"Each day is a miracle out here!"

(Sorry this is week 3, a few weeks ago. I am failing at the blog. Sister Black Has yelled at me.)

Hello, sorry i didn't send an email yesterday... but i was WAY busy. So I am sending one today! :) so i don't have time for a marathon email, nor do i have a desire to type that much!!!! so here we go with the highlights from last week.

Tuesday morning we woke up and it had snowed 10 inches monday night, it was still snowing and snowed pretty much all day tuesday. 10 INCHES! It was insane, school was cancelled and everything... of course as missionaries we don't get to just take a day off so we were out and about, mostly we just made visits and we had a really intense snowball fight with the spanish elders, the elders we serve with and a woman named Carmen and her son Christian from the spanish branch. We all had lunch there and then we put our coats on and went outside. it was really fun! the snow here is so different than in utah... its so dry and hardly packs when it falls! All of our evening appointments were cancelled, of course because people in GreenBay stay INSIDE and hibernate for weather like that! sO, we went to Bishop and Sister Huzzeys house and had dinner and visited. It was good, since they have 2 children out serving I think they are really aware of us and called and just knew we might be needing a place to come for the night. I LOVE them!

Wednesday was a good day too. Some roads still hadn't been plowed so we had to plan our routes carefully, but we played volleyball with the women in the morning (I'm getting dang good PS, taylor & tatum it's on when I get home!!!) then we had interviews with President Barrett. He's great. Later that night we went to the Young Women's Christmas Party at the Huzzeys... that was really fun. It was good to meet all the YW finally.

Thursday was zone conference. I felt like I was back at the MTC! It's one whole day spent at the church in different training meetings. However, I learned so much. Since it was Zone conference we had our zone come and the Appleton zone. There were lots of us and I got to see Elders Love and Turney who were in my district at the MTC. That was great. It's fun to get to meet so many other missionaries. All of the new missionaries and the missionaries going home bear their testimonies at the end. It was so cool to hear from the missionaries that will be going home and know that in just a few short months that will be me! I want to live this time up while I have it!!! We also did a zone presentation on enduring to the end and we were to share an experience we had with that. I was able to talk about little miss Jaydie King and what a good example she was to me of enduring to the end of her trial and making the best of a bad situation. It was powerful. Its so interesting that all of the experiences we have in our lives really do prepare us for the future. I see that each and everyday as a missionary.

Friday we had dinner with the Cozzens family. They are SO cute. Bro Cozzens has been out of a job since march. He was just hired on to manage a wal mart store about an hour away from GB. SO he is only home on weekends. He has the cutest family of 6 kids ages 12 - 3 months. They are some of the most faithful people I have ever met. Can you imagine being out of a job for 10 months with 6 kids? Some people never even knew they were dealing with that. I love the Cozzens family. After dinner we went to the Carlsruhs home to teach Corry (our 17 dynamite investigator who gets baptized in early january) and a lady named Heidi who is one E. Jolley and E. Pulley's investigators. She has three small boys. Danny 6... Reese 4... Sam 2. They are so rowdy! I love them but as we watched Joy to the World the elders maintained them. It was intense, at some points I didn't think the house would still be standing thru that short video. I finally convinced Sam to sit by me and told danny if he sat still and watched the video i would have a snowball fight with him after. SO then E. Pulley just had Reese, who is most active of all!!! Ha it was a good teaching appt though. Both investigators committed to pray to know if the B.O.M. is true and and to act on the answer they receive despite what other people tell them. Heidi gets a lot of anti- mormon comments, daily. I love to teach, my testimony is always strengthened as I do! PS i held true to my promise, and we had a good snowball fight with the kids after the lesson!!

Saturday we did a LOT of service. we went to a neigborhood christmas activity at the elementary school and I passed out prizes. It was fun. Its so good for people to see us out in the public like normal people and not like mormon robots that just knock on their doors or something.

SUnday we went up to Sturgeon Bay... it's so beautiful there! look at it on the map, its a peninsula and they have great apples and cherries there! Apparently its even more beautiful in the fall. mom we'll have to go there in the fall when i get home!! We cover the branch there too. There have been missionaries there for 28 years, they just took them out a couple transfers ago bc nothing was progressing. It's so TINY. There were 5 of us in Relief society. That's what I thought church was like all over Wisconsin. Oh how I was wrong. Greenbay has really big wards with lots of children in primary and in nursery. The Young womens has at least 25 active girls. It's great. But sturgeon bay is teeny. They meet in a progressive building. SO right now they are in a phase 1 building. THe seminary building in pima is about the size of this building. when the branch gets bigger theyll add more and more until it can get up to a stake center size building. Kind of cool. The church is so amazing how well they plan EVERYTHING including how they buy land and build churches. We vistited less actives and investigators there and then stayed the night at the Seelys home. Grandma and Grandpa- they remind me of you! It made me miss you!

Monday morning we drove to Algoma, visited referrals and then came back to finish our Pday yesterday in GreenBay. We cover a lot of area and sometimes it's frusterating because I want to stay in Sturgeon Bay or Algoma and work there. The church NEEDS to grow there! We visited a really cute couple, she's 23 he's 27 who just don't attend church mostly bc he works sundays but also bc the branch is so tiny and they feel out of place being the only young ones! It would be hard for me too i think! Last night we went and made dinner with the elders at the home of the Ribbens family children. Their parents are in North Dakota with their daughter who was in a really bad accident on her way home with kids from other families in the ward from BYU Idaho for the semester. They hit black ice and rolled. It's just scary. FLY home if weather is bad. It's worth the money. THe weather is still so bad there that the parents slept in the hospital the past couple of days while jenny was there because nobody could leave the hospital. She gets to come home today. It was a really scary situation and they all should have died. SO we made dinner with the kids bc their parents were away. We made spaghetti- 1st time i've had it on a mission!!! and then we played RISK. Rocky- I played risk and I get it now!!! I can play! UGH i told everyone about my bad experience with the game of risk one christmas day. haha they all laughed. We only played it because the elders and Joey, whos 13 insisted!!!

Today it dropped from 41* in our underground parking to -6* in about 5 minutes in our car as we drove out of the pking garage. -6*, everyday i say at LEAST once "Why do people LIVE here???!! It warmed up to -2* now. SO WARM!!! haha Actually though, with all my layers and gloves it's not too bad at all!!!

I love you all! I love being a missionary. Each day is a miracle out here! Love Sister Pamella Jo Black