ALL the chocolate that I could never eat!

Hello everybody!

Well, this past week has been GREAT and we were super productive (no baptisms, but we're working with the ward to strengthen the ward) because we had a CAR! It was so easy to make it to appointment, visit people who lived a long distance away, and AC. Oh the AC! You've got to love it especially when it's so hot out. UNfortunately, we have bikes this week.... Also, we live a long ways from anywhere (on a bike) and in a well-to-do neighborhood. We haven't had any luck tracting or street contacting, except for when this guy brought a pistol to the door, we were pretty lucky that we didn't get shot... Nah, he was pretty nice, it was just a little late (like 8:10) to be knocking on people's doors, but we talked with him a while and it turns out that his brother is a bishop over in SLC and his sister is a member in this area! That was pretty cool, but we haven't gotten the chance to talk with him again. We'll probably stop by sometime this week.

So one of the families that we're teaching right now just found the church again after moving to KCK from Colorado. The mom is from Liberia, and is a single mother with 5 children. I have major respect for her keeping her family so close together under such hard circumstances... I think that they have been not active in the church for a very long time though because it didn't seem like they remembered a whole lot, but the mom and her only (and oldest daughter who's turning 18 in a couple months) are extremely hard workers and both had great faith. She and her two oldest children have been baptized, but she has a 10-yr-old and an 9-yr-old son who we're teaching to prepare them to be baptized. I had no idea how hard it was to teach children! I have a ton of respect for teachers! I never could've guessed how hard it is to get them to focus one any one thing in particular! Still, we have had a couple of really great lessons with her and her daughter joined us this last time and it was really a great discussion and I feel like we helped them and I'm looking forward to meeting up with them again.

Oh, and at the end of the lesson, we left them with a big bag of candy (so that might have made them want us to come back! Haha hopefully not just for more candy though...). We actually didn't buy it, we had just come back from our dinner appointment... and let's just say that we might be getting really fat over the next couple weeks... We have about 10lbs of chocolate AT LEAST at our house right now! Last night we had a dinner appointment with the C's (a family in the ward) and she's a MARS distributor. So of course she had to send us home with some candy. No, not just some, but about enough to give us DIABETES. It's ridiculous. I'll include a picture of JUST the candy that I got. My companion got just as much! It's nuts! (We actually have peanut M&M's, peanut butter snickers, snickers, and almond M&M's now, so that's all kinds of nuts too! Sorry, bad pun...) Luckily we have bikes this week, so I'm hoping that I won't gain too much weight. We typically bike around 10 miles a day (with all of our gear), so we will see. I'm really really glad that I have a 3-liter camel pack because I would be DYING without it! I might get heat stroke like Elder D! (see previous emails) 

 So one day my companion was just feeling TERRIBLE and he ended up sleeping through all of our study time (I encouraged him to do it because he was throwing up and had a headache... not good news). Anyways, this is him after he woke up. Doesn't he look happy? I actually got around 2 1/2 hours of scripture study in. CRAZY RIGHT????? I had no idea that I could even focus on one thing for that long! Haha anyways the second picture a little longer of a story. So one night my companion was trying to make spaghetti, but we didn't have any pots or pans. So he uses the slow cooker! These noodles were HUGE! They soaked up so much water, and he was about to through them away, and I had a thought,'hey, those look like chicken noodle soup noodles'. Soooooo I ended up making chicken noodle soup! I put it all together and it actually doesn't taste that bad!

One last thing. I don't know if it is more frustrating to have people refuse to come to church, or to have them say that they will, and then not come. ESPECIALLY when you arrange for a ride to pick them up.. We had 9 less-active members and like 5 investigators who were GOING to come, but didn't end up there... Talk about frustrating. One of our investigators (who just dropped us) was super awesome to teach, but he didn't really want to meet with us anymore. We told him that he should at least attend church at least 1 time before he made that decision, but I guess that he just really did not want to come. We're going to keep checking up on him and seeing how he's doing and stuff, but I guess only time will tell. We can't force anyone to do anything.

Ok, last LAST thing. So after visiting one of the less-active families in the ward (one of those who said that they would be there... grrr...) Told us that we should just stop by her grandma's house to see how she's doing. Now her grandma is super active in the church and is actually a ward missionary! But we went and visited her anyways. Now before we go any further, her grandma is a ward missionary for the Kaw River ward. The reason why she's going to the Kaw River ward is because she only speaks SPANISH. SO that was a very interesting visit, but I am going to say that it was one of the most fun visits that we've made in the past week because it reminded me of home! (A little shout out to the Spanish Branch in Spokane!) She was this super tiny Latino lady and it reminded me so much of my abuelitas at home. We were able to communicate really well though (since Portuguese is so close to Spanish) and I ended up sharing my testimony, and she shared hers as well! (My companion was COMPLETELY lost since he didn't speak either language) I actually understood everything that she said, and I certainly hope that she understood what I was saying! I'm really looking forward to Brazil, but I'm having so many great experiences here!

Anyways, I love hearing from everyone throughout the week especially now that both of my addresses are out there! Hopefully I'll here from y'all soon! Tchau tchau!

Elder Colvin