A snowy, icy tundra

Dear everyone,

It's great to hear from you. Winter is definitely here in New York. Last Monday we played soccer/football outside with some other missionaries in shorts and t shirts; this week that won't exactly happen, ha. It's a snowy, icy tundra now. Driving to church yesterday the thermostat on our truck read -9. Pretty crazy - for me anyway. I hope the campout this week goes well; I don't remember ever camping out in January...cool, though. I have yet to get Mom's letter this week so I can't respond to anything in that, sorry. If you send them earlier in the week I'll get them before the weekend and that's better that I get them before I read your emails and email you back.
I have had another great, quick week. Our district meeting in Binghamton went great as well as our exchange in Elmira. Wednesday morning we drove right through Ithaca...that was pretty weird/cool. Unfortunately we were running late, trying to get to Utica for a district Meeting at 10am, otherwise I would have made an attempt to visit those in Ithaca. Where were you around 7:30-7:45am on Wednesday morning? We drove past the Panera (sign) but I had no idea if Paige was there then. We'll make it happen, ha. Other than the trainings this week we were able to actually get quite a bit of teaching done. Gail, our investigator, is doing amazingly well. We taught her at the church with some members Wednesday night and it went great! She also came to church and after the 3rd hour we met up with her and asked how it went/if we could answer any questions for her. She said something to the effect of - yeah, I have questions but you can answer them later, I'm just enjoying this great peaceful feeling. Haha, it was great! It's amazing to me how much Spanish I am using here in Utica. I love it so much. I used it a bit in Albany but it wasn't nearly as frequent/common in interactions with people we encounter on the street and such. Here it's been almost every day we're out and about that I use Spanish. There is a Sunday School class in the ward exclusively in Spanish, too. I forgot if I've mentioned before that we are teaching a man - who was a member's acquaintance - from Puerto Rico who speaks little English. It's been great teaching him, he's very receptive and knowledgeable. All in all things are really going great and moving swiftly along. I'm excited to travel to Albany late tonight! We are doing trainings over there this week (2 Tuesday, 1Wednesday) and working with Elder Checketts (previous companion there in Albany who is still there, going home with E Miller). The Albany ward has continued to have tons of success since I left which is great to see and I just heard that a man I started teaching, a part-member family I wrote about before, has a baptismal date! It's so cool. So I'm excited for all of that and Friday we have New Missionary Return and Report - where the new missionaries (like Sister Smith in Ithaca) come and we meet with them with President and have trainings and such. I'm excited for that. This week is going to go by very fast. I'm happy and happy to hear from all of you. Thanks for all that you do for me. I love you.

Love, Elder Christensen