Called to Serve: Elder Spencer Shirley: General Conference .... yaayy!!

Daaaang sounds like you've had a busy week or so. Also ya what in the world are y'all going to do with all of the meat that dad will be getting? you'll need like 3 more freezers. glad he's having fun though. The Family we would visit in Valdez was the Baczuk family, they're cool. You should say hi to luke for me, he's a senior so he'll be one of the older priest there.

I must say it's kind of nice not having to deal with getting cold here. It is annoying how hot it is sometimes but really if you just drink water it's not that bad. I don't know if the garments arrived yet because we don't really go to the mission office that often. Also I meant they're not the right kind as in they're not the dri-lux kind, that's the kind I like. But it's alright, I really just needed more garments so I'm sure they'll work. The stitching on some of my garments just hasn't been the greatest so I've been getting really big holes in the seams of my garment bottoms so I've had to get rid of a couple of them. Oh and sometimes when it rains my panyo (sweat rag) will be in my pocket and it'll turn my garments blue or green or whatever so ya I had to get rid of some of those garments as well.

We finally got to watch General Conference yaaaaaaay!!!! The leadership is a little walay claro sometimes though so we actually showed up like 2 hours early on saturday because they didn't tell us they changed the time. It's cool all the changes they're making with everything. Really starting to push more of a family aspect to learning the gospel, it's cool. Favorite talk.... I'd have to look at my notes but overall I just really liked how they talked a lot about taking on the name of Christ. Between that and families they had a really good theme going on between all of the talks. Sunday we did have an investigator come to watch conference with us, he came for the afternoon session but, 20 minutes before it started, there was a "brown-out" (That's what they call Black-outs) at the church so we lost all the power in the church and didn't have any gas to power the back-up generator so we ended up not watching the afternoon session at the church. We did get to watch it eventually at a member's house so that was cool.

Oh sunday I got to baptize one of the sisters' investigators so that was cool to. The building still didn't have power when we did it so we did everything by flashlight light so that was quite the experience.

And ya they don't really have a lot of holidays here. They don't celebrate Halloween or anything like that, so they don't really have any holidays from september-december. That's partly why people start putting up christmas decorations so early.

I go on exchanges with other elders probably 2-4 times a transfer, this transfer it looks like it'll be more like 3 exchanges. I actually just had an exchange this last monday and I lead the area for the first time so that was cool/stressful. My companion will actually have been in the area for like 8 months by november.... no, that doesn't normally happen... Normally the longest your in an area is for 3 transfers, he's been here for 5.... maybe 6 or 7. Hahaha jokes, he'll most likely transfer out but it's really fun to joke that he won't.

Last week we tried making mango floats.... It only takes like 4 ingredients.... yet somehow it still ended up really bad.... long story short we're trying again today.

I can't think of anything else that happened at the moment so that'll be all I say. Hope you're doing well! Thanks for all the love and support! Of course I miss you but i'll see you in like 70 days so I'll be fine.

Love you! Nahigugma ko nimo!
Elder shirley