Already five months

This week's email is mostly answers to questions. Here are the questions:

How much service do you guys do, and what do you usually do?
How are your investigators progressing? You never sent an update about that family, are you still teaching them? 
How are you getting along with Elder Greenburg? What are the best things about him?
And what are the best things about Elder Piersen? 
Is Edmunston still the promised land of the mission?
Why can't you guys meet with more than six missionaries on p-day? Can you still do sports?
Can you believe you're coming up on six months?
What have you learned in your phone training?
What are the blessing of missionary work that we as members overlook or take for granted? What will you do differently when you are just a member missionary again?
What was the highlight of your week? The hardest thing?

Do you need us to send exercise bands or anything so you can still work out in the mornings?

He didn't get to all of them, hopefully next week!

Hello again everybody,

       Sounds like you had a very nice relaxing MLK break. It's really weird to think of how fast the time's gone by. Today's my 5 month mark. School's like halfway done. And everyone's been telling me that the first 6 months is like the mental halfway point in the mission, the last 18 are as fast as the first 6. 

       Also, I'm sorry that none of the photo's I've sent have dad's tie. I do wear it, and I do love it. But I guess that you don't see the tie I wear every day, so it's hard to judge. And yea, everyone at Edmundston has the red tie, so sometimes we all wear it together, like on the French temple trip, all of us wore it. I'll get a picture the next time I wear dad's tie though. :)

       Also, we might go to the dentist's after all. I asked Elder Greenburg if he was down, and so we'll probably do it next p-day. 

       We don't do a ton of service right now. Most of all our service is snow removal. It's amazing to me that people would build flat top roofs in a place that snows this much. We've helped some members clear off their roofs, we can't get on the roofs, but we move the snow once they push it off. 

       Excited about the announcement by President Nelsen. We watched that earlier today, I think it's super awesome. Elder Oaks and Eying are going to be awesome as well! Great. 

       Eric and Brandy (that's the family) are doing good, but every time we have a day to go to Grand Falls, the weather's been bad, and we have to leave early, or they have company over, so we don't have a lesson. But they have been doing really good still. They've been reading the Book of Mormon together, reading the story book with their kids, and they love it. Eric does have a couple weeks off though, which should be very nice for us, because we can teach them in the afternoon too now. 

       Philip is doing pretty good too. We've taught him a couple times this week, and he got along really well with members. I wish I knew how to teach Philip how to break up with his girlfriend though. That's by far his biggest struggle. I guess that's what I get for not going on enough dates. (Man, I can already hear the "I told you so" from dad.) He's started reading the Book of Mormon, which is cool, and he always asks us questions, which is really cool. Sometimes people just are quiet and don't ask to see if they understood right, and it hurts in the long run. Philip asks about everything. We taught about the Godhead, and he really liked that, it made a lot of sense to him. 

       Edmundston is still the promised land. We've been doing a lot of finding, and teaching a ton to people. The problem is that we teach lots of people who don't actually want to find out if the Book of Mormon is true or not, and then act on it. There are a lot of people comfortable where they are at, so we are just trying to be more bold. 

       It's a mission wide rule that we can't be with more than 6 missionaries. I don't know all the details about it, but I believe it started because people were driving far outside their areas to meet with other missionaries on p-day to play sports. Sadly, the rule affects us too. We technically could go down to Caribou for sports, but it would only be six of us able to play, and so 1 of the 4 companionships would have to leave. And it kinda sucks to kick one person out, so it kinda killed it. Also, it kinda sucks that if we want to do that it's 2 hours driving. 

       I think one thing I I thought about on our training with the phones is that you guys had a lot of the same principles. One of the things we will do is that once a week we will go through each other's devices and make sure that there isn't anything bad going on, like bad pictures, messaging, deleted search history, etc... I realized that before my mission I had a tendency to get defensive about my phone. (Don't think that's quite the right word, but it was kinda like you poked a snake.) Really, that's a principle and idea that comes from Satan. Being open and willing to share 100% of a device shows you control your device, it doesn't control you, that you are using it cleanly, and you are honest. Could you imagine asking someone on the street to see everything on their social media, photos, information on their phone? I imagine people would be very defensive. But we want to live in such a way where we could hand that phone over and let them see everything we do. 

       Anyway, love you all! Hope you keep having a great time. Can't wait to start hearing about how the Polo season this year goes!

Elder Marsh

       I do have a few things to request. Somewhere my oil vial broke, and so I need a new one. TRX bands would be awesome, and a pull up bar would be awesome too, although we might be able to get a bar at Mardens. Think that's it. Love!