New pictures!

October 6, 2014

Dear Family,

Hey! :)  I did see Brianna, Dad, Tori, Bro Jensen, and Morty. :)  It was so cool to see people again and weird at the same time.  It was so much fun and so spiritual to watch conference!  We had Pablo come to the priesthood session!  He loved it. :)  First time he's been to church.  And also Gary and Debbie came too and then later that night (yesterday) we all got together and talked and stuff.  It's been such a good couple days.  I loved the General Conference talks.  There were so many good ones and a lot of them were answers to my prayers and guidance for what I should do for the next six months.  I loved Jorg's talk as well!  The whole thing was just so awesome...  Jorg's may have been my favorite though.  We watched conference at the stake center which is the building I meet at for church.  It was super fun. :) 

I had a cool experience with my military plan and what I went through with that when I was a junior.  There's a 17 year old girl member here who really wants to do military and is planning on it but she didn't want to ask God or read her patriarchal blessing or anything so I went over and shared my experience and how there are other ways to joining the military than following whatever the recruiters say. But she was super appreciative of me coming over and sharing my experience with that and yeah!  Woo!  

I loved the pictures of the pumpkins!  :)  They look so fun and huge!  How did that even happen?  I don't even remember where they were growing...  That's so cool though.  I like the picture of Sam sitting on his pumpkin. 

That's so much fun with soccer. :)  Man I wish I could be there and play around with them.  I love playing soccer now with the other guys and I still got it. :)  I've made some pretty cool goals and stuff.  But there are way good people here too.  One of the guys plays professionally.  I feel pretty cool when I go up to him and am able to get the ball away from him and yeah! 

Things between the districts have kinda come at a standstill.  We're just waiting out the transfer I feel like.  Which we will find out about transfer stuff this week!  I will know by Saturday night what is going on with my new companion and stuff!  I'm pretty sure I'm getting a new companion so yeah!  Pretty crazy!  Stressful too though, but it's all good.  Elder Creasy actually isn't doing very good.  He asked us for a blessing the other day and I gave the actual blessing part not the sealing.  He's getting better though.  

Casper is the bird that bit my finger and I still talk to him sometimes. :)  I keep waiting for him to attack me in the middle of the night too...  

My bike is kinda funny.  It's pretty dead.  I'm just hoping I can make it last for another 20 months. I think I might be able to but we'll see.  I try to save the brake since I only have one which makes things kinda adventurous.  

Zone conference is Friday from 9 till 4:30.  

Oh also, I was told the other day by a member that when I speak Spanish I sound like I have a French accent. :)  Kinda fun but makes me wonder if my accent is that bad that it doesn't even sound like a bad English accent.

As far as success goes, this last week has been much better as the other weeks have been.  It's been a hard transfer with other people but a good one number wise and teaching wise.  Different experience.  We'll see what next transfer brings!  

Oh could you also send me dates of everyone's birthdays and important things like that?  I'm forgetting all sorts of things that have to do with time and I can't remember for the life of me what Dad's birthday is.  Weird how time gets so distorted here.  The weeks are blurring together and moving quickly.  But slowly.  It's strange.  

I don't really have anything to say about this last week though that I haven't said already so sorry! I love you guys!  I'll send another email if I think of anything interesting that happened this last week.  You all are awesome!  I miss you guys!  Have a great week and have fun!

September 29, 2014

Hey mom! :)  First off guess what?  I am on day 103 already.  Fun stuff! 

That's super cool about church!  It must have been super cool to see all that stuff and to watch the farewells.  I wish I could have gone but that's ok. I still feel bad about my farewell because it kinda sucked.  One thing I learned in the CCM was how to write talks though so yeah!  I haven't had the opportunity to speak yet in church but I feel like it's coming...  We'll see.  I'm going to be so nervous when it comes but it'll be alright.  As a missionary you actually have to memorize Doc and Cov 4 - at least here you do so that's pretty cool!  

I'm way excited for General conference!  I can't wait!  Is Dad singing in the Sunday afternoon session?  I'm going to be looking but it's alright if I don't see anyone. :)  It's still super cool.  Sounds like you've been super busy with your stuff you have going on...  Good luck this week!  Don't get too stressed out!  Do the boys soccer as much as I did?  What kinda things are they getting into?

Well this last week was a whole lot better.  Things have calmed down.  There are still issues but as a district we are all pretty much family.  Elder Creasy and I hung out all last night because he's pretty sick and can't work but we pull emergency exchanges all the time.  We are all basically family though!  It's actually really cool and fun!  I have learned a whole lot from these experiences.  It's crazy how much you can learn in even a week that it would have taken so long otherwise to learn.  Every week I work on a different Christlike attribute in PMG and every week it's so hard but I learn something cool and different that I didn't know before.  It's just so much fun to be out here. :)  

That sounds awesome with the garden stuff!  Man I miss how autumn is like in Utah.  Things are the same here year round so it's not so fun but that's ok.  The feeling is in the air for sure that summer's over.

This last week just felt weird.  Everyone felt it.  It was just goofy.  Not bad or good or anything but yeah.  We found an awesome family kinda thing.  They just moved into our area.  The mom is an active member but her kids aren't but one is super interested and curious.  Golden situation basically.  We haven't actually met the kid yet but we will tomorrow.  It's been way hard to teach and work this past week though with Elder Creasy.  I went out into his area with his companion a couple times to help them out and that's actually a lot of what we have been doing.  Helping out other elders.  

I haven't seen Aunt Louisa...  Hopefully before I leave!  Transfers are in 2 weeks.  I'm 85 percent sure that I'm staying though so that's good.  I like it here a lot! 

Thanks for everything!  I love you!  

So with staying in with Elder Creasy, they live in the same complex as another companionship.  They're English and one of them is from Micronesia.  He's basically one of my favorite people in the world.  He's about a transfer older than me so yeah but he's so cool!  Last night we didn't really have any food for dinner because I was with him in his appt but they brought us some leftovers from their dinner they had with a Tongan family. Now I haven't eaten like red meat or anything like that since I've been out here so we both went crazy and ate like pigs.  It was actually pretty funny but there came a point where we both were feeling kinda weird.  It's been so long that we were pretty sure our bodies were just going to reject the food.  But yeah. :)  Elder Creasy is so cool though!  One of the elders for sure I want to be companions with.  He's way nice and fun and stuff and super cool.  

We met this returned missionary from South Carolina the other day which was pretty cool.  We were just knocking doors and he answered and invited us in and just talked with us for a while.  he gave us some awesome reference papers and we made copies and yeah!  that was pretty fun to see someone like that.  he's been off for like 12 years and still single but yeah it was super fun!

My Spanish is coming along.  People here are way nice.  They keep encouraging me and helping me feel better about it so that's really good.  Hopefully it will get to the point where I will finally be comfortable in it.  I think I just need to talk in it more...  Maybe.

Guess what?  Remember what I used to do when I was younger?  I slept walked!  Guess what apparently I'm starting to do again!  I didn't know about this but I guess I do talk in my sleep too which is interesting hearing what I say in my sleep when I wake up Elder Petersen but the other night he said I got out of bed, walked over to his bed which is by the closet so he thought I was just going to the closet or something then I turned and started walking towards him.  He was so scared. :)  He said he doesn't get scared too often but he was terrified.  Then I turned and knelt down and said a prayer and then got up and went back into my bed.  So yeah interesting stuff with that!  He said if I slept walked again he's going to all out punch me though.  

Anyway that's from this last week!  I'll talk to you guys later!  Have a good week!

Love you!