Take no Thought What Ye Shall Eat or Drink

A family that is taking good care of Elder Novakovich texted us this picture, I assume to prove that Darren is not starving.

9/26 Letter from Elder Novakovich

So I find out transfers this coming Saturday, which happens to be General Conference!  Woot.  If I was any sort of fortune teller, I would guess that I am staying in Gardiner and Elder Gaykowski will be going somewhere else.  But I have no clue though, because President has developed the reputation of making transfer decisions no one saw coming!  I never would of expected to be leaving Somersworth after one transfer, but it happened nonetheless.  Hopefully I do get to stay though.  I really like Gardiner.  I have especially grown to love a guy who lives really close to us.  His wife is a member.  He has a golden heart, but he has been messed over by religion before so doesn't want any part of it.  He was actually the one who called home the day you had your surgery.  We were over at his house and I was talking about how you were going through the surgery that his wife went through just a little while back.  He asked me for my home phone number and he called to see how the surgery went.  Tyson picked up the phone, and from the sounds of it, he didn't have a clue what was going on.  Hopefully he relayed the message, but I imagine that he didn't.  He is an amazing guy.  I love that man to death! 

So the baptism for John was pushed back the 8th of October due to general conference. 

I don't know what I would really like for my year mark!  For the pizza, I think anything would be good!  I can't really remember what toppings the pie has, but I think something with some meat would be good!  As for other stuff, I really don't have any cravings.  Hard candies like blow-pops, lifesavers, and some others like that would be good.  I guess you can surprise me!  I haven't been disappointed with anything thus far!  :) 

That is so cool to hear about Camryn and the blessing.  That had to be an amazing thing to hear about how she knew the blessing was going to work.  It's amazing how much faith a child can have!  I guess that's why the savior repeats over and over again in his teachings "become as a little child."  Tell her I am so proud of her! 

Ahh I can't believe Taylor is almost in college too!  Man, it's going to be sweet being in the same school as Taylor!  That will be a really fun experience!  I bet she is way excited for college to start... 

Oh boy, I think Utah State might win it again this year.  BYU isn't doing so hot!  Hopefully the Aggies show up to play!  The game is at BYU this year, right?  That will be a fun game to go to.  Hopefully some crazy Aggie fans cause some raucous! 

Well things are going great here in Gardiner!  We have a combined district p-day today, which is going to be sweet!  Everyone in our district can play some basketball!  We are going to have some competitive games for sure!  I am really excited for that.

More from Elder Novakovich

The weather here has been perfect.  From what I checked out, Utah has been scorched!  The weather there has been hotttttt.  I am not jealous of that.  Not one bit.  You can tell though that fall is coming upon us here.  People are emptying there pools.  Just to go on a little tangent:  EVERYONE here has a pool in their backyard, which is ironic because they have MAYBE 3 months of weather that is good for swimming.  Anyways, people are emptying their pools and the trees are starting to show signs that they are going to change colors.  The only depressing thing about fall on its way is the fact that winter is that much closer.  I am not looking forward to experiencing a full blown, frigid winter in New England.  No sir, I am not looking forward to that at all.  But I will be sure to capture all of the beauty of fall for y'all!  I will include a lot of pictures to show you the best part of being in New England.  

Things are going absolutely great out here in Gardiner!  The gym is still in full force and I have nothing to complain about!  This month is going to be a busy month!  Elder C. Scott Grow from the Seventy is coming down for our Zone Conference on September 19.  And to add more awesome to this transfer, we have interviews with President Wilkey on the 15th!  President Wilkey is going to be one busy man this month!  I am excited to be able to talk again with President!  They are much more enjoyable now that I am not talking about negative things!  I am grateful for all that he has done for me.  I was talking with him last Zone Conference and he mentioned to me how I was going to be his favorite story.  He talked about how happy he was that I am truly starting to plant myself in this mission soil.  He wrote a little letter to me and placed it in my BoM, which basically was complimenting me.  I was very happy to hear that he likes what I am becoming.

Well it’s good to hear that things are going well on the home front.  I miss everyone so much!  I love you so much and am extremely grateful for all you do!  

I love you!

Elder Novak 

8-28 Letter from Elder Novakovich

Haha yeah I did survive the hurricane!  Heck, our apartment didn't even lose power!  How anti-climatic is that?  We were preparing for something epic, but nothing really happened in our neck of the woods.  Our area didn't really do much to prepare for the hurricane, except for buying water and other nonperishable goods in case loss of power. I guess you can count that as a serious blessing, but it still would have been sick to be able to claim you went through a harsh storm like a hurricane.  All I can say is that I am glad I got out of Vermont!  While we were doing our laundry this morning, I saw that Vermont was experiencing some serious flooding.  And I know for a fact that the area I was in must have gotten it bad!  We had a pretty intense storm while I was there and it caused serious damage from falling tress (there are A LOT of trees in Vermont).  So it definitely was a bust where we were.  Some areas lost power due to a tree falling down on power lines, but that is the extent of the damage. 

The baptism on Friday went really well!  It was very well attended and it went extremely smooth.  Everything went to plan and fell right into place.  The only hiccup was one of the speakers showed up seconds before he was supposed to talk.  But he was forgiven when he explained during his talk that his best friend just died in the hospital and that he has been with him for the past few days before he passed away.  It was a touching talk and really brought a special spirit to the meeting.  Melissa was extremely happy to get baptized.  It was an experience that she won't be forgetting anytime soon!  After the baptism, we went over to her place to get our BBQ on!  We had burgers, dogs, and pasta salads.  For dessert, which I had multiple servings of :), we had a chocolate cool whip spread between graham crackers!  Holy cow, it was amazing.  What they did was take cool whip and add lots of chocolate into it.  Once completed, they took a tin tray and placed graham crackers on their sides and used the cool whip as mortar to keep the grahams together.  I don't know how long they sat in the fridge, but by the time we ate them the graham crackers were as soft as the cool whip, which made it amazing to eat!  Probably one of my new favorite desserts to eat!   It was sooo good.

New Apartment?

We're not sure if this is Darren's new apartment, but he sent this picture to us and was proud of his tent assembly skills.

Short Update from Elder Novakvich

Weather in Maine has been absolute heaven!  Holy cow, you couldn't ask for better weather... The way I see it, when Winter comes around, I think it is more than ok to ask for this kind of weather... Not looking forward to the -30 degree temps with tens of feet of snow.  Yikes.

The missionary work has boomed this week!  We had a record amount of lessons given, 19, investigators to come to church, 4(two of them being the first time ever), and new investigators.... We picked up three last week!  That is so cool.  I am excited to see how that goes.  Both my companion and I are getting along great. 

Again, sorry that this is such a short email. 

I love you so much

Elder Darren !

August 8 Letter from Elder Novakovich

Golf was fun!  Is was quite a downfall in the quality of my game, but what can you expect when you haven't swung a club in about 9 months!  The course we played was called Western View and it was a small, small course.  It was one of those that the front nine and back nine were the same holes.  They had about 5 holes that were approachable par 4s from the tee box.  If I had my old swing and set of clubs, I couldn't of even used my driver on some of the holes!  The average par 4 length was 260 or so yards.  I would of launched it past the green every single time.  For the round, we ended up just playing a 3 vs. 1 scramble against the kid who is amazing.  We beat him by a few strokes... But he still was pretty dang good.  We all shared a ladies version of the sasquatch driver... That was crazy to swing.  I could feel the shaft bend like nobody's business whenever I swung.  I still had a shot where I bombed it 280 or so, so that was cool. 

The teaching pool here is thin.  This area had an explosion of baptisms about 4 months ago and now it's pretty slow.  We are trying to find some new people to teach, but everyone here has talked to the missionaries about a thousand times.  I am hoping that the members will hook us up.  The baptism coming up has been through the hands for elders for the past 12 months.  I am lucky enough to be able to be there when she finally gets baptized.  It was pretty cool... Last time we visited her, I had the chance to play the guitar.  Her husband has been taking lessons for the guitar and he let me shred some riffs on it.  He has a pretty dang cool guitar/amp combo.  I miss my guitar!

I have no clue what I would want for my next package.  As of right now, I am sitting solid with the amount of candy.  I just was able to finish off the jelly beans the other night.  I still haven't touched half of the other stuff in the package.  There's so much candy!

Nothing really new happened this week.  Just the same old stuff.  I miss you terrible and love you so much.