It has been a ridiculously cold week! Luckily we had the car! We had to give it to the Carthage Elders yesterday, but guess what! It's warmer! We might be above freezing right now! I'm not sure. But it's considerably warmer now.

The Library is FINALLY back open! I'm so glad! I was getting way sick of invading our member's homes to email. The school's have been closed all week,pretty much. Which is ridiculous. They say it's closed because of "dangerous temperatures." Whatever! Have gym and recess inside! This isn't that complex. These darn Mid-Westerners are a bunch of wimps. haha

So, no one came to church yesterday. That was way lame. We haven't found a new investigator in 2 weeks. That is very upsetting. We're expected to get a new investigator every day. 7 a week. And we've had two weeks without a new one. And not for lack of trying either.

A couple weeks ago we did a cookie-run. We baked some cookies and took them around to some people. Some investigators, somc less-actives, and I think 1 active family. Sis. Lewis, one of the less-actives we gave the cookies to, told us last night about her thoughts on the cookies. She thought we had greased the pan with bacon grease! She said they smelled and tasted like bacon grease! I don't know what happened! We did not use bacon grease! Now she's telling everyone in the ward that we made her bacon cookies! lame!

I don't recall if I told you about how we had lunch with her on Christmas Eve. We went over to her house and watched An Unlikely Mormon. It's a DVD of Glenn Beck telling his conversion story. It was good. I really enjoyed it.I highly recommend it.

I'm glad that the Shipley's are enjoying the dog. How is Grammy's cat doing?

We have a mouse in our house, we discovered this week. We named him Hamlet because he is going to die. Stupid Hamlet.

Do you have any suggestions for cheap Crock-Pot recipes a missionary could make? We recently acquired a crock-pot(just like the old blue one I grew up with!) and I would love some ideas on how to best utilize it. We cooked a nice pork roast in it all day, then shredded it and made pulled pork sandwiches. That was awesome. We also cooked steaks in it. I remember you tellin me Dad, about the Scouts cooking steaks in a Dutch oven with Vegetable Oil. We tried that with some super cheap steaks we found at Wal-Mart. It wasn't bad. Kind of a unique flavor.

I have improved much in my cooking ability. I like to cook a lot. I make some amazing tacos and quesadillas, I tell you what. :) The secret is the stuff called El Pato. It's this little can of Mexican tomato sauce kind of stuff that you buy at Wal-Mart for 62 cents in the Mexican Aisle. It makes for an amazing sauce for taco meat or to cook a chicken breast in for Quesadillas. Of course I add other spices as well, but that's the main ingredient. I'm going to make some Manwich Sloppy Joes today. I've never done that, but it sounds so simple.

Not much else is going on to report of at this time. Hopefully things will start picking up. :)

Have a great week! Enjoy your vacation!

Love,
Elder Bracken