April 24th letter

Greetings from Elder Arko in the office (no they don't have a Dwight),

Elder Arko's week has been the same as usual. They have received a few referrals from Temple Square that have been in thier area so they had some fun getting in contact with them so far. One of them seems to be very interested in learning more, but was a little flabbergasted that two young men showed up at his front door with the DVD he ordered. Apparently he thought it would be shipped or something, but he got the real deal! The other one lives a little further out so the Elders haven't been able to visit them yet.

There are two companionships in the office, one companionship is made up of assistants (they travel around at zone conferences giving a message and do a lot of other traveling for splits and such), the other two Elders are the secretaries (who stay at the office and do things like booking tickets, filling orders, paperwork and organizing logistics of the mission). Elder Arko had the great idea to bake an apple pie for the traveling assistants. The only thing is Elder Arko didn't have any ströbröd (the translation is bread crumbs, but it's just a mix of flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder). The recipe called for 3 deciliters of that; so Elder Arko, being the genius that he is, decided to just add 1 1/2 sugar and flour each to the recipe and add a dash of salt and baking powder to make up the difference...it was a pie, but it was EXTRA sugary and...it was okay, but still very interesting :) So we have an improv baker on our hands :)

The Elders didn't have too much time for finding this week because they've been working in the office a lot and also have a fair amount of people who are investigators or potential investigators that they've been getting a hold of and setting up appointments with. Another thing is their ward seems to be getting into missionary work more. They have two appointments to go out with other members on home teaches. They also might take a few of them out tracting or contacting.

Elder Arko is now reading in the book of Jacob in the Book of Mormon and that is a book he's learned to appreciate a lot more so he's really excited to read it this time. Last time he just seemed to connect with not only what the book was saying, but also with Jacob himself. Elder Arko feels that Jacob is his 'home boy'.

Elder Arko has been thinking about Mother's Day since it's coming up :) The calender he has says "Mothers Day Elder Arko gets to call HOME!" They haven't planned their Mother's Day yet, but he will be calling home pretty early because of the time difference.

They've had little problems with the volcano over there. All the trains and buses are pretty booked up because a lot of people can't fly. They didn't have any missionaries get stranded or anything of that sort. They didn't even really see too much of an ash cloud, but it's said that when it rains if you put a white plate outside you can see the flecks of ash that come down in the rain.