Letter 4-14-08

Hi Family,

It’s already the middle of April. Isn’t that crazy? So there’s this funny thing. I kinda told my district that my family would visit our new mission president, John L Robison, who lives in Bountiful, and tell me what he is like, and then I would tell the district what our new mission president will be like. It would be nice if someone in Bountiful would make me an honest man and not a liar.

I also thought of a few other favors. First – there was a quote that I gave in the end of my farewell talk that is from the Count of Monte Cristo that I would like someone to give me. It says something to the effect of look into the storm and say do your worst, for I will do mine.Second – There have been people talking about the Allegory of Zenos because apparently that was the Sunday school lesson this week. I have the packet/workbook thing that I got from my Book of Mormon class at the house. People in Bountiful should know what I am talking about. In there, there is a ton of information about the Allegory of Zenos that makes that chapter a whole lot clearer. If someone could give me the information in that packet so I can understand better, I would greatly appreciate it.

Now this week was funny. I got a ton of old letters. First off I got Joe’s and Dad’s letters from March 16th this week. Dad, that Key to Happiness thing was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. As I was reading it, it felt like I was reading a conference talk. It’s something that I will go over many times. Joe mentioned the language in his letter. Mostly the language here is normal, except for a few southern words. Y’all is the most common one. Everyone and his dog says y’all. I’m not joking. I’m trying to not let it get to me, but we’ll see what happens. The other one that I hear occasionally, but not as often is fixing. I find it means that they are about to or preparing to. Like, for example, I’m fixing to go to work. I’m fixing to go to the Doctor. It catches me off guard.The other old mail I got was the mail that my roommates at BYU forwarded me from my apartment at Stadium Terrace. In it was Shawn’s Christmas card, so now it’s cool that I have Shawn, Becca, Sarah, and Ethan in my room. It’s fun. I also got my Harris Interactive W2, so I sent that on. I don’t know if you still need it or not, but I felt you could use it more than me.

Bruce – I got that letter of yours. I was all excited because I saw a 4 page letter from you, then I realized that it was the same paragraph 13 times in a row. Grrr… but I have no idea to do a mirror letter. I looked around just barely but couldn’t find how. Plus if I did know, I don’t think I would want to tell you because then it would be hard to read your letters ☺. So you are on your own on that. I’d be willing to bet that someone like Byron may know how to.

Shawn wrote me and told me about the Tennessee weather and the river about 46 feet deep. That reminded me to talk about the weather here. Mostly it is sunny and windy, but occasionally it gets really stormy. But it is different. It pours like no other, but only for like 15 minutes and then it stops. There’s also lightning storms that are far superior to those in Utah. It’s kinda cool. But there is no draining system in the roads, so there are huge puddles everywhere for a few days when it rains. Then there’s the Rio Grande. I’m not anywhere near it, but the scout troop in the ward here went there and told the ward about it. It’s about as wide as the chapel, so it’s huge that way, but its only 2 feet deep, 4 feet at the deepest. I found that funny.

Now on to this past week.

Good – I ran into an interesting religion this week. It’s an Iranian religion called the Bahai Faith. It is like a combination of Muslim, Buddism, and Chritianity. They believe in a few great manifestations of God: Moses, Abraham, Buddah, Jesus Christ, Muhammed Ali, and Baha Ulah. The Latter is like their latter-day prophet that lived in the 1800’s. Apparantly he was in Prison most of his life, but was let free for the last 2 or 3 years of his life. Someone should do some research on him for me. But the Bahai believe that there is no way you can know about God’s physical attributes or what the afterlife is like, but they believe in living good lives so that you can prepare to meet God. They believe in the Bible and the Koran as high school textbooks and as well as lots of other scripture that was written by Baha Ulah.

Bad – Bad and Ugly are the same thing this week.

Better – Here is an interesting experience. We taught a couple that was fairly religious and believed in prayer and the Spirit. They had never heard of Joseph Smith or the restoration, so after we gave the message, she said, before we challenged them to read or pray, that they are going to have to pray about this, because it is something new. Great! I wish everyone was like that. We taught them more about prayer and the feelings of the Holy Ghost so hopefully something will come out of this. We also have a few great potentials, but I’ll save them for next week.

Ugly – The FLDS church thing that has been going on. Apparently down somewhere in southern Texas they found a place where the FLDS had like 400 women and girls evacuated. They found they had been abused a lot and there where even 14 year old girls that were pregnant. The bad thing is though that everyone here is now mistaking the FLDS for our church. They think that it was us, and there are places on the Radio that talk about the Mormons doing this and also on the front page of the newspaper they had printed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was doing this, totally leaving out the fundamentalist part. It’s horrible.

Best – Interviews with President Rose this week. He is a great guy. He talked about David and Goliath to the whole district, applying it to missionary work, then in personal interviews we went over being a successful missionary, page 10 of preach my Gospel. Three Main points. One – Success is measured by commitment to go out and work, not by numbers or results. Two – Don’t compare yourself to other missionaries because every missionary is different, in a different area, at a different time, with a different companion. Three – As we raise our expectations, our effectiveness will increase. He also reminded me that “No” means “Not Yet.” They will accept it eventually, even if that’s at judgment, but now is not the right time, so don’t be discouraged when they tell you no. I have kept that in mind and it has really helped a lot.

That’s all for now. Keep writing, preferably snail-mail, because I don’t have much time for checking emails. I do have some friends, they’re not all dead (meaning I got a letter from 2 people not in the family, yay!). Someone wake up Byron and tell him to write me about my knew nephew. He’s the only one that hasn’t written in our family. Tell him that Mandy Gifford, who was formerly in his singles ward as ward choir director, is down here and just got engaged.