Letter - Week of April 25 (six month mark of his mission)

My Easter was fantastic!  After church, we had a member invite us over to dinner.  The cool part was that he was bringing us along to a non-members house to have dinner.  Apparently the nonmember is coworkers with the member and she heard that he would have us for dinner all the time on Sunday's at his house.  So she thought it would nice if we came along as well to dinner.  It was great to be able to go over to their house.  They had quite the feast for us.  I haven't eaten that much food in one sitting in awhile.  I was wobbling out of the house after it was all said it done.  We didn't talk about the gospel at all, but from what the member said, just our presence will make a huge impact with her.  The fact she let us in, according to the member, was huge! 

Well my talk got changed to our Ward Easter dinner we had.  I spoke at that instead of sacrament. 

I believe President Wilkey called you a few days ago.  He said he was going to, so I assume he did.  I love that man.  President WIlkey is such a good guy.  I like him so much more than President Hill. I look back on how things went down in Serbia, and I can't believe how things turned out.  We are all human, even mission presidents. 

I got the healthy package... That was an impressive amount of items you were able to cram into that package.  I definitely am set with goodies.  I have so many lying around our apartment.  

I heard from Alex Porter today... Apparently he broke his ankle pretty bad in Mexico and is now back home in SLC recovering from it. 

I love you so much... Thank you for everything.

Letter - Week of April 18

So yeah, transfers happened this week.  We didn't get a phone call.  So it looks like another 6 weeks in Vermont.  Zone conference is in five weeks.  The only missionaries I have met are the ones who are in my district.  At this point I have been on companionship exchanges with all of them.  My companion is the district leader, so we go on companionship exchanges every week.  

We have a pretty yummy Chinese place here in Johnson that we go to twice a week or so.  Once on P-Day and once with a member who takes us every Wednesday before our scripture study class.  That member was actually a member of the seventy back in the day. 

As I told mom, our ward has been pretty crazy these past few weeks.  We had two members die, an older lady and a two year old.  I don't know if the two year old made news over what's going on nowadays, but he was accidentally shot by one of his siblings when they were playing with a gun.  So these past weeks have been very emotional for everyone in the ward where I am serving.  

Our stove will hopefully get fixed this week.  We called the members who are renting out the apartment to us, and they told us they would contact the gas company or whoever to fix the problem.  We have been forced to cook in the church building this past week.... OH I HAVE A GOOD STORY!! So last week I was cooking Dad's garlic pasta.  It was about done: the pasta was minutes from being cooked and the garlic was completely browned in the oil.  So I took off the pan with the olive and garlic and placed it onto a stove that did not have any heat on it.  After 10 seconds, I noticed that the oil was starting to boil for some strange reason.  I went over to grab it and it started to boil even more.  So I put the pan down and as I did so, a few droplets of oil jumped into the air. And I still don't know how to this day, but those oil droplets ignited into a fire ball that reached the ceiling.  I thought I was going to burn the church down.  I have never screamed so loud in my life.  Right before my face was this huge ball of fire.  Oh man, it was awesome.  The smoke that came from it was pretty impressive.  I had to close the room door because it was thick enough to set off the fire alarm, which would have been bad news.  But the good news is nothing caught on fire.  So I am safe.    I don't know if that ever happened to you, but it’s scary stuff.

I get to have pizza for lunch today!  We are going to Lydon to play some basketball with everyone in our district.  Haha, it’s time to put my game face on.  Unfortunately, Vermont doesn't believe in having wood floors to play on.  They believe carpet is far better. Oh well.  At least we can still play. 

April 11 Update

Now need recipes that require no heat…

I haven't had the chance to try any of the recipes that dad sent.  Our stove died on us, so we have no way of preparing the meals.  I have stuck to anything that is microwavable this past week. 

Things are still going the same in where I am at.  Nothing to report.  The snow has almost melted.  We have had a few solid days of rain here and it has helped with that. 

Please send referrals, does this sound familiar to you former missionaries…

This week was pretty much the same.  Tract, tract, tract.  That's all we really do.  We have a pair of investigators who we teach regularly, but that's about it.  It’s really wearing me down just knocking, knocking, and knocking on endless amount of doors.  Tracting has to be the least effective way to do missionary.  I always think what it must be like to have a pair of 20 year old kids knocking on your door saying that they have the knowledge about the restored church of Jesus Christ.... I just wish there was a different way out here, but we don't have any other option.  It doesn't help that we have a small amount of miles to use each month, which really restricts are abilities to get around at all.  Only this far into the month, we have used half of the miles allotted to us.  Oh well.