2/24

hey sooo to start off, I got a very interesting Valentines Day card this week from all the sister in the RS. and then also 2 missionaries. They both wrote pretty odd things. Elder Lee wrote, "You need to stop being so cool." Why?... and Elder Toutai wrote that he translated my homecoming into Hmong. ummm I'm pretty sure he's mistaken, because i haven't came home yet... odd.  (Elder Toutai probably meant to say farewell.)

 

So N***** is doing great! She super kind and she is one of those people that god had prepared to find the gospel. It is super awesome when you teach someone who actually keeps his/her commitments. So N____'s baptismal date is for the 8th of May. She changed it because her grand kids are coming.

We have been seeing this family every week for a couple weeks. They are active and have been for awhile, but they haven't been to the temple to be sealed and the bishop says they've kinda plateaued over the years. Their youngest daughter is 7 and will be baptized in a few months and their older daughter just recently started coming to church again and doesn't really remember anything. Its pretty good teaching them because we can really see how much the church and the gospel brings them together.

 

The other day I was walking in town and I looked through a window of a restaurant as I was walking and I saw a hockey game on.. As I was still walking I zoomed in on the top where it says who is playing and the score.. I saw it was USA vs CAN and by time I could look at the score or look at the game  I had walked past the window. WHAT HAPPENED! I was freaking out! I didn't want to turn around and watch... but I totally wanted to at the same time.  I didn't tho.

I was thinking about jump the shot (the game the young men played last Wednesday for scouts....where someone swings a big rope around) the other day. That's pretty lame that the bishop got toe up. 

My hand has a scar, but its all healed up now. 

We finally got in contact with the Yugoslavian family again and also we started teaching an old ami that we found in the area book and his wife. We're finding people out of the woodwork and things are developing quite nicely.

So is the class schedule is going to be a lot of classes. Its 16 hours. Does melanee think I can do it? I'm pretty nervous about having homework and having a math class. I have forgotten like all basic math. Its pretty weird that going home is starting to get real. I don't really know of anyone who I would want to be room mates with because i don't know who is going. Thank you so much though.

A couple weeks ago I got a letter from Jenifer Norris asking what Emmett should do to plan for his mission. I would tell Emmett.. and Bradley and Andrew to try to see people as children of God, that really helps you to develop Christlike attributes and also to learn to do everything that a mom does.... that really helps.

2/17

My hand is pretty good. I've been squeezing most of the infection out of it and its been healing quite nicely.

I try to answer dad's questions every time. I like the ward a lot. They seem to like us too. There is a lady in the ward who looks like she could be a manager for Dior, or Chanel and her husband always looks like a million bucks, but anyways she came up to me and was like "Elder, you are super fresh." Elder B***** gave me a Hugo Boss shirt with cuff links and I was wearing the new suit I bought. 

 

We are teaching a couple people, but its pretty slow. Pretty often people set stuff up, and then don't show up. I like my companion a lot.  On pday we usually clean. Its pretty hard to get around town fast enough to do anything. There isn't any summer school for me, so I guess I will just sit on facebook all day. Just kidding. But I want to have a lot of time to get in good shape for soccer.

 

Prez hasn't done anything that embarrassing lately, so that's good. I'm not sick. I like your letters. I think if I do go to Provo it would be a good time to take that french language test. If I take it at SVU I have to send in the test to get graded by BYU anyway. So if we're there, might as well try and do it.

Nobody really talks about the Olympics here. Soccer is still a bigger deal, but every once in a while people will have the Olympics on their TV..... and then not let us in... so I don't really know that much about the Olympics.

We almost got kidnapped again last night. We were porting and two people pulled up right next to us and said, "hey, can we ask you some quick questions?" His first question was "why do Christians eat pork?" and his second was "in the bible, it says that Jesus is not the son of God, why do Christians think he is the son of God?" I pulled out my bible and asked him where it says that and he's like "ohhh, ummmm, I don't know, hey, get in my car and I'll take you downtown and I'll buy you a pizza and we'll talk about it. I said "hey, tell you what, here's our number... go read the bible, and then text me the verse that says Jesus isn't the son of God." I will never get in another car like that ever again. Its just not worth it.

So N***** is doing GREAT! She's had so many spiritual experiences and the ward loves her. The first time we met with her, she said she was ready to be baptized, and she knew everything. We said, "ok, will you be baptized March 1st?" and she said no. and then she came up with a ton of things she had to do before she could be baptized. and we were like.. ok, no big deal. just pray and ask God" and then we met with her this Monday, after we finished the lesson and said the closing prayer she's like, "hey boys, I've been praying and praying and praying, and I didn't get an answer, but this morning, I GOT AN ANSWER!" I was so close to being like "oh, that's cool, we can talk about it next time" but then something stirred inside of me and I asked "soooo, March 1st?" annnnnd boom goes the dynamite. she accepted.

So we were filling out a baptismal calender with her and there is a really cool staircase of things to check off before you are baptized:  lessons 1-4, commandments, sanctify the sabbath, read, pray, and baptismal interview. She took a pen and marked off every box and i was like... hey, you haven't...done.. most of... those... but... whatever. She is stoked. We are seeing her this afternoon, that's why this email is so early.

Pictures!!!!

is there a Chipotle is France???

2/10/14

hey everyone!

So you know how I told you that the mission president trolls me? Well, he still does it. We had interviews this week and pretty much just when prez is there, and there are missionaries there, something happens where I look like an idiot. For example: everyone was shaking hands with prez and than he asked everyone a question... and just then my cell phone started vibrating so I yanked it out of my pocket and fumbled and dropped it and the back came off and the battery slide across the floor and prez said "voila, elder guymon... say the prayer and repent for what you did." Everyone laughed so hard...

 

and then later on prez was talking and giving a training and I was chillin and started eating so candy and he stopped talking and gave me the WEIRDEST look ever and so everyone in the whole 2 zones looked at me right when I was digging around in a bag of candy...

 

So we have been teaching this lady from I***. This week she brought us her friend to teach, but its really hard cuz he only understands Persian. Ok, well he speaks some French, but M***** has to translate for us and no offense to her, but she doesn't do a very good job, sometimes I'll say something super simple like "the bible is the writings of prophets" and then they'll have a 10 minute conversation and its bad because M****** is new to the whole christian thing too. But overall we have no clue whats going on. I told them about houssain and they wanted to know more about him but I don't remember anything besides icees, fishing, and he coached soccer.

Another one of our amis (the lady who came to church with her friend) is doing real well. She keeps coming to church and we keep seeing her. Her friends took her on a church tour and answered a lot of her questions, so we are just tryna fix a date. The only thing is she wants her son to know the gospel too.

So elder E****** made some chocolate mousse this week, but what we do that is really good is we put the mousse in our ice cube tray and then have little fudge pops. I was tryna get one out (with a dull potato peeler) and stabbed my had VERY, VERY hard. There was a lot of blood, but I'm ok. No doctor visits or anything.

 

Melanee didn't tell me its a boy, but you did last week... kinda.

didn't you JUST get called to primary?

So I have been emailing my SVU counselor and she told me that there is NOT going to be a summer II term. So I guess that settles that. I also dont really know how to register for classes. Like I know how to literally sign up on "mysvu", but idk which classes I need or how to work out my schedule or anything. what should I do?

So for working out, right now I pretty much just want to get more lean/cut and also quicker. I've been running some and I feel pretty good lung-wise.

So at interviews, I was the oldest missionary there, and I didn't know ANYONE. Well I knew SOME. It's cool that elder W**** is still in my zone.

The mission doctor told me about a cool trick were you boil water and then breathe in the steam and I pretty much was 100% healed in like 3 minutes. So don't worry about that.

Are there Kane Olympic shirsies?

Mission Conference Pictures

2/3

hey everyone, what an eventful week!

so Elder E******* and I have been doing really well. We've been visiting a lot of members and getting them pumped for missionary work. I'm really excited to see what will happen with all of that.

There is a woman who has came to church with her friends for the last 3 weeks and she finally set up a rendez-vous with us. Those members gave her a Book of Mormon over a year ago and she says she reads it all the times and also recieves the Liahona (church magazine), so I think this is going to be super good. The members are all super pumped for that. She goes to Relief Society activies and has been going for a while now. She also has a son.

So Elder Kearon came this week. We had to go to Versailles and guess what.. the trains were all sold out... so we had to wake up at 2:50!!! Our train was super early! and there are no buses that early, so we had to walk across town in the middle of the night to get to the train station. It was quite unlucky, but it was a really good conference. I felt really really stupid at one point. Whenever somebody raised their hand to say something, they would have to stand up, so that everyone could hear them. So I stood up and related missionary work to an old Nike commercial. In the commercial, Ladanian Tomlinsen (back when he was good) takes a pitch and starts running up the feild and all kinds of defenders from all different teams are all trying to tackle him and he's running and juking and breaking tackles and its really cool. I was telling the missionaries about this, and I looked out and I realized probably the majority of people 1.) didnt care about football, or 2.) didnt know anything aboout football, or 3.) were sister missionaries... so then I was like.. oh, I'm an idiot.... and there's a Seventy (the special person who came to speak at the conference) sitting right behind me... so that was pretty lame and as soon as I sat down he says, "I love rugby too" everyone laughed...

 I made the parallel that even though there are tons of things trying to tear him down, so many hard times, trials, people not showing up to church, temptations, Ray Lewis, everything.. he keeps running and trying his hardest. I invite you to go watch that commercial on youtube. I think if you type in "Nike leave nothing" you could find it pretty easily and think about the scripture 2 nephi 31:20.

I've had a lot of sore throats on my mission, much more than I ever did at home... I have another one right now.

M***** didn't come to church.  The family that drives her was sick. That was lame.

So today for lunch we went over to the oldest lady in the ward's house for lunch.. she made us peach duck. I didn't think I would miss duck when I left on my mission but when I had it, it brought back some great tasting memories. The weird thing was that it was just duck legs, I was like.. hey where's the rest of it?

We went through the area book and found some sweet people to teach! A couple of them really didnt know why the missionaries stopped coming and were super excited to see us. So thats good.

That would be pretty great to have a workout program.  Elder Smith gave me one but it's imossible because I dont have like any dumbells or anything. I've been doing TONS of pushups and they get super boring on the cold floor, but I'm not fat... I'm actually doing pretty good and then when I hit my birthday, I'm going to diet until the end. So wish me luck with that.

The girl that saw Maddy was Sister Pymm. She was in my district when I was in St Omer. That was a LONG time ago!

I think that Crosby is a super cool name for a dog. Can we get a spaniel? or a golden retriever?

So I wasnt really asking about the fafsa.  My admissios person told me that I have been readmitted for the fall. I thought I wanted to go to the summer semester... and I have to register for classes on the 19th.. how do I do that?