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Every time I click on the "Compose" button to write you guys I start singing "Hallelujah", cause of the "baffled king composing hallelujah" part, or however it goes. Weird thing.

So this week was good. Thanksgiving happened. It was better than last week, if for no other reason than we didn't sleep half the time. We ate at our branch missionarys' house, which also was host to the branch president's family, the 2nd counselor's family, and another family from Tappahannock, and the non-member family we've been teaching. Lots of food and laughing and even some football. They had an all-out turkey bowl at our little farm compound that morning. They invited a lot of friends but it was tackle so we couldn't really play. Elder Jones really really wanted to though (he loves football if I haven't told you yet; like breathes it through his nostrils) so he was playing two-hand touch rules while everyone else played tackle. It actually worked out a lot better than I expected. I would've been the smallest one on the field by a long shot (lots of big guys there) so I decided to play it safe and not join. Instead I took pictures and filmed some of the plays on my digital camera. Eventually we got on the roof of this giant airplane hanger and took pictures up there. It was pretty high and pretty cool. Got some good pictures. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera so no pictures. But hey, you've got 4 weeks so whatever.

But yeah it was fun. No injuries which was an achievement for their turkey bowls. Aside from Thursday's festivities it was a pretty down week. Everyone was gone or didn't want to meet until after the holidays so we did a lot of "attempts" at missionary work, without much to show for it. But hey that's where character is built, right? It wasn't that bad though.

I did have another doctor visit to MCV, my last one there. I gave them my doctor's info and they also printed out my all my records for me so I can give it to whatever hematologist I can find in Provo. Everything's good still, but he made it seem like I'll have to get blood tests every few months for the rest of my life. He said it can show up again at any time. It could happen tomorrow it could happen 5 years from now. I don't know how likely it could happen but it seems to be a certainty it'll come back. I don't know though. They have no idea what causes it or anything. Fortunately it doesn't cause any other blood problems so I won't have to worry about that.

I did meet some cool members in the waiting room this time. They both went to BYU and met each other there and now he's doing commercials for some big-time advertisement group here in Richmond. He's an art director. So we talked about what my aspirations were and stuff. It was interesting. Right after that I got called into my room which was right next to this guy in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs and a giant cop next to him. So yeah, contrast.

That was on Tuesday, which also happened to be the same day as our thrown-together district meeting. I was not expecting to do one cause it was Thanksgiving week and everyone freaks out when we don't do it on a Thursday but Sunday night they're like "you need to have one on Wednesday". Well because Gloucester needed some baptismal clothes they needed to come up here that day and we didn't want to have two trips between us so we're like "okay let's have a meeting". It was lame. We talked about people we were teaching and watched The Testaments. Yeah I know, lame. But we're gonna make it up this week with a district meeting Friday which will be me and Elder Jones' official last district meeting so we might do something crazy-cool. No one else will be doing one so we'll be like the best district ever by doing it. Or something like that.

This week I'll be going to Gloucester from tonight to Friday cause of some more leadership meeting stuff. So that'll be fun.

I think that's all I've got for you though. Talk to you next week!

-Elder Parker