Family Letter 9-22-08

Dearest Family,
Last night I had a dream that I was home. Ahh!! What a nightmare…
So, A rumor around here says that the NFL season has started. I don’t think it is true because no one back home has mentioned a single word about the NFL these last 7 months. I think that after the Giants won the Super Bowl the NFL was cancelled. Somebody prove me wrong… J
Anyways, back on the ranch, how is poor little Elder Droge doing? Well…hmm… my normal response of ‘I’m doing good’ wouldn’t be the most correct response for this week. How ‘bout this: I’ve been doing good…most of the time. There’s been a lot of drama here in Brady this transfer. Why haven’t I mentioned it? Well, I’ve been meaning to. It’s just that I only have a silly little hour to do emails and sometimes I don’t have time to mention everything to the family and write President Robison all in the same hour. We do have a car here in Brady. We have to. It’s a small town and, for one, we have to cover a bunch of other small outlying towns and, two, we have to drive every week to either district meeting or zone conference and 45 miles is an awfully long way to ride the bikes, which we do ride occasionally if we want to save miles. That car, though, has gone through a lot. Poor little car.
First off, we were driving on a more baron road when Elder Pyle got bugged by a little fly that made its way into the car and took his eyes off the road for a second or two. Not the smartest idea. Always keep your eyes on the road. Suddenly we slammed right into the curb. BANG!!!! The front tire was slashed and the hubcaps were broken off.
The second little incident had to do with a squirrel. The little devils are everywhere here in Texas and one of them one day was a little impatient to cross the road and ran right in front of us. Well, when you match up squirrel against a tire wheel, there’s not much competition, if you know what I mean. Elder Pyle was laughing afterwards but I didn’t think it was so funny. I felt bad for the little guy.
The third thing came when we were driving to zone conference. We were a little on the late side, so Elder Pyle decided that he wanted to drive a little faster than he should’ve been driving and the police officer that he drove past didn’t think that was such a good idea because the roads were wet due to the rain that we had received. Well, Elder Pyle got slapped with a ticket and in missionary world that is not such a great thing to be in possession of. He got suspended from driving for 30 days and now I am the lucky one that gets to drive the car until October 11th. Yay!
On second thought, though, never mind. I wish I was in the passenger seat this last week. Our last little incident wasn’t so funny and has actually made me quite stressed out. Think about this for a second before going on. What is the worst sound you could hear in the world and what is the worst feeling that you could feel? Well, now that you’ve thought about it, let me put in a petition. Worst sound – the sound of a 7-year-old girl being hit by the car you were driving. Worst feeling – the feeling that comes for those few seconds when you don’t know if the girl you just hit is ok. Yeah… not a fun experience is it? But its not like I could’ve done anything better. We were just driving back to the apartment to grab a few things when the little girl just darted right in front of the car without looking. I didn’t see her until she was 2 feet in front of me due to the big paramedic truck on my left that was stopped and turning into the Sonic. I slammed on my brakes and swerved out of the way, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I was even going the speed limit. Luckily though, she basically bounced off the front left bumper and because of her bones of steel she was up and walking afterwards. They had to take her to the hospital over night to make sure that there wasn’t any internal problems. There wasn’t. She was home the next morning. I’m fine, she’s fine and everything’s all peachy right? Negative. Like I said there was a paramedic right there on scene and so in like 5 seconds there were police officers and firefighters present. That type of thing kinda attracts a good sized crowd. The fact that there were already tons of people around due to some sort of homecoming gathering didn’t help things at all. Except for the fact that I have 1,000 witnesses, it seemed, that said that it wasn’t my fault and there was nothing more I could do. But because of that and the fact that this is a rediculusly small town (5,000 people) the whole town knows that the mormons hit a little girl. News spreads fast and everyone wants to know what happened. I’m even famous. I made the paper. There is a little article, right next to the football story, that says Adam Droge from Utah hit a girl. Not very fun. I don’t like being the center of attention.
Outside that, I am ok. Trials are given to us for a purpose and like it says in D&C 122, they will be for our good. Brady is a great place. There was one other investigator story that I promised that I was going to mention. It is a Spanish family that is interested. They do speak a little English, but not a ton. Luckily good ole Elder Pyle knows some Spanish because poor old Elder Droge took French in high school and is Spanish illiterate. So I just sit around looking pretty (I got that phrase from Arctic Cirlce, there was a guy there that said that all the time) and throw in a small English phrase here and there while Elder Pyle does most of the teaching. Sometimes I wish that God would bless me with the gift of tongues, but I am not so lucky.
Anyway, though, that is all for now. Scripture/Trivia challenge is still up from the last two weeks because I haven’t received a response on that. Good luck to BYU. Keep kicking trash. I’m enjoying it. Good luck to Joe as well. I think its time that your team wins a game because I am not a big fan of sad news.
Peace out All!!!
PS – new signature again. That’s a nickname I have received via the missionaries out here for some strange reason. To say it right, drop the “E” sound on Droge and pronounce mister “my-ster”
Elder Adam R Droge The DrogeMiester