December 25, 2012



Hey everyone! i'm still alive if only.  my p day is on tuesday so today obviously.  the week has been good.  the days are super long and we work all the time or try to at least.  my companion is elder hales.  he is from layton ut and he is 21. he is pretty great.  the other elders in my room are marson and potter (yes like harry and he hates it when we make jokes about that).  Elder marson is from manchester england and he is so funny, he keeps us all laughing.  Elder potter is from odgen and he looks exactly like lou ferrigno (not sure how to spell that but it is the guy from the old hulk movie).  A couple of elders even came by and took a picture with him because he looks just like him. 

there are two other elders in my district in another room elders davis and karras.  Davis is from oregon somewhere and karras is from kaysville.  Then we have 3 sisters in our district all from utah.  Sisters sims, busteed and eschbach.  i lied, eschbach is from germany.  they are great too. 

elder davis and potter are going to benin with me and then elder marson is going to lyon france and sister sims and eschbach are going to lyon too.  then sister busteed is going to st george visitor center.  all of them speaking french. 

the french is coming along good.  i am right now in the regular class which is ten weeks because they are not bringing anyone in tomorrow.  but i am working hard because there is a slim chance they will let me go early still.  i have been working with one of the teachers and she really knows that i want to leave early and so she tries to work with me and push me to learn at my level and also help everyone else. 

it is the morning right now so we really haven't done anything even eat breakfast but we are going to have a general authority come and speak in a few hours, everyone thinks it will be edler.  that will be cool.  then we have a greg olson fireside later and a large lunch.  i can't remember what else, but there is probably some cool stuff. 

i didn't take many pictures this week but the ones i am going to try and send if i have time are some of the room mates.  the one in the onezie is elder marson.....yeah.  the one with him in that pic is his comp elder potter. then the other one with the weird face is elder hales.  elder potter split an apple with his finger and those are our messy desks in our room.  but we spend most of our time in the classroom.  they only let us come back to the room after we leave at 7 am most of the time until 9 30. 

there is tons to do though.  on sunday we watched a recorded talk of elder holland talking called missions are forever. it was sooooo awesome!  i loved it and it got me totally pumped up to work all the time.  you all should watch it, especially benjamin, haha because he will know what it is talking about, but he has probably already seen it.

there is a mouse in our airvent that ate a chocolate turkey and so we call him claude.  haha i am going to send home a package in the next few days with some present deals,  nothing special so don't get your hopes up but emma will be happy with hers.  i just forgot what day it was and that the mail closed early yesterday. 

it doesn't even really feel like christmas right now.  i will plan ahead better next time haha but whatever.  there is probably more but i don't know what else to say because all the days mesh together and each day itself feels like 3 or 4 days.  we will be sitting at lunch and think it is like 5 pm or we will be talking about something that happened yesterday or even in the morning and say oh remember when this happened the other day.  oh wait that was like 3 hours ago. 

nathan your letter was really short.  shape up. it is the first one you get to send me :) emma i don't think i got one from you but im good, you're awesome.  dad and mom thanks i miss you too.  also write your letters through dear elder so i can have more time to write my emails cuz we only have a half an hour to read and write everything.  well I'm doing fine, surviving. tell my buddies hi and i hope I won't see them because that would mean that i have left early.  but if i do that will be good too. i have seen james. if you see them and he is great.  i am in the zone with the creole elders and tahitian elders too. so nick clark is down the hall and i see him every day.  they are awesome.  there are four elders going to fort laud speaking creole here.  the food is not that great mainly a little old or a little cold or a lot weird tasting, nothing like moms good cooking.  thanks for the puzzle and the treats. we have soo much junk that i can't eat it all.  well i am trying to attach some pics but i don't know how so i guess i won't and i only have a few minutes left.  mom i love you and hope this is a good enough present this year.  have a good christmas everyone! got to go now.

love ya all elder rybin.