Happy St. Patrick's Day

March 19, 2013

Hey family,

How is everyone? I'm doing great. Happy St. Patrick's day! On Sunday we had corned beef and cabbage as well. It was really good. I had to give a talk on St. Patrick's day, and that went pretty good. The wards here are only half full so the lesser amount of people made me less nervous. How is Ian doing? Does he still have the "RM goggles" on? Seems like he is getting used to normal life quickly. What does he do all day? I can already tell that it will be weird to come back and not have a companion with you all the time. So this week has been fun. We had a couple lessons almost everyday. We are staying busy. The 14th was Pi day so we made some treats and took them to some of our gators and ward members that have really help us out in this area. The weather here has been really nice and warm. It cooled up a little bit yesterday and actually snowed! That happened as we were tracting, so that kinda took us by surprise. It is also super dry here. So I have had some pretty gnarly nose bleeds the past 4 days. What is the weather like in Fairbanks? Last Tuesday I made a new scripture case from scratch out of leather. It looks really cool. I will have to take a picture and show it to you guys. This P-day we are going down to Ogden to shop and to go bowling. I'm not a big fan of bowling, but Fat-Cats gives missionaries free bowling on Tuesday, so we are going and seeing how it is. Then we will probably go play a zone vs. zone basketball game down in Far West. We have an elder who is 6'8" and he can dunk like no other, so I think we will win. We also have a member with a white peacock farm, So we might check those out today out in Honeyville. Last Tuesday we started teaching this man the missionary lessons. His name is Fred. He is hilarious. He is kind of stuck in the era of hippies. He is old and has COPD from all the smoking and drugs he did. We asked him how many years the doctors gave him till he dies and he said, "I got as many as I want man" in a really Tommy Chong under the influence type voice. I don't know if he is in denial or if he is just crazy. But his wife says the doctors gave him 5 years and it's already been 3 and a half since then. He says that everything we teach him is true. He already has read the whole Bible and Book of Mormon and believes it all to be true, and that baptism is essential to make it back to live with Heavenly Father, but he still doesn't think it is right for him. He told us that he doesn't have a reason why, but he just isn't ready yet. So we will see how that goes. Hopefully he opens up more so we can understand what his real reason for not wanting to be baptized is. The kid that went to jail is doing a lot better. We talked about the Word of Wisdom with him and he really took it well. We also have a lesson with him tonight. Most likely we will teach him about the baptismal interview questions and why you need to be following certain rules and commandments before you are baptized. Well I have to go. Hope everyone is doing well. I love you.

Love, Elder John