Thanksgiving is tomorrow...

Dear Family,

So first an update on my foot. I am doing perfectly fine and it is healing up nicely and I took the stitches out this morning. It looks like it will be a pretty good scar. I am being careful on it but I am definitely not letting it slow me down at all.

In other news I have had some bike problems this past week that have left us stranded far from home. The first major problem that I had was that we were biking home form the far side of our area and I stood up to pedal fast through an intersection and as I tried to pedal my chain snapped. I was able to control the bike so that I didn't fall but the pedal did whip around and give me a big bruise on my thigh. So I got out of the road, picked up my chain, and we started walking. We walked for about 45 min before the english elders could bring me the bike tools I needed to fix the chain. I then tried for about a half an hour to fix my chain in the cold. I couldn't really do anything because a couple of the links in the chain had frozen up (the chain has had a lot of abuse) so we called a member to pick us up and our bikes. So by the time we got home about two hours had gone by and I was very cold and dirty. Sergio (the member) was nice enough to take us to the rest of our apointments that night. I came back that night and throughly cleaned my chain and put it back together. Unfortunately it was about 3 links too short so the next day I was limited on the gears I could use. But the bike made it all the way through the day until 7 pm last night. This time I was pedalling up a hill and the chain broke. Fortunately it was right next to our next cita so we just locked up our bikes and went in. So after that we walked home, it only took us about 30 min because parts of it were down hill and I could coast a good part of the way. So today we are going to go to the bike shop and buy a new chain. It was a pretty eventful week.

So this Thanksgiving I am grateful for warm jackets, helmets, and great members that are willing to help out the missionaries.

For dinner tomorrow we are going to a member's house. She is from El Salvador but goes to the english ward so we will see how it goes. We are having a preThanksgiving dinner tonight at a member's house (Hermana Paz) which I am very excited for. She is definitely one of the best cooks in the branch and is a really nice lady. She is always helping us out so last Sat. we went and cleaned out her garage for her. It was a huge mess so we went over in the morning and took everthing out, sweep it, threw lots away and then re-organized it. (Thanks Dad, saturday chores are helping me out) I really had a good time doing it and she made us hot chocolate which was nice especially since it was some in the high 30's outside.

It has definitely cooled off and the humidity will cut right through you if you are not careful. Thank you for the sweater it has really helped. When it is really cold I wear my longjohns, a white shirt, sweater, jacket, gloves, beanie, and scarf. I have gotten really good at wrapping my scarf and I can get it so that only my eyes show when I am riding my bike. I really love it here on the east coast. I have never been happier in my entire life.

We are teaching are really cool lady from Honduras, and she is going to be baptized on the 6th of Dec. It is really cool to she her take the steps to get ready to be baptized and she is really excited. She has a really crazy personailty but is pretty funny when you get talking to her. She told us a story about how a couple years back she got in a fight and broke another girl's nose. She is a live wire but willing to change in anyway so she can go to church and be baptized.

So I think that is the main news from out here in the east. I hope that everthing is going well back hope and that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Love,
Elder Haslam