Happy Monday everybody. I hope everybody is doing well. I'm having a
great time here. This morning we woke up to a lot of fog and there was
some snow on the ground. The forecast calls for some more snow coming
up this week. Hopefully not too much snow. Anyways, transfers are a
week from tomorrow. I am pretty sure my time is up here in Pottsville
soon. I've been here for a while and I've had some great experiences
and some not so great experiences. But I'm ready and anxious to see
what else lies ahead.

This week has been pretty great. Missionary work here is going well.
We are continuing on working with Sister Gibson and Sister Kaufman. On
Wednesday we had our weekly lesson with sister Kaufman. We watched
parts of the BYU devotional by Elder Robbins call tasting the light. I
encourage you to watch it, it's a great talk. He describes a faith
spectrum and is ranging from 1-10. 1 being that your an atheist and 10
having a perfect knowledge of God. Sister Kaufman said she was an 8
which I thought was great. She said she would be higher but she hasn't
been baptized yet. Some great progress we are making with her. She
also came to church yesterday.

Sister Gibson is doing well. One day this week we helped her with
picking up garbage around the neighborhood. She lives around the
corner from us. We had a great time talking about different things and
getting to know each other better. She really is a great person. One
lesson we had with her this week we introduced the stop smoking
program. She said she wants to set a date for when she will quit
smoking. She originally said that she wants it to be Easter. Hopefully
she will be able to reach her goal.

An awesome finding experience happened this past week. We were at the
Stanley home on Tuesday night having dinner and afterwards going to do
splits. Bro Stanley gets a call from a member in the branch asking if
he had an extra Book of Mormon. He didn't but thankfully we were there
and we were able to provide it. The man who wants it is a friend of
theirs and is really interested in the Gospel. His name is Allen and
soon we will be helping him to come to the savior.

Love you all, hope you are all doing well. Have a great week.

Love Elder Shumway

It does seem like thanksgiving was a while ago. I did have a great
thanksgiving. I'm grateful for the members here too. I've been in some
great areas with some awesome members who do take care of me.

Wow you are in a choir! What songs are you singing? Christmas is just
around the corner. What do you guys plan to do during Christmas break?
We should have church on Christmas. Here in Pottsville there will just
be sacrament meeting. I don't know what's going to happen in my new
area if I get transferred. I'll have to talk to you probably the
Monday before Christmas cause then I'll know if I'm staying or
leaving. We can also set up the time to skype cause I'll most likely
know when church is. I don't know where I will call from yet, it all
depends. I should be fine with Skype, I still have dad as a contact of
mine on Skype so it should work just fine. You didn't tell me that
church time has changed. We have been at 2:00 for a long time. Now
it's at 8:00am! Wow! Have fun getting up really early. It's easy for
us here in Pottsville cause we have the building to ourselves so we
can decide when church is.

Both of the sisters are kind of preparing for baptism. We haven't been
able to get sister Kaufman a date to be baptized. She is still
smoking. Our last lesson with sister Gibson we went over the stop
smoking program and she wants to set a date when she will quit. She
wants to set the date for Easter. We weren't too thrilled with that.
Sister Black while we were there said why don't you do it on your
birthday? Her birthday is January 7th, and then Elder Black said, why
not Christmas? So we are wanting her to bump that quilting date up
sooner so she can be baptized sooner. Unfortunately she has decided to
do Easter. She told me that yesterday at church. How did we meet them?
Well sister Kaufman is a spouse of a member and had been taught by the
missionaries before but the previous missionaries were very pushy and
that why she stoped investigating. Sis Gibson called our branch
president wanting to come to church because she has family members who
are members of the church in New York and has admired them all her
life. December 10th will not stand unfortunately. No work on Mason, he
has pretty much disappeared.

Games are always so fun to play. I wish we could have played more as a
family. Have you ever played the game catchphrase? I also have a mouth
piece for that game. It is getting colder. This morning we woke up to
a little bit of snow on the ground. So you ask those questions about
what did he say when he cut my hair and ask if I can get my money
back. I actually did it and I do t think I can get my money back
because it was free. It was a mistake I made while cutting my hair but
I have fixed it. I have spent a long time here.

I think Daren should really think about getting a pool. Especially
because of the little nieces and nephews. I'm sure dad enjoys his high
tech phone.

Looked like you all had a great time at the ward Christmas party. Oh
man cinnamon rolls are good. I haven't found any cinnamon rolls out
here that are good enough as yours. Also rolls, yours are the best.
I'm excited to get a letter from the ward. I do remember last years
and I still have it. It is really nice for everyone to do that. I
remember going to flip side, that was a lot of fun. You guys did stay
for a while and late into the night. Seems like you guys are doing
quite a bit of fun stuff.

I got on Facebook every now and then. We mainly use the messenger app
to communicate and have lessons with the people we are working with.
It is a great tool.

Elder Ostrom is a goof. He likes to make people laugh. We don't eat a
lot of ramen, we've actually been trying to give away some to some
members in the branch. We cook every now and then in our apartment.
Usually simple things like mac and cheese or a pb&j. Breakfast I
usually have a breakfast sandwich, lunch we usually do in the
apartment or at subs n such down stairs. Dinner we hope we have an
appointment if not we come home and eat.

Yesterday was grandpa birthday huh? I miss him a lot too. I was just
telling sister Gibson about him the other day and had brought back
memories of him. Sorry to hear about the death in the flygare family.
How is sister Whiz doing? Is she still in the hospital? I did include
her in my fast yesterday. I hope everything goes well for her.

Transfers are a week from tomorrow.

I'm excited to get another package. I've gotten the last one you sent.
Thank you for all those things. I ate those treats in like two days,
they were really good. Thank you for the tree too with all the
pictures. I would like $200 on my card.

Love Elder Shumway

Before I forget, I would love to have a copy of that story that we
always read together as a family. The one about the comb and the
harmonica. You know?