Dear Elder Alex,
It was great hearing from you last week, hearing all about your new area. I love that you're back in the backwoods now, the under belly of Tennessee. It sounds rather exciting to me to go into an area where you have to do all the sleuthing, exploring, investigating and phoning. You may even have to earn the trust of the members there, you never know.
Nikki gave a talk in Primary today, yes, another one. She loves speaking and says she gets nervous up there (which was evident by her shaking back and forth while speaking) but she says if she speaks more and more then she won't get so nervous. Who thinks like that as a kid? She spoke on missionary work, well, she actually read what I wrote about missionary work since she totally forgot she was speaking until we got the call late last night. I told her to try winging it, but she said she's not ready to do that yet. I don't blame her.
We had wonderful talks about temples today. Bro. Tuttle and his wife spoke in sacrament. It was an unusual sacrament since there was no bread after we finished singing the sacrament hymn. So we moved to the youth speaker, then we had bread but it was frozen so we had to wait for it to thaw, so we moved on to the first main speaker. Then we sang another sacrament hymn and proceeded with the sacrament. I rather enjoyed hearing a couple talks first, because they really invited the spirit into the room. After the sacrament we had the concluding speaker, sang and closed.
In Sunday School Randy Thompson taught us more about covenants. He is such a gifted teacher. When we were discussing the covenant a man and woman make when they marry, he made a point that stuck with me. In Corinthians it says, neither is the man without the woman nor the woman without the man in the Lord. Bro. Thompson said that God is 2, a man and a woman together, there is no other way to get to that state. I had never really thought of it in those words.
We had a fun day yesterday. We went to Mountain Home for the airshow, we went with the Billings from the 8th ward and met dad there after his shift. The show was awesome. I had never seen the Thunderbirds fly before and they were very entertaining. My favorite part was when 4 of them flew to the center and did some slow rolls upward. They had music playing in the background and it was beautiful soothing music as we watched them climb to the sky. Then out of nowhere from our left comes one of the soloists flying only a few feet above us at some super sonic speed. It caught everyone by surprise and most of us practically jumped out of our seats. It was so loud and the jet whizzed by us so fast, you couldn't help but scream, then laugh. They had totally planned to catch us all by surprise. I loved it. After that, they buzzed us unaware a couple more times. The Blue Angels have never done anything so sneaky, but I wish they would now. Anyway, it was a fun day. The girls even stayed afterwards and got autographs of the pilots.
We had our first stake humanitarian work day last week and it went really well. There was a good turnout, many donations and several projects worked on. I'm looking forward to having this day every month and for more and more sisters to participate in our humanitarian projects. We made little dresses, rice bags(can be microwaved and used as warmers), bereavement blankets for St. Luke's and St. Al's, ABC books for ESL agencies in our valley, children's blocks sanded for women's shelters, loomed hats for homeless shelters to give away and a quilt tied for LDS humanitarian center. I'm looking forward to several more projects. There is always so much that can be done.
So how is your area now that you're getting to know it better? Were you ever able to meet with the family of 8 kids? I love how this month's Ensign is all about the Book of Mormon and its power. There are wonderful articles and stories of conversion from around the world because of reading/experiencing the Book of Mormon. I hope you get a chance to read it. I loved the article by Elder Gonzalez and how he talked about how there are different ways that people will come to know the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. They are 1.by hearing its teachings, 2.by reading the book, 3.by doing what the book teaches, 4.by asking God. He said we all get converted differently which I'm sure you've noticed as you've been teaching people.
For me I was initially converted by listening-to my parents, teachers, prophet. Then I received a much more powerful conversion when I read through the Book of Mormon as an adult and I read it in just a short amount of time. It's something I'll never forget. To this day, I now have wonderful spiritual experiences whenever I read the Book of Mormon. It just keeps building on what I felt as a young person. I'm very sad for people who don't know the blessings you can receive by continuing to read the BOM over and over again. They're really missing out on a great part of life.
Well, Leah has just made brownies and it's smelling pretty nice in the house now. Nikki is testing her boat for the big boat float this week in Mrs. Bunn's class. I'm crossing my fingers that it will float. Kristina is studying history. The dogs are barking at something imaginary in the back yard, Kirk is probably skyping with Sarah in his apt in Rexburg, Sean is probably at Steve and Carolina's enjoying stories of Laura and Axel's birth of their twin girls this week, Mary and Esther. Dad is in Mountain Home working hard for the family wishing he was here. I'm home writing my missionary son knowing he's where he's in the right place at the right time with the right people and looking forward to hearing his news Monday.
Be well and remember the prayers of your family always.
love you,
mom xxoo
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