Letter 1-21-10

Dear Family,

This past week has definitely been an interesting week. I think that I have gone into denial. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Yesterday was Zone Conference. It was really good. President talked about having faith in Christ and how that having that faith in Christ is the best and most important thing that we can walk away with on our missions. The weird time at Zone Conference though was at testimony meeting. They always have the departing missionaries get up and bare their testimonies and for some odd reason they decided to call on me. How dare them. After Zone Conference, we had a baptismal interview set up for Joe Sanchez, but we had to wait around for a while because Zone Conference ended early and I was sitting there pondering and it didn’t seem real that I have run out of Zone Conferences. It honestly feels like that I’ll be to the next Zone Conference at the beginning of March. It’s a weird feeling. I had heard that the mission goes by fast, but I don’t think it’s possible to fully comprehend how fast it really does go by until you are living in your last transfer.

To make things even better, along with all the birthday letters that I have gotten, the Church decided to send me what they thought was a good birthday letter, but was actually the scariest letter of my mission. It informed me that Gregory Coy, Derrick Craven, and Adam Droge will be flying home on Febraury 24th. We take off from Lubbock at 8:55 AM and arrive in Dallas at 10:00 AM. We then wait around awhile and take off from Dallas at 12:25 PM and arrive in Salt Lake City at 2:15 PM. It didn’t give time zones, but it did say that the first flight was 1 hour 5 minutes and that the second flight was 2 hours 50 minutes. We talked it over and the math only works out right when the Time Zones correlate as to where the airport is. So we will leave Lubbock at 8:55 AM Texas time and arrive in Salt Lake City 2:15 PM Utah time. I kind of hid that away. I don’t feel like dwelling on it at all until it is necessary to, but I figured that those who want to be there at the airport to escort me home might want to know because if I didn’t, it would be an awful long walk from the Salt Lake airport to Bountiful. Plus, now those who want to be there can have plenty of time to put it into their calendars ahead of time. If any changes are made or any new information comes up, I’ll let you know.

Onto better things though, how about a golden birthday? I didn’t even realize until a few weeks ago when my companion noticed it that this birthday is the only time of my life that I will turn 21 on the 21st. That’s kinda fun. It is also convenient timing that my birthday is on a P-day. That will make for a fun day. No need to worry about presents. I’ll pull a Mom and say that I don’t really need anything for my birthday. I’m not greedy. Just another day in the life of a missionary.

Speaking of missionary work, we had, like I mentioned, Joe Sanchez’s baptismal interview. He passed, so that is good. He didn’t think he had enough money to pay tithing, however, so the district leader made us promise that we’d have him talk to the bishop about his finances. We also gave him a good talk. We told him that he needs to pay his tithing first, no matter what. If he does, everything else will fall into place and somehow things will always work out. We extended him the promise that the Lord gives in Malachi to prove God. Test him. See if he will not pour you out a blessing that you will not have room to receive it. He took that well. However, he forgot that he will be out of town this weekend, so we rescheduled for next weekend, the 31st of January. We did experience minor disappointments with the other investigators I mentioned. I told about six people. Four of them were committed to coming to church, but Joe was the only one that showed. Chuck and Sharon didn’t commit, mostly because Sharon is scared of coming to church because she is closed in with a lot of people, but Jake, Sara, and Peter were all going to come but for one reason or another did not. I guess that just means we work harder because we’re getting down to crunch time and we really need to get things going. Now is the time. Anyways, though, I better get going. Everyone have a nice week!

Oh, did I mention that I have officially dodged all leadership calls outside being senior companion? Elder Droge never trained, never was a DL, ZL, or AP. Just a regular proselyting missionary his whole mission. Mwa ha ha! (not that I would've turned down the opportunity to serve if President wanted me to, but hey...)

Elder Adam R Droge
The DrogeMiester