January 25, 2010 - Winter Walk

Dear Home,

I have been in a busing area for over 6 months now, and as such, I've collected a few funny stories about catching (or trying to catch) and riding the bus. But the story that has been unfolding for the last week or so is the funniest story yet, even surpassing the time I tripped over my own feet trying to quickly cross an intersection to catch a bus that was passing us simultaneously.

It all started when Elder Wallace went home (for medical reasons. He's coming back next transfer). His companion, Elder Bennett, then went into a tri-panionship with the Zone Leaders, leaving his car driverless, so the powers that be decided that Elder Grimshaw and I could use their car for the rest of the transfer, including most of the month of January. So we didn't need to buy bus passes this month.

Then the transfer ended and the car went back to Elder Bennett, meaning that Elder Brown (I haven't told you about him yet, have I? Remind me later.) and I are busing, hence, we need bus passes. Of course, you wouldn't buy a monthly bus pass when there's only 10 days left in the month, so we planned on buying day passes. Now I need to share a little math. A monthly bus pass costs about $68 (Canadian). Day passes cost about $6 apiece (also Canadian). 10 Day Passes x $6 per pass = Almost enough to be worth buying a monthly pass, when there's only 1/3 of the month left. The moral of the story: Buy the month pass. But that's only the first part of the story, and I only had to tell you all that to explain why we're using Day Passes now. And now I'll continue the story.

Yesterday, it snowed. A lot. Luckily, we had our day passes (which work kind of like scratch cards. You scratch off the day and the month you want to use), so we were glad that we wouldn't have to walk everywhere in the bad weather. Then Brother Wanner called. We were having dinner with the Wanners that night and he knew we were busing, so he called to let us know that the buses were shut down that day because of all the snow on the road. But of course, we didn't get that phone call until AFTER we scratched off that date on our cards. So not only did we NOT get to ride the bus, we also used up a day pass as if we HAD gotten to. Elder Brown was not happy.

But walking back home from the Wanners was really fun! Elder Brown took out his camera and made a documentary of our voyage. We braved the blasting winds, trudged through mountains of freshly fallen snow, made a snow angel, and (barely) overcame the bitter cold. It was a LOT of fun! And the best part is that Elder Brown has it all on his camera.

I'd say this transfer is off to a great start. ^^

Much love, your cold-conquering missionary, Elder Andrew Robarts

PS. By the way, in case you couldn't tell by my snow angel comment, we /greatly/ exaggerated how bad the weather was. It was actually pretty nice. We were just glad we didn't have to drive much that day. The snow and ice on the road would've made things /very/ slow and unsafe. Luckily, we were on foot, so while it was slow going, we were completely safe the whole time (and having a lot of fun).

PPS. I almost forgot something that may or may not be pretty important. My new Email Address is 'andrew.robarts@myLDSmail.net'. I'm told that Emails sent to elderrobarts@myLDSmail.net will be forwarded to my new account, but just in case, try to remember to Email my new account, not my old (or current) one.