Received Monday December 3, 2012

Griffin and Zak...matching hair

A self-portrait taken one month before he entered the MTC

QUESTIONS:

I know there are several Mission Christmas Conferences. Which one do you go to?

Ours is on December 19th. I haven't heard much about it, except that it should be fun

Last week I sent lots of mail. Get any...a re-print of your letter with my comments? A load of pictures?

Yes and yes. I forgot to bring the reprint to answer the questions you asked. sorry! I liked getting all those pictures a lot. I pinned some of them up on a bulletin board by my desk. I think my 2 favorite are still the ones comparing my and griffin's crazy hair and also griffin's werewolf costume. very well done.

Did you send your flashdrive last week?

no :( sorry. I realized I had taken a lot more pictures since I downloaded them onto the flashdrive so I figured I'd load those on and send it today.

It seemed I had a lot more questions this week, but that is all I remember!

I just remembered! you asked what cape verdian food (I think I wrote about cape verde in one of my first emails here. it's an island off the coast of Africa. A lot of people from there live in New Bedford) I ate on Thanksgiving. All I really remember is Jag. Fatima (the mom of the house) (some people here do not like to be called by there last name) is famous for her jag. It's mostly rice with some beans and (I think) kale (leafy green vegetable). I think it's fine, but everyone raves about it. (I guess she uses the best kind of rice and best kind of beans etc). Also it took me a while to find the name jag to be appetizing.

Hope you have had a good week – keeping warm, working out, finding new people to teach; sharing the gospel, eating good food, sleeping well, wearing your retainer and flossing at least once.

I have been doing those things. Probably less that 50/50 about flossing last week though.

Good sports update about the rams and the turkey bowl. What do the NFC west standings look like now? are they still on par with everyone else?

I think it's too bad the Young men lost a close game, especially since everyone was cheating against quinn. I remember when dad had his long streak of getting at least 1 TD, sounds like the streak is now the other way, but his team keeps winning. The YM just need to draft Greg Zuerlein like the Rams did and they'll be able to win.

Chase sent a good email update I'll respond to here.

It sounds like a good job and a very good location. I could see myself doing something similar and wanting to end up in a similar place. There's no way to know though. I know who to trust my money with when I'm rich though.

Did you guys know the Killers have been my favorite for a long time? I had heard about the new album. I have watched his "I'm a mormon" One kind of funny missionary joke is that watching that is the easiest way to listen to regular music while staying obedient because during the video one of his songs is playing in the background, but it's ok to watch because it's on mormon.org.

That's crazy you know Natalie Hale. Like she said, we never really hung out, but I definitely remember her (or maybe her sister. I sort of can't remember which is which). I figured it would be a weird time to be at BYU. I figured most every girl I knew will go on a mission or end up married pretty quick. I think it's safe to assume in the premortal existence we got to choose if we wanted to go to BYU either with Jimmer or a good guy to girl ratio. it wouldn't be fair to have both! haha just kidding.

and good job getting the new phone for 30$. Capital Group would be proud of your cost-effective investment.

We ended up having even more lessons with less active members than usual this week. Jackie Carmo, who hasn't been to church in years came with us yesterday which was great. The Simpsons gave him a ride. We're hoping to help make that the normal for him. He's pretty far out there in a lot of his ideas. He doesn't really have much of a testimony of the restoration, but he is very christian. He was mostly baptized (15'ish years ago) because he thought mormons did the best job of "walking the walk"

we didn't end up getting to teach Miranda at all this week, which was a bummer. When we reminded her about fast sunday (with a text) she said she'd fast though, even though she couldn't come.

We spoke to the YW about how to respond to questions when they wear there "I'm a mormon and I live it... love it" shirts. I heard a new weird rumor about mormons. Numerous people have asked one of the YW about the magnets that mormons have that we're not allowed to show people and when we put them together it's the end of the world or something. very strange. I always like it when we can work with the youth, they tend to be excited about the gospel, instead of treating it like a chore.

We mostly stopped doing the law of consecration in the apartment, but last week Elder Wilding had an idea. In the beginning of each month we'll all put 15$ into a pot and use that to buy the things we all use (milk, eggs, cheese, bread, stuff for the apartment). President Packard is always talking about Zion and recently we talked about Alma's "Zion" he had with his people (by the waters of mormon) and a big part of that was they lived the law of consecration. it worked well last month for us too. In one of my emails to President Packard I mentioned that to him and he said he thought it was great and "a good start", so we may be increasing our consecration-ness even more in the future.

That's everything, love you all!