Received Monday, July 30, 2012

**NOTE: Once again, Zak is using the questions, I sent; which is great. Here is his letter:


HOW are you feeling?? All better? Mucus issues?
Good. I was 97% better when I first got here to MA and was 100% a few days after that

Did you ever receive those little tiny toothbrush things? Did you like them?
yes. I have not used them yet. I thought about using them in the plane
like you said, but decided not to.

From Griffin: have you taught anyone the Gospel yet?
yes. We've found 4 new investigators (1 couple and 1 father/daughter) since I've been here from tracting and I've taught in some lessons with investigators we already have.

What did you eat at home this week?
basically the same as before. lots of oatmeal. cereal sometimes for breakfast (frosted mini wheats). a tuna sandwich once. a few peanut butter sandwiches, with lays chips. grapes (with peanut butter! Very good). there is this family that has a really big garden and they gave us some vegetables from it (I'll take pictures next time we go to there house) and I ate a carrot from them. an apricot and an apple. Also we always do service at this Red Cross place where they give food to poor people (we help them carry their food to their car, some of which are oddly nice looking), and they gave us some other random food including macaroni and cheese we ate once. Also we have some granola bars that are good

Any interesting dinner appointments?
not super interesting besides the house with the giant garden (and a big male turkey and 2 goats and a few chickens). They are a completely normal and cool family too. The dad spends 1 hour in the morning on the garden and I think that's it. We got to personally pick a lot of vegetables from them and keep it. People always make us good food though and lots of it and usually have good dessert too.

What is the name of your companion?
Elder Woodruff from Kentucky. He's going to hit his 18 month mark soon. he also is the DL. I'm really glad I like him and all 4 missionaries in the apartment a lot.

How was the Rhode Island trip??
really fun actually. plus since the Staples drove we didn't have to use any miles/gas which was good (btw, we usually only go like 30-40 miles a day, every once in a while we have to go a lot though, if we have far out dinner appointments and drive a long ways for District meeting or something). Driving and seeing the mansions was cool. Also I think my favorite meal here so far was dinner that day, I got a Philly cheese steak sandwich and an Awful Awful (this place's signature malts. they're awfully big and awfully good).

Did you get the pictures from Christopher’s fishing trip? (I sent 2)
Yes, I was glad to get them, they were cool. Also you should send me a family picture.

Do you have air conditioning in your apartment?
yes, thankfully

Have you gotten a hair cut yet? If yes, how is it?
Yes, two days ago, it is good

You still fixing your hair?
yes

Have you worn your whole suit much?
at district meetings (every Friday) and at church on Sundays

Do you want anything from the plastic travel case found in my closet?
no

Anything you need?
send a family picture, like I said earlier. How worried should I be about sending the flashdrive home in an envelope (about it getting broken)? I forgot to bring the camera today, but next P-Day I'll bring it and upload all the pictures so I can send them home

Another cool thing that happened was last Friday our district meeting
was in foxburough, where the Patriots play! after the meeting we drove over to the stadium and ate at a restaurant there (I just forgot the name of it) that was very similar to Cafe Rio. I took a lot of pictures while I was there. I didn't see Tom or Bill or Wesley or anybody else though

Did I say last time I was giving a talk? I gave it yesterday about
following the council of the prophets. I spent most of a few personal study hours preparing it. I mostly wrote down scriptures/BoM stories and bullet points I could expound upon. I talked about who I meant when I said "prophets" (all 15 of our "prophets seers and revelators", all the BoM and bible prophets) and what it means to follow their council/sustain them. The biggest part of that was to realize that it's not really prophet's council, but the Lord's council through the prophets. All through the story of Nephi getting the plates from Laben you can see Lamen/Lemuel complaining about their Dad told them to do this hard thing, but Nephi always says it was the Lord who told them to do it. Also in that same part of the BoM many times it says that Jerusalem would be destroyed specifically because they rejected the prophets, so that's what can happen if we don't follow their council. On the positive side, in Alma 50 it talks about how the people were righteous and they did listen to their prophet, and because of that the people of Nephi had never been so happy. The same can be said of us personally, or as a family, or as a ward if we follow the prophets. Also I planned to talk about a recent president Monson talk where he says to "remember who you are". As I thought more about that I remembered in Romans 8 it says we are children of God, and if children then heirs. So we should take President Monson's advice and remember that. that's the sparknotes version of what I had planned out. I felt really good about it as I was planning. I feel only ok about how I did though, people said lots of nice things though, including a new convert who's testimony is kind of faltering right now, so that was good. The reason I only feel ok about it though was because I was really worried about going short (I was supposed to talk for 10-15 mins) so while I was up there I really expounded a lot and when I finally looked at my watch I saw I was already over time! I quickly bore testimony and said Amen. I felt bad both that I didn't get to say everything I wanted to and especially for the guy after me who didn't get his full time to speak. Also they could have had us sing only 1 verse of our intermediate hymn to save time, but they didn't (did I tell you about the hymns between talks? that we all stand for?).

We don't have anything really planned today, which is part of the
reason I got to send such a long email

(Elder Woodruff isn't quite done yet, so I'll continue) one sort of disappointing thing here is that I haven't talked to anyone who seems to really care about sports. Today I saw some really cheap Red Sox/Patriots shirts but decided not to get either because I don't really have a reason to love them yet. I was close to getting the Patriots one thought because I did get to spend some time in Gillette stadium.
I heard Michael Phelps decided to be lame this year though and even said in an interview he didn't really train hard. I'm really hungry right now and when we get home I'm going to make a turkey sandwich and eat it with apple juice lays chips and wheat thins. We have some strawberries I'll probably eat too. Also I just barely bought some clementines so I should eat on me of those.

Happy birthday to Griffin!! I bet raging waters is/was very fun also congratulations on everything for Quinn's eagle. Make sure to do that paperwork quick though, the longer you wait, the easier it is to keep procrastinating. Seeing my plaque was cool. You could also email me a picture of Quinn's project if you wanted to so I can actually see what he painted and stuff. thanks for everything!

-con mucho Amor
Elder Zak Cole