February 3, 2016 - Hey, I'm In Danbury!

Sorry about that whole Fiasco last week. The software that the church has put on the iPad's decided to force update all of the iPads in the entire mission at 5 o'clock on Pday, so the email I had written up got erased. I'll update you a little on what happened that week. It was a good week, we had a baptismal date scheduled for the that weekend, but it got canceled because of the storm. We reset it for February 14th and she's pretty determined to get baptized that day. The snowstorm was pretty crazy even though we didn't get it that bad. We weren't allowed to drive basically that entire day, so instead we did our weekly planning. It was a pretty intense storm but all the snow is already pretty much gone. I started driving again for the first time in more than 8 months. It's been a good time. We have this little box in our car that tells us to slow down when we go too fast and gets mad and sends a report to president when we hit the brakes too hard or accelerate too fast. So it's been little bit different of an experience since last time I drove but not a bad one just a different one. Missionary work itself is also a little bit different here than in the city and that's a little bit of an adjustment too. There's not thousands of people walking around on the street, everyone has cars, and people have more normal hours. So in some ways it's a lot harder but in others it's a whole lot easier.

This week so far has been a pretty normal week. On Wednesday night we visited J---. He's awesome. He has a few things that are keeping him from coming to church but he'll get there. Later in the week we helped a member paint an apartment, and we were supposed to have our fancy meeting with the stake presidency and President Smith, but it got canceled last second on Sunday.

Yesterday I had a pretty cool experience. We went on a companion exchange with Elder Baldwin and Elder Viera, two of the Portuguese speaking elders in our zone. It was the first exchange that I've ever "been in charge of" and it went really well. You learn a lot when you're trying to teach others. The Elder that I was with was having a little difficulty with something and I had no clue how I could help him. Then at the end of the exchange we did a little debrief and I remembered a section of Preach My Gospel that perfectly answered the problem that he was having. We were able to set some goals and make some plans to help him improve and it was a pretty cool spiritual experience.

I love you. It's great to hear from you and hear that everyone's doing well. Have a great week. Thanks for coming in clutch with the glasses and insurance thing I was able to go and order them.

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride

Transfer Day!