8/25/09

Hey Mom & Dad,

Good to know that my family's still keeping up on it's home teaching, even without me ;)

Sorry, I haven't sent the camera memory card yet. I had it, and the tape, all ready in the UPS envelope last week when we went the the Postal Office last week to pick up my package, but then they told us that USPS doesn't ship UPS :( Well, that is the competition, after all, I guess. But I'll try again soon. I happen to know that there's a UPS in the local Staples.

Yeah, Hawaii was great. I want to try surfing again. Oh, and wherever, I think I want to try water skiing, and anything that involves being dragged after a boat in a lake like that.

It's cool you're learning more about working with pictures. I wish I knew a little bit more myself.
Recently, in a few spare moments, I finally started writing a story I've had for a long time from the beginning. Of course, I wish I'd done it ages ago. But oh well.

That's a cool way to talk to yourself in your journal. I wish I was a little bit better like that. I also wish I had a better organization for my uplifting letters and stories and quotes I've gotten. I've certainly got quite a few.

I liked the article by Elder D. Todd Christofferson (Moral Agency, June 2009 Ensign), too. I liked the part where he mentions that though we taste good and bad in this life, we do not need to yield to Satan to fulfill the purpose of this life or learn. Hopefully we do learn and repent if we sin, but "like Jesus, we can gain all we need in the way of a mortal experience without yielding."

One of the investigators that I'd been working with before the areas changed finally came to church yesterday! Her name is Jenny and we had been teaching her with Jesus, the former atheist. Sadly, he's disappeared. In our work this past week we went up to Baker and Barstow. We had one "media referral" which meant we had a video (Finding Faith in Christ) to deliver. The address was in a car workshop. We went in the first time and didn't get very far so my companion started to leave, but since I though she'd probably seen a commercial or something, I really wanted to do my duty and at least deliver the movie, so I convinced my companion to go back in. We talked with her a bit more and found out that she had a son that was Mormon and wanted to learn more. We wound up leaving her with the movie, a pamphlet and a Book of Mormon in Spanish. She seems so sincere and it was a great meeting. She lives in Barstow but we'd be really happy to go back and visit. Hopefully I'll be able to write about her again in a while.

Anyways, we've done a bit of finding this past week to try and get people to teach. We finally had a lesson with a part-member family that we've been trying to get to. Don't know how it's going to go or how he really fees, but he does want to keep having missionary discussions. And we just got a call from a member family who has a friend family with someone who is very sick. They want the member family to visit along with the missionaries. We will probably have a chance to give a blessing too.

Elder Pepperdine