Pokin Right Along!

Hey you'uns!

They say you'uns down here. It's pretty funny.

It's been a pretty busy preparation day, and I want to respond to all of your individual e-mails better than I have been so this one is going to be short. 

This past week was pretty good. I found myself wanting to be lazy though, which is super frustrating. It's really easy to get distracted and really hard to snap back to work once you get distracted. This coming week is going to be a "re-focusing" week for Elder Aubry and I. I think part of it is that we get along well together and have both had really crummy companions so we're enjoying the time we have together a little too much. Or at least I am. Funny how you can find a way to complain about any situation!

Okay okay. So I've got a good but extremely horrible story to tell you. So, there's a family that lives about 20 miles away that has a less-active son. Last time we were over there we were talking about wanting to take a walk around the property, they own something like 100 acres or something. So while we were e-mailing, we got a call asking if we wanted to come up for dinner and a nature hike. We hadn't been planning on it, but we went anyway because we're hoping to be able to get Marshall back to church. So we get up there and start hiking. At first it was fine, no big deal, sort of on a trail. Then we walked by the drying cow heads and I almost threw up. It smelled HORRIBLE and I'm pretty sure I would have cried if I was a little kid. Then as we kept hiking, we stopped following a trail. We were just hiking through brush and trees and bushes and it was awful. I lost my sunglasses cause they were on my shirt, and I'm lucky I didn't die, I'm pretty sure. To make it even better, we were constantly swatting ticks off. Constantly. I was so worried about ticks that I hardly even looked around and enjoyed nature. Despite my vigilant swatting of ticks, long jeans and a long sleeved shirt, I pulled somewhere between FIFTEEN AND TWENTY ticks off of me that night. One was in my hair. It was disgusting. I hate ticks. I almost cried.

And Mom, I have yet to get chiggers. 

Love you all! 

Elder Christopher Drake