Elder Finch: January 11th

I love South Carolina.

Lately the temperature has been varying between 15 and 35 degrees. That probably sounds nice to you. Unfortunately 15 degrees here is different that 15 degrees in Utah. There’s a lot more humidity in the air here, so the cold penetrates through everything.

Winter here is not as hard on the ears and fingers as it is in Utah, but your bones get a lot colder. For a while, our car's heater did not work. Luckily we got it fixed. I have not seen one yet, but apparently they get ice storms here. This is where ice builds up on everything. It gets to the point were the ice starts pulling down telephone wires, and stuff like that, but there has not been much ice yet.

Elder Urry and I stopped running. The cold was too much for him. It was almost too much for me too. While running in this cold, your lungs start to hurt, and then all your joints get cold. The cold kind of attacks form the inside out. When it warms up, we'll start running again.

Something funny, last week, I was offered coffee on three different occasions. Elder Urry told me that before that, he had never been offered coffee on his mission. The first guy that offered us coffee, we had planed on teaching him the word of wisdom, so we were somewhat ready for it.

It keeps surprising me the things that are holding people back. We just barely dropped our investigators that were nearest to baptism. They have three children. Last week we were talking to them about marriage. They decided that that was a step they wanted to take. Then yesterday, they said they changed there mind. We kept asking them why. When we were just about to give up on finding out why, they told us they’re cousins. We had to drop them because there was not anything that we could do to help them. They had trapped themselves. We are hoping that this won't affect their children negatively.

We dropped a lot of other people yesterday too.

On a happier note, Marcella is progressing again. She had stopped progressing when her husband came back, but she started reading again. She seems to have a great desire again to do what’s right. She has not come to church yet. Hopefully she’ll come this Sunday. If she dose, a lot of good things could happen.

My Spanish is improving a lot. When I'm speaking Spanish, I don't think in English at all anymore. I have been complemented on my Spanish once.

When I'm talking fast, conjugations still trip me up a little. It is hard because one verb has 51 different forms, when in English, each verb only has 4, with an exception of to be. For example, with run, there’s run, running, ran, and runs.

We have two working bikes right now, mine and my companions. We hope to fix the other two today. One of the bikes, the crank keeps falling off. I'm thinking about putting glue on the bolt, so it won't loosen any more. That bike also has a flat. The other bike has worn completely through its tire in spots, and the tube popped. We plan on buying a new tire and tube for it today.

Everything else is going great.

I am enjoying all the Hispanic food, and the warmth of today. Today it is about 40 degrees. Mondays are usually warmer.

I guess that that is all I have to say today.
I love you all.
Elder Finch