Awesome Orb of Amazingness

hey there!!
   man it sounds like life in alaska is still as life threatening as it was before haha. but if you all werent out there on adventures and having things go wrong i would wonder if you were sick or something. as a family we are obligated to have those crazy almost dying experiences haha.
   wow things are going by fast, i may say that every letter but seriously i push send on this email and then blink and im writing another one to yall. but things here are good! i think its actually colder here than up there. im loving the cold! its where i belong, well not for the next two years anyways, imma be sweatin bullets the second i get off the plane haha. its funny because my companion is from arizona and the other elders in my district are from idaho and oregon. so to them all the cold is like death, but to me its all smiles :)
  we havent gotten our travel itineraries yet!!! AAAHHH!! i want it a little bit.. only like a lot though. i hope my visa went through, there have been missionaries who have to wait an extra 2 or more weeks for that stuff so i dont like that.
  here we made a goal for the last two weeks we would talk only spanish, it Sucks. but amid the confusion and the headaches and the spacing out it is going good! haha
  on new years eve i felt really down in the dumps. i looked at why i am here and could only name things that others expected of me and i thought i was only here for an example or whatever. then my amazing teacher hermano penialillo talked with me. he said that as a missionary we are like nephi. in one experience nephi said that he is a giant rough rock rolling down a hill. every adversity he had or hard time he went through was an obstacle on the way down the hill, and after he hit each obstacle his rough rock got polished just a little bit more, and a little bit more. and we will keep being polished until we are the perfected shiny awesome orb of amazingness that God knows we are. it just takes time and adversity. he also compared people to Shrek and said that everyone is an onion and no one really knows what is on all the layers of your onion. the only ones that do is God and Jesus Christ. yup my teacher is awesome.
  anyways for a new years eve party we ate this NASTY fruit cake that an elder recieved around thanksgiving time haha. we all grabbed a piece and a few of us forced it down. i was one of the few who did it :) gotta represent the Summers'. anyways i gagged the next 5 minutes trying to swallow the horrid thing. it smelled like indian food in a diaper.. no good. haha but it was fun? memorable anyways. then we had a silly string fight back in our rooms (thats against some rule i think) but as a zone leader i okayed it :) but besides that its been a pretty normal week. food still stinks but i ate a cream puff that shattered my universe, translation, twas the mother of all cream puffs, aka i liked it alot :)
  i also read a talk called 'rise to your call' or something like that from 2002, i think president ewyring (i cant spell..) gave it. its an awesome one for people who feel inadequet or over run with their calling, their job, or just life.
  i love and miss you all and want to wish you an amazing new year and dont give up hope!!
  love Elder Summers