Letter #6

Dan sent home his first SD card with pictures on them!  I will add a few this week and next week. I think these are the tags of the people in his MTC district (?). 

 

I think these might be the actual people behind the tags!

 

These are Rexburg people that he got to see in the MTC.

 

His first baptism!

 

Now for Letter #6

 

Today marks the beginning of the last week of my first transfer. Missionaries mark time in the mission field by transfers, which are 6 weeks long. At the end of each transfer, there is a possibility that you will be moved from your current area, but I really hope I have at least one more transfer in Stadium ward. It's crazy to think that I've already been out this long. There are 17 transfers in a mission, so I'm about 6% of the way done. Which sounds super small and super big at the same time. But you should probably start sending my snail mail to the mission office, because I don't know if I'll still be at this apartment or not.

Elder Kearney and I were going to baptize Brian this last week, but when we were trying to finalize some details in the morning, we got a text from him saying he was in the hospital for his back, and that it would not be able to happen today. Well, he is getting better, and he will be baptized this next week with Sonya, so we will have 2 baptisms this next week. It was pretty disappointing, but life happens sometimes.

General conference was so awesome. I don't know if this happened with you guys back home, but all of a sudden, every talk was about missionary work. I had never seen these talks that way before, but it wasn't like there was more of a focus on it than normal, but it was where my focus was, so I saw it everywhere. President Weaver made a comment about that inbetween sessions at one point, so I guess it's a pretty normal thing. Also between sessions on Saturday, Elder Quigley (a senior elder from the office, who technically isn't on a mission anymore...) took everyone to lunch at Taco Bell. Apparently it's an age old tradition, but basically, everyone from the Tacoma Zone met at Taco Bell (about 20-25 of us), and Elder Quigley bought about 200 tacos. And we ate them all. And the 6 sister missionaries ate about 2-3 each, so that bumps our actual numbers way down. I wasn't counting, but I probably had 12-14 tacos, and Elder Kearney had 20. And that was a pretty bad Pokemon choice. But we ate all of those tacos. For conference, I marked Russell M. Nelson in the second session, Dieter F. Uchtdorf in Priesthood session, L. Tom Perry in the Sunday morning session, and Jeffrey R. Holland in the final session as power talks, and I wrote down obedience and peace as themes. And there was a ton of interesting things about having those themes too. It was great hearing about obedience, because whenever you hear about obedience in the mission, it's people telling you that you will go to hell for wearing a jacket with a logo, or something like that, all Law of Moses style, but whenever they talk about it in conference, it's all like, "This guy paid tithing for a couple years, and he's so awesome!" I was told that the MTC talks aren't released to the public because the general authorities are so much more harsh toward us than they are in conference. And then with the theme of peace, section 87 of the D&C is foretelling the Civil War, and greater wars to come, and then section 88 is called the Olive Branch, because everyone got so freaked out about that prophecy, but anyway, the point is that we are going to be talked to about finding peace the most right before it's hardest to find. Signs of the times. Anyway, those are just my thoughts from the first listen over.

Oh yeah, and I just remembered about the best part of this last week. Wednesday morning, President Weaver showed up at our apartment for personal and companionship study. And it was so great, because we were all ready on time and everything, and he was so happy with us, because he said usually when he shows up randomly to study with people that they aren't ready at all or anything, and he said we did really well. And companionship study with him was awesome, because we just talked to him about the mission gossip and stuff. He gave us some "hot buzz" to spread around, and told us our ward could have some sister missionaries in May, which they've been really wanting for a while now. Anyway, all sorts of awesome stuff.

We had a ton of sun this last week, but the last couple of days it's gone back to being rainy a lot again. But that's why Washington is so beautiful. President Weaver says that Tacoma is the Garden of Eden in the spring, because even the weeds bloom. And it really is beautiful here. There is so much green, and moss everywhere, and we have a ton of flowers right now.

Anyway, I miss everyone, and love you all! I'm going to wrap up this letter now, but I hope you are all doing well! I love hearing from you, so write or email whenever you can :)