It is legitimately -2 degrees outside rn. And windy. 1/1/2018

It's been cold this week. Like cold enough our windshield-wash/de-icer freezes when we use it. So that's awesome. Another bummer thing about this week is our car broke. The dealership claims they replaced the intake solenoid valve but I'm pretty sure they just reset the check engine light because the car still sucks. Anyone who has a 2015 Chevy Equinox, sell it, take any offer over $6, and buy a pogo stick. I've killed ours like 5 times, it's an automatic, you should not be able to kill an automatic. Plus when you turn the traction control off, it doesn't go all the way off, so the church parking lot donuts are abysmal. (for anyone who thinks I'm being a terrible missionary or at least an ungrateful one, this paragraph includes bits of sarcasm, but rings mostly true.)

     Elder Richardson is still stick with the plague or mono or mad cow disease or appendicitis or something, we try and guess which disease it is, and we've listed them all by now. After we had that lovely experience of "collecting data" at the hospital and the Wendy's bathroom, the test results came back saying that nothing is wrong. Soooo we have no idea what he's sick with, but it's something and it makes him miserable and we can't really tract much... So this transfer has been drrrrrrraaaaaaaaggggggggggiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnngggggggg on. But hey, I'm alive, Joseph Smith is still a prophet, the Church is still true, and Jesus is still the Christ. So I will survive. 

     Also, I forgot to tell an awesome story that happened on Christmas Eve. I told it to my family on  Skype so I forgot to tell all y'all about it. Anyways, Christmas Eve while at dinner we got 13 phone calls. All from a random number, I didn't answer it because it was on silent and we were with a family on Christmas Eve. However by the 14th phone call, we had finished eating, and I answered it. My first thought was "holy cow I'm pretty sure I'm on the phone with Tony Montana from Scarface." First of all, I've never seen that movie, but I didn't have to to know that this man was straight up mafia. Anyways, ironically enough, the guy on the phone was also named Tony, he was from Long Island, had recently moved to the area, and is a member. He gave us an address, and we (5 of us Elders) went to visit Tony after dinner. When we got to the address, we got kinda scared. It wasn't a house, it was a Psychiatric hospital, had a barbed wire fence around it, and had a vibe of "not really a choice place for 5 missionaries to be." Buuuuuut we went on knocked on the door (you couldn't just go in, it was like an airlock setup straight outta Star Wars.) The little box on the wall asked what we were looking for, and we said we had gotten a call from Tony, and asked us to come visit, and we were representatives of the LDS Church. All the lady said was "oh Tony isn't in this building. Turn around, walk straight, he's on floor 3, CPU." First of all, creepy, bc I didn't know she was watching us. Second, we didn't give her a last name, and she automatically knew who Tony was. So we were kinda getting worried, bc this place quite literally was an asylum, and people apparently knew who Tony was, even though he wasn't even in the area. But, we figured we'd be protected, as missionaries trying to do good on Christmas Eve, and we went to the HUGE main building, and walked right in. First thing we see is a set up large double doors, with large mechanical locks, and biometric security. There was an office with barred, tempered glass windows, with a Police officer with a .45 on his hip. So we immediately knew this was going to be legit. We told him we were looking for someone named Tony, and I'll be darned, this guy knew exactly who we were looking for. He called up to CPU (Community Processing Unit) and asked Tony to come down. While we're anxiously waiting for Tony to come down, we're quietly discussing a game plan, because the fact that everyone we'd talked to at this Psychiatric Center knew exactly who we were looking for when we said "Tony" instilled a fair amount of stress into our young hearts. Anyways, Tony came to the other side of the airlock/security gate thingy and he was just some like 26 year old Puerto Rican dude. He's also part Italian, and that's readily apparent by how he talks, but he was really cool. Apparently he got out of prison after being locked up for 3 years, and wants to come back to Church. So that's awesome. Anyways, we set up an appointment to come back, wished him a Merry Christmas, and went on our way. The return appointment was this week, and we went to really meet Tony and get to know him. When we got there, before we did anything, I asked the guard, "what exactly is this place, and do we need an escort to be in here?" He told us that is was what most people refer to as "an asylum" but also is a basic Psychiatric hospital. Luckily the "CPU" floor is more or less apartments, so we can visit Tony there, but we had to sign some HIPA thing that said we wouldn't repeat anything we see or here while traveling through the building. He also called up to the CPU floor to inform the staff that visitors would be coming, and then let us through the security gate and we were on our merry way. We had a great talk with Tony, read Mosiah 4, and afterwards, I was able to contact the 2 sister missionaries who found, taught, and got Tony baptized back in 2010. They were very excited that he was found, and glad to hear he was leaning towards the Church again. They knew he went down a rough path, fell away, and got in with the wrong crowd, but didn't know he was in prison for 3 years. So I had a good Facebook chat with the 2 of them, got some advice, and on Sunday, we got Tony to church. So that's probably gonna be the coolest "reactivation" story any of you hear this week. 

     Ok after typing all that, I've lost the desire to continue typing for too much longer. However, we were also able to have a great meeting and lesson and dinner with Sister Dwyer and her daughter Kassidy. Sister Dwyer was baptized many moons ago in Trinidad by a certain Elder Fife many of you may now know as Doctor Fife. She is now in the Binghamton Ward, and I was more or less brought here to help teach and baptize her daughter Kassidy, because that's an awesome connection, and proof that it is indeed a very small world. The Dwyer's fed us some AWESOME Trinidadian food and wow, lemme tell ya, it was wayyyy better than just about anything else I've eaten in like 6 months. And Kassidy is on date to be baptized on the 13th, along with Millie! So that should be an awesome start to the new year. 

      Well, that's about all the excitement I have to share this week. It's kinda crazy to think that it is already 2018. I feel like last New Year's Eve was not that long ago, and that was spent at Davis Clark's house and involved many bad combinations of things that explode. We blew up twinkies for like 2 hours. Plus, last NYE I may or may not have kissed a girl at midnight. Crazy to think that this NYE, I showered, shaved, and was in my bed by like 10:12. So it's crazy how much can change in a year.  But there's no place I'd rather be, and nothin else I'd rather be doin for the year 2018. 2018 is my "black hole year." The year where I literally will never see my house. I get to see like a million other people's houses as I knock on their door and tell them I'm not a JW, and there's something special about that. 

      Love you all, happy 2018, thanks for bein awesome.