Useless Cravat

Attention people of other places,

How was your week? Did anyone get a lot of snow or have stormy weather? This week we had a lot of ice on the roads. In a place that is able to handle it this ice like Utah it would be quickly eliminated in about 30 minutes, but because we are in Arkansas there's literally nothing anyone can do except sit like lumps and cancel school and work day after day until it's gone. :) So everyone got a full week off school haha

For us though we didn't really get any time off. President Taylor says that they still work in the snow and ice in Canada so we can do it here too. What he doesn't seem to understand is that Canada can actually HANDLE this weather, here people cannot. Not only does nothing get clear but nobody seems to have the slightest idea how to drive in snow and ice here so it's like a minefield. But it does make for some fun drifting and sliding around! I'm sure after a bunch of missionaries get hurt President Taylor will learn his lesson...

On Monday it was sooo icy basically the road was covered with inches of ice. It looked like snow so everyone keeps calling it that but it wasnt haha--it was straight inches of ice just coating the roads under the guise of snow. So all we did is drove over to the Flower's and hung out with them! We played games, ate, and hundled up next to their faux fireplace. We also may have gotten some skin boards and went out and slid around on the ice. We helped Logan and Sarah do a photoshoot in the cold "snow" as well to try and help them win SAU's snow photo competition! Some of the photos included Logan lying accross his mustang in a swimsuit ready for summer haha-- In the evening it got so bad and impossible to drive and so forth that we just stayed with the Flowers all day. We are calling that photoshoot our "service" for the day. :)) We drank hot cocoa and spent a lot of time talking. 

Tuesday was no better, in fact it was worse. You can't even start driving on flat ground without your tires spinning futiley (if thats a word). Luckily we have 4 wheel drive! But we were encouraged to keep working (unless it was really dangerous they said--and even though I thought it counted as really dangerous we didnt get enough direction to feel good about just staying in so we did our best). We spent the morning working on administrative stuff, and getting things in place for when the next branch president is called, then we went and had lunch with the Flowers! Sarah's poor car has gone through it haha--she hit a tree with it on Monday cause of the ice, slid into a curb on Tuesday cause of the ice, and then snapped her windshield wiper off due to it being frozen down as well. Luckily her car is only lightly dented from these endeavors. We spent the afternoon sliding around as we attempted to walk around and talk to people and visit people. We learned that the less you pick up your feet and just let yourself slide, the better off you are! Every person we tried to visit said it was too cold and we shouldn't be out and should go away haha--but it wasnt a complete waste because in the space of 4 hours we finally ran into a lady named Ashley who has some friends who are members! She is interested in the Book of Mormon, and wants to sit down and talk with us sometime. We also had a good visit with Mike Jones, and got to talk with him about football and so forth. We had a mini lesson with a guy named Brent too and he's really interested and is looking for a church. For dinner the Flowers had us over again and we had some amazing Alfredo Sauce noodles and salad and cheesecake and ice cream and garlic bread! 

We ended the night by going to teach Jarriod. We ended up debating with him about snakes for a while. He had the ridiculous impression that snakes have legs hahaha--so we couldn't help but try and teach him a lesson about how they actually don't instead haha--sometimes you can't teach the Gospel to someone until they have some basic human knowledge such as the fact that snakes slither. They do NOT walk around on legs!! He also thinks that if you chop off a snake's head it doesn't die, but speaking from personal experience I can testify that this is also not true. :)

On Wednesday we drove the Millers to District council in our truck because they were scared to drive down in the ice. A drive that would have usually taken us 60 minutes took us 2 hours instead. :)) but we made it! We had a good district council, the ZLs came too which is always fun. We ate at Cottons for lunch and then exchanged. I went back to Magnolia with Elder Lloyd which was fun, it again took is several hours to return. We did get to teach a guy named Charlie though, but he wasn't super focused on us because the whole time behind him there was water pooling behind him because a pipe in the wall somehwere had ruptured. So the whole time we talked he kept looking behind him in dismay and concern at the ever growing pool of water and then looking back at Sister Miller rambling on about the Gospel and looking more and more helpless haha--finally I Was able to get a word in and end the lesson so we will see if he wants to talk again...

In the evening I went out with Elder Lloyd and we got a lot of visiting done! We ran into a guy who tried to get us to pay his cell phone bill (which was $140 haha--don't know what kind of expenses he was racking up with that kind of bill haha). He kept saying he would pay us back with cash if we could just use our cards to pay. As we walked away he said, "okayyy well you never know what if I ended up being God? Then you'd regret this!" Hahaha

We also taught a guy named Blake out in the cold on his lawn, and taught the Restoration. He's really interested though and when we were talking about Joseph Smith Blake said he'd been searching for a church too and asked us if he could come! We also taught Shardae and talked about the sacrament and church. She seemed to like it a lot and her house was warm so we were happy. Also got to teach Octaviorson or whatever his name is, and then went and stopped by the Flowers so Elder Lloyd could say hi. We got to revisit the famous Pepsi Nitro with them as well!

Since I'm leaving soon I've decided to take every opportunity and excuse I can to drop by the Flower's place

"Oh! Oops! Sorry I wanted to buy some Flowers and I guess I ended up here too bad so anyway how are you guys doing..."

"Elder Bradshaw just got off his exchange and needs to recharge, could we swing by?"

"Oh no I left my coat at yalls place, we will swing by later to pick it up"

"I have a pressing concern about fresh pork chops Logan, and I think you're the only one who might have an answer!"

"Theres something wrong on your records I noticed, might need to check with yall and see if we can correct it..."

"Elder Bradshaw has a question for you Logan"

Thursday we went in the morning to walk the dogs but they turned us away for the first time because of the thick ice still on the ground. The dogs were not very happy about this decision and made it known very vocally as we left. After that I got a call from Royce saying Wade O'Neal passed away. After that I was on the phone with tons of people (Lonnie, Chris, Millers, Strattons, Lowthers, Debbie, Thomas and much much more) for the next 2 hours. After getting things squared away for representation and speakers for Wade's funeral, I dealt with the other problem, which is Debbie Ryan fell and broke both her shoulders! So that isn't good. We exchanged back and then visited Thomas, her son. He is not all there it seems, and switches from manipulate and crazy, to nice and childlike back and forth and so it's hard to know what to expect from him. He keeps on trying to have Sister Bahr bring him Sister Ryan's purse so he can do who knows what. But it was still a good visit, we were able to pray for him and so forth.

We had back to back appointments in the evening and as we were running from place to place we kept getting more and more behind. And then we got a call saying we needed to run over and help clear put Wades room at the nursing home. So we ran over and threw everything in bags and ran to the next thing. We never got back on schedule all night. 

In the evening we went and had a lesson with Becky which was fun! We met at the Millers. We started teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ but Sister Miller kept trying to get them to name the 10 commandments and to recite things from articles of faith they have never heard or had any way of knowing haha--I don't know why. It was a good lesson though we steered back on course and then put Farod on date for February 3rd. He keeps calling getting baptized "getting backwashed" haha

Also we now have over 200 newly interested people in our pool besides our teaching pool so we simply cant keep up with everyone!

On Friday we went and cleaned the church in the morning with the Millers, and then in the afternoon we taught Debbie and Brooklyn. We taught them all about commandments and the 10 commandments, and then we also taught them the Word of Wisdom and they have already been following it! We put Debbie on date for the same day as Brooklyn, so they will be getting baptized on February 3rd as well as Farod! After that we continued our trend from Thursday of Being perpetually behind, it was unpleasant but also good to be busy! We taught Blake again and in the two days since we had taught him first he and his girlfriend watched 8 Book of Mormon videos and they want to start coming to church together! We had a good dinner with the Masses at Flying Burger and ranted to each other about social security and other political subjects that I will not mention in this email haha--but suffice it to say it involved lithium thingies and big metal boxes that are sometimes used to transport humans...and then we went and watched the first vision video with one-legged Chris. He seemed to really like it, we pointed out the feeling of the spirit and invited him to pray on his own. 

Now I am starting something new--a spiritual thought! I will be putting a spiritual thought in my email from now on. 

Surprise! I was just pulling your leg. Go have your own spiritual thoughts, stop being lazy and wanting the work to be done for you!

Saturday was fun, we went in the morning with Royce the 2 hours down to Shreveport for Stake Conference. We went to the leadership session and it was really good. They talked about Family services, and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Then in our bishops breakout with the YW Presidents we talked about the youth and how you focus in on them. We ate dinner at Ki Mexico with Brother Harris, Royce, and Brother and Sister Lowther. It was fantastic tacos as usual! Then we had a great evening session as well, and I got to reconnect with many of the Stake members! I've served a total of 10 transfers in the Shreveport Stake which is over a year, so I've gotten to know a lot of these members pretty well! I will also mention that there were a few suspicious disappearances of some choice members that could potentially be next branch president into the stake offices before the meetings.... ;)

Sunday we drove with the Flowers to stake conference and it was quite good! President Smith shared a fantastic talk on the Atonement of Jesus Christ and also I probably got distracted making little animals out of magnets haha for some of the conference. Those magnets will get you!! We ate a great dinner and then had a little Come Follow Me lesson as well with Logan and Sarah. 

--Abe