Received Monday, Jan 14, 2013

I've been sick and haven't shaved since Friday morning. I thought I looked too  miserable, when I'm really doing ok now, so I took one while I was smiling. You might be able to see an ailing Elder Beck in the background of one.

Zak, as usual, started by answering my never ending questions:

Did you get the ear muffs I sent?

yes! they were good. Elder Beck has some just like them

Did you get the New Years Eve questions; the knit hat?

I did and I did

Did you try to answer any of those questions? (NYeve)

yes is not a homophone, but it is the answer to the question. I went through them all, I think with elder Wilding. There were 2-3 that I didn't know that didn't have it written down, I should have brought them with me. I was glad to see my own Q's in there

Did you buy anything in Building 19 last week?

We didn't end up going. I don't remember why. I think there was no time.

Did you do any home teaching from the ward last week?

well missionary work IS home teaching, it just is usually to non-members; so yes I did LOTS of home teaching. Also, we always record and report to the ward mission leader all the members we meet with (active or not, if we had any sort of meeting, dinner appointment or anything) and they put that down as home teaching. We were not assigned any families or anything though.

When do transfers come again?

sometime in the first week of February.

I am just about an hour away from when Tom [from mom/julie: for you non-football people, Tom is Tom Brady, quarterback of the Patriots] and his buddies play ball, so those games were pretty close to me. It sounds to me like they're going to win the Superbowl  Joe Flacco isn't really strong enough to hit clay pigeons [search for this on Youtube...it is great] with a football, so they won't win. I'm still mad at the Falcons for stealing that receiver that I wanted the Rams to get so they will be cursed and nobody liked the 49ers.

I didn't know there was an official state of emergency or anything, [state of emergency in Boston because of the flu...and apparently Zak had it!] but I have heard a lot about how bad it is. and I've felt it too. 

Elder Wilding was sick like 2 weeks ago, we don't know if it was "the bug" (that's what everyone says) or something a little different. He mostly just had to make very frequent trips to the bathroom. I started to feel sick Tuesday night. It was while we were at a lesson with Maria. I just got really cold and my head was tired and I felt sick. Wednesday i felt mostly better, we didn't cancel any plans, I mostly slept and moved slowly instead of morning studies, but the rest of the day was regular and I felt ok. but it kicked in around 7:00 PM again with me suddenly feeling extra cold and tired and a little miserable.Thursday was basically the exact same as Wednesday but a little worse. Friday was a bit worse too. We did cancel somebody late at night because I knew (correctly) that's when it would be the worst. That night it was really hard to sleep. that was the worst part of the whole thing. Saturday morning was not fun either. I knew I wasn't going out at all. My voice was totally weird, very deep and funny. made it entertaining to sing "down down down in a burning right of fire". After that morning I never felt too too miserable though. When I called the doctor he said to take 3 ibuprofen 3 times a day and some sudafed. About the ibuprofen, he felt he needed to give me a quick spiel about how if he were to prescribe it to me it would be an even big dose than that, so don't be worried about taking so much, but I had already heard mom say that sort of thing 999 times so I wasn't bothered.

 Elders Beck and Lopes got sick Saturday as well. It hit us all differently. Lots of sneezing and coughing. Nobody threw up. I've gone through 2 big boxes of tissues. there were no elders at church on Sunday  I'll be well enough to go out tomorrow though and I really think Elder Beck will too.

 We went out and bought soup, Gatorade  and pudding today to facilitate the process. The other lame thing that happened it that today our water suddenly got shut off. The plumbers said it should be about 4 hours, so hopefully it's back when we get home. we went over with a few jugs to the Simpsons and got them filled up with water.

There was one other fun thing that happened this week before we started our impression of the pirates who don't do anything.  On Wednesday I think this lady we've been trying to help [stop] smoke called and said her friend gave her some cigarettes and she still had them, but she didn't want to smoke them. I think it's kind of strange people don't just throw them away in this situation  but I'm also glad people call us about this stuff. I told her not to throw them away and wait till our lesson later that day. We brought our blender with us. we put her cigarettes in it with some water and blended it all together and poured it into a cup. It was a very gross grey chunky mixture. The point was to help her realize even more she does not want those in her body, plus it would probably healthier to drink the brew than it would have been for her to smoke it. It was a good lesson. I've heard a few times of missionaries doing things similar.

One other fun thing was a lady we're helping get back to church gave each of us (the Simpsons also always come with us) a card saying thanks and some nice things. I wonder if she still would have done that if she knew we were going to talk about tithing that day (just kidding).

To answer griffin's question I beat all my companions at Pokemon  many times. Also I beat them twice in a row at risk while sick.

That's everything. You all try to stay healthy, and stop copying our weather, since you're in California, it might as well be warm. You can always wear knee high pink socks if it gets cold though. go pats!

Love you all!