It's probably not a good idea to scare a cop.

Greetings everybody! How is life? I hope you are having fun back in Sunny Canada. It kinda stinks down here, see the Valley works in such a way, as to trap all cold air in the valley, turning it into a kind of cooler. And there is snow on the ground so it is a little chilly. All the wind comes over the mountains and gets cold. Oh well, we just dress up nice, and there is enough members that if we are about to die we can stop somewhere and warm up. Did I mention I love this area?

Had a pretty decent week down here. It started out with a zone conference. OH I forgot to mention last week the craziest thing about zone conference. They have put these little boxes inside all the missionaries cars, that measure how fast they are going, where they are, if they do any dangerous maneuvers, etc. etc. It is a little reminiscent of 1984 for me, but hey, I guess it's part of the thing we agreed to when we accepted our call. It's really just meant to keep things safer and missionaries more accountable. To be honest, I've always been under the impression I'd just like to stay on a bike my whole mission, and I know I know, be careful what you wish for, But this just makes me even more not wanting to be in a car. To many things to worry about it you ask me. Gas, Miles, Spy Gadgets.

In terms of missionary work this week was pretty good. We've pretty much dropped Chris again for a time. We can't really figure out what is going on, and he's stopped returning calls and texts. He actually called us on Thursday because we had been asking him to call us back so we could actually "talk" to him. We're tired of texting him. He called us and we talked for like 15 seconds and then he was like "hold, on, I gotta go I'll call you right back". We never heard back. So we'll back off a bit and see if he makes a move towards us. He was on medical leave from work because he hurt his shoulder, and went hunting. A perfect time to meet with us, come to church etc. but didn't. So we'll see what he does.

Tony is doing good, we could tell last week he hadn't been reading the Book of Mormon because he was back in his old ways. I don't want to come to your church every week, I want to be catholic. But this week we went by and he'd gone from Alma 18-Alma 35 in a couple days, and the difference was amazing. Instead of "I won't join your church" it was "I can't join your church". (Which is a miracle in itself) And "I want to come to your church every week". And we're doing family history with him on Wednesday so hopefully we can get him interested in that. The Book of Mormon has real power to move mountains. And the ward is getting really excited about Tony. He's so close, he just doesn't know. We shared the first vision with him, the spirit was super strong and we invited him to be baptized. He said no, and then we pointed out how the spirit had left. He totally felt it, but just can't make the change. He knows it's true! But too much tradition. We haven't given up on him yet.

And at Zone Conference, the Zone Leaders gave us a promised blessing that if we Taught on the Spot to everyone we came in contact with, we would find 1 new investigator this week. Well I was all like "well dang. This is Sanford. We haven't found a new investigator in over a month". I admit I didn't have a lot of faith at first, but I changed my tune and sure enough, Saturday night we were walking and I was super cold. I was just like, "Elder Park, I want to go inside right now". So we saw kind of a potential investigators house, Part member and went and knocked on the door. Went in, started chatting with him, I don't know why, but it kind of tumbled out of my mouth "you've lived in the valley (equivalent of you've lived in Utah) your whole life, why haven't you joined the church?" Well essentially that led to him accepting a Book of Mormon and a return appointment for tonight. He's basically trying to change his life, and feels like God has "called" him to do something but doesn't know what. He had meant to flag us down but we got to him first. Amazing. New Investigator! So that made the disappointment of dropping Chris hurt less.

And We were walking home one night, it was dark, and I saw Officer Brown's cop car parked at the community center. I thought, "hey, Greg is pretty chill, let's go talk to him". He's a member and way cool with us, we talk to him all the time. So I walked around, more to talk to him, and I realized he still hadn't noticed us yet. So I figured I'd play a little joke. I got around to the drivers door and yanked it open as fast as I could. A different police officer went "woa and turned to look at me". Yep it wasn't Greg. He was cool though, thought it was funny and then we told Greg about it later and he thought it was funny too. Probably wasn't the *best* idea. But it made a good story.

Also, did anyone else celebrate 11/11/11 at 11:11? it was during our District Meeting and we had a little cheer.

Elder Gibb