Pancakes

Good morning again!  So funny story, without realizing it, the thing that I had gotten out to put all the mix in, you know I’ve been looking for a cup measure this whole time, and I got out, I can’t think what it’s called, it’s a container, with like a handle, but it has measurements all along the sides, you use it to measure out liquids and stuff like that.  Yeah, well there’s a cup measurement on here and I didn’t think about that, so funny story I’ve had one this whole time.

Now I’m scooping out the mix and putting into the container.  I’m really excited, we had pancakes at someone’s house the other day.  Oh yeah!  While we were in that one branch… Boulder!  While we were in Boulder, the member that we stayed with, we stayed in the basement of this super super awesome house,  I think I just told you about it, and he made us pancakes Saturday morning.  Super nice of him.  We were gonna have a big egg breakfast but then we remembered it’s fast Sunday.

Oh! Fast Sunday! I gotta tell you guys about that. We had an amazing, so we, not much work has been going on in our area, if I’m being honest, we had some investigators, but they were not really progressing, and so we decided that we wanted to fast, for, really work.  And as we were fasting, you know we were in the Boulder Branch, apparently the mission leader in our 5^th ward got up and told the ward that we didn’t have too much work going on, that we were struggling to find and asked for the ward’s help.  Already we got a referral from that and that was super cool.  We got a bunch of referrals in Boulder.  We were able to find and contact a couple part member families and with that contact they were put on our radar, who are willing to learn the gospel, we found a family that wants their kids to be baptized.  The Lord answers fasts, granted I’ve known this for ages, especially while preparing to go on a mission, I saw a lot of miracles there as you know.  But, well it was just kinda one of those cool testimony experiences. Umm, yeah, it was amazing.

Oh! So I got word, that Talena (last name redacted) oh, please don’t write the last name when you type this up mom, they’re not supposed to have a last name, or tell people’s full names, or post them whatever, I don’t know the rule I was reading.  But Talena, an investigator that we were teaching in Powell, her and her daughter are officially getting baptized on the date that we set with them, February 18^th. Oh, and the cool part is that we have an exchange with the assistants in Billings the 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th, and so there’s a chance that if they move the baptism the 17^th, and if President Wadsworth approves, I will get to go down, especially since Talena actually wants me to baptize her.

(Back ground mumbling from companion)  Okay! I’ll be watching.  (starts to sing) ♪♫♪Cracking an egg, now I’m going to watch my companion who’s getting something out of the car.♪♫♪   (Whistling Jurassic Park…)  Good to see you’re back!  (conversation with companion) So the other day we were  coming out of Boulder and oh, as we came out of Sacrament meeting, it was a wonderful forty five degrees.  Didn’t even have to wear a coat.  So nice.  And so I continued to not wear a coat into our meeting with President Bingham yesterday, came out of that at about 5:00, and it was freezing cold.  Again.  Back down to like 15 degrees.  So sad.  No, it was only 20-25 I think, but with the wind, that was killer.

Half a cup cold water.  Oh, I forgot to slightly beat the egg before I put it in but it’s just kinda sitting at the top of all that pancake mix, so maybe I can still slightly beat it.  Cold water… whistling… There we go, half cup.  More whistling…  I will consider that egg slightly beat now.  Of course I forgot to beat it until after I added the water, but hey, it still works.  Oh there we go.  For a moment there when I started mixing this mix, it reminded me of that clay drink that dad would drink back home, the one with the lead in it, (laughs) bless his heart. 

Oh, so we live a little outside of town, which I’ll admit does help alieving uh, oh I don’t know, I think honestly maybe living here might have made it a little harder for me coming in initially. Because we live a little outside of town, and it just kind of reminded me of the openness of Powell and Greybull, we live up near all these kind of like ranches, I can honestly say I never want to work on a ranch, that’s just not me, but, I do like the way it all looks.  I think it’s gorgeous.  Living next to horses… I’ve gotten over all of that for the most part, I have some occasional, what’s the word, like occasional touches, occasional hints…. I miss it, yes, but I’ve gotten over really the homesickness part of it.

Oooooh! There’s pancakes in, yes, “there’s pancakes in this mix”, there’s pecans in it, like little pecan bits in the mix. I thought that it was just going to be flavoring.  That’s awesome. Oh, I forgot to pre-heat the pan, so I’m going to have to wait a little bit before doing any of that.  Oh, it suggests that you put butter in the griddle, at least that’s what the picture says.  Let’s hope we have some butter.  Oh! Conveniently placed butter.  Right next to the griddle.  So since I’ve been here, I’ve learned how to use a gas stove.  It’s pretty legit, I’m embarrassed to say it took me a little to figure out.  (clicking noise) There we go!  You turn the gas on,  and then you turn the little dial thing to the light part of it and it sparks, it starts sparking the thingymabobber, and eventually lights the flame.  Those are my technical terms for today. 

We had some, let’s see It’s preparation day today, not necessarily planned on doing too much, that I can think of.  Part of MLC is President and sister Wadsworth got after the missionaries for playing podball a little too harshly.  President said that “I have been going back and forth on banning it, there was one point where I wanted to and sister Wadsworth was like ‘No! you can’t ban it!’,” and he said “Now Sister Wadsworth really wants to ban it, and I tell her ‘No, we can’t ban it!’” laughs.  Podball I think I talked about it a little earlier in my mission, it’s basically just ultimate dodge ball, there’s two to three balls, everyone’s against everyone, which as you can imagine can get pretty intense.  Especially since you get hit in the face a lot… If you hit someone in the face, you’re out and that person’s still in.  But, well like if I were to throw it and hit someone in the face, then I’m out and that person’s still in.   But it still gets pretty intense and apparently, well probably at least 60% of the injuries that occur are podball.  I think another 15 or 20 are from basketball.

Let’s try that pancake on for size.  I used to be really good at making pancakes. I made them a lot in… Powell I think.  No, no, that was Butte. I made pancakes a lot. Powell I got really good, I just made the bagel egg sandwiches all the time.  That’s right because in Butte we’d get all the free pancake mix.

Oh! I’ve lost some weight.  I’m pretty excited about that, I’m now down to 190.  No longer at 200.

But yeah… How are you guys doing? 

I’m no longer driving, which I’ll admit is nice, I would not have wanted to drive in this big of a city.  Which makes me really nervous when I get home.  As much as I love driving, I LOVE driving, the long open roads, just driving for ages… but, I’ve been a little panicked, I’ll admit, driving around in this city.  Going on exchanges soon where I’m going to have to drive here.  There’s more than like 3 stoplights in this city.  (laughs) We got a Costco and all sorts of stuff.

So I think when the bubbles appear on the pancake and they’ve popped, that’s when you’re supposed to flip it. Hey!  That looks really good.  Except that well, that bottom part caught a little bit, other than that it’s doing pretty good. 

Let’s see. What else is new?  Oh yeah! I no longer have an ipad!  I’m recording this on my Samsung tablet.  No I did not do anything, and no we’re not, I did not have to pay any more money.   Back when I lost my ipad and had to get a Samsung tablet, there was one other missionary in the mission home that had to get one as well, his name was Elder Tenney.  Since he had gotten it, he really, really hates the Samsung tablet. And I really, really fell in love with it. And so, since he’s in Great Falls we talked about it at transfers since they were coming to pick up all these new missionaries and he was kinda talking about how much he didn’t like it, and I was like, “well, if you want, I can trade with you.  I’d be willing to do that”.  And so we did!  And so I no longer have an ipad, I have a Samsung tablet that I can record on, and then email stuff directly from it.  It means I don’t have to risk not sending something because I don’t have access to a computer so it’s kind of nice.  The only thing that I’ve come to realize today, Oh!  It’s only on two! That’s still too hot?!? Okay, whatever.  Do your own thing griddle.  The only thing that I’ve come to be I guess saddened by is the lack of available photo uploading. Yeah.  I can save my photos on my SD card, my internal micro SD card that’s inside the tablet, or the external micro SD card that’s whatever, you get what I’m saying, but you can’t like save them to the cloud like you can with the ipad.  I can off my mission., but for some reason that particular feature is blocked using the google account that we’ve been given. So, a little sad there.  Cause that was kinda that nice reassurance like oh if my ipad ever gets lost or if something happens, I still have all my photos backed up.  And go to the cloud that I can still access.  And now I can’t do that.  I’ll have to just, every so often, back them up to the SD card, pull it out, and back up the photos to a flash drive, I think is what I’m going to do.

Oh gosh darnit it’s burning now!  AAAAAGH!! Not too badly burned.  I just got to really watch these pancakes now.    Ooohhh, I’m really excited to eat this pancake.

Other than that, things are going good.  How long is this recording, cause I think the max is like 18 minutes.  OK, I’m at 15 minutes. I’m going to stop this now.

I love you guys a lot, I’m probably going to record one more at some point today, but for now I’m going to finish making pancakes, clean up, and start emailing. 

Love you guys so much and hope you have a wonderful day!  And keep on smiling. Bye!