November 14, 2016

Dear Family and Friends!

Wow, what a letter and what a week, thanks mom for the update, I'm so glad things are going well and that you got to have such a fun, jam-packed last week.  Tell Spencer to talk to Aaron if he has taken a liking to swing dancing.  At the senior year of prom Aaron killed it with the swing dancing, it was awesome.  Also, I'm a little jealous that dad is going to New Zealand, I remember forever ago when his friends from New Zealand invited us to go forever ago, I'm also excited to hear if the family will take off or not.  I'm of course all for the family going to Hong Kong, and given that last time when I really only wanted to be in Utah 1 year I got that wish, we'll see if I get 2 in a row.  Although it would be really nice to be close.  We'll see what happens, the Lord has a plan.  

I don't have too much time this week, so I'll keep it quick.  If you haven't watched President Uchtdor's talk from the President session of General Conference, please watch it.  In his talk he talks about the Book of Mormon missionaries "Alma and Amulek".  He talks about how there are "Amulek's" so to speak in our wards, who just need a chance and they'll become some of the strongest members we have, but they just need that chance.  Anyway, we found the "Amulek" so to speak in our ward, he received a calling last week, and he has taken off, and it's been super cool to witness.  This last Sunday was also so powerful, President Krot and I had planned to speak at the end, but he just leasned over to me after the rest hymn and told me to give the rest of the time to him.  Of course I did that, and he proceeded to ask several of the youth (many of him have only started coming again the last few weeks, and one who hadn't been for several years) to bear their testimonies.  It was so touching to hear of their trials and their spiritual experiences that brought them back.  One of my favorite things that was said was "Even when I had turned away from the Savior, he was never turned away from me."  I know that that is true, and it was just such a wonderful spiritual experience.

In other news, we're still going to seminary every day, I haven't been perfect on the no sugar, but I can count the number of times I've messed up on one hand which is good, and yesterday, we tried холодец. If you're curious what's inside, look it up, I was terrified at first, but it turned out not to be that bad.  Anyway, that's all for this week!  Oh, and a big hello from Patrick O'Leary to the family :)!

Love you all!

Elder Belnap

ХОЛОДЕЦ:

gelatin (they grind the pig bones themselves)

turkey

carrots

some horseradish on top (of course)

the trick was to have a bite, and then a bite of something normal (like bread or potatoes), that was I could handle it a bite at a time.