Dear Everyone,  Well, I made it through the sub-freezing weather and now it's starting to

 warm up a bit 

again.  As you know, I hadn't brought much winter gear, but I thought it would probably be enough to keep me warm anyway despite the cold since I would be wearing more layers 

than I did back home.  However, I didn't really account for the icy wind that we had  here. I also realized a little late that whereas back home I would only be outdoors for  at the very most an hour, here we were knocking doors for hours on end without ever being  let inside to get warm.  So, in the end I ended up freezing my tail off, but I survived  and I learned that I only like the cold bits and pieces at a time.  I also learned that I  don't like the wind nearly as much when it adds another 10 to 15 degree drop to the  freezing temperatures.    Anyway, besides the weather here, we've been having lots of other fun experiences. Doing  stuff with members, knocking doors, and...being chased by a dog.  Yep.  I can now  offically add that part of mission culture to my checklist of things accomplished.  Elder  Wilson and I had gone to try an inactive member, but when there was no answer we decided  to tract a street next to it.  As we were walking towards the street we saw a German  Shepherd about 20 feet away from us, but couldn't figure out if it was chained or not.   Then, it took a couple of steps closer to us and we could tell that it definitely was not  chained.  So, we decided that rather than taking our chances, we'd just walk back to the  car and try another street.  Elder Wilson turned around and started walking back towards  the car and the dog started sprinting at us.  I let out a shout and we both started  booking it for the car with the dog snarling behind us the whole way.  When we got to the  car, the dog was too close behind us for us to get in so we ran around to the back side  of the car.  Then, the dog came around one side and chased us twice around the whole car  like some crazy game of duck, duck, goose.  Well, after two loops we decided we'd had  enough of it so we stopped and I started swinging my backpack at it and Elder Wilson was  brandishing his scriptures ready to bop it on the head with some "scripture  power."  I guess we looked at least a little intimidating because it backed off a  little and Elder Wilson shouted at it and it backed off a bit more.  We decided it would  be smart to keep the car between us and the dog, so Elder Wilson got in the drivers seat  and I got in the backseat on the driver side and we drove off.  Afterward we had a good  laugh about it.  After that incident, I now consider myself a fully broken in missionary.  :)   The rest of the week has gone pretty well.  We went out to one of the member's farms and  helped pull up about 150 lbs of frozen turnips out of his garden.  We also chopped some  more trees down yesterday and had some trouble getting a stump out, but finally got it.   Some other service we've been doing a lot lately is giving blessings.  Elder Wilson and I  gave two this last week and we've given about one a week since I got here.  That's always  a great experience as well and it's humbling to see how much faith some of these members  have in the power of the priesthood.  Giving all these blessings and seeing the faith of  some of these people has in turn strengthened my own faith.    Because it was so cold last week, we didn't have a whole lot of success in getting in  doors.  You'd think that because people didn't want to be outside in the cold, they'd all  be at home and we could come in and speak with them.  Instead, people just wouldn't open  up their doors because it was too cold outside.  So, it wasn't a very eventful week as  far as teaching goes.  We still taught a fair number of lessons, but none to anyone who  has really been progressing a whole lot.  We tried to get one of the spanish members to  come with us for one of our more promising investigators, but when we came for the  appointment we found out the investigator had been called away for work and so that fell  through.  Still, the work goes on and I'm still doing great.  I can't believe that Elder Wilson is  going home in just two weeks.  It'll be a big change without him here anymore.  Well, one  of the members is taking us out to lunch today so I better go.  I love you all and I  continue to pray for you every day.  Tu hijo y hermano, Elder Bradley Bishop