09/09/06

Elder A,

What’s new? I was over at Mom’s and Dad’s today installing their new all in one printer/fax/scanner/copier. It’s pretty nice! While I was there I was checking out your pic with the Pres and sister Hobbs. They look like good peeps. I was trying to determine where your area borders are to outline it on your map, but I don’t know the border streets and stuff so we can outline it. So send that info along in your next letter. I also rigged up Shelli’s TiVo while I was over there. She’s pretty excited to be rockin’ the TiVo in her room. I have been liking my upgraded one here too. I’m also finally syncing my iTunes with the Dark Angel. She’s filling up, but she’s not in a hurry. This has taken all day and then some. I get an error every once in a while, but I think it’s only when I leave my computer and it goes idle and drops off. I still have about 1300 songs left to sync. I need to go get an external drive to use as my back up to back all my pics and music on. I’ll have to do that soon. I’m so nervous about losing my tunes. So you want me to sync the iPod with all church music and send it out? What are you going to listen to it all on? Do you have speakers?

I had the day off today with pay. I worked some serious hours by the end of Thursday. Probably 50-60 hours at the end of Thursday, so my boss told me to take Friday off and not use any PTO. So that’s cool. A paid day off today. Not really, since I still gave the company 10-20 freebie hours anyway. But I made it productive. Not only rigging up the stuff at mom’s and dad’s, but I changed the oil in my truck. I changed all 4 brakes in the C-RV and I found 2 nails in the driver’s side front and 1 in the passenger side front. They only deflated at the rate that I’d have to put some air in them every other month. So they are pretty solid tires. I went and got those taken out and the tires patched anyway. Deposited some checks, did some shopping, managed to get in some TraVo watching too. So I felt pretty good about today. Now I’m even writing your letter while syncing the iPod and chatting with John. I still have a list the size of my arm I’ll have to continue tomorrow (Saturday).

I went and saw Invincible yesterday. The football movie with Mark Wahlberg. It was good. Got me amped for some football. My Steelers opened up the regular season against the dolphins. Hines Ward racked up some points for me, so I’m happy about that. I’m poised to beat Clint this week for an opening week win. Nothing worse than losing your first week, except for losing your first two weeks.

So can you print your letters off of the e-mail? If you can, then you should write a good letter that answers all my questions going back. I’m not getting answers to my questions. The time pressure sucks that you only get an hour for e-mail. The demands of letter writing can be pretty great though, I understand that. So just when you can.

What more can you tell me about your area? What can you tell me about your companion now that you have had more time to get to know him? What about your investigators or tracting experiences? It’s great that you love tracting. I told you how I loved it too and it is a rare breed that really enjoy doing it. But the harder you tract, the more contacts you rake in through tracting, the more respect you get from everyone especially your leaders and Pres. I broke the mission record twice tracting. I think I told you about that. Once with my 3^rd companion when I was only out 4 months and he was out 2. I replaced his trainer and we just ripped it up. We were both so new and hungry and ready to prove ourselves. We both ended up being AP’s together, he was the office AP and I was traveling. He told me that he was tracting a lot in his spare time in their little AP area and was going to make a run for our record. So I took this greenie I was on a split with that week and we ripped well over 200 solid contacts out of the day. I’d have to look back on my journal for the exact number, but it was a huge day of tracting. More than most peeps got in a week. I set the bar way too high for Walker to come near it again. Setting the record for the second time. I had the president telling me to take it easy on the greenies. I told the president that the greenie I was with will be the only one that sees that number as an attainable goal and make a run for that again some day. I broke him in right. So you should see what you can do to beat whatever tracting record you have out there. Set the standard that Elder Alexander is a tracting machine. He will tract your butt off if you get with him! He’s such a big time tractor; he’s a regular John Deere! Those will be the comments the mission will utter when your name comes up. And as a result, you will get in more, you will give away more books, and you will teach more discussions and you know what other number comes up with all those other ones do!?! How is your journal looking? Filling up nicely?

Mom said that John had some gift for me from you. But I haven’t seen anything yet. I called him per mom’s request and asked him about it and he said, Oh, yeah, I’ve got it at work. So I guess I’ll have to harass him to fork it over. So I’m not sure what it is yet or anything. Then I pressed him on the family pics and he finally sent those over via e-mail tonight. So we’ll have to develop those and send some out to you. They look nice. John and I are about to throw down on messenger again right now. He is trying to debate me on political issues again and say that I’m slipping to a democrat when I’m about as militant right winger as you can get and will always be more conservative than John on any issue. I get sick of his petty debates.

Only 400 more songs left on the sync. You never told me if everyone in both NC and SC are hard core Panthers fans. Oh, and your Blog site address is http://elderalexander.blogspot.com . get that out to all your peeps, both old and young, bond and free, happy and sad. Everyone needs to check it out. It’s awesome!!

I guess you didn’t have much effect from Hurricane Ernesto or whatever its name was?

I started reading the B of M like I told you I was going to. I’m around 1 Nephi 12 or 13 right now. It’s good getting back into that. The iPod finally just finished syncing. So now that it’s finally done, I’m going to go read and go to bed. It’s 10:20 after a busy day. So I’ll finish this up between tomorrow and Sunday. You will need a fantasy football update come Sunday night anyway before I send this Monday Morning. I’ll check you tomorrow.

Well, it’s Sunday night and I just finished watching the Mannings play each other in Sunday night football on NBC. They did a good job on NBC tonight. They have Al Michaels and John Madden and all the team, so they did good there. Anyway, I’m going to barely edge Clint if I’m lucky enough to even win. I’m going into Monday night football trailing by 13 pts. And have Shawne Merriman (LB for San Diego) and Antoine Winfield (DB for Minnesota). So I hope they both pull at least 7 pts each. Not much else to update you on until Monday night football finalizes things. So I’ll update you next week on everyone’s record. I’ll end it here so I can send this off and you can get it Monday morning. Hope things are going well. Keep bustin’ butt and knock your knuckles bloody. Work Hard, Pray Hard!
Love ya,

Trav