Oh, The Weather Outside is Frightful

But since it's p-day, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. As long as it stops by tomorrow.

Ok so life in Alaska....er I mean the San Luis Valley has been interesting this week. You know it talks about in Doctrine and Covenants 122:7 "If fierce winds become thine enemy" and that was basically the summary of the past 4 days. Hurricane Katrina made a comeback tour or something. Thursday we had mighty wind gusts, which made working very very painful. Actually it was really funny, because it was so windy it was messing with our power, our lights kept flickering on and off and our fridge turned off and we eventually lost all power. Remember, Elder Park is from Korea, the cutting edge of technology and had his first power outage a few weeks ago and had no idea what was going on. So then we tried to turn on our sink and our water was off. So no water or power. And he was just freaking out, like "this is the most powerful country in the world! And it can't handle a simple windstorm?" I was laughing a lot. He was really worried about our food going bad in the fridge, but we had an appointment at the church right away so we had to leave and I was like "well, just have faith that it will come back on". So our appointment rescheduled for later in the day and we came home and our front door had been blown open. It was closed, we made sure of that. So that was a tender mercy that our appointment fell through, that would have been one cold house if we'd come back an hour later and the door was still open. Well I guess we got back in the evening and it was open again, but at least our power was on. That was a cold night.

And then they cancelled school today, all the oldtimers are like "we haven't seen snow like this in the last 15 years" and it dumped last night. And yesterday during the day. Coupled with wind and they had some nasty nasty drifts on the back roads. It feels like Canada here, which is funny because it doesn't snow like this in the valley. It gets cold, but little snow. So I'll just say, I'm glad it's p-day. And we've realized our front door stinks, because there was a bunch of snow inside our house this morning in front of the door.

This week we actually got to sit down and have a lesson with Chris! It was short but sweet, and we committed him to fast on Sunday with us that he could get his job situation worked out. That's the biggest thing holding him back. He's been reading the BoM though so that's helped him out a lot. We just need to get him to church! He mentioned he might be moving to Florida, and that would not be good. Well maybe, but we want to see him get baptized. We'll have to follow up with him on the fasting this week.

And we had a lesson with Steve that was just amazing. We had a plan when we went in, but just in talking to him, and about his reading, we decided to sit back a bit, ask some questions and see where the spirit took us. Well ultimately it ended up that he asked us to share our conversion stories with him, and the Spirit was very strong, one of the top lessons of my mission for sure. And something that I'd thought the past few nights after doing my evening prayers was to ask him if he'd prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true. I couldn't find a way to slip it in and kind of kept pushing it off for some reason during our plans, but during the lesson it just came out so smoothly and fit perfectly. He fasted with us on Sunday and came to church so we are going to follow up with him tomorrow. He also watched the First Presidency Devotional with us which was really really great. I liked the new video they previewed, though the English accents kind of threw me off a bit. I loved Elder Uchtdorfs story about "arson" haha that was awesome.

And we taught Tony on exchanges with one of the San Luis elders and it went like a typical Tony lesson. Tony bore testimony of the truthfulness of the prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and that Mormons were going to a higher "degree of glory" than catholics were. Then he talked about how much he didn't like the catholic church. Then he said he couldn't change. The San Luis elder was dumfounded and tried to capitalize on Tony's statements but Tony likes to talk so he couldn't get a word in. After the lesson, the other Elder was like, "man...you guys have condemned that guy" which was an interesting statement. I really hope Tony gets baptized. I really do. So if he doesn't, I hope we haven't condemned him. Oh well, I'll let God be the judge.

Ok 2 more funny stories. Well one isn't really funny, the storm we've had, we're pretty sure knocked out a tower or something because we have had almost no signal in our house or outside or anything. It doesn't help that we are roaming all the time to begin with because there is no Sprint service in the valley. That has been a hassle.

Also we had a trainers conference call with all the Trainers/trainees that came out with Elder Park. They had people signing on, and President and the AP's got on, and then a few more people got on. Well one of the later arrivals didn't know President was on the phone (ok, this time it wasn't me). And it was silent. So he started singing "I'm, dreaming of a white christmas" in a great Bing Crosby voice. It went on about a verse and a half and one of the AP's was like "hey president wants to know who's beautiful voice that is" and it stopped immediately. I was wondering how it was going to end. Ahh good times.

Ok, well i think that's all. Next time you receive an email from me it will most likely be next Tuesday, heralding the end of the transfer, and the beginning of a new one. My guess is me and Elder Park stay. Maybe that's more of a hope. Anywho, it would stink to leave a week before Christmas and be in a new area, knowing absolutely nobody. I think I have one more here, and then I'll leave and Elder Park will stay. Or we'll baptize everyone and then get flushed and the new missionaries will have nothing to do haha.

Love ya!
Elder Gibb