Letter 9-15-2008

Dear Family,
It sounds like everyone is doing great. Someone also had a birthday yesterday. Let me sing one more song. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR BRUCE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! I know you all are getting sick of that, but that’s happens when people have birthdays. The big 16. Holy cow. Bruce can drive and date. That’s scary. And he is in high school. Ouch. I feel old now. I’m almost 20. But Bruce, if you aren’t doing Football or Band, don’t feel bad or scared to tell me. I wouldn’t react bad. I’m just glad you’re having fun doing what you are doing. High School Band honestly kinda bored me at many times. If it weren’t for Pep-Band, I would’ve honestly quit after the first semester my sophomore year. Just ask Annie that. I had a really rough time that first year. I didn’t even hardly practice at all. I know. It was bad of me. High School football is also a lot different than Little League. Bigger game, bigger stage. But anyway, off that subject, I did celebrate yesterday. I sang happy birthday out loud in my apartment (yes, I’m in an apartment. Not a member’s home Sad. ). Did you hear me…? I also had some cake that was given to us by a member and I ate some ice cream that I had left over. It was fun. Also, thanks for giving me Julien’s address. That is way awesome.
So I also got some pictures this last week from Byron. That was way fun. It was cool to see pictures of Ethan, Sarah, Nathan, and Sammy. They are all so big. I especially liked the picture of all four of them sitting there on the couch. That was way cool. I also saw this new lady in the pictures and it took me a few minutes to realize who it was when dawned on me. It was Becca. I could hardly recognize her. She looks way good. Thanks a lot Byron. I will enjoy those. Anyone else who wants to send me pictures through snail mail, I will thoroughly enjoy them.
Mom, you mentioned something about everyone back in Bountiful Utah Stake preparing a talk, then a random person or two being called up to give that talk in stake conference. Its funny you mention that because we just did the same thing last week in zone conference. All the missionaries had to prepare a 5 minute talk on humility and then one person was selected to get up and give the talk. That same idea was also incorporated back in the MTC each week for sacrament meeting. That idea is really good. What it does is get everyone studying up for a certain topic and learning a lot, because you know that you learn more when you are preparing for a talk than listening to one in the audience. One secret from that for any that are preparing a talk back home. If you don’t do it, you’re the one who is going to get picked, so study up .
I’m sorry to hear from Mom that Brother Hope died. That is tragic. That’s not news that I like to hear, but thanks for telling me. Give Sister Hope my condolences.
One last thing before I move on to me, thanks to Dad for giving me that information about Alma’s authority. That helps. And it makes sense as well. Alma most likely got his authority to baptize before he was made a priest of King Noah, meaning he was grown up righteous, but then fell away when Noah was made king and got straightened up again with Abinadi and went down in the water with Helam only as a token of his true repentance.Now, I didn’t receive any insights from last weeks trivia about whether or not polygamy is an eternal law that will be incorporated in the celestial kingdom, so I will let everyone ponder on that for another week before I throw something else out. Remember that information is in my BYU BoM class packet in Jacob 2.
Now on to Brady. Like I mentioned before. Last week was Zone Conference. Half way through the transfer already. The trading deadline is almost here again. Just two more weeks. 6 week areas have been known to happen quite often, so I could easily be sent away from Brady already, but you never know. One thing is for sure, its not very often that someone gets put in two straight 6 month areas in this mission, but who knows. Brady is a good place. I can’t remember if I said this or not, but Brady is a very beautiful town. It has trees, hills, and lakes. It doesn’t really look like Texas. The small branch is also really fun. Great people.
Missionary-wise, we have pretty much now started from scratch. We are building up this area. The last set of missionaries left us with 3 good investigators to talk about.
First is an 84 year old black lady named Mae Usher. She is a legend in this mission. She loves the missionaries and the missionaries love her. She has been talking with them for 3 or 4 years now. She isn’t really progressing really fast at all, but is a very fun lady. She gives all the missionaries nicknames and the nickname that I have been given is “Flycatcher.” I killed two flies in two visits and that impressed her, so I got the nickname. She is progressing, just ever so slowly, that’s why we continue to go back. It took her 2 years to finally come to church and she has now been coming consistently for about a year now. She hasn’t rejected baptism, she just hasn’t made up her mind yet. If someone is feeling adventurous, she loves and waits for people to call and talk to her, because she doesn’t ever do anything and is very lonely at times. She’s even talked with other missionaries parents before. So there you go. 325-597-1467. Know one has to, but she would just be tickled, I’m sure of it.
Second is a young lady named Joleen. She is engaged (getting married this Saturday) to a less active member. Apparently, she had asked him what he believed in and that got the missionaries talking to both of them. The other day, we were at the lake on P-day (a member family took us there for lunch, but I promise, we didn’t get in the water) and she was there because her fiancé is the son of the members who took us to the lake and out of the blue she told them that she wanted to get baptized. We hadn’t even taught her any lessons at this point of time, so that was way awesome. Now she is getting married and will no longer be breaking the law of chastity, so we can finish teaching and get her baptized. Only obstacle is that both of them work a lot, so it is hard to get in and teach, but she comes to church every week. She even came alone yesterday.
Third is another part member couple that aren’t married yet. LeAndra and Zeke. LeAndra is the less active member and Zeke is the non-member. The both come to church every week that they can and Zeke wants to get baptized and has been taught just about everything, but is waiting on LeAndra, who is still technically married to her previous husband and is going some legal issues for a divorce that she is trying to get settled. Complicated, but they are at a slight standstill for now, but he will get baptized eventually.
Anyway, I’ve talked too long. I have another cool story about a family we found, but that will have to wait for next week, so keep posted and I’ll write again next week. Peace Out
Elder Adam R Droge Antialienator345