December 28, 2015

Well, not a whole lot to tell this week

Just kidding, actually had a great week after we talked. I didn't get that homesick, we had stuff to do so we just geared up and left and everything went well.  I got recharged without getting too baggy. I probably would have gotten homesick as all get out if it werent for having such a great couple of days afterwards. 

Great videos too! skimboarding and boxing. You'll have to send me a surf video too. And as always I love seeing the truck get used out at Julies. 

And for Sarah's classes-looks pretty good to me. Is there anyway she can get Shane Reese for stats? 

And with the DNA, do you have specific information yet? I wanna know exactly which Eurpean countries and all. 

That's cool about gary Apfel. I know who he is but have never met him. I've always kind of wanted to go into the military but I don't know if I can make the sacrifice-like, I could give up my life for the country, but I couldn't give up my salvation, ya know? Not like its mutually exlcusive, there's lots of perfectly active and faithful servicemen, but it would sure be hard. Good for the boys to see though! 

And this week! Birthdays are actually a huge deal here and I have no idea how everybody knows but holy cow they treated me well. I had two families call me over for cake (one of them is in the picture, thats the hna Norey) and I got about 4 eggs broken over my head. Absolute blast. Its a tradition here, throwing eggs at the birthday boys and its so fun because you know its gonna happen in every house but you're just waiting. One of them was really funny because it was two kids, with their hands behind their backs, standing there, and they're like "hansen, come here! We have a secret to tell you!" ok. And then its a big party and everyone is running around throwing eggs and I'm chasing people getting egg on them too. Its a mess and normally I'd be a little bothered with people filling up my only clean shirt with egg yolks but its out of love. Fun day, american birthdays suck. Just wish everyone knew how much I hate cake so I'd be able to quit eating it. 

And I don't know if you remember the girl I told you about that's going to get baptized? Her name is Anne and she's the white looking girl in the family picture I sent you all a while back. We'd just been struggling with her for a while-she didn't want to accept a date-she always read, usually went to church, and wanted to get baptized but was afraid of the committment. So we backed off a little and focused more on her salvation than on her baptism-focused more on preparing her for eternal life rather than for her baptism, didn't talk about baptism for a week-and then on friday night she sat us down and just said "I want to prepare myself to be baptized this saturday". Right out of preach my gospel. And then we're just like "yeah, I think we can arrange that". We focused on her needs instead of just getting her baptized and then the spirit got to her and told her what she needed to do. It was just a cool moment, one of those moments that keeps me on the mission. The spirit is the real teacher. She will easily be one of my favorite baptisms. And then, another sister in that same house that we had been activating, out of the blue, just tells us "I want to prepare myself to go through the temple". We hadn't even talked about the temple with her. The spirit tells us what we need to do in spite of what we do as missionaries. 

Good week. Good lessons, found some new people, didn't get robbed, christmas, birthday-all in all pretty good. 

And Dad-what did the manager tell you about the sale of the ranch? How do his job prosepcts look once they cut the ranch in half? I want his job one day, run a business and still get to play cowboy. That would be fun though, I think you should do it. And I think I've been to the Ocala range, it's good. Wait for a good cold front and go! 

I think that's all I have for you all, Love you all and It was sure great to talk with everybody!