Hey!!!

Hope you guys had a good week. Sounds like new years was pretty good for you guys. My new years was pretty good. We didn't really do anything. Just some missionaries came over and we played monopoly. That's about it. There were fireworks going off like crazy the whole day. People started lighting fireworks in the early afternoon and it lasted all the way until the next night. I guess they take parties like these seriously down here. Ohhh and you will have to tell Jaden happy late birthday for me!! I can't believe he is 18!! It seems like I was just barely 18. I got those videos that you sent of his game! He is looking pretty good. The one where he went coast to coast was pretty sweet. Sounds like he had a great tournament. I can't believe he didn't get all tournament team. That's ridiculous. I always thought that white mountain sports were kind of a joke...but whatever he probably is better than most of those kids anyways. Yeah there was a bowl game that was down here in the superdome. It was the sugar bowl. I think it was alabama and oklahoma. There was alot of people down here that went to the game. It seems like there is always big things going on down here. The NBA all-star weekend is going to be in New Orleans this year. I want to try and go to the slam dunk contest and all that but I probably won't be able to find a way to go. Maybe I'll just stay outside the arena and see if I can see any of the players haha. So not much happened this past week with New Years...we did go over to a members on new years to have a little party. We had a little fire and made smores and stuff so it was pretty fun. Then I went on exchanges with another missionary down here. So that was pretty much my week. The weather has been really cold lately. Today its like in the 30's we're kind of hoping it is going to snow but it won't. The last time it snowed down here I think was right before katrina. It's been a while. Oh and about hurricane katrina there are still houses down here that were wiped out by katrina. They still have plywood on the windows and there is like a paper thing on the door that says it has been searched during katrina or something. So some areas down here haven't even recovered from katrina. Yeah so on Saturday we had to help this guy take out his storage unit and it took us the whole day. We had to take everything out and then sort it out and put it back in. He is a recent convert and his parent aren't members so we helped him out and then his parents fed us some pizza. I think he wants the missionaries to teach his parents. It's not our area so it will be the other missionaries that teach them. Yesterday for church we had the branch split into an english branch and a spanish branch. It's good to see this branch growing. I guess before hurricane katrina there was like 3-4 wards down here and they were about to make it into their own stake but the hurricane made everyone move out. Now the people are starting to move back in. So it's growing. This week we did alot of service. I think we did like 31 hours of service or something like that. Since there's not very many people to teach we just do alot of service. That's about the best thing we can do down here. Its good though I like doing service for people. I think that could be the best thing you can do for someone is to serve them. Well I don't know what else to say. I think that's about it for this week. I love you all and pray for you.

Elder Willis :) :))