It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

An e-mail sent on December 1, 2008

Hello all!

Lots of love from wint'ry Oscoda, MI. We got a couple inches of snow overnight, which is lots of fun to walk through! We (thankfully) have new miles now that it's the start of the month, but in order to avoid running out like we did last month, we're going to start out walking anywhere in Oscoda. Makes me wish it were a little denser of a city. We're probably going to kill our miles right off the bat since we have work planned this week that will take us to Houghton Lake (100 miles away), Hale (30 miles away), Tawas (15 miles away), Whittemore (50 miles away), and Au Gres/Omer (70 miles away?). Yeah. So, we won't be able to use our car much this month. Too bad.

Thanks for the package! Elder Valentine was jealous of the candy bars (I was too selfish too share them) but I didn't feel that bad because he got a package last week with one of those big bags of Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups and he had them all finished inside of one day. The cookies are delicious! The thermals will come in handy! And I'm way excited to have CDs! I love the Rejoice and Be Merry CD! Elder Valentine doesn't understand why I'm so enamored with the King's Singers but that's all right. I'll only make him listen to them through the end of the month.

Sticking to a theme of musical news, I'm going to have a very musical Wednesday at zone conference. I'm playing the hymns, performing one musical number (I'm a little grumpy at the zone leaders for letting me know with only enough time to practice one day - today), accompanying another (some of the sisters are singing), and then playing for the caroling activity (I'm not exactly sure) that we're apparently having after zone conference. For my musical number, I borrowed a Christmas songbook from one of the ward members. It's not meant for a piano solo, so I'm doing what I can to jazz it up. I wish I had paid more attention back in music theory - I'm so bad at composing/arranging. Oh, and also, I'm hoping I get transferred out of Oscoda before Christmas because the branch music-lady (whatever her official title is) asked me if I would like to sing for the Christmas program (how she got that idea I'll never know. Actually, I do know. I mentioned that I sang to Sister Karn - bad move on my part).

In non-musical news, we had really great trade-offs with Elder Fortuna, the district leader, and his companion, Elder Wilkinson this last Wednesday. We all blitzed Oscoda to conserve miles (since Houghton Lake, their area, is 100 miles away). I started the morning with Elder Wilkinson, we taught a lesson while tracting and taught one of our investigators and then I switched to spend the evening with Elder Fortuna. We did some more tracting; I felt really strongly that we needed to go back to the street Elder Wilkinson and I had knocked earlier and we found a couple of potential investigators. Mostly it was just a lot of fun to talk to Elder Fortuna. I don't know, I guess it's just nice to spend a little time with someone who's not your companion every once in a while.

Sunday was a little disappointing for us; only one investigator came to church (we were hoping for at least two), and our less-active member that I mentioned last week ended up being sick. Still, it was a good time, I guess - Elder Valentine and I both spoke (about which I was not informed until Friday night, despite the fact that Elder Valentine heard about it on Wednesday).

Oh, and also, Thanksgiving was great! We spent the day with two member families down in Tawas - the food was great, we played Apples to Apples and generally had a good time.

I love you all,
Elder Cloward