Email from January 7, 2013

It really has been a great week here in Centreville 1st! It was full of lots of good lessons and a great fast Sunday. In fact we hit the record for the most lessons we've had in a week since I've been here, so it was a really good week for teaching. We had lots of lessons with the young man we've been teaching named Ben (my parents got to meet him on Skype) they all went very well, he is a really great guy. Elder Skinner did have a pretty gnarly bike accident on our way to one of our lessons with Ben though haha. The 3 of us (Elder Skinner, Ben, and myself) were riding our bikes to Subway for dinner and a lesson at about 6 o clock, which means that it was already completely dark out haha.  So while we were riding we were using some bike paths that go back through the woods and there were quite a bit of puddles from some rain we had the other night. Well Elder Skiner and I don't have fenders on our bikes so usually mud gets flicked up from the front tire onto our pants if we ride through them, so usually we try and just wheelie over them instead. This time though Elder Skinner pulled up to wheelie and his left handle bar came up but the right one stayed where it was at! The handle bars snapped completely in half haha. So Ben and I were a few yards behind him when we saw this happen and it just looked like his bike slipped out from underneath him all of a sudden and he fell over haha. We both stopped before hitting him though and went to see what happened. Elder Skinner is totally fine but his bike is definitely broke haha. We should have expected that though considering we found that bike on the side of the road underneath an overpass just lying on the ground haha. But the bike did last him a good month before it broke! So we got our moneys worth out of it. Elder Skinner is now borrowing another missionaries bike until he get's his alternate bike mailed here from home, which is hopefully soon because the loaner bike from the other Elder is almost an exact copy of the one that just broke haha so we don't really trust it. New Years eve with the zone really went well though. We played Risk for a bit and then watched Brave. We still had to be in at normal time so we didn't get to stay up until midnight. Man Brave was really good though. It was lots better than the Puss in Boots movie we watched for Halloween haha. Oh and I almost forgot one last cool thing that happened this week! We found a new guy to teach named Alfredo, who is a really awesome guy and a deer hunter, and he said that the next deer he shoots he is going to bring us a bunch of meat because he's the only one in his family who will eat it haha. So he gives away all his meat to friends and just keeps a little for himself. Deer tags here are rediculously cheap, I think it's like 16 bucks for a tag that allows for 6 deer and then if you hit your limit you can renew your tag as many times as you want for just 12 more dollars or something along those lines. We've had a few members tell us about it. The deer here are super overpopulated and kinda malnourished, so I think that's why it's so much cheaper. It's all bow hunting though, there's nowhere far enough out from civilization here to have rifles haha. So hopefully next week I will be able to talk about all the deer meat we have! And about elder Skinner's new bike haha. I hope you all have had a great week as well! I love and miss all of you guys!