July 20, 2009

Hey Mom and Dad,

I am SOOO sorry that you only got one email. I wrote a big long email in response to yours Dad and then when I clicked send it brought up the "This Website Cannot Be Displayed" thing and the website was down so I couldn't go back and rewrite it or anything. I was SO upset!

Yevonne will hopefully keep progressing but so far she is still not willing to commit to baptism.

Yup, you can imagine (knowing me) how decisioned out I will end up being ;)

Well I am looking forward to all of the music that you recorded :D It should be such a fun experience to watch/listen to it all.

You didn't tell me that part about Kody's concert. That is AWESOME! I wish I could have seen that :D I wish you could have recorded his reaction too ;)

I'm pretty sure the way we lined up in Austria was the same way you described that they lined up. It was so cool to have the chorale up above :D Isn't it amazing to hear them perform in cathedrals?! AHHH! :D

There were always some people crying in every concert we did which was really rewarding I must say. I'm glad they did such a good job.

That is SO lucky that you know the Goerigks and they still do the B&B for people they know. Man I wish I could have gone. I would have been SO rusty on my German though. I would have made a fool out of myself but boy would it have been fun to listen to her talk and try to pick up parts of it.

That's awesome that she compared me to you when you told her I am serving a mission :D I loved talking about all sorts of stuff and nothign at all :D Those are the best conversations.

That's awesome that you stayed for 2 nights! Man I can still picture the inside of that house and the rooms and the bathroom and everything! It's crazy! I miss all of that. :) I'm loving life out here though. Have fun with the flight home and don't play too many of the video games or watch too many movies. Make sure you get your beauty sleep ;)

All is well out here. I am really trying to do better at giving detail about my adventures but I am just terribly bad at remembering things and I try to write them down but I'm bad at that too ;)

We were tracting yesterday and had some funny rejections. I need to run and grab them though so one sec...Okay, I'm back. So this one guy we knocked on his door and a dog started barking really loud. When he answered the door he just cracked it open and said, "The dog's pissed off," and that was pretty much it and closed the door. I laughed pretty hard at that one. Then on that same street a couple houses down we were walking up a driveway and the guy was sitting outside and said, "Hey guys, I'm not ready to join the flock yet," I thought that was pretty funny too. Finally, this one was probably my favorite, a lady answered the door and said, "If you're Jehovah's Witnesses, goodbye." We said that we weren't and she said, "If you are religious, goodbye." So we said, "Have a nice day," and walked off. It was pretty funny :D You'd be surprised how often people think we are J.W.'s. You'd think they'd see our name tags and get it but anyway :D

Another funny story I forgot to tell earlier that Elder Cellan reminded me of happened on the 4th of July. So we were walking back to our car after having done service in the park. (I don't know if I told you or not but we helped the fire department run their cotton candy and snow cone booth. It was really fun and we did it in our white shirts and everything. We got aprons from a member, but of course I still had snow cone juice splattered on my shirt. I just took the "Tide 2 Go" pen to it and you can't even tell which shirt I used.) When we got to our car we kept hearing a small thud and then a beeping sound. We were looking around and noticed a lady throwing apples at a car that was parked in front of her yard. There was a lot of parking traffic so this person had parked where they weren't welcome apparantly. It was hilarious! She was just picking up the apples that had falled off her crab apple tree and throwing them at the car and every two or three apples would make the car beep at her. We laughed pretty hard at that :D

Let's see, today we are going out with a priest in our branch named Ben (the grandson of the members we live with). He is going to take us to see a pond that is on the family property (don't worry, we won't be getting in or anything), and then to see some of the mines that are still open and safe to go in. It should be pretty awesome but pretty hot!

Speaking of hot, it's been over a hundred most of this week! It's TERRIBLE! I am getting used to it though and I'm drinking lots of liquids (more than I used to, but not as much as I should probably). I drank a whole 2 quarts of water both of the past two days. I'm learning to accept the fact that I AM going to sweat so I might as well just deal with it ;) It's gross though :P

It was pretty funny when Elder Neeley got transferred I was sort of going through withdrawals from Mindy Gledhill music. We would listen to the two CD's he had of hers all the time but then he got transferred so I didn't have it to listen to. It was pretty funny. I sort of missed the "Trek" CD he had too. I am happy to get to listen to my A Cappella stuff now though (remember that he didn't really like it all that much).

I finally had to buy a refill for the typewriter and I was also able to find a refill for the correcting tape too so now I can fix my typos a little bit better.

Good news, Melissa's daughter, Aimee, is going to take the lessons from us. She was sitting in while we were teaching her mom, so she is already technically an investigator (we picked her up as one when we started teaching the family), but we are going to reteach the lessons to her. Hopefully she will feel the spirit and follow in her mom's footsteps by being baptized. Also, she has been coming to church and seems to have quite a crush on one of the young men in our branch who is an AWESOME guy and is just her age. He should be a great influence on her. Hopefully he doesn't get annoyed with all the flirting she does. She has a non-member boyfriend who is putting pressure on her to join his church so she's a bit confused right now. We are hoping that this new crush will help with that ;) Anyway, so we are excited for that.

We have a member family who is really good at member missionary work and giving us referrals and working with their friends. They have two families they are really working with and another couple that they could start working with and they are excited and really not scared to talk to them about it. We are very proud of them.

Hmmm...I'm trying to think of any other things that I could mention but as of right now I'm drawing a blank. I can tell you that it is hot in our room at night but I'm learning to deal with that too ;) hahaha

Things here are great, I love the work and the gospel. It is really really fun to see people (including myself) progress and come closer to our Savior Jesus Christ.

Oh, I mentioned this in a letter that I just wrote but haven't sent so you'll get this first. I need more acne pills. Also mentioned was the fact that my companion, Elder Cellan, gets VERY little mail. He gets like a letter from an old lady in his ward and maybe one other letter a month maybe. SO, if you could spread the word to my friends and the family to send him an occasional letter just for fun I think that would be AWESOME! Thanks :D

I love you both,

Elder Jay Davis