Elder Nicholas Berrett is currently serving in the Billings Montana mission (serving most of Montana and a good portion of Wyoming) for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is excited to serve the Lord and the people of Montana and Wyoming for the next two years!

Monday, March 27, 2017

Voice Recording 3/27 pt 1

Well good morning mom, happy Monday.  The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day, it’s warm out.  There’s no snow that I can see except for like on the mountains far off.  It’s going to be a good day today.  Let’s see, I have exchanges today, I’m heading in to Helena 2nd ward.  Actually venturing out of my shell a little bit today.  Going somewhere else.  It’s kinda funny because last transfer, both exchanges I stayed here.  So I’m pretty excited.  It’s going to be fun.  I get to be with Elder Rickenbacker.  Sorry, I’m… it’s just… it’s so nice out.  I’m looking out the window.  I can feel the warmth of the sun.  I’ve really been enjoying it the last couple of days because it’s been so long.  And I know I’m going to go home and it’s going to be like 10 times even better.  I mean hands down it’s still my favorite feeling when you get into that warm car that’s been sitting outside for hours after you’ve been in an air-conditioned building.  Granted, that wonderful feeling only lasts like a few minutes and then you’re scrambling to get the car to cool down.  But it’s wonderful. 

So I’ll just set this right here and I’ll begin, oh I probably need to pull up the recipe too.  Will it still record?  Yes it will!  Oh, so the pancakes, I think I told you about them last week, were wonderful.  Oh! So worth the effort.  The only thing that would make them better is blueberries.  Hands down, I’m buying some today.  With the little money I have left for the month, I’m buying some today.  And, to top it all off, our bishop’s wife makes her own syrup.  Regular and this butterscotch syrup.  And she gave me the recipe for it.  AND made me a jar.   She made it in like 10 minutes.  She’s like “How much time do you guys have?”  Cause we were following up with the Bishop, or we had stopped by the house real quick to report something, I asked her for the recipe, and she’s all “I’ll just make you some, How much time do you have?” And I’m all “Well we need to get going in a couple minutes here.”  And she’s like “Okay, I’ll just make a quick batch!”  Boom!  10 minutes later hands me this mason jar.  I’m really excited to try it.  The recipe is

½ cup butter
2 cups sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbs corn syrup
Boil one minute, then add 1 tsp vanilla.

Okay, so maybe it was buttermilk syrup, not butterscotch, but anyways, I had it last time.  I ate dinner at their house, and it was the most fantastic syrup I’ve ever had in my life.  And I’m so excited to try this!  On the buttermilk pancakes. I think I still have enough buttermilk. Oh yeah, totally. Plus it expires the 24th of May. (March)  I’m assuming however, the buttermilk is like milk and you’re fine for a couple of days.  It doesn’t smell horrid. I shake it and I’m not seeing any curdles or separating.  I think I’m fine.  And, well, I don’t have any other option. I didn’t buy any regular milk last week.  My companion drank straight out of the gallon a couple days ago cause he’s like “You don’t drink this milk anyway”.  So funny. 

Ok.  I’m just staring at the syrup, and outside, and it’s going to be a wonderful day.  I’m super excited.  I love the photos you sent me! I actually have a, its kinda cool on the android, apparently you can have multiple users on the device, and I can edit the user pictures and mine is of me in that little frog t shirt with just like the crazy spiked hair and the biggest grin on my face.  I love those pictures you sent me.  Ok.  Oh here we go.  Also I got that email you sent me, and thank you so much for actually watching that, believe me I was, I was like, “If I could watch ONE thing right now, it would be Alton Brown’s pancake video” and you solved that.  You’re wonderful. 

(yawns)  I had a wonderful night’s sleep last night.  We got to sleep in until 6:30.  The last couple of days we’ve been waking up at 5:45 or 5:30 for things.  Our mission leader wanted to correlate with us before ward council in the morning yesterday so we got up pretty early for that.  I don’t remember why we got up early Saturday though.  I can’t remember.  All’s well that ends well.  (yawns) I don’t know why I’m yawning right now.

Oh yes, I actually need to make the mix.  So I think I was going to divide the mix in half, this week, cause way too many pancakes last week.   And if worse comes to worse, if I need a little bit more, I can just make like a quarter of a batch.  Which I don’t know how I’ll do that because a full batch requires two eggs, I can’t put in ½ an egg… All’s well that ends well.  It’ll work out. 

Ok.  Directions.  Okay, now you said that I need to shake up the mix that I made every now and then, cause the ingredients like separate.  I have the mix in a Ziploc bag, not a lidded container, sorry Alton Brown.  He probably despises Ziploc bags or something like that.  Cause they slowly release too much oxygen, or they separate the hydrogen from the oxygen as it goes in… and I don’t know. (shaking bag)  But I will consider this thoroughly mixed up.

Now instant pancakes.  I have my thing.  “Heat an electric griddle” ok, yeah, blah, blah, blah…  oh crap. Oh, what?! No!  Ok, so I just throw in let’s see, 1 cup buttermilk,  that’s first.  I am really excited about these pancakes again.  And now that I can actually pretend like I know what I’m doing, they’ll be even better, faster, and easier to clean up.  So one cup buttermilk, one egg…Look at me doing fractions and math.  Granted dividing two by two wasn’t exactly the hardest thing ever.  We’ll see how I am when I get to the “one stick of butter”.  Oh, that’s just for greasing the pan.  A whole stick of butter?? I’m pretty sure it said in the video to limit that amount.  I’ll have to go back and read that email you sent.  I usually just use like a tablespoon or something in the pan, let it melt, move it around.

Let’s see, what happened this week so far that I can talk about?  Oooh! Gospel sing last night!  That was awesome!  Gospel Sing, I think I told you about this earlier, is something that the town of Townsend does.  Once a month, basically the whole community gets together, and they sing gospel songs about Christ.  They take turns hosting it at different churches.  This month was hosted at our church and the whole zone came, and we sang Called to Serve and A Child’s Prayer.  It was so amazing!  I loved it!  Honestly though, my favorite were probably the Methodist songs, and the Methodists.  I mean just picture this Methodist choir up there, there’s a guy playing the spoons, a guy playing the acoustic guitar, singing, and everyone's just kinda singing in this choir, and then there’s this guy on the banjo just sitting there in the back. He’s got this beard and everything.  It was so great.  I loved it.  And the best part was, thanks to The Lower Lights, I knew all the songs! (laughs)   We’re singing along and it was great.  I had a blast.

What else do I have to do?  Oh, melted butter.  Duh.  Two tablespoons.  I’m like, “I feel like I’m forgetting something.” Yeah.  The melted butter.  (singing unknown song)  Anyways, Gospel Sing was awesome.  We have an investigator in Boulder that we are planning on bringing.  He was a Baptist preacher for quite awhile in Georgia, so we really think that he’ll enjoy himself at the Gospel Sing next month.  I don’t know why we didn’t think of it earlier.  We were kind of sitting there, and we were saying “Oh My Goodness.  Mike NEEDS to be here.  He needs to be here.”

Umm, let’s see… What else happened this week?  Interviews with President.  They were awesome.  I had  a really great interview with him.  We talked a lot.  Was Zone Conference this week?  Yeah! Holy Cow.  We also had zone conference this week.   Not even close to being melted.   I saw a lot of great old friends.  Elder Bredsgard – He served in Thermopolis pretty much the whole time I served in, well, the Big Horn Basin, down in Wyoming, so we got to know each other really well.  He’s a stud.  Works really hard.  Love him to death.  He’s currently the zone leader in Butte right now.  So I was asking him how people in Butte were doing.  How’s Carl and Ross…  I actually got a facebook message.  Someone posted on my wall.  The Burkes.  He was previously in the… Oh!  I’m getting a call.  From Michigan?  It was just some, I don’t know, recorded call “Your Google listing is about to inspire”  (I think he meant expire, but I left the mistake in because it made me giggle) “Your google listing is about to expire.  If you are a business, call this number to resolve it.” Or “Press one now to talk with me.” And I’m just like, whatever.  We ain’t no business.  So that’s that.  Let’s see…  “two cups of fresh fruit such as blueberries, if desired.”  Well, it’s definitely desired, it’s just not accessible right now.  (yawn)  Why am I yawning so much?  One cup of instant pancake mix.  I think we ran into this before.  At least I know where the 1/3 cup is.  (whistling Star Wars)

Oh!  Here’s another thing that happened this week, that you’ll appreciate.  I tried Cane’s Chicken.  We have this less active that we work with, Steven, he’s from the Valley.  He’s awesome.  I love working with him, teaching him, and helping him to come back.  He’s struggling a bit right now with faith, but he’s getting there.  Anyways, he fed us lunch and made us homemade Cane’s chicken with their sauce.  Elder Shumway later said that it was good, but it definitely wasn’t as good, and it was pretty dang fantastic, so I’m pretty excited to try that. I don’t know if it’s like Get Home and Gotta Try Cane’s Chicken, but if that’s where the kids want to go I’ll be down for it.  Honestly, I’m fine with anywhere.  I do miss Chipotle, not gonna lie. And my clothes are done.  So I’m gonna go change my clothes, well, I meant I’m going to go change a load.  And I’ll be back up here. How long has this recording been going for?  15 minutes.  Ok, I’m going to pause this and send it off.  Love you!  Bye.

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