May 26, 2009 Preparing for Elder Bednar's visit

May 26

Mom and Dad-

That is so cool that you guys all went to the airport for Brett. Was he really pretty quiet around you guys? That’s a little strange haha. Do you know if Dan got a chance to record his homecoming talk, or has that not even happened yet? That is so cool that he is back. Ray only has a couple months left, and then I will be around 8 months after him. Ray really wants me to go to BYU Idaho with him, but im really not sure what I want to do yet. What does Brett have planned to do as far as school goes? Thanks for the pictures by the way, I enjoyed them. I have been taking a lot of pictures lately and I am definitely planning on sending them home early this week. I just need to buy some padded envelopes and then I will send the chip home.

This last week was a little tough to get too much work done because of all the rain we had. There was a weird little tropical storm type thing that was over us for about three days. We also had Zone conference which made it sort of difficult to do anything that day. A couple of our investigators that we thought had some good potential ended up dropping us later on in the week, so that was a little bit disappointing, but it will all work out. We still had some good stuff happen. We did some tracting and found a couple of new people to teach. On Sunday, a new part member family moved in and the husband, who is a non member, said that he wants to start coming to the investigator class every Sunday. We have been having some cool experiences with random people just randomely showing up and wanting to be taught. I think I might have told you about the lady named Casey that we are starting to teach, or maybe I didn’t, I don’t know. Anyways, this lady has been investigating the church for over a year now and she has read both the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Book of Mormon cover to cover. There are some members in our ward that are selling puppies, and this lady (Casey) called to buy one and a conversation about the Church sprang up somehow, and now she wants to take the lessons. Some of these people have just fallen into our laps, its pretty amazing.

We have been doing a lot of knocking on doors lately. We want to start working more with the active members and help them to invite their friends and neighbors because it seriously works so much better that way. We have a lot of investigators right now, but they are pretty much all from tracting, so they don’t really have any connection with the Church members and that makes it difficult. Its been fun though, just trying to think of all the different ways we can find people. It is getting so hot out here. The other night, the humidity was up to 93% and we aren’t even in June yet. The Weather is supposedly supposed to be crazy this year. They are predicting over 16 named storms to be coming in this area, so that should be fun. I don’t know where they come up with those estimates though.

Im so excited for Elder Bednar to come to our mission. We get him for about 3 hours. Im scared though, because I think that we might have to role play in front of him, and I might poo myself if that happens. Elder Bednar told our mission to prepare by studying two of his talks, “Ask in Faith,” and “Seek Learning by Faith.” I definitely recommend you guys reading “Seek Learning by Faith.” I really got a lot out of it.

So I really don’t know what I want to do as far as school. Are you guys stressing out about where to move? I think, as much as I would love to have a couple months off when I get back, it would probably be best to get right back into school while im still fresh. If you’re still in California at that time, I would probably just go to FJC. But I really don’t know. I have 10 months to think about it, so I think ill be ok. Around this time President Summerhays starts asking us about school, so I will try to get some opinions from him. Eveytime I have an interview with him, he tells me that I have a very bright future ahead of me, so that gives me some hope haha. Oh yeah, my release date is April 15.

Well, I think I have to go now, I love you guys so much. Thank you for your emails every week:) I love you Mom, I love you Dad! Tell the Family I love them!
Love, Josh