Aug 10, 2009

Mom and Dad-

How are you guys? That’s cool that your going back out to Utah for that convention. Is it a dental convention? Are you going straight to lake Powell right after that or are you coming home first? Im jealous of all the time you are getting with the kids. Andy sent me a picture of Ryan at the hospital with a huge smile on his face. Ryan is the coolest haha. So Ray gets home this Thursday huh? Is he going to start school right when he gets back or is he going to wait for the fall? I just got an email from him. I think he is wiggin out a little bit.

This week was ok. It actually was quite challenging. I am having a really hard time loving my companion. He just does a lot of things that really get under my skin. I actually talked to President about it this week and President just kind of laughed and said that he completely understands the nature of the beast that I am dealing with. I guess my Elder Adam has sent President some emails that kind of let him know that he is a bit out there so he shared some empathy with me when I talked to him on the phone which actually helped a lot. He told me that I have a crown awaiting me after this transfer, so I am a little nervous/excited about what that means. But anyways, besides that, everything else is going very good. The work is great. Despite the challenges in the companionship, I am actually still very happy. We have two baptisms coming up this Saturday the 15th. Either Elder Adam or I will perform Westley’s Baptism, and then I think Torrin Caldwell will be baptized by his Dad. The cool thing is about Torrin, is that his Dad has been less-active for a couple years now, and none of his brothers or sisters have been baptized. But ever since we have started teaching Torrin, his Dad has been coming back to church and he is now worthy to baptize Torrin. The other cool part is that he just got called yesterday as the new gospel doctrine teacher which completely took me by surprise considering he just barely re-activated. So yeah we are pretty excited about that family. Something else happened yesterday that we are pretty excited about as well. There is a new married couple in our ward, the Voytavach’s. Sister Voytavach is active but her husband is not a member. We had heard that he had taken the lessons before, but was not interested, so we hadn’t really bothered. But yesterday after church, the Bishop wanted us to come into his office and said that he had an investigator for us. So we went in and there was the new married couple, and I guess that had just had a very spiritual experience with the Bishop and Joshua Voytavach now wants to take the lessons. The Bishops goal is to get them sealed in the temple, so that’s what we are shooting for. I am really excited about him.

So anyways, I am sorry to bore you with all of that. We are teaching a lot of really great people right now, and are ward is so great. They have been helping us so much. They are all really excited about missionary work so it has helped us out a ton. President told me that I would be out of here next transfer which makes me a little bit sad because there is just so much going on right now. But at the same time, I think I am ready to get out of Fort Walton after being here for almost 9 months.

Oh yeah, something else really happened this week. We had another tornado touch down here in Fort Wiggity. It was pretty crazy, we were on our way to go tract some street, and when we turned the corner, there was just a wall of black coming at us. So we sat there and were taking pictures as the black clouds started to creep over us, and while we were taking pictures, we noticed that the clouds were forming into these really funky shapes and they started spinning. The wind then started to pick up and we saw a wall of rain coming from a distance, so we decided to head to the church. So, we found out later on that those were funnel clouds and that there was a tornado somewhere in Fort Walton and the alarms at the military base were all going off. So that was a cool experience. I took a great video of it, so I will send that home shortly.

Alrighty, I think im gonna go now. I love you mom, I love you dad. Thank you for everything!

Love, Josh