Going to Cody!

Hey everybody!!! So can you believe another 6 weeks is here and gone?!?! transfers are here and we got the call yesterday...... Me and elder archie are being transferd to Cody Wyoming!!! we will be serving in the 3rd ward and ill be finishing his training and will be the district leader. we are getting doubled into the area so we will both be brand new to the area and will be trying to meet everybody as fast as we can! It will be fun im really lookin forward to it!! But im extremly sad to leave Thermopolis:( i really love it here and the people here have a special place in my heart. It was short time being here but it was fun and i really will miss it!! But i know that there is work to be done in Cody and hopfully i will get to stay there for a while and not worry about gettin transferd around all the time!! haha but ill go wherever!! Hmmmm lets see we had a great week of teaching! The area is finially picking up! We found 2 new investagators and 6 less active members who want to be taught! So it was fun going and meeting new people and getting to teach a lot of lessons!!! man next week i hit my 9 month mark...... WEIRD!!!!!! Gettin close to that year mark its scarin me a little bit haha time is just flyin by!!! So last pday I pulled a Brian Swisher. we took the whole zone on a hike. We thought it was an easy hike but the sisters disagreed with us. So I said ok I will take you a shortcut back down. Well it ended being straight down the side of the hill. The sisters were not happy with me. Like father like son. If you know my dad and have been on hikes with him you know what i mean! haha Well i hate to have such a short letter but i have to get going!! I am leaving for Cody right now! ill email yall next week from Cody!!! have a great week!!!

love, Elder swishdaddy

 our hike

study time

Barn dance and Doughnuts!

Hello!!!!! So its been a sad week in the Thermopolis community:( The last day of school was last week and on that friday night a pair of sisters and their boyfriends(one of the sisters just finished high school that week) were drinking and driving. The two sisters were up front and the boys in the back when they got in a violent collison. The driver(older sister) died instantly and the younger sister died later. The two boys are both in the hospital with major injuries. They were all loved in this little town and everybody knew them wether they were 90 or 10 years old, everybody knows each other here. Its hard to see people so sad and so lost. I had only seen the girls, I never met them but it was still heartbreaking to hear. Im so happy to know that our Heavnly Father has a plan for all of us and he knows what is best for us. And that this life is just the beginning to a great eternity with our families and loved ones. My prayers go out to the families that have been effected. It really has been a sad week.

  Enough of the sad news though! On the plus side the weather is great and the best news of all.... I think i lost weight this week!!! I told myself last week i was gonna control how much food i ate and i did a good job, so on sunday i broke out the pants i came out with to see if they would fit..... And yes!!!!!!!!! They fit!!!! Its a miracle!!!! hahahaha so i celebrated by eating some dougnuts!!!!:) hahaha so they probably dont fit now but hey for that one day i felt skinny again!!!;) 

 People understand my love for pigs here, ITS GREAT!!!:)  So we had a ward Barndance this week!!! It was so fun!! A ranching family in the ward puts it on every year and they clear out one of their big barns and a live band comes and they call it a "ward activity" but their were more non members there than members! It was way sick!!! Line dancing and some other kind of country dance. It looked like a lot of fun!!!(us missionaries aren't allowed to dance) but i wont lie i wanted to get out there and dance hecka bad!! Everybody was in their cowboy hats and boots i was jealous hahaha! What a great missionary activity! We should do this in Brentwood. So fun! Hope its a good week in Brentwood!!!! Love and miss yall!!!!

LOVE elder Swishdaddy

Snowing in May! (lots of cool pics)

Hello Brentwood!!! So Happy late Mothers day to all the moms!!!! With out Moms this world would be one craaaazy place! They keep the world in order!!:) Thank you for all that you do Moms!!!!

  Well i got to skype home yesterday and see my awesome family!! I always love skyping home and seeing how everybody is doing!!! Man i'm lucky to have a great family! I love them and miss them so much! Yesterday i was especially thankful for my mom! We would go to houses yesterday of people in our ward and talk about moms, we would go around the room and share what we love about our moms it was so cool to hear everybody talk about their moms in all the houses! So This is my turn to share with all of you if i could pick out 1 thing that i love about my mom it would be the LOVING PATIENCE she has. I probably wasnt the easiest kid to raise but no matter what i did my mom was there to love me and had the patients to deal with all of my junk and help me learn and grow every day. Im so grateful she cares about me enough to love me through any situation i put myself/her through. She is an amazing example to me and to what i'm looking for in my future wife. My mom is a superstar i'm so lucky to have her in my life!! I LOVE YOU MOM!!!<3 

  So yeah Thermopolis is going great! i truly love it here. I love how beautiful it is and how nice everyone is!! We are teaching a good amount of people and are having a lot of fun!!! We are moving today! So its gonna be a long but pretty fun day!! We are moving like literally 3 seconds away hahaha but still got a lot of junk to move!! So this past week it of course SNOWED! its MAY WHY ON EARTH IS IT SNOWING?!?! This is not okay because i made a promise that i would put all my winter clothes away till next winter, makes sense right? well not in wyoming hahaha but hey i made a promise so i trucked around in my short sleeve white shirt;) hahaha no but it was fun!!:) Man i love being in the outdoors! i love this back country here its so pretty and has such beautiful wildlife! i cant wait to come fish and hunt up here after the mission!!!!:) OH.....so another thing that happened hahahaha.... driving home one late night this week i was driving from Basin to thermopolis so i had to go through Worland and it was late and we were tired and we just wanted to go home so i bumped up the speed and next thing you know those lights were flashing.... They busted Swishdaddy!! haha got a nice speeding ticket and the cop toatally laughed when she saw i was from california!!! i was so mad about that! hahaha but yeah that was a bummer of the week but i guess i can laugh about it now? hahahaha Well i think im out of stories!! I put captions on all my pictures this week. I hope everybody has a great week i love and miss everyone!!!!

Love, Elder Swishdaddy

 dressed for our basketball tournament (yes we had permission)

 This is a hot spring in a members backyard. They pump this water into their swimming pool. They swim year round, even in the snow! 

 my bishop's snow cat

 sledding behind the snow cat

 this is Pete. He lives in Thermopolis. That is a pet raccoon he is carrying on his neck. It even wears a shock collar so it stays in the yard. Everyone here puts shock collars on their pets. Cats, dogs, and yes even raccoons! 

working hard tracting

 its beautiful here

This is what 90% of the roads look like here

3v3 Tourney!!!

Hello everyone,

                    The work here is going solid. So last week we decided to make a big goal. We decided to teach 30 lessons! We taught a solid 23 lessons this week falling short of my high goal of 30 but hey not to shabby! We will try again next week and see how many we can teach. 

                    So Thermopolis is a tiny town in Wyoming but one thing I have learned is this is a small world. In my ward I have made so many connections. Brother and Sister Snow's family live in Brentwood (B3), the McCarthy's, My sister's ward mission leader in Virginia has family here, and my mom says Sister Hanberg does too!! 

                So today for pday we are going to my bishop's cabin!!! Its gonna be a lot of fun! we can't drive into the cabin because there is too much snow so we have to snowshoe 2 miles to the cabin!! Its gonna be so fun! And then when we get there we get to go hike some more and go shedding. Shedding is where you find antlers that have been shed by deer. He's also gonna drive us in his snowcat. I'm pretty pumped for it! It should be a fun day! 

            Okay so here's my awesome week I had,  So we kept hearing about this 3 v 3 basketball tourney going to happen this last weekend and apparently it's a big deal and stuff. so me and my two comps went downtown and signed up for this 3v3 tourney!! This used to be the nations biggest 3 v 3 tounery!! They used to get up to 300 teams. They literally shut down all of downtown and some other streets in town and set up about 120 half courts!!!! Teams come in from Chicgago and Denver and a college from Texas! hahahaha So thank goodness we signed up for REC play not the competitve play. But still rec play had some really good ballers! So we played in our white shirts and tags with our shorts and basketball shoes! hahahahahaha we looked so funny! People were staring at us and laughing! hahahah It was awesome! so we go out there in our first game on saturday and we were thinking we were gonna get shut out but we some how pulled the worst team! haha So we whooped up on them! and being missionaries and looking like missionaries playing ball we attracted a crowd to our game so everybody was laughing cuz the "Mormons with ties could ball" hahaha! Anyway we go to play our next game and the crowd followed us and we show up to play and its a team from Denver! with all these big guys over like 6 foot 3! hahaha they looked at us and were like "ohhhh shoot boys were playin against Jesus's team ain't no way we got a chance against Jesus!" hahaha they were just super funny they were really cool guys but were really good ballers!! they beat us 16-10 but were not trying and were not sweating after the game hahaha then you look at elder swisher and I'm drenched in sweat! Then we played some other team who were good but were at the same level as us(we really weren't that bad!) so we had this battle and they ended up beatin us 16-14! So there ends "The Elders" team for 3 v 3 basketball hahahaha BUT so many people saw us it was crazy and everybody loved us after all was said and done hahaha it was a really cool experience! 

So that's about it. 30 lessons next week!!!!

Love and miss you all!!

Love Elder Swishdaddy