Elder Ryan John: 11/15/09

Well hello there fam! Well dad i hope you have had your fix for eye surgeries for a while.. that would be nice! I wish there was something i could do for ya.. I will continue praying for ya! So mom i guess you just felt a little left out with dad having all these surgeries that you decided to go get stuff done to your back eh? Its like trying to keep up with the Jones' in our family now isn't it... :D Its a good thing I'm not home or else i would have to think up something to mess up real bad so that i could have the worst problems in the house.. you know how competitive i can get :D lol no but i really am praying for both of you! no more old people symptoms until your at least 50... ok?! oh and by the way mom i am fine from the car accident.. i promise. but yes it really is a miracle! pretty crazy pictures huh? So how has the weather been in Utah? we got some snow here.. and boy i tell you what this place is so beautiful! I absolutely love it! Like even at the library where i am at right now out the window is just woods.. its awesome! and there is deer all over the place.. I haven't seen any elk but the deer are everywhere.. We see them everyday. In fact the other night we were driving and one of them hit the side of our car! it was just like what happened to me when i was in Shelly's little red car down by snow college! but no worries i think the deer lived... :D So this week we went and raked leaves for our ward mission leader at his house.. well he lives up at deer lake and he owns this resort up there and it is just absolutely beautiful! I couldn't believe it. He has all the docks too that go out into the lake and i wanted to go fish off them so bad! lol.. but we had to rake leaves otherwise he probably would have let me.. He is like 80 years old and he is the nicest guy in the world! But it was pretty fun. maybe when the lake freezes over he will let us go ice fishing off of his dock.. that would be perfect. Plus they have lots of cool fish in the lake he said.. So this week overall was pretty good. It feels as if we have a lot of work that is just kinda sitting on the fence and so we have been trying our best to shake the fence and just hoping and praying that they will fall on the right side :D But we will see what happens. The Bassett family is still doing pretty good. They didn't make it to church this week. And Bruce (the dad) well he is a history guy and he just loves history but because of that he went on google and typed in "Joseph Smith" and "Brigham Young" and so on and so forth and just read everything that he could find.... so he is a little upset because of it.. But the cool thing is that it makes no difference whatsoever what happened in the lives of those men regarding the restoration of the gospel when it comes to knowing whether or not Christ's church is back on the earth.. Satan just tries to make it about the prophets or (the men) when really it is about our savior Jesus Christ and what he has done for us right here right now! along with what he did for us 2000 years ago.. but that is the comforting part.. and we kind of explained that to him.. but we will see.. so please remember the Bassett Family (Bruce, Laura, Nick, and Elizabeth) in your prayers if you will! They are such a wonderful family and they know darn near everyone in the ward and didn't even know that they went to the church.. So that is a good thing so we are just going to try to get the ward more involved with them and see if we can help them progress in gaining testimonies! But we are excited for what work the Lord has given us right now! In the district we had 2 baptisms this week.. and so that is cool.. We are just plugging along.. Oh and mom about boots we are going to try to make it down to Spokane sometime soon and see what we can do about buying some boots.. so i will let you know about that.. But if you find some polishable WARM black boots just send the pic or link to me and i will check them out and tell you what i think.. :D I know we kind of did that last year but then i didn't really need them so now that i need them well i will put a little more into it :D Well interviews are tomorrow... and so I am looking forward to that! I love President Palmer! He is a wonderful man! Such a spiritual leader... its awesome! But I'm looking forward to hopefully getting a heads up about what is going to happen this transfer even though we still have 2 weeks to go.. But my guess is for me that i will be here the rest of my mission... But we will see what happens.. I cannot believe that Saturday was my 18 month mark.. WOW! that went by fast.. But anyways I love you guys so much! Thanks for all that you do for me! Get better both of you! Take care of yourselves!

Elder Penman