Final fun times

Dallin is all set with his neon safety helmet!

Papi and the boys taking over Safeway!

Tivoli could sense something was going on.

Out for some Korean BBQ with the Bardusons. 

Dallin is sharpening up his cooking skills for the next two years.

Sad saying goodbye to good friends.  

For his last meal as a civilian Dallin chose Vals with Kelly. 

Life Is Still Chill

Why hello everyone! So good to see you! Well, write you, I guess. All the same.

This week has been wunnnnnderful. Elder Chase and I are well aware that it has very little to do with us, but we've been blessed to see some seerusmiracles this past week. We had two guys basically set their own baptismal dates, which is like unheard of. Particularly unheard of in a teensie little town like Carey, in which everyone knows one another. We tell people that these guys have set baptismal dates and everyone's all "Nah man, I know that guy, there's no way," and we're like "Brah, Jesus can do stuff like this." And He is! It's crazy.

Anyway, dang! I kinda gotta run off to do an activity of some sort, so I'll update you on all that another day!! Peace out and live long! mUAH!

Elder Slavens

Dallin's Farewell

1/10/15 11pm Dallin preparing his talk while Papi worked on a paper.  He did a great job on his talk.  He wrote it all himself.  He even stayed home and didn't go to the dance so he could finish!  

Such a good boy!

The Ae's drove all night to make it to Dallin's farewell.  It was so nice of them!  They came for Dallin's farewell and another farewell later in the day.  Then they drove home that night.  

They are amazing!  

Rachelle, Kara, Kelly and Nancy

Dallin, Dean and Kyle.  Kyle wasn't there.  They photoshopped him in.  

They did prep posing for Kyle.

AHHHHHH BLAH I GOTTA GO FASSSST

Yeah, one of those days I guess. We ran down to Twin to do some shopping and were gonna be there for like an hour but that turned into 5 and now we're rushing to get everything else done, whoops! But yeah, it's been a chill week. Transfers just hit and it looks like I'm sticking it out in Carey for a bit which is no surprise.

This week we set a baptismal date for a dude named Bryan Wood who basically just appeared out of nowhere! Huge blessing, considering he's one 600th of the people in this tiny little Idaho town. We're pumped for him. More info to come!

Bahhhhhh yeah I should probably bail. Sorry, errbuddy! We'll try harder next time! Hugs and kisses!

Elder Slavens

Our post Christmas Skype

We had a fun time in Tahiti but we were so excited to be home and talk to Chancellor!  Our next Skype on Mother's Day will be our last with Chancellor and our first with Dallin.  We have to figure out how to Skype both at the same time!

The Merriest Christmas!!

Well hello there my fellow humans! How have you been this Christmas week?? I sure hope it's been swell, 'cause if not there's not really much I can do to help out! But hey, mine was wonderful, so maybe that'll bring a smile to yo faces? :)

Anyway, again, it was a wonderful week. Christmas was very good here in little ole Carey, Idaho. Dang, these people feed us way too well. But that's chill, I'll just work out when I get home, I guess. Hopefully. But yeah, Christmas was really good this year! We basically just did this house-hop thing where we ran all over the dang town and visited as many members as possible and shared Christmas messages with all uh them. We wanted to make a point to help people remember the true Reason for the Season, even on the very day that everybody gets all wrapped up in unwrapping. Ya feel? All the kids were like 'Presentspresentspresents", so we busted in there like bosses and were all like "Naw man, Jesusjesusjesus!!!" And they ATE IT UP. We had a blast just visiting everyone we possibly could and reading Luke 2 with 'em, as well as sharing the story of Samuel the Lamanite's prophesy of the coming of Christ and all that good stuff. Hopefully we did some good there!

The members in the area gave us so much food this past week I have no idea what to do with all of it. Way stressed out about that, but I guess we'll live. I think we have like 100 plates of fudge, which I can only eat like piece-by-piece in order to avoid dying from over-consumption of super-charged, ultra-dense chocolate juice. Dang I'm 'bout to get so fat.

Other than that, it's been a fairly normal week. To be honest with you, the work in Carey is pretty dang slow. You see, there's only like 600 people that live here, so everybody knows like actually literally everyone, and almost all of them are members already to begin with. So finding new people to teach is a pretty rare occurrence, but we're trying at it!! And now that Luis has been baptized, we only have a couple of people who are even remotely close to reaching that point, so we're working real steady-like with them and trying to really bring the spirit to help them get there.

The slowness, however, is almost a blessing in disguise, considering how often we have to be out of our area running around doing administrative business. The fact that not tons is going on in our area means that we don't have to stress tons about conflicting schedules and whatnot. So that's chill. Still, I can definitely see potential here, so let's get to it!

Tha's 'bout it for me, folks. It's been a really good week and I'm pumped for more to come! Peace out, muah!

Elder Slavens

Friday the 13th VS. Christmas

The battle of the century. And I was caught right in the middle of it, gosh dangit! Now, of course, Friday the 13th didn't actually happen this week, but it sure felt like it. So I think Friday the 13th was jealous of all these cool holidays going on as of late and it decided to make a ruckus and try to ruin Christmas. For that I call it a battle.

But before we get into THAT, I just wanna take a moment and update you on all the travels Elder Chase and I have undertaken this week. Holy moly we had a lot on our plate! So as Zone Leaders, as I believe I've previously stated, we must go on exchanges with all of the District Leaders in our zone once a transfer, which can get a little hairy in a zone like ours. ESPECIALLY when we're required to do baptismal interviews for the investigators of the district leaders as well. So here's what went down: This week we had plans to go on exchanges with a District Leader relatively close to us, but then we found out that we had to do a baptismal interview in Salmon, which is that town that's like a million miles from Carey. So in order to save miles for the rest of the month we had to change that exchange up like a day before it happened. So we ended up turning this 1-day exchange into a 4-day adventure all around our dang zone and we drove for SUCH A LONG TIME I thought I was gonna die. But we ended getting all our stuff done so that was chill.

I think that story didn't even make sense. Sorry about that.

ANYWAY, on to the bad luck.

This Saturday we had a baptism!! Now obviously that's not bad luck. But I feel like all of the preparation for that dang baptism was just riddled with bad juju. Every corner I turned I was afraid a piano would fall on me or something, that's how serious it was! I guess that's an exaggeration, but let me explain. Saturday started and we were pumped to go do some contacting and bring some peeps closer to Christ. Well no dang body was there!! So we were running around most of the day just trying to find people to talk to which simply was not working.

We eventually got a call from our Mission President asking about some toys left us by another missionary a while back... Apparently a missionary gave the Zone Leaders here (before I showed up) a bag full of little model Star Wars spaceships that we were to give to another missionary. We were never given any sort of time by which this baggie needed to be given to its owner, so we just kinda had it. Well the President called asking where it was and we were like dang, where is it?? So we searched like every place we could think of for it, and it was nowhere to be found! So we were like oh no, what if we threw it away on accident?? So we went outside to the dumpster and started searching through it for these dumb toys. Here we are digging through this dumpster just ticked off out of our minds 'cause of these toys, and apparently some dude thought that was pretty funny. So funny that he walked over from across the street and started taking pictures of us on his smart phone. He asked us to wave for the camera, and for a second I thought Elder Chase was gonna jump out of the dumpster and kill the dude. The guy ended up bailing and we gave up on the dumpster dive. We walked into the house and THERE IT FREAKING WAS - the baggie of spaceships just chilling on the floor in our apartment behind a couple of random things. Oh man that was bad luck.

We then found out that we had been nominated to do a musical number during church the next day so we had to take a bunch of time and make one up and that was just too much!! But we figured it out 'cause I'm a genius (not).

We also were to fill the baptismal font because it's not a Stake calling here - someone just needs to do it. So we started doing that and the water was FREEZING so we had to go into the room that's like the heart of the church and mess with the cogs and whatnot to get the heater working. Once the font was full we realized there were like a million little bugs in it, so we had to find a net to skim them all out. We did, and got those filthy bugs out, and I put the net back where it went and as I dropped it it slipped into a giant hole in the floor that I hadn't been paying attention to and I think it got like ground into a million pieces, I have no idea. That was just so random and such bad luck. At that point I thought I might as well just sit down and cry. But I'm too tough for that.

Then I got sick BAHAHAHAHA like what?? Man, my life. So I was like well so much for the musical number! But it was too late, so I just had to deal.

And THENNN the baptism happened. And it was BEAUTIFUL! Everything went PERFECT!! It was one of the best baptismal programs I've ever seen - Luis, the baptizee (or whaterver you call him) speaks Spanish, so we had a bunch of members who know Spanish participate, and the program ended up being half-English, half-Spanish, which was super cool and I think Luis appreciated it tons. I had the opportunity to confirm him the next day, and it was so great. A Christmas miracle!! Whew.

So yeah, it's been one of those weeks. Oh yeah, and my camera broke this week too, so I have no pictures. Sucks. But hey, life is good!

Peace out errywun.

Elder Slavens