Received Wednesday, Nov 14, 2012

This is Zak with his 3 roommates. It was taken at a home where they had dinner. He tells about the picture at the end of this letter. Enjoy!!

I have lots of stuff to tell, and not much time to tell it!

Questions:

What happened with transfers?

Elder Concha is leaving! he's going to waterbury Conneticut, or something like that. He leaves tomorrow. The rest of us are staying. We were all very surprised and disappointed Shocked and appalled you could say. Elder Wilding is getting a new greenie who was called as a portugues elder like him. That is all we know.

What day do you get notice of being transferred? Tues? Mon?

**no answer**

Are you still at the same address; if different, please give your knew one.

same

HOW is your weather?? Cold? Wishing for warmer clothing?

cold. not terrible right now though. I will explain more below

Have you been a “helping hand” yet? If yes, where and how did that happen.

yes! last weekend we all went. Every missionary from the whole mission went over to Connecticut to help. Friday night the whole Packard family spoke and they all did a great job. That night all the elders slept in the chapel and the 20'ish sisters went somewhere else. The next day we went to work. I got a shirt! it's XL, but i'm still glad I have it. The first thing we did was shovel sand out of someones property away from the house where a bulldozer can get to it. Ever since that summer I dug the ditch in our yard I've liked shoveling, so that was good. After that we did a few other random things, stuff like cleaning a ton of isolation stuff from someones house. We drove home saturday night and Chris, one of our investigator was baptized.

Any great food you ate this week?

The food is basically always good, nothing comes immediately to mind as amazing.

You hearing any election/results talk?

Some. It's hard to stay neutral about it. I think most people could kind of figure who I voted for. The Cape Verdians are so so so happy. Mostly they can't understand why someone (except for the exceedingly wealthy) would ever vote against Obama

I think I have sent 2 items of mail since we last “spoke”, get them? I don’t even

remember what they were...

ummm it's been a long week. I wish I could remember though. I think I got at least 1 thing and I really liked it. Did you send more pictures maybe? or maybe a letter with more updates.

When you go into people’s houses, is the TV on? What are they watching?

Sometimes. On sunday sometimes people are watching the patriots. This Cambodean lady we visit is always watching tv from that side of the world. She turns it off when we ask though. One person insisted her put on The Best Two Years for us while we waited another 20 mins or so for dinner to be ready. It is far funnier to watch as a missionary. Chris is always watching a movie. Changing his movie standards was tough for him, but he was willing to make the change which was great.

Anyone try to listen/talk to you while the TV is going?

they usually are willing to turn it off.

I did see one time that the Laker just fired there coach!?! what is going on there? We should be winning 3v5! I haven't heard anyone talk about the celtics at all yet. Did i ever mention about when someone at a store called me out when I used my Dodgers debit card? I thought it was very funny.

Yes I do have a scarf. I have yet to put it on

I already talked about the service in conneticut. That might be the only time in my mission that all the missionaries are in one place. apparently mission presidents are told not to call mission conferences. Also while we were there the mission sent us lunch in brown baggies which was nice, but also random people fed us free hot dogs and dunkin donuts. It was very cool.

So, just a few days after the hurricane we had a "nor'easter", which means we had a bunch of freezing cold wind from the freezing cold north eastern part of the freezing cold continent. It was not fun. I had on my full suit coat, sweater, trench coat and everything. I didn't think about the scarf. That's over now, so it's back to regular sweater weather that's not too bad. When winter really starts to come in i will find something to cover my ears, and find the best warmest gloves. I came out with no gloves and just bought some.

Chris' baptism on Sunday was great. a decent number of people came and we had food afterwards which was great for him to talk with other members, normally he's pretty shy. Alex, who is a 22'ish member we take with us to a lot of lessons baptized him, which is great. He asked me to be the one to confirm him (this sunday). We're still going to be visiting him often, he's made a lot of changes, but he still is going to need a lot of help to stay active. We are slightly worried we baptized him a little early, and that he did it for the right reasons, not just because his missionary friends wanted him too. I think everything will work out though. Also it was his birthday that day!

something I just remembered, something I want for christmas is some (legal) music. There's no specific rules about it, except what's in the white hand book (it has to be uplifting, not make you lose focus, won't drive the spirit away with beat, or anything, no romantic overtones). Elder Beck has lots of cd's we listen to, but eventually when one of us is transferred I want to have a few. Some Mo-tab is fine. hymns by other people are good too. One cd I like a lot is the The Work by A Nashville Tribute.

today we were in franklin for a district pday. We played football, it was fun. I am sore. I wish I had more time! I think we may come back tomorrow because Elder Beck's computer wasn't working well, so I might be able to send another quick email then.

Thanks for the great update, that was lots of exciting stuff

Love you all!

also about that picture, Brother Mello took it and he took a bunch of pictures and it kept not working, or he didn't like them for some reason, until he took that one in which half of us weren't paying attention. Very funny.