Received Monday, April 8, 2013

More Pictures of Zak.....

Apparently, this is one of Zak's first attempts to get INTO the dryer. He said this attempt was when he got in feet first, but by the time he had to pull his head in, there was no more room. Off to the second try. Oh my. You know he eventually got in...scroll down to earlier posts and see those pics.

Zak, during the recent snow storm

Just before a baptism

QUESTIONS:

Did you get your flashdrive back??

yes, I'll respond to that letter in a moment

Where did you watch conference; at the stake center, your apartment?

at our apartment. we weren't sure if it would be better to watch it on our apartment laptops, on our tv or the Ipad we own. Ultimately we put it up on all of those and watched while playing Doodle Jump on our droid phones.

just kidding

I'll give a quick weekend run-down. Saturday morning (before conference. which, in case you didn't realize is from 12-2 and 4-6 here. feels funny coming from the west coast time zone. Priesthood was from 8-10!) we went to the Elwells house to give them the format to our fancy-handy-dandy invite. We talked to one of the young women who lives there a few days before and she said she wanted to use it to invite someone to here her give a talk she's giving in a few weeks. Very nice people. Then we went to an investigators house to make sure they were coming to conference. they were not home :(. then we went to our ward building (not stake center) to watch with the handful of others that were there. After the "morning" session we went back to that investigators house and found her there feeling a bit woozy and very guilty. We talked to her on the porch for a bit then re-invited her to watch the next session of conference. She excitedly accepted and a great member who's been fellow shipping her came and picked all of us up and we watched it at his house with his family. She really liked it, but did have to leave early to do something for her daughter. She really enjoyed listening and being with the family though. After he took her back home we went back to the ward building to watch the rest of that session. We did miss all of Bednar's talk, which was a bummer, we'll probably watch it later. well worth it though.

we went to 5 guys for our dinner, which is the cool thing to do here in canton ward, then watched priesthood session in our ward building. Sunday we did lots of stuff too and watched both sessions at church.

someone in our ward, Sister Parkinsen makes bag/packets for her kids for conference to help them pay attention and she gave us one too. All through conference I used the notebook in it to take notes, I obediently checked off a box next to each General Authorites picture after they spoke a on a sheet she gave us . She was a little upset neither of us made any use of the scissors, glue or stickers she gave us though. It's funny to be a missionary.

Do you see Chick-Fil-a where you are? Do you eat there?

I don't think there's any here on the east coast. Never eaten there, always heard good things though.

Any big plans today?

dinner with the scharrer family. Talk to brother scharrer (YM presidency) about mutual this wednesday and see if we can steal about 5 minutes of it to follow up with all the young men who plan on bringing friends to this sunday.

no set appointment after that though, just a list of people we could drive by.

I did completely forget about ESPN last week. It was pretty fun, but not spectacular. I took pictures, including one one a worker who looks just like D-Wade editing highlights. Yes, I saw bald-headed Scott Van Pelt as he was doing his radio thing. When we were walking down a hallway with some fancy offices on either side an employee went into one so a scurried by so I could peek in while the door was open and saw Colin Cowherd in there. We walked past Teddy Bruschi lots of times, he said hi. And the last famous person was Kurt Schilling as he was getting ready to talk about opening day (Which I heard was great for the dodgers by the way. did we have some rookie pitcher hit a home run and pitch a shut out or something like that?). The whole thing reminded me of a college campus just full of sports stuff.

I wonder if Donnie Avery will do well with Andy. I still thought he had good potential when he was cut. He always seemed to be injured. Drafting him before DeSean and picking one of the biggest busts ever in the 1st round of that draft will probably be the biggest definers of the Spagunolo era of the Rams

I really liked conference, it does have an extra special feel as a missionary. Also we are speaking here on the 28th at sacrament meeting about general conference, so I was thinking about that a lot. unfortunately I did not think about "Go Tell Aunt Rodie" at all. I have continually thought about learning the piano when at home though.

Sounds like a very fun and packed spring break. too bad the ice skating didn't turn out good for mom at all. kind of a weird story to tell as a missionary, but I don't know if I ever mentioned the first date I went on with Ms. Amanda Vegas Shea was roller skating. I was very bad. I tripped and stumbled and bumbled around the circle the whole time. it must run in the family. No bruises or doctors needed for me though.

About conference, I don't have many specific talks or moments and that jump out to me right now, but I took notes and I felt like just about every person talked a lot about missionary work. I loved Monson's story about the fire. Aren't we all just like him with the matches and our Heavenly Father like his parents? How often does he look down and just think: please be obedient! don't light that on fire! I really liked Holland's like always. Nelsons spoke a lot directly about missionary work for the 2nd conference in a row. The anology about the tomoatoes was funny because president packard just emailed us about making sure we try to have a great influence on future missionaries because "after all, you can count how many seeds are in an apple, but not how many apples are in the seed". Ironically, the one that really might have touched me the most was the talk by the Young Women's president. Perry's and Ballard's were both very good too, I feel like I have more of a connection with both because Perry spoke to us at the MTC and Ballard did to us just a few weeks ago. Also Elder Halleck, a 70, gave one of the prayers and he spoke to our mission back when I was in my first area. I guess I remember more specifics than I thought.

Did anyone notice that things about the Boston mission were mentioned in TWO different talks at conference? Elder Eyring did during priesthood session and Elder Anderson talked about the online/digital stuff being done here.

Kylie always scores a goal now!

I wish I had done more hollywood type stuff while at home, just because it's there and a unique opportunity. Glad you could find Regis' star on the walk. Did you find Steven Jackson's star too? (that was a joke)

do you still watch the RegisReplacement and Kelly show?

The other big exciting thing this week was we got a mormon.org referral (it comes texted to our phone), he was really interested. We had a short talk with him on his porch and set up a return appointment for this week. I hopefully it goes well!

We also have intereviews with president Packard this week, which should be good/

I think that's about everything. Everyone have a fun week! nobody get injured this time!