Elder Collin DeWitt: WEEK SEVENTY SIX

Hello!

I wanted to start off by saying that Elder Murtonen is fantastic. He has a super thick Finnish accent, and occasionally needs words defined for him. In addition to our regular studies, we now do an hour of language study every day. Because of this, we have some SUPER funny and weird conversations. Here are a few of my favorites:

He was trying to describe to me some Finnish candy that he had. It was a weird black chewy candy, and I was pretty confident that it was the same as the salt licorice that my Swedish companion gave me. I asked him if it was licorice, and he said he didn't think so. He looked at the box for a minute, trying to figure out the word he was looking for. After a minute, he finally looked up and said, "I guess in English...ammonium chloride." That's probably the most dangerous and edgy sounding name for licorice I've ever heard.

We were shopping at Walmart today, and I needed some lotion. (The cold absolutely destroys your skin.) We were looking at all the options and Elder Murtonen picked up a bottle. He asked, "What is body milk? Body lotion is good, but what is body milk?" I never realized how ridiculous "body milk" sounded until he asked me what it meant.

We talked about goals for the future, and I asked him what some of his goals were. He said simply in his thick accent, "My goal is to not die."

So this week has been quite crazy and unbelievably cold. It was about -27°F (-33°C) every day since I got here. And super windy. So dang cold.

And it's not just cold outside. Our apartment is absolutely frigid. I wasn't able to sleep for the first two nights, since I only had a thin blanket and really lame socks. I ended up wearing my winter coat to bed. Finally I texted our landlord and asked where the thermostat was, since we don't have one in the apartment. She said our thermostat was in the apartment next door, and she would call them and ask them to turn our heat up. WHAT. So we have to make sure we're on really good terms with our neighbor, or else...

I got in the car with Elder Murtonen at transfers, and he told me that I'm the district leader. Again. I've been the district leader for eight transfers straight now. This district is absolutely fantastic though! I love all of them like crazy. They're hard working, obedient, and super fun people. And as a bonus, none of them are from Utah! Nothing against Utah people. One of the sister missionaries is from Arizona too (Sister Prince), the other sister is from Texas (Sister Peters), one elder is from Italy (Elder Salerno), one elder from West Virginia (Elder Zollinger), and my companion from Finland. We're pretty diverse!

The sisters are in Brooks, and they have one investigator who is a Catholic priest. He wants to be baptized because he believes that this is the true church, but he can't until his contract with the church expires. So in the meantime, he is an undercover REFERRAL MACHINE. Anytime someone comes to him with questions, he refers them to the missionaries. It's freaking awesome. They also gave me a new thick blanket that was an extra in their apartment, so they're my new favorite people.

The other day, we got a call from a member saying that their less-active brother needed help moving. We went over to help, and found that we were the only ones that had come. It was okay though, since he didn't have much stuff. We loaded all his things into his dad's truck and drove over to the new apartment. He's sharing the small apartment with another middle aged guy. At one point, we left the door open as we went to go grab some more boxes. The guy glanced over to the stove, and asked us to close the door. When we came back inside, he explained to us that he had a gopher living in his stove. He had found it outside half-dead and without a mother, and so he picked it up and took it to his apartment. (I had to explain to Elder Murtonen what a gopher was. I told him it was a ground squirrel.) The guy made a box for it, but the gopher decided that it liked his oven better. So, this guy has a wild gopher living in his stove and oven. He was telling us all about it's "personality" (he was just describing typical wild animal behavior) and seemed not at all concerned that if he ever wants to cook anything, he'll have to work around the gopher. Real weird guy.

The ward is pretty small here, and generally made up of normal working class people. Except for our ward mission leader Brother Stubbs. He's a radiologist in Medicine Hat. To illustrate how rich he is, all I have to do is say the phrase he used when we saw his car: "This is my winter Porsche."

We have a few potential investigators, and we got a referral from a member last night! MY FIRST MEMBER REFERRAL! And I've been out for a year and a half...

I'm excited to be here, and now that I've bought some thicker socks, I'm ready to brave the ridiculous cold and get to work!

Love you all!

Elder DeWitt