Bad news/Good news

Hey everyone!

Man this week has been quite a mess for myself and elder Smithee it's nuts! First off, we went on P-day to a zone activity up in Woodburn and played football and soccer, which was absolutely sweet. One hitch though... as soon as we got up to woodburn it started SNOWING! It was ridiculous, because we played for about four straight hours, and it snowed the ENTIRE TIME we were there! Now, the rule in the mission is that if there is any snow on the roads, all vehicles are grounded and missionaries cannot drive. Well, we were all in woodburn, so the zone-leaders had to call the AP's to get permission for all of us to drive home in the snow, and it was nuts. Oh my goodness I forgot how nuts drivers are here in oregon. Well, it's not even that they're nuts... just that they're terrible in the snow haha. I have some pictures of it on my camera which I'm going to be sending home soon, along with all my pictures from the MTC etc. up until this point. So we got home safely, and we couldn't go anywhere, so we just hung out at the apartment and played pooh-head for several hours as well as studied and such until the snow melted off.

One bad thing that happened, though, was that because we spent all that time outside in the cold, Elder Smithee got sick! He was kind of bed-ridden for a couple of days, so while he spent his time in bed, I spent my time studying like a madman. I seriously studied for a bout 12 hours or so over a period of two days it was ridiculous. Good, but definitely ridiculous haha. I think I now know where everything temple-related is in the bible. Check out Isaiah 22:23-25 it's awesome.... so are all the cross-references :-).

Other than that, there is some bad news... three of our baptisms have fallen through for now. Gracie and her two younger sisters are no-go's for the time being because their family is being lame. She spent christmas and new-years with them, but while she was there, her family gave her a whole lot of flak for investigating the church, and told her she would be crazy to join a church like ours that controls people's lives yadda-yadda. I can't stand people who talk smack on the chruch when they don't know what they haven't even looked into it. On a good note, they're still praying, still letting us come over and teach them, and they gave us the address of her aunt's house, so we're going to pay them a little visit... maybe talk some sense into them haha.

Aside from that, we have one bit of good news. Salvador, the husband of Silvia and father of Guadalupe has been sitting in on our lessons, and he is absolutely eating it up it's rad! I'm thinking within the next two lessons or so, we'll probably set a baptismal date with him I'm excited! He really knows a lot about the plan of salvation already, and the stuff he doesn't know, when we teach him about it, he accepts it completely! Ah I freaking love being on a mission!

I'm trying to think if there's anything new happening here..... ummm.... Oh! Transfers are coming up on the 11th, and it's looking like Smithee and I are going to be together for one more transfer! Ah I'm so stoked about that i love that guy. Instead of moving him up to be a zone-leader, he'll probably stay with me one more transfer, and they're going to be splitting the Keizer/salem area, and we're going to be staying in Salem, which is sweet because ALL our investigators with baptismal dates live in Salem!

Well, that's about it for the news around here in the Keizer/Salem area of Oregon. I hope everything is going great back home and that all of you are safe and having a good week. I love you all so much and I hope you know that.

Con todo el amor de mi corazon,

Elder Mooney