Letter 12-10-09

Dear Family,

The month of December rolls on and the Christmas season is well underway. And to get this out of the way, what do you give a missionary for Christmas who only has 2 months left when Christmas hits? Probably something that he could use for a month or two on the mission, yet also use after he gets home. As far as what that is, I have no idea. Elder Droge’s Christmas wish list is empty at the moment, so be creative. And FYI, a common gift is missionary music, but President Robison came out with a new rule that totally axed most of my music that I have collected. We can only listen to vocal or instrumental renditions of the hymns. Yay! … … ! But yeah, be creative and surprise me. That’s all I’m saying. And just remember that there isn’t a need to worry about me too much or ponder over the matter a whole lot because receiving Christmas gifts isn’t at top of my mind this season, so all is well.

Last week I mentioned that I saw snow for the first time on my mission, but it melted away. Well, just hours later a second storm hit and this one was real bad. It snowed and stayed all the way till Monday. I laughed at how the people here all panicked since it was the biggest snow storm in Roswell in six to eight years, yet it was only 2 or 3 inches. It did make for a dangerous ride to our combined Christmas Zone Conference in Lubbock. We were perfectly fine and no one in the mission was injured at all, but there were a few close calls due to the icy roads. One truck tipped on its side and another car with my MTC companion Elder Craven in it slid into oncoming traffic and almost hit a pole but remained untouched. The Lord watched after his TLMites. The conference was good. It had a duel purpose. We had our Christmas celebration on part of it and the other part was great instruction where President Robison gave us our goal for 2010. We are going to triple baptize this next year. We started at 20. We doubled that and hit 40. Now the goal is to be able to hit 60 baptisms. I’m excited for the direction this mission is going, but yet I am sad that I won’t really be a part of this goal, unless we hit it in the very first month. I feel like I am walking away from the mission and abandoning it. I wish I could do more than I have, but like Alma says, I should be content with what I have been allotted. I have nothing to complain about. I saw able to witness first hand the transition that this mission went through in completely changing the mindset and attitude towards the work. I have learned a lot and have become a completely different person. Now it is time to work my absolute hardest and sprint towards the finish line and then jump blindly into this strange new world that I will be forced to enter. Life after the mission. Or better yet, life after death.

Things are looking to turn out well here in Roswell these last few months. We do have a few baptismal candidates for the end of December and the beginning of January. I have this weird goal to hit 17 baptisms on my mission, which is an average of one per transfer. I’m at twelve right now and have to get 5 more in the next 2 ½ months. We have 3 fairly solid dates and a few others that could follow suit, so the goal is looking realistic, but since I have already spent too much time on other things I will leave you hanging. Mwa ha ha! Tune in next week!


Elder Adam R Droge
The DrogeMiester