New Jersey Snow!

Hey mom!

Sorry it's so late, but it's better than nothin' right?

Yeah we got blasted with a couple of snow storms. There was a storm on saturday and that dumped about 18 inches I'd say. Then that melted a little and we got another storm on wednesday. Well it was more of a blizzard as they say, but really it just snowed all day with some slight winds. The snow was so heavy and wet that we could hear tree branches breaking and falling to the ground. During both storms we had to stay near our apartment. Since our area was no where near our apartment, we couldn't go visit them, so we decided to play in the snow instead.

On Saturday we did everything we could think of to keep ourselves entertained. The other elders decided to take naps, but I couldn't sleep so I decided to go shovel some snow from the car. when I got finished shoveling our car out I wasn't very cold and I still had energy so I started shoveling another car out. I shoveled 3 cars out before my back started to get sore. I went back inside and laid down for a bit and used a hand-held massager to get some of the knots out. After a few minutes I went back out there to shovel the rest of the cars. Elder Pfost traded off with me. After a little bit, everyone started to come out and dig out there cars and they were helping each other out. Lending shovels or helping to dig out eachother's car. It was cool. I haven't seen any thing like that since I got here. We did that for a couple of hours and then we decided to go play in the snow. And eventually it was time to go inside.

Then on Wednesday we stayed insided until after lunch. It was snowing all day Then we went outside and started to build a snow cave. We built a small one that could fit 3 people, but we wanted to make it bigger so we started to build a tunnel to another snow cave. We got most of it digged out so that you can crawl in the tunnels. We didn't get the other snow cave dug out though. While we were working on it, a lady asked us to help push her friend's car out. So we did and they thanked us kindly. Then we went back to work on the snow cave. at about 6PM, the power went out. We could still see though because of all the light pollution bouncing off of the clouds. Like I said the branches of the trees were falling everywhere, and our car was parked under some trees. Across the parking lot there was an empty space, but it had to be dug out. So i started to dig out our car again and I put all the snow on the snow cave. Then I dug out the other parking space while the other elders dug out the snow cave. Finally I got it to the point where the car would fit. So we moved the car into the other parking space.

By the time we parked the car, we were all soaked and cold so we decided to go back to the apartment and warm up. We went to find some flashlights and we took off all of our wet clothes. I didn't realize it, but when I took off my wet clothes they weighed like 20 pounds. Elder Howard took a warm shower in the dark with a flashlight. I was halfway through my shower when the lights came back on. The snow is melting pretty fast, but our snow cave is still there. It's supposed to snow again on Monday and maybe Thursday.

The picture that I sent home that Okamoto drew, I think it was an original. maybe. If I looked at it I could tell. Sister Winegar might have just taken it and made a copy for all the missionaries and Elder Okamoto might have wrote I love reeses on the back of all of them.

Today we moved a lot of furniture to Monmouth Juction. One of the Senior couples is going home so we moved their furniture (actually the mission's furniture) to another apartment because another senior couple was moving in later today. Then after that we got showered and came to the office.

I heard about the missionaries that died a few days ago. That is pretty sad. I guess the Lord needed there help with something else. I also heard about the earthquake in Haiti. I guess the news gets to us fairly quickly in some way or another.

Well that's all I can think of to write now. More later.

Love,

Zack