You're Killin Me, Atwood!
٩(◦`꒳´◦)۶

Hoo boy! What a week it's been. I typically begin these updates with some sort of introduction thing, but this time I'm just gonna go ahead and jump right in to the action. Everything else will come up as we go along.

So last week while I was talking to my mom exclusively because my brother was asleep and my dad took my little brother to go snowboarding, I learned that enrollment in college courses happens in April. Yeah boys, things just got a bit more real now didn't they? Well, the grand beginning of this week was that while Elder Atwood did digital organization, more on that later, I was looking at general requirement classes for college and picking out classes I thought could be interesting because if I have to take a biology class anyway, it may as well be a class that could also potentially help me in my field, or at least one that fits closer to my actual interests. Like, say.... Plant Kingdom class, because in animation you often have to draw many varied types of plants, and having at least a small knowledge of different plants and how they function in the real world can later help me come up with and animate fictional plants that are more believable, better looking, and more diverse than they would otherwise be. All of this preparation for college kind of tripped me out a little bit, but I made a list of general classes that appealed to me, and I figured that was as much prep work that I needed to do while I'm still in the mission field. I sent the list of possible classes home and I'm leaving up to my parents to enroll for me so that I can, of course, stay as focused on my mission as possible. That said though, having real life peeking through the window at me again is a bizarre and somewhat difficult thing, even though I'm more or less prepared for it because I already have a pretty good idea of what I want to do in life and how to get there. So for me at least, getting all worried about stuff like college isn't as big of a stress, because it's already planned and thought out. For those of you who are planning on serving missions, figuring out what you'd like to be beforehand can help you to be less scared of the future while you are in the field. Obviously the spirit may prompt you to do something other than what you initially thought, and who knows, it still has time to do that for me, but I have found that having at least an idea or loose plan for after your mission helps you to stay more focused on your mission, because you can remind yourself that you already have a plan for later and don't necessarily need to worry about it. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, next order of business.

Walt is still progressing more or less. I think he's the kind of person who requires a lot of patience and perseverance, but he is slowly becoming more and more open to receiving the gospel. He's very kind, and very happy when we come by, so all in all I think it's safe to say he's doing well.

So another thing about this week, I got to do exchanges again, and stay in Kekaha again. So that's a big hooray kind of thing. The current district leader over here, Elder Barbeau, is probably my favorite missionary in the whole zone. He's a hard worker, and he loves the people a lot. He's also from Canada, so of course his accent on the word "bag" is also a plus. While he was here however, Elder BBQ, for BBQ I'd his nickname you see, had a bit of an interesting morning. And for those of you who are easily grossed out, now might be a good time to stop reading. As Elder Barbeau was stretching out in the morning, he began to notice what appeared to be small white slugs, completely covering the carpet. I'm sure most of you know where this is going. Yeah boys, we got maggots. Maggots are terrible. I hate them. So the morning was spent taking care of a mass amount of maggots crawling throughout the carpet. And why were they there? Because Elder Atwood left raw meat outside on the counter. Now we have a consistent and constant maggot battle. I don't even know where maggots come from. They just sort of appear on dead meat that's gone bad and they eat until it's all gone. Then they just disappear. I'm serious if anybody out there knows where they actually come from I'd like to know, because I know they can't just be spawning in like Minecraft villains or something. They've gotta be coming from someplace. Well anyhow, the problem was soon dealt with, and by that I mean we took out the trash. The problem with taking out the trash was that after we did that, we discovered we have no more trash bags. Oh goodie. Which of course means I've been fighting a war on this stinking maggots issue since the exchange, which was on Friday. I was planning on going into much more gruesome detail on this aspect of the week, but I figure that can wait until I get home. There are some things that emails just cannot convey. And the horror of seeing maggots in your house is one of them. The rest of that exchange went pretty well though. Lots of fun, but then, with BBQ it always is.

The most significant challenge is the struggle to get along with Elder Atwood, and it's a struggle for reasons that I don't even fully understand. For some reason our companionship is the most bipolar thing on the planet. Sometimes he's the worst I've ever had to deal with, sometimes everything is more or less alright. Sometimes he's just mildly annoying. Most often I just find myself saying "You're killing me man!" (or smalls)

So that's definitely an ongoing struggle to be sure, but you can all rest assured that I'm doing my best to get along with him, and I'm figuring it out slowly but surely.

Until next week everyone! Aloha!
٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

Sorry.  Not many pictures this week. 
Elder Atwood chopping wood, and Elder BBQ on exchanges