Letter 12-1-08

Dear Family,

Wow, it is December and officially Christmas season. Man, time really flies.

So I've developed a new system of how I will do things for email. Ok, not really new, just a tad bit revised. What is it? Well, nothing interesting, so if you really want to know, then you will let me know. Just keep this in mind. Make sure I have your right email address and everyone else's primary email address. How do you find that out? Look in the little box that says "TO" and look at all the email addresses that I've sent the letter to.

Moving on though, I forgot to tell you something about my new companion, Elder Romney. He is from Centerville. I found that real fun to be serving with a very local companion. If you want to visit his parents and learn more about my companion and tell them more about me, here's his address, (edited for safety). Stop by and say hi.

So I have some good news for everyone out there, last transfer I made a record for how many pictures I took in 1 transfer. A few different things went on that helped that, which include my return to Midland and the Bushmans and also Halloween. I also had a companion that loved taking pictures, so that helped. Anyone know what that means? I am "fixin to" make a new picture CD at Wal-Mart and send it home. Slight tangent, "fixin to" is Texan for "about to" or "preparing to." Everyone says that. There's a few other words and phrases that they use that I find fun to use myself, however, one that I have committed myself not to use is y'all. I think it sounds weird and I prefer the Utah version of You all, you guys, or simply just you. Anyway, back on track, I'm not sure if it'll be this week or next, but I will make a new picture CD. I won't do one every transfer, but this one is an exception because I took lots of pictures.

So after all the drama about me telling you that I promised to tell you about investigators here and never doing so because there was never anyone to talk about, I have a few stories for those of you who claim to like hearing about missionary stories. One. There is a lady named Mary Jane Rodriguez. She is married and 26. As you might've found from the last name, she is hispanic. We've taught her the first three lessons already and she really gets the message well. The only problem is her husband. I don't know if Greg has ever ran into this, but he is very possesive of his wife it seems. He is not religious at all. He doesn't want to sit down and listen to us. His wife, Mary Jane, wants to come to church and wants to be baptized, but he won't let her do either. the best that he does is let us talk to her. Greg, since you served in Mexico City, I assume that you know how to deal with hispanics a little bit. If you ever ran into that, you should give me some advise on how we can help her and what we can do to get her baptized.

One other story. I usually won't mention all the first lessons we teach, but here is an exception. We found this lady named Shery Byrd. She has a 7 year old daughter, Lauren, that turns 8 next month. They are both very open and very teachable. They also love talking, especially with us. Well, when we taught the restoration lesson, like I said we did, it went extremely well. They understood and comprended perfectly. They did so well that when I got to telling them about the first vision, I decided not to tell them what Christ said to Joseph Smith. Rather, I decided to ask them what they think Christ said. Here is there response, almost in exact words, "Join none of them because the fullness of Christ's gospel wasn't on the earth." That was amazing! The great thing was that both of them said that at almost the exact same time. Shery actually took notes during the lesson. I've never had that happen before, and Lauren's faith is pretty much stereotypical of that described in Mosiah 3:19. It is through the roof. It's great.

I'll let you know if anything further develops. Those are the stories of the week. I hope you enjoyed. Next week I will let you know how Zone Conference went. That is tomorrow. But in the meantime, my time is up. I am signing off. Everyone have a great week! Let me know how Thanksgiving went.

Elder Adam R Droge
The DrogeMiester