Crap, dude. I got pulled over by the fuzz. So this cop comes up to me and asks where I'm coming from. As it happens, we had just finished another service project, and were dressed in our raggy service clothes. I probably looked pretty G. So this dude assumed I was just some snot punk kid. I subconsciously pushed my sweatshirt over so my tag was visible, and explained that we're missionaries from the Church, just heading out from doing some service for a poor old guy who can't walk. I hoped that'd soften his heart a bit. He proceeds to snatch up my driver's license and walk over to his car. 10 minutes later he returns. "I'm going to have to cite you for speeding,' he says. "Now get out of here, and watch your speed." Guess how fast I was going. 7 over the limit. Guess what my penalty is. 90 bucks. What a wonderful day.

Anyway, it's been a pretty fun week. Lots of fun things happen as a missionary, as I'm sure many of you are aware! Just too bad they all seem to happen at the same time. I hope you all have a wonderful week! I sure hope I do!

Elder Slavens

Dat Flu Though

Friends and family!! Why hello there!

I hope everything's going swimmingly for all my loved ones out there, and that preparations for the coming Christmas season are tickling your fancy and making you glow with Christmas cheer!

I, for one, am freezing.

It started snowing halfway through the past week, and has proven unyielding. The weather here is quite stubborn, that's for sure. At first I thought it was just bi-polar and couldn't decide where to go. But the past week has shown to me that, rather than being undecided, the weather is certainly decidedly against us. But it's okay, because I laugh in the face of harsh conditions! It only makes me more determined to get into somebody's house! Take that, snow!!

But this week has actually been quite a bit less productive than I probably make it sound. Namely because of the flu that's been going around which decided to hit our house last Tuesday. I got sooooo sick. I was bed-ridden all day, save the times I was bent over the toilet. Unfortunately I don't really know how to put that more gracefully. But Tuesday was very rough for me, and it made for a very unproductive day, which is always a bummer for a missionary. I can only imagine what it was like for Elder Wright.

Just kidding, I experienced it myself!

That's right! Within the next two days, Elder Wright had contracted the exact same freak thing I had had, and we went through the exact same motions once again! So that made for two off days this week, which is just so not fun! I mean, it wasn't the worst thing in the world, 'cause I got the chance to do a lot of reading and studying, but I wanted to be out there really doing stuff!

And unfortunately, because of our sicknesses, I don't really have any other crazy stories to tell about this week! But the days we weren't sick were pretty good, although neither of us have been on our A-game since we've just been so out of it. But I think we're all better and that this week will prove more fruitful! Fingers crossed!! Well, 'arms folded' is more like it.

I hope you all have an awesome week! Thank you for your prayers and support, it means the world to me!

-Elder Slavens

Another Day, Another Blessing

Hello again, everyone! It's me! Elder Slavens!!

I've been having an absolutely awesome week! Unfortunately, not a huge amount to report on, but it was still really good!

Thanksgiving was really fun! We may or may not have spent the entire day with one family, named the Hesters. They may or may not haveten kids, and thus not mind too much the presence of a couple hungry missionaries. We may or may not have played Monopoly twice with them, and I may or may not have been beaten twice by the same stinking punk 12-year-old kid who kept rolling doubles and buying out all the good properties!! Needless to say, it was a great day, albeit a frustrating one 'cause that snot-nosed Clayton Hester kept beating me! But I'm completely kidding, I love that kid.

Though he is cheap.

The rest of the week has been awesome. We got a referral this week from our Group President to see a young family who's in a very rough spot. The dad just recently had his arm run over by a truck at work, his arm now being completely shattered and useless. On top of that, the mom has a broken arm too! So neither of them can do anything, and they have no way of paying their bills! So they called the city to find help, who then directed the family to the church, 'cause you know, we're the best, right? So the bishop agreed to help them out during this time of need, on one condition: let the missionaries come over and share their message!

Muahahaha, we got 'em now!

We've gone to see them a couple times now, and they're a really cool family with a lot of faith. They've agreed to be baptized if they have some time to do a bit more study and pray to feel the truth of the Book of Mormon, which I'm absolutely sure will come with time. We're also planning on doing something fun for them for Christmas this year, because it looks like budgeting's gonna be tight for them this season. Any ideas on what we could do for them??

Anyway, I'm off! Have a wonderful week, everyone, and be excellent to each other!

Elder Slavens