Okay, so I pulled out my coat this morning.

  But to be honest, P-day mornings include just a lot of sitting around in the cold pre-dawn breeze, which isn't conducive to staying warm in any way. Frisbee is getting hard to do as our fingers are numb enough to be constantly fumbling and missing throws. So yah, it's colder. Which is pretty good, but I still need snow. The plants are struggling with staying inside all day, but they are not acclimated to the cooler weather and it definitely doesn't help them. 

Speaking of plants, while we were at the store the other day I spotted mangoes on sale, and had to pick up one or two. I enjoyed eating them one half at a time throughout the week, which was cutting it close as the last one I ate had a little bit of mold on it. This week we had our first district council in forever, due in part to the district leader getting transferred this last transfer. Elder Markham is our new district leader, and he set some pretty crazy goals for this transfer. For starters we gotta take a cold shower every morning. Set the shower handle all the way to cold and leave it there for the transfer. I am able to handle this one okay, as I have been taking not cold showers per se, but colder ones since I got here. When we first went out to exercise, and the temperature and humidity were killing me at six in the morning, I had to counter it, if just a little bit, so my showers have been on the colder side anyways. You should hear the yips and howls from the other guys, including Markham, every morning when they have to get in. The other goal though, in my opinion, is wholly unrealistic. We are all supposed to be doing a hundred push ups every day. I've only been able to do around forty five, and that is throughout the day, with a lot of breaks in between. I still can't run worth a can of cheddar and broccoli soup though, despite us doing running exercises every other morning. All the other guys leave me in the dust, and I would just love to challenge them to a twenty mile bike ride. Biking I have tried to keep up with every day, and I hope to not lose any power there. Before district council we went to Braum's, one of the most delicious restaurants in the area. They have wonderful ice cream, but are only located in a couple of states near Texas. The reason being that they get their delivery of milk every single morning fresh from a farm located only a couple of hours away from every Braum's. You move too far away from Texas and they start petering out. After district council on Wednesday, we had meetings every morning from ten to eleven, as Elder Teh of the seventy spoke to us in a mission wide zone conference. He talked about our toolbox, how we need to make sure we are not cutting wood with a screwdriver. That we are supposed to change up our tools and make sure we know how to use all of them. Then he backtracked a little to say that we should always be using the Book of Mormon as our central main tool, and to use our other tools to compliment it. He talked about how in the Bible when it says that a shepherd would leave his sheep in the wilderness to go search for the lost one, that this is a mistranslation. Joseph Smith correctly translated it as the shepherd would leave his safe sheep to go travel in the wilderness to look for the lost one. And that is what we are doing here, searching the wilderness for the lost sheep. We discussed a story of a millionaire who went missing and how the whole world searched for him. The military pulled out their scanners to search for him. We as missionaries need to use all of our tools as we do our best to find the missing sheep. We heard rumors that afterwards he would be doing apartment inspections by phone, so we scrambled to clean up but he never did. 

All of us were wearing short sleeved shirts on the first zoom meeting so that afternoon our mission president sent out a link that led to the missionary standards of clothing. The next meeting about half of us were wearing our suits. Then the ZLs had to just tell us to wear our suits for the last one. Right after the last meeting was President Nelson's message to the world. Despite the slow and pausing internet we got through it and I loved it so much, we shared it with a lot of the members we were working with. Then we did more service setting up for Christmas at the train depot this week, plus helping a couple people move. We did have two appointments set up for this week but they both cancelled. We did get a big list of new numbers to call so we are working through that. Problem is, its really old and we are getting a lot of dead numbers. Out of about fifteen numbers we got one who picked up, who had moved, who we helped to move their records. We got a lot of people asking us this week if we had a place to have Thanksgiving dinner at, and we did. The family confirmed with us at the beginning of the month about it, but in this last week they had to cancel because of something, but we'll be able to find a place for the holiday. That's been about all this week. I've gotten some time on the piano as my companion continues his Pathway work. I'm hoping for more connected calls this week, and I hope all is well at home. Enjoy Thanksgiving!