Splitting Logs

Hey! Well it's been a pretty good week. We did a lot of service this week, and I love doing service because it makes the time go by fast and it's good to get out of church clothes and do physical work. On Monday it was kind of a quiet P-day. We emailed and then went shopping, and then went back to our apartment and played some games with other missionaries. that night we had dinner with the MacDonald's, and after we had a lesson with Jason about obedience and the Word of Wisdom. It was a really good lesson, and we committed him to live the Word of Wisdom. He said it will be a slow process but he is working on it. After we committed that I felt really impressed to commit him to be baptized, and so I did, but he said he didn't know yet. It was good that I asked because he told us all his concerns and what was holding him back. We told him that the closer he gets to living the Word of Wisdom, the more in tune he will become with the Spirit so he can receive his answer. I hope it will be sooner than later, but it's on the Lord's time and not mine.

On Tuesday we raked leaves for Jason for about an hour and a half, and then on Tuesday we raked leaves for Shawn, our other investigator, for a couple of hours. We do a lot of leaf raking here. There are tons of leaves. It was cool because she told us she had already read what we left her to read, and then we set up a time to see her again and have a lesson, so tomorrow we're doing that. On Thursday we raked leaves again for Jason (He has a really big yard). After we finished the raking, we loaded the leaves into trash cans and hauled them on a four-wheeler into the trees to dump them. It took most of the day to do that. Earlier that day we had stopped by Bro. Best's house. He is 81 years old and had a ton of guns and navy stories. His wife was in Germany during World War II and has crazy stories about being forced to be in the Hitler youth and stuff like that. Anyways, Bro. Best was out with a chain saw cutting up logs from trees he had cut down, and hauling them back to be split. We were in our church clothes, but there were logs that weighed probably 80 pounds, and he is really old, and we didn't want him to hurt himself, so we helped load the wood and haul it up to be stacked, and then helped him stack wood that was already split. He started throwing his hatchet at a pile of wood, so we had a hatchet throwing contest and I'm pretty good at sticking it. I'm a born warrior. On Friday we went back to Bro. Best's house and helped him split all the wood we had hauled up the day before. I really like doing that kind of work. I like working with the big trees and logs. I had never split wood before either so that was cool. He had a splitter that we used, which pushes a wedge into the wood and spilts it, but I did some by hand too with an axe. I'm pretty good with weapons of war. Anyways, enough about that. It's good to serve the members and those you are teaching. The past two days have been pretty normal days I guess. I'm getting excited for all the snow, but not for the cold. I have a good coat though so I will be ok. Oh ya, and 5 months tomorrow!!! I love you guys!! Love Mat