October 25, 2010

Hey,

Sad I didn't hear from you this morning. That's ok though, I know your busy. I hope the churches filters didn't block an email that you sent.

This past week, because Elder Serdar is the District Leader, we got to go on exchanges with the Zone Leaders in Vidor, Tx. Elder Serdar stayed in Lack Charles, and I went to Vidor. I like going on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, they're always good missionaries. The exchange did make me miss the country though, Vidor is very country. The pictures are at the Texas visitor's center in Orange, Texas off of I-10.

The weather is still in the 80's or so. A few of the leaves have fallen but it's still probably more green than Utah is in the summer. I honestly can't remember how green it is there, only that it is less green than here.

We get to go to the Temple on the 16th, that's exciting.

Our fan in the apartment stopped working this week, so I took it apart and put it back together now it works, but it's really noisy, we'll probably never use it again.

We had interview's with President Moldenhauer this past Wednesday, that's always great.

We get to go to the ward Trunk-or-Treat this Wednesday, that should be fun. Elder Serdar has a Bunny suit another missionary left in the apartment that he's going to wear (supposedly). I don't know what I'm going to do, if anything. Elder Serdar said he would be upset if I dressed up as him.

When we stopped at the border I got an "Official Texas Travel Map" I'm sketching a copy of it with the areas I've served in on it. It's funny, THE mission seems so big, and Houston so far away, and then you look at it compared to the state of Texas..... Texas is REALLY BIG.

Love you,
bye

October 18, 2010

Hi All,

Funny, I've been sick too. Weird family bonds. I'm over the cold though, just need to get this phlegm out of my throat.

B-day requests?....Just Ties, Polyester please. and for either Christmas and/or Birthday, maybe a new camera. My camera's been around the block but it still works for now.

Also, what ever happened to the medical insurance card you guys were going to get me?

So, when a missionary goes home, mission language is that he died. I tell you this because I spoke with a being that belonged to the world beyond this one. Someone who has passed beyond the veil to the land of eternal P-Days. Former Elder David Clark toured his Mission with his family this past week. It was pretty weird to see him not as a missionary. He was in Lake Charles seeing people from his mission. He gave us a call for a phone number and we met up at one of his recent converts house for a few minutes on the way to our appointment.

I am including a voice recording I made last night. Tell Dad I owe him an apology, I was wrong about the definition of pride and being proud.

Oh so yesterday the Primary asked us to sing called to serve with them in the primary program and said if the kids (25+) sing louder than the 4 of us then they could cut our ties. Well, the primary lady, I'm not sure what her calling is, only brought 3 ties for the primary to cut. Yep I had to saccrifice my tie and walk around the end of Church like 15-20 minutes of E.Q. and afterwards, with a snipped tie. There's my funny story for the week.

Love you guys,
Bye

October 11, 2010

Hey,

I'm Still in La. Looks like I'm going to spend about 1\4 of my mission out side the state of Texas.

The Conference was good. Tyler (cousin) was actually one of the first missionaries I saw that was not from my mission. I also saw Ty (neighbor)before the meeting started. I got 2 main messages out of Elder Costa's Talk.

1: You really don't have it that bad. He Told us some of the missionaries in the meeting covered an area smaller that 1 square mile. As a mission president in Brazil, he had an area that was in the Millions of square miles. Plus Brazil has only 2 seasons: Summer =127 F. & Winter 100 F. with 90% + humidity. Also that we are serving in the united states where it is the easiest to talk about religion.

2: Teach by the Spirit, & TEACH PEOPLE NOT LESSONS. He told his conversion story about how the missionaries taught a Lesson to his family, and his father did not let them come back because the missionaries taught them about F.H.E. Well, Elder Costa's parents were doing F.H.E. 7 days a week and didn't like how the missionaries told them to only have it once a week. 10 years later 2 new missionaries came and taught his father what he needed to hear and not a lesson. etc.

I'm thinking about sending a package home either today or next week, probably next week. I will send a memory card with pictures as well as all the voice recordings I have made so far.

So on Saturday we stopped at Panda Express for lunch/dinner. I went to the bathroom, and the zipper on my suit pants broke!! Fortunately 95% of the time left before we got to the apartment was sitting in the back seat of a truck. I still felt really self conscious as we left Panda Express and got into the truck. If I remember correctly, Missionary Mall said they would replace anything that broke from normal wear and tear. I will send a picture on the memory card so we can see if they will replace them or not.

Elder Serdar bought a typewriter from a thrift store last week to type letters on since computers are banned.

I heard Mellisa's Engaged (from Robin) is that true?
Well, I hope your not all Black + Blue from your wreck.

Well I got to go,
I love all of you,
Bye

October 4, 2010

Hey,

Aggghhhh, I only have 29 more days as a teenager!! I've been out 10 Months, double digits! :-) Man that's crazy. It has been so nice the last week, words can not describe the joy I feel. :-) Things are going great.Transfers are in a week so we will see what will happen. I really have no idea if I will stay or not.

Did I tell you that we have a Tri-Mission conference coming up on Saturday? It will be with Elder Costa, of the Presidency of the Seventy. He spoke about prophets in the Saturday morning session of Conference. The bad news is that One of the Recent Converts from the new "Preach My Gospel" DVDs moved to Lake Charles so we wil probably have to report to Elder Costa about how Brother Ming Han is doing. That in it's self is not the bad news, the bad news is that we have no Idea where Ming is. Ok, that's not true, before he turned his phone off he told us he was back in China! He told us he would be coming back on August 26, but his house (work owned) has been rented out to another employee. He quit his job and turned his phone off. So, we might have to tell Elder Costa that we lost a really important Recent Convert. Possibly infront of 3 missions....Glad I'm not the senior compainion or District Leader. ;-)

Also, Jim ______, the guy who has been trying to quit smoking, we think he might be avoiding us. We don't know why. We hope we're wrong.

We didn't have anywhere to go last night so we decided to contact people around McNeese State. It was around 7:50 PM. So, we contact college sudents for like 45 Minutes. It's about 8:30 and dark and I turn to Elder Serdar and say, "Elder, ALL the people we've contacted so far have been girls. Almost all of the people I've seen have been girls. I think this might be the Girls Dormitory we're walking around." Needless to say, we got out of there pretty quick before we got the cops called on us.

Ok, 9 minutes left. I guess we get to go to the Temple again in November, that's cool. Could you print up and mail me copies of President Uchtdorf, and President Eyring's preisthood talks as well as Elder Oakes's talk from this conference, and last conference? If you could just print those up and mail them I would really appreciate it. Those were my favorite talks by the way. Oh ya, after hearing President Uchtdorf's talk on pride tell Dad I owe him an apology. I was always telling him not to be proud of me, well I was wrong.

Well, I need to go. Have a great week. Be safe.
Love you guys. Bye!

September 27, 2010

Hi,

Oh my gosh it feels so good out side right now! It makes me want to sing a hallelujah chorus.

My week was pretty good. It was different being in a trio instead of a normal companionship. In a lot of ways I liked it because you get...more of a variety???... I guess that is the best way to put it.

Today is our Zone Preparation day, not sure what we're going to do, but I'm excited for it.

So, when we moved into the sister's old apartment, we asked the mission office if they had changed our address in the computer, they said yes, but guess what??? This past week the housing coordinator from the mission office went to the old apartment to finish close/clean it up. Elder Serdar had 8 letters from the past 3 1/2 weeks plus we had 2-3 referrals they had mailed to that address, oops. (That's why we mail directly to the apartment.)

Was it Deborah's (Pulley) husband who had the 3B's diet when he goes to the south? Blue bell ice cream, Barbecue and Brisket? Well I found a 4th B, Buffalo Wild Wings, Yum. Turns out it's banned because the environment is not conducive to having the spirit, but those were some good wings. I'm definatlely going to eat there when I come back after my mission.

So this week the church decided to upgrade all their missionary phones. They gave us the LG "Remarq". It's a slider phone with a full keyboard and camera. Huh?? that's a nicer phone than what I had back home. I have no idea why the church gave us these phones. There is so much about them the missionaries can abuse. The screen is on the out side, and sliders are kind of flimsy so they will probably break pretty quick. We aren't supposed to use the camera, but it's not locked and there's no way to track when it's being used. And there's like real music on it for ring tones. Don't get me wrong it seems to be a great phone, just a terrible missionary phone.

So any way, the Zone Leaders called us up on Wednesday and told us to drive 30 miles to Orange, Tx. and to be there in about 1 hour, and told us we would get our phones Thursday evening. I don't know if you understand, maybe Dad, how disabling not having a phone is. I think it would be like Dad having to work from home with out a phone, phone numbers or any other form of contact other than face to face. Then after we gave our old phones to the Zone Leaders and got back to Sulphur, we realized they didn't tell us when/where to pick our new phones up. So we don't have a phone, we don't have their number, but that doesn't matter because they don't have a phone either, and the Zone leaders live 45 -60 miles away. Fortunately, we got it all worked out. Our apartment has a land line we never use. We were able to use a ward list to call our ward mission leader and fortunately he was home. He was able to give us the Mission office number which gave us the Housing coordinators number who happened to be at the same meeting as the Zone leaders, during lunch break. whhheewwwwww. Needless to say we were blessed.

Well, I've ranted on about phones enough. your right we weren't able to do much work in Lake Chunk (Charles) this week.

Real quick then I've got to go. Elder Costa of the Presidency of the Seventy is coming on 10/9/10 to speak at a tri mission conference so that's cool. Will you or Dad get on the new family search look up Nida Christensen, Born: 6 Jan 1903, Died: 31 Oct 1991. She's one of Elder Serdar's ancestors. Just want to see if we're related at all.

well I've got to go hope you have a fun week and a great conference.

Love you Bye

September 20, 2010

Hey there,

I think I'm doing as well anyone could in these circumstances. The humidity has been down the last couple of days so that has been really nice. I think it might be starting to cool down a little, just in the mornings, and evenings. It might just be a localized cooling not seasonal.

If you want to, you can include in the news letter that Elder Serdar is( well was/Will be) a professional Halo player, I forgot to tell you that. This coming week Elder Serdar has to go to Kingwood for a leadership conference for 4 days. Since it is so far away I am going to be spending the week in Sulphur with the missionaries there. Elder Serdar and a few other missionaries will stay in Kingwood with the assistants. Most of the Leaders that will go to that conference will get back to there areas every night. But president decided we're just a little to far away for that. So if you send any mail I won't get it until Friday night at the earliest.

I actually had stopped cooking pizzas because it was getting so hellishly hot outside that the AC in the old apartment was having a hard time keeping up, and firing up the oven didn't help any. Mostly now my lunches are either eating out, or yogurt and a can of straight tuna, no mayo or anything. I did PB&J for a while but gave up on that also. Don't worry, if I wanted something tastier I would go too the trouble to make it. On the bad side of food, our meal coordinator is scatter-brained. We have had 3 dinner appointments, 2 of which WE set up, in the last 3 weeks Besides the standing appointments we have on Saturdays, & Sundays. The Bishop and the Relief Society President are working on it though.

No we didn't figure out what kind of spider it was, Elder Serdar took a video of it on his HD video camera I'll try to remember to stick it on a memory card the next time I send one home. I'm pretty sure it was not a tarantula though, it was fast. It looked like a giant Hobo, or wolf spider, but I have no idea what kind it actually was.

Thanks for the address, I also have the Houston mission address from the ward newsletter (Ty's address)

On Saturday, we get to go on exchanges with the Zone Leaders. That's always fun. Both of our Zone Leaders have actually served in Lake Charles before, so I'm looking forward to it.

I'm still working on the retainer. Both us and the dentist have been really busy. I'm going to try to do it today some time.

So this week some old lady gave us $20 because her son is a Mormon and was a missionary. So we decided to use the money to get some Ice cream and dinner. Well, at the ice cream parlor the lady who served us asked US questions about religion. She was at work but she said we would meet with us and wanted to learn more. It was a pretty cool miracle.

Well I need to go I'll talk to you later.
Love you
Bye!

September 13, 2010

Hey,

I got your letter today. No, the tie is not too bright, but it is too small. Elder Serdar who is 5' ?'' can barley wear it. I hope you enjoy Lake Powell, Take some pictures.

I am not sure if there is any sort of fall here. I know the pine needles and pine cones fall, but I don't think very many, if any leaves fall.

I'm getting pretty pumped for conference in 3-4 weeks, and NOT because I can sleep in and don't have to dress up. Funny/Weird huh? No my feet are not hurting, maybe a little off and on. When they do I try to do the calf stretches on door steps while we're tracting.

Elder Serdar and I are getting along great I'm having the most fun I've had in a while. Today for P-day we're probably going to the church and watch church movies: The new Joseph Smith movie, The Testaments, etc.

Oh ya we also found a HUGE spider in our apartment last night. The BODY, the body was at least 1.5'' long, not counting the legs. Elder Serdar put 4 gloves on, 2 on each hand, and caught it in a Tupperware container and put it in the freezer until it died. That's how we measured it. It scared me pretty bad. My vocabulary almost got a little larger. I thought everything was bigger in Texas, not LA. I will maybe send you a picture next week.

The work is going great. Last Saturday we set 2 Baptism dates. One of them was with ____, the guy who's read a whole triple, but can't quit smoking. After steering the conversation away from himself for most of the visit/message, he told us he knows he needs to quit smoking and is going to try to quit again. The spirt was really strong.

Well I need to go. I look forward to hearing how your trip was

~Love You Guys! Bye