October 19, 2009

Hi Mom,

lol, well eating out because of lack of time is the worst because you can't enjoy it. It is awesome that you've spent so much time with Grandma, don't feel guilty that you haven't had the time to fix meals. I am sure the family understands.

Man, I wish so badly that I could have been there to watch the football game with all of you. I really miss clam dip lol. I guess I could make it but I don't have enough confidence in myself to try. Ah well, lol. I miss seeing Grandma and Dad get so upset with the players. Nobody out here does that when they hear about football. I'm the only one that gets so into it :P Boring.

I was able to try the music on the organ, it was really hard, really long, really slow, but really fun! I will have to practice and practice and practice and I still won't get it down, but it'll be fun :) I'm glad that you are proud of my musical skills even though I'm not THAT talented. I wish I had more talent and more patience with myself and with practicing.

I found out again where Clay is going. He is going to Indianapolis, Indiana on like October 28th, so I need to respond to the letter that I FINALLY got from him. He and Caitlin tag teamed a letter. It was nice to hear from both of them. Especially since I haven't written to ANYBODY recently including Caitlin and she still wrote me. Well I have done better writing on my mission in the first couple transfers than I would have at home, but I've slacked off lately. I'll get back into the groove.

WOW! It is a crazy thought to think that I am almost not a teenager anymore. I had thought about being 20 but not about the fact that I won't be a teenager anymore! The holidays drawing near is very strange as well. I've heard Christmas is SO fun on a mission! I'm really excited, but it'll definitely be strange not having the traditions of home.

I hope you don't mind but I wrote a pretty detailed description of the baptism in Dad's email so I'm going to refer you to that. We should definitely have some more baptisms coming up soon.

I love you farther than that ;)

Elder Jay Davis

Hey Dad,

I'm sorry you hate Miami so much and had to be there for meetings none-the-less. 95 degrees and 85% humidity?! Holy SMOKES! That sounds like what it was in Venice when I was there with UAM.

Well that is good that BYU won. Too bad it was by such a short margin yet again. They always seem to start out strong and just get very warn out throughout the season.

I am very glad to hear that Grandma is doing a ton better. I've been thinking about her a lot. Not to worry but just to sort of ponder what life has in store for us. We are definitely blessed to have Mom in our family. I've been noticing that more and more since I've been here. We have been asked by the people who own the place we live in to keep the house cleaner than we had been. My companion and I have been working really hard to improve ourselves, but the other companionship really hasn't been doing much at all, and when they do stuff they try to pass it as having done a lot so now it's up to us. I really understand how Mom must have felt with Kody and I arguing all the time and also with us not wanting to help her clean. If we didn't do it, eventually she would just have to do it herself (which isn't good). Well that's how it is here, if we don't want to get in trouble we end up having to do all of the clean-up. Oh well, what can you do? So basically all of that was to say that I'm growing to appreciate Mom more than ever even though I already did.

I have had one chance to play through the organ piece one time. It took me about half an hour to make it through the whole thing and it sounded miserable but it was way fun :D

I am SO happy that the heat of summer is mostly behind us. It still hasn't quite left us here in California, it's sort of on and off but it's better than it was for sure. Winter is going to be pretty lame this year I think since I won't be getting any snow :P Lame. Other than that I'm glad to have the rain.

The baptism was yesterday. Delores got baptized. I've told you a lot about her but I'll review. She is African-American, has two older sons that live with her, and is not very well off financially. She is kinda crazy and is terrified of water (other than like a shower). I was pretty nervous to see how the baptism would go, but she did great (though she was VERY visibly nervous). It was quite a cool experience. Funny story though. We were planning on sharing a baptismal program with the other missionaries and their investigator, but their investigator got sick and had to postpone the baptism. Well the other missionaries were pretty much in charge of the whole program. So we had to revamp the program and get them all printed out and folded, luckily we had plenty of time. (This all happened Sunday)

Next week, Gladdys will be getting baptized. She is an elderly lady who likes to complain to us but learns well and wants to be a member of the church and believes all of the doctrine she knows so that is awesome.

(This email is going to have to be the generic email from where I talk about the baptism on cuz I don't want to retype all of these stories lol)

So at church yesterday we had 5 investigators. Also, there was this one lady in a wheelchair who came with one of our members who is in a wheelchair. They both live in a care home together. Well the one that isn't a member introduced herself to us and told us that she wants to be a member of our church. So we asked when we could come teach her and (because she's in the care home) she said she is always available so that will be really nice to be able to get lessons with her. So hopefully we'll have a total of two baptisms this month and hopefully two or three next month.

Don't worry, I'm smiling for the most part and for surely having fun while working hard. Time definitely flies by a lot more when I stay busy and positive. For the most part (other than the cleaning situation) I am staying very positive. I can't wait to find out how transfers go next week. We have like 21 new missionaries coming in so I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get to train, but if not I'll still be happy. Who knows what will happen though.

I love you,

Elder Jay Davis