Hello from SD!

Hi everyone,
If I learned anything out here so far on my mission...its that I will not live in the Dakota's once I get home! They're nice and all...but the wind is killer. Anyway, this week was pretty sweet.
First part of the week was pretty slow, up until Wednesday. Then we drove up to Eagle Butte(town on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation) and had a district meeting there. It was good stuff and we started an exchange. Elder Schoppmann came down to Pierre with me. He's an awesome Elder, really humble and hardworking, it was a privilege to serve with him. He's actually from a Navajo Reservation in Arizona, from a town called Page. He isn't Navajo, but his family has a ranch on the land.
Anyway, we had a lot of success together. We were able to visit a part-member less-active family who we never had contact with and scheduled a return appointment with them to teach their family. The husband is Catholic but didn't mind us coming back to talk about the gospel. So I'm excited about that.
Then we spent most of Thursday tracting because a lot of our regulars weren't home. First half of the day was fruitless, but the second half was awesome. We tracted into a former investigator, and she wanted us to start coming back and teaching her. She came to church this week, her name is Pat Hill. So that was way good.
Then we also tracted into a lady named Rachel who said she "wanted to talk to us" but had to clean up her house real fast. So we stood outside her door while she tidied up and were kinda scared...no one wants to talk to us. Turns out she was really genuine. She has been studying religion for a while, she's a non-denominational Christian looking for truth. We taught her the Restoration lesson(if you don't know what that all entails, read Preach My Gospel Chapter 3, lesson 1. Actually, I'm challenging you to read it, every family should have a copy in their home, its an inspired book and will really strengthen your testimony!) Back to my story, so we taught her the lesson and she asked a ton of really great questions, and when we asked her to read the Book of Mormon she told us how she always wanted to read it but never had a copy!! She told us she would study it out before we come back again and we asked her to pray about what she studies. She could be
really golden as long as she doesn't have any too farfetched ideas that turn her off of the truth.
Other awesome stuff happened in the week, Brother Gravatt told us some more sweet stories and 4 ways on how to torture and kill a man slowly that the Natives implemented on their criminals...kinda interesting.
Sunday was awesome. It was Branch Conference and President and Sister Cannon came. All the meetings were great and afterward we had potluck, yum. After all that President Cannon help a big meeting with all the leadership of the Branch, and us missionaries, and basically told us what he thinks the branch needs and how to fix it. He also really pushed the point that the branch needs to make use of their full-time missionaries, so hopefully the branch will want to become more involved in missionary work and reactivation work and so on. Things are really looking up, and from what I've been told, Pierre is one of the hardest areas in the mission, so its nice to come here first so I know how to deal with it!
Oh ya, Elder Nelson and Schoppmann swapped back on Friday, so I'm back with Elder Nelson, which is good too. Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well, is reading their Book of Mormon and will also take my challenge to read PMG Ch.3 Ls.1 "The Restoration." I know that if you do the Lord will bless you and your testimony will increase in the knowledge that the gospel is true!

Love,
Elder Fittpotluck, yum