Christmas

I've got to say one thing. Talking to the fam was good.

Also my branch has a bunch of most excellent members. We were fed a ton of food but even better we have a bunch of great members who took us under their wings. I've got to say my first Christmas away from the fam was a success. I found a lot of extended family this last week.

Now for the follow up from last email. My exchange with the Zone leader was a success. He is more of a Yolo missionary so our plans for the day kindof happened. But, when you yolo it right you are more receptive to the spirit. So we had a bit of "exchange magic" as he called it. He felt inspired to text this guy who has been busy with finals at the university. Said guy texted back that he had his last final and we could come anytime that day after 2:00. So we went over there and went over the book of Enos with him. Some background to this guy: his first language is Not english so old style english is like a foreign language to him and the last lesson they had with him (which was on exchanges with the APs) he decided to start believing in God. So he's quite the guy to be doing all of this stuff. Anyway in our lesson with him we committed him to Baptism. Dang fetch oh my heck. For not believing in God not too long ago he's making massive changes. It was indeed some "exchange magic". Needless to say I'm pretty excited to be going on exchanges with Elder Grant from CTK (Carry the Kettle) in our district.

Also another interesting story from the exchange was we swung by this guys house to see how he was doing. He let us right in which was pretty great. He seemed like a super chill kinda hipstery guy. Also something great he had this old old poster for Lord of the Rings. I was super jealous ;) We didn't have much time with him so we just read the intro to the Book of Mormon. We talked about it a bit and when we got to the part where it talks about when you get to know that the Book of Mormon is truly the word of God you can also know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is also the true church we invited him to be baptised. He declined, in a nice way, and we continued on. Come to find out, HE WAS a MEmber THIs Whole time. We don't know why he's pretending to be just an investigator of the Church but that's how it is. And of course to see how I am in lessons Elder Coleman did not inform me of this until after the fact. It was some funky business.

That's all I got for now. I may send a following email about some Native stuff but for now that's all I got. Thank you all for your support and I hope y'all had a Merry Christmas. It's odd to think that it actually happened and now it's over but life goes on. Potatoes gonna potate.

Regina

So I'm currently in Regina (again ugh) :) This is why I'm so late today at emailing and also why I might not be able to get back to everyone that I would like to so please excuse me.  BTW interesting things about Regina (Re-jeye-na): Once you pronounce that out you'll wonder why anyone would name anything like that instead of Re jee na. It's become second nature to me now and I'm pretty used to it but when I first heard it I kinda had a "WHat did you Say??" moment. Lotsa fun. The drive from Yorkton is 2 hours (Yay...) and it is the second largest city in Saskatchewan with the only temple in our mission. The reason I'm here right now is because of Exchanges. Now that I'm the comp of a district leader I get to do exchanges with Zone leaders. So woo here in the dirty city again :)

Anywho the big news for this week is we finally have our missionary couple here and getting settled in. Yesterday at church it was wild. We had the new missionary couple (the Olsens) the stake president (President Noblet (No-blay(He's French))) and his cronie and President Craig decided to make a surprise visit. WHooo :) So basically our branch got a spiritual shot of roids. I was so yoked when I saw President Craig walk in. We talked about a lot of great things and we're having a pilot program get started out in Cote all good stuff for missionaries to hear. 

Also it's been getting really cold and wintry now. We got down to about -28 degrees wind chill C. I'm not sure what is worse though. -28 wind chill or -10 with humidity. Either way it's cold cold cold. But I'm surviving so far so that's good :) I'm going to have to see what happens when it gets to -39 degrees C because we can't go out at -40 :) For those of you on Fahrenheit scale -28 is about -18 degrees. So colder than what most of you are experiencing :D Today is fairly nice actually. It's around -5 degrees so no thermal underwear weather :)

CHRISTMAS!! for my moms sake becasue I didn't tell her this yet we've got dinner appointments scheduled every day this week and a couple on Christmas day. We started getting people fighting for us to come over this last sunday so that was good :) It helps when you're the only two Elders within 200 ks :)

Hope y'all have a very very merry Christmas and remember the true meaning as well :) Love you all. Till next time Potatoes gonna potate

 

Love Elder Mikesell

SNOW

Yep we got snow but I'll be talking more about that later. To begin the mass email this week we had our Zone Christmas devotional. It was a really great experience. I think one of the things that stuck with me most about Christmas from it was President Craig talking about "the hopes and fears of all the years" If you're familiar with the Carols in the hymnbook that is a line from "O Little Town of Bethlehem". Christ's coming was truly the hopes and fears of all the years.

One thing I really enjoyed about this Zone conference was we were able to stay at the Zone leaders house for two nights. The first night we had 8 people in this house and the second night we had 10. IT was a blast. We were only expecting 6 people the first night but the APs decided to crash there because they had a washer and drier. That was quite the surprise for us but it was good and kinda fun. Partially because one of the Elders that was staying there was being extremely angry. But one of the ZLs was his former companion and worked his magic to get him calmed down and having a good time. Watching that happen was quite amazing. Especially since it was something the ZLs did that got him going. Another thing that was interesting and fun to watch was the second night there was much tie trading going on. I didn't participate because nobody wanted any of my "Beauties" or in other words ties that are not visually pleasing to the eye. I now have doubled my tie collection by collecting these "beauties". I actually came away from that experience with one more tie. The story behind it was kinda funny.

So there I was... I had been trying a bunch of new stuff on the mish already so this went quite well with what I had been doing in the past. One of the Elders had this Ginger drink mix and he was offering it to anyone who would take it. For good reason. So I was like what the heck I'll try it. So i warmed up some water and dumped it in. It was nasty. Somehow I took one or two more spoonfuls of it before I decided that it was truly nasty and I wasn't imagining it. But, another Elder who was trying to get some ties for cheap got offered to drink the rest of it for a tie. He declined multiple times so I piped up and asked if I could get a tie if I drank the rest of it. He said I could so I tried as hard as I could to just drain it. It ended with me coughing my lungs out and looking for something to get the nasty out of my mouth. Nasty.

The final thing about Zone Conference was an answer to my prayers. We were able to attend the temple the end of the first day. It was sooooo good. I had been wanting to go to the temple ever since I found out I would be in the Stake with the temple in it. But lucky me I got sent 2 and a half hours away from it. However one of our trips out to Regina Elder Spell and I snuck over to take a look at it. But yeah I was soooo yoked to go to the temple. 

Back to the subject line of this email. We got snow and lots of it. IT just absolutely dumped on us this last Thursday. We got at least half a foot in a day and it's been snowing off and on since then. It's been interesting driving around with bald tires but we've survived so far :D But there

s a miracle story that goes along wtih this snow. We felt like we should go shovel the snow off of the driveway of a lady who did not like the missionaries too much. She blew up at Elder Spell the last time he tried going over there so we were a little worried. But when we started shoveling her driveway she came out and thanked us a lot for shoveling her driveway. She also offered to have us over for dinner. Which at any time before then and after the missionaries that put the bad taste in her mouth she would've avoided us like the plague. It was amazing. 

That's all I got for now. Love you all and have a great Christmas season

CHRISTMASSSSS!!!!

 Mountain (kindof)

Mountain of the Lord

Blizzard

First self haircut

More Mountains

Random

Blurry moon

Weird cloud formation

Kamsack Water tower

So first of all I'm really going to try to make this short so I can finally get my pictures to you. If I get more time I might have to add some more but for now its gonna be short.

Now for the beef. Y'all should go to the Churches website for the christmas initiative #asaviorisborn. It's really low key and has a lot of videos with some great talent. Plus CHRISTMAS. I think one of my favorites so far has been the one by Alex Boye.

Next our branch had a Christmas Party. WOO! I think that at that party we had more people in the building than I have ever seen. There was also a ton of good food and Elder Spell and I got plenty of leftovers :D Also some members from Noodledorf brought that kid I was telling you about like five months or so ago. Gage was his name and he's still a beauty. He's actually been sitting in on lessons we have with this member families son. He sat by us while we were eating and we had a grand time. Another funny thing that happened was this nonmember who's living with a member got up to the front of the room and got us all to start singing a rousing round of Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer. And during the parts where some people repeat or add things like "like a lightbulb!!" I started saying those but in the most monotone voice ever and kindof slowly and behind the beat. I don't know what it was about that but people started laughing about that. I was pleased with myself because I got people to laugh. It was a good time :) Also for my mothers sake and for those of you who know about this. I haven't got away from the poinsettias. They had a massive poinsettias plant in the building and my face was not having it. For those of you who don't know I'm highly allergic to poinsettias. My eyes start itching like someone poured tarantula hairs on them and my nose starts running. It's lots of fun you should try it sometime. Anywho Apologies for the short email but I REALLy want to send pictures. So TTFN