Dear Little Cousins...

Being on a mission is a lot of FUN! It is also hard work. I don't ever get to sleep in or play video games, but that's OK. I get to ride my bicycle every day and that is fun! I also get chased by dogs a lot. The other day a dog almost bit me, but my companion rammed it with his bike tire and we got away.

Oklahoma is as flat as a pancake. If you ever get up high, you can see for miles and miles. Oklahoma is also covered with RED dirt! The people here are very proud of their red dirt.

On Thanksgiving we ate a meal with some members. It felt like a normal Thanksgiving, but there weren't as many people as we have at my house. But last year I was so sick with the flu on Thanksgiving that I didn't eat anything all day. This year it felt great to enjoy a nice turkey dinner.

Our Mission President didn't want us to do any tracting on Thanksgiving so we wouldn't make anyone angry by disrupting their family holiday, so my comp and I bought a Pumpkin pie and some Cool Whip and ate it all Thanksgiving night. YUM!

 I can't wait for Christmas! There is a big park in Elk City that has lights everywhere in it. We drove by it a couple days ago. There are a lot of people that walk through the park and ride on a double decker bus around it. There is also an awesome carasell that people take rides on like the one we rode with Donovan in Seattle.  We're thinking about walking through the park and talking to people and getting some of the free hot chocholate they give out in the park this time of year.

My comp and I are best friends. We're having a great time.

Thanks for your support!

-Elder Shumway

Turkey Week

 I came home from a 24 hr exchange and there were two packages and like five letters for me on my desk! It was awsome! Thank you guys SO, SO much! (I NEVER thought I would ever look forward to mail, but getting something in the mail is AWESOME and can make a missionary happy all week!)

I'm going to try to write back to all of the letter writers, but don't know how many I will be able to actually finish and send by tonight.  Grandma and Grandpa Clark sent me some stuff. They are awesome. I need to write them back.

Missionary work is so unpredictable. We have super awesome and successful weeks, and then we'll have a slow week and every appointment will fall through and we won't teach hardly any lessons. The town we are in is full of people who are literaly always working in the oil fields and we can't meet with women unless another male is there but their husbands are ALWAYS working.  We only have three active priesthood holding members in Elk City who work a lot as well. It can be very, very slow sometimes, but we keep on finding things to do like service and tracting.

Thanks for the pictures, Dad. I miss Oregon and the mountians. It is very flat out here. You can see for miles and miles. The only thing that breaks the horizon are oil towers and windmills. haha.

That is very cool about the BOM reading challenge. I'm in Helaman ch 8. I want to finish it before I start over again. There are some cool study techniques that I want to do next time I read it but I plan on reading the BOM throughout my whole mission.

 I will send a longer e-mail next week. We have stuff to do and are always busy. For thanksgiving we have one dinner appointment, but it isn't even in our area. haha! No one feeds us, but that's ok. I plan on having a lot of mac and cheese.
 anyway... luv y'all
      -Elder Shumway          

BEST WEEK EVER!

 This week was the best week of my mission so far. We taught more lessons than we usually do, and we committed three people to be baptized on Dec 3.  It was an awesome week. Last night we had the most spiritual lesson I've ever had on my mission. It was with a lady who knows that the church is true and has been meeting with the missionaries for two years now. We have been helping her try to overcome her smoking addiction and get baptized but she never wanted to set a date because it stresses her out which makes her want to smoke even more. Her smoking has been getting better and we felt like we should set a baptismal date with her and her 10 year old foster child (who reminds me alot of Jackson, the boy that I baptized).
   We watched Prophet of the Restoration with her because she has been taught every lesson multiple times and we didn't want to be repetitive or annoying. That video is very good at bringing in the spirit. At the end of the video the spirit was thick in the air and it was very quiet. We told Michel, her child, that he was old enough to be baptized and asked him if he would like to do that. He seemed like he had been waiting for us to ask him that question and quickly said yes. We committed him to Dec 3 and then turned to Cheyenne and committed her to that same date. The spirit was raging and she committed without hesitating. It was awesome.  My comp was fighting back tears. It was sweet.
  A good week.
        There was an earthquake two nights ago here. I didn't feel it, but all the other missionaries did. Apparently it was kinda big. Today there is an 80% chance for tornados! I'm excited to see a tornado but the weather doesn't look like there is going to be a tornado. But I did see big lightning storms in the distance last night. Pretty cool.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A 5.6 magnitude earthquake shook central Oklahoma late Saturday. What could be the largest temblor in the state's history damaged homes, shook buildings, caused cracks and rattled a college football stadium 50 miles from the epicenter.

Chimneys collapsed through roofs of homes.
Area residents reported glass breaking and items falling from walls.
Several roadways buckled, including Highway 62 and other county roads.

The quake was shallow at 3.1 miles deep and occurred at 10:53 p.m. Central Daylight Time. It was centered about 45 miles east of Oklahoma City. Several smaller aftershocks struck early Sunday.