11/12/06

Hey Yo,

I can’t believe it’s been a whole week already since I wrote you. It seems like two days ago. The week went fast. I might not have that much to talk to you about since I Eight-Paged your bones last week. Nahhhhhhhh! You know me. I bring the love every week. You can expect plenty of action in this letter as well, even if it has only been like two days since I wrote. I bring my A game every time I write you a letter. It’s Saturday morning at 9:23 AM. I’m not sure why I feel inclined to tell you the date and time each time I start a new entry, but I guess it gives you perspective of my surrounds and frame of mind. I got your envelope with all that stuff in it. I burned all the pictures to CDs and took it all over to Mom’s and Dad’s so we could gather around and view the slide show together. It was fun. So there were a lot of pictures and videos on there I’ll have to comment on. Should we start with the Hike? It seems like there were a lot of pictures of that hike you took to “Kings summit” is that what it was called? Is that the highest peak in SC? Or maybe even NC? Is it a poor man’s King’s Peak? Have you hiked that? We’ll have to do that when you get home. I love that hike, even though it almost killed me. I’ll go much better prepared next time because of it. I’m the only one that summited in my party too. Anyway, you had a good vantage point from there. It was cool to see Charlotte so far away, but a cool skyline. The trees and foliage were pretty up there, no? Who all went with you? Is that your District? It looked to be about the size of a District, so that’s what we were guessing. So your MTC buddy Al Roker Junior is in your District then? He seems like a funny guy. Kind of a big goofy sort of cat. Send more details on that hike. You have a lot of pictures of lizards again too. Are there tons of lizards out there or what? I saw you had another pic of another Big Dog spider too. Those spiders are Beasts! That one looked bigger than Elder Leavitt’s big dog spider. You know what I’d like to see? One of those wimpy lizards trying to take down a big dog spider. Now that’s a death match I wouldn’t miss. I bet a big dog would put up a serious fight, if not even take down a wimpy green lizard. You should catch a lizard for a pet. It would be cool to feed it bugs you catch. Maybe a big dog spider just for kicks. Do you have Cock Roaches out there? Those would be a good treat for a lizard. Speaking of pets. Is that cat yours? Or is it just a stray? I loved having a cat in Harlem. We were infested with Mice and Willy was the perfect addition. He was super agile and fun to make jump with his toys we rigged up, he had mad hops! He kept us pretty much mouse free too since he’d either catch them or they just knew there was a tough mother-shut-cho-mouth in our apartment. So more scoop on your cat would be appreciated. What about that Turtle that you were seemingly bringing home? Is that a pet now too? What did you name the Turtle? What about the cat? We named Willy that name because he was black and white and we had just watched Free Willy as a district activity a week before. We liked the name Willy anyway, but then found out that Willy wasn’t what he seemed to be when he had kittens all over Elder Steven’s shoe in the closet. That was s dirty trick he played on us. We had to give Willy and all of his kittens to James Josey, one of the guys we baptized in Harlem. He loved those cats!

I saw the family picture on the desk. The one before we left for the MTC. That is a good pic. I’ll send more pictures soon. I’m not just talking this time either, Suzanne is developing those at Target right now. So you should get those soon. I liked the picture of that Pimped out Caprice with the chrome rims. You know you were diggin’ that car. Did you go knock that door and chat it up about Caprice Classics? That might have got you in to teach, building on that common interest. Do you want me to send you a sweet picture that I made look all sporty of your CC? I could send you a couple of sweet pics of your old whip. Let me know.

What’s up with Elder Leavitt’s Big Dog biceps? Dude has some freakin’ 50 millimeter recoilless rifles for guns there. How is he maintaining those on his mission? I bet I can still beat him in an arm wrestle though. I ain’t skeered. He doesn’t know the tricks of the trade like I do. I’m a student of the game. I have studied and practiced for years till I have refined and perfected my art to more of a science. You don’t need to have the guns he has to beat a dude of that stature. You just need technique. It’s the same way I can rip a NYC Yellowpages in half, it’s not in strength. I’m not strong enough to do that, but I do it with no sweat. Same way I’d beat E. Leavitt with an authoritative thump on my side of the table as I bend his arm way back, way back, aaaaaaaaaallllll the way back! That’s where I first came up with my Boom Shockalocka! Phrase. I’d always end all of my victories with a Boom Shockalocka! As their knuckles hit wood. It was a bit of a mental game like me laying down my opponents king when I put them in check mate. It makes them more nervous or anxious when they play me again. Their mental game is not the same after that. Speaking of Chess, what’s your chess status? Have you played much if at all out there yet? Need to strike up the chess and risk soon. Anyway, even though I’d beat him in an arm wrestle, I won’t take away from him that he has way impressive bi-cepts. Good on him! I wish I still had some guns. I have the dough of a typical desk jockey now with accompanying dough in the mid section. I just weighed myself for the first time since I worked at Snowbird, when I weighed in at 195. I’m tipping the scales at 203.5 now. That’s what happens when you eat BK every day I guess. Since I weighed myself, I have stopped getting Trav’s specials at BK cold turkey. I don’t think I’ll go there anytime soon either. I’ve got to get my weight down! I quit the carbonation and caffeine and actually soda all together at the first of this month. As is tradition come November 1^st. Gotta get my bones in game shape for Turkey Bowl action.

I was on Snowbird’s website the other day to see what the snow conditions were doing, and guess what. You are still on there with your smiley mug. Funny! It’s fun to see you on there still though. My action shot is now removed.

Let’s talk about your videos and food shots. Sister Kay is a trip. She seems like a really nice lady though. She put a mean ironing on that shirt in the video. Her home and everything is definitely humble. And she puts her faith first too which is cool. Here plating and presentation was interesting. Not something you’d see done on food network. But very nice for her to make a meal like that trying to go all out for her missionaries.

John is on messenger right now telling me his girlfriend was out on a date with her ex last night. It’s getting rocky for those two. I’m not sure this will pull through. This has been a bur in John’s saddle since they first met, that she has been so hung up on her ex and now she’s going out with him again and making a good effort to get back together. So John is just about done with her.

I’m half way done with 3^rd Nephi now. So I’ll easily finish the B of M before the end of the year. Let me drop a few verses on you that stood out to me in 3^rd Nehi 7.

15 And it came to pass that ^aNephi—having been visited by angels and also the voice of the Lord, therefore having seen angels, and being eye-witness, and having had power given unto him that he might know concerning the ministry of Christ, and also being eye-witness to their quick return from righteousness unto their wickedness and abominations;

16 Therefore, being ^agrieved for the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds—went forth among them in that same year, and began to testify, boldly, repentance and remission of sins through faith on the Lord Jesus Christ.

17 And he did minister many things unto them; and all of them cannot be written, and a part of them would not suffice, therefore they are not written in this book. And Nephi did minister with ^apower and with great authority.

18 And it came to pass that they were angry with him, even because he had greater power than they, for it were ^anot possible that they could disbelieve his words, for so great was his faith on the Lord Jesus Christ that angels did minister unto him daily.

Here’s another great example of such power as a missionary that should be aspired to by all missionaries. I’m sure most missionaries would see “being visited by angels and the voice of the Lord” out of their realm of possibility. But I beg to differ. I think Missionaries (even those who would see this as impossible for them) have this happen on a frequent basis. I can testify that I had angles around me as a missionary on several occasions and those are just the occasions that I felt and knew they were there, whether clearing the way for me preparing those before me to be taught, or protecting me in circumstances which were certain danger. I think they visit missionaries, maybe not in the sense of the word that this verse says like being taught, but maybe. We know the Holy Ghost teaches missionaries exponentially. Your learning curve goes way up on your mission. This example of Nephi being taught and ministered to by angles and the voice of the Lord is a prime example of this occurring. We know Joseph Smith had the same experiences and look what a scholar he became of the Gospel of Christ. You have “power given unto” you to teach with authority and testify boldly of the things you have seen and know. The longer you are out and the more you see and experience, you will testify and teach with ever more boldness. I feared that word at the beginning of my mission. I was timid for the most part and wasn’t sure of the things I was teaching, but as I was given this power and knowledge and testimony, I relished being bold and challenging people to be baptized almost within 10 minutes of meeting them. Some of my statements would almost be overbearing because I was so anxious to boldly testify that I could offend someone of another faith easily. So I had to dial the boldness down a little bit sometimes and follow the promptings of the spirit instead. I LOVE the last verse though, that the people became “angry with him, even because he had greater power than they, for it were not possible that they could disbelieve his words, for so great was his faith on the Lord Jesus Christ that angels did minister unto him daily.” I think I experienced that only a few times on my mission where someone was actually angry with me for having greater power than they because they could not disbelieve the things being taught. One example being that minister of a born again faith that brought us in to bash. He was intelligent, he was well read in the bible and this was his livelihood. He made a living out of being good at teaching the gospel according to his interpretations. I was training my first greeny in the Bronx at the time. When he began challenging the Book of Mormon I didn’t even realize what I was doing or what I was saying at the moment. I was totally caught up in the spirit and opened my mouth. The words were just there. I testified so powerfully about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and was saying things that made chills go down my back. Have you had moments like that yet where you are testifying so powerfully that you get a spiritual rush off of what is coming out of your mouth? It can make you well up with tears, it can give you goosebumps, chills, whatever, but the spirit is flowing right through you so powerfully that no matter who you are talking to, even the most hard hearted, stiff necked atheist cannot deny feeling it. To take a quote out of my white bible from my mission, our Area Authority was Vaughn J. Featherstone and he said in the mission conference that I was conducting “No Defense can withstand the assault of the Spirit.” Remember that quote. Write that down in your White bible if you want. But don’t ever forget no matter what you are up against, if you have the spirit and testify with full faith and power, knowing by what authority you speak and have been endowed with as a missionary, they don’t have a defense against the assault of the Spirit you can and will bring in that moment. Getting back to my story, I was almost in awe at my own testimony. Remember I didn’t even have a testimony in the MTC that first week. I hadn’t read the Book of Mormon until I was blessed with a 2 week window of bed/study time at the beginning of my mission, and I was only out 6 months at this time.

D&C 130:59 “And by the weak things of the earth the Lord shall thrash nations by the power of his Spirit.”

1 Cor. 1:27 “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

Jacob 4:7 “Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things.

D&C 1:19 “The weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh—

D&C 35:13 “Wherefore, I call upon the weak things of the world, those who are unlearned and despised, to thrash the nations by the power of my Spirit;

D&C 124:1 “Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Joseph Smith, I am well pleased with your offering and acknowledgments, which you have made; for unto this end have I raised you up, that I might show forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth.

By the end of my testifying, I challenged him that he take a copy of the Book of Mormon, study it, find fault with it and if he could disprove this book using the bible (as he claimed he could do) I would have him baptize me into his church. I think I told you this story before, but no matter what, it was impossible to lose. First of all, I knew he couldn’t disprove the B of M. Second of all, he had no authority to baptize, so I would only get wet if that were to happen. He loved it. He welcomed that challenge. How great would it look to his congregation if he were to give a sermon on these two LDS missionaries that he disproved their holy book of scripture and converted them and here they are today to be baptized… say Hallelujah!! His eyes lit up, I could almost perceive his thoughts of this vision running through his head. Well, we left as friends and a week later, he called me, frustrated and said to come get my book and hung up. We went over there and knocked on the heavy metal door. He opened it partially, with the chain still latched and handed the B of M I gave him back through the crack of the door and said “here, take it.”. he started shutting the door and I said wait. What did you find? He said, I can’t focus on my sermons, I can’t think straight as long as that book is in my house, get it out of here. I said, can’t we talk about it? He said maybe later, but he can’t deal with it right now and slammed the door. We didn’t hear back from him, but I cracked it open right there in front of his door. I saw there were TONS of pencil markings and words that were all erased. All of the notes he had jotted down were something that was either nullified in the next verse or nullified if he looked into it in the Bible. He had obviously spent a lot of quality time on trying to disprove the book and found it impossible. I think it rocked him to the core and made him question his own beliefs. What a paradigm shift if you make your living off of something that may not even be right. I can’t blame him for getting it out of his house. Hopefully the seed was firmly planted and he took me up on the offer to talk about it later maybe with missionaries who took over that area, or maybe the next time he saw a commercial for the church and a free copy of the B of M. Who knows. Poor guy was just a victim of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the mighty assault of the spirit. His defenses, no matter how strong as a minister in his own church, were no match for the assault and shock and awe of the spiritual carpet bombing he received.

Well, before I knew it, I busted out 5 pages of love here. I will change topic for a minute. Brinlee’s Birthday is Sunday. She’s the big 3 already. We are having a Birthday party for every year she’s been alive. Yesterday (Friday) she had her school party with her little peeps and teachers. Then when we got home, I had a surprise family adventure night planned. We went to dinner where they had a play zone for her to go play in the tubes and stuff. Then after that, we went downtown to the Delta Center. Suz and Brins didn’t know what was up. We went to the doors and there was little Mermaid stuff, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan stuff all over. They found out we were there for Disney on Ice with Peter Pan, 101 Dalmations, Little Mermaid (her FAVORITE), and Lilo and Stitch. It was a lot of fun. The look on her face through the whole thing was priceless. We were only 7 rows up from the ice and in the zone where all the characters go to interact with the crowd. So they were perfect seats. We had a blast. It was a busy day for one little girl, so she fell asleep on the way home and fell into her bed, sleeping in her clothes last night. She partied like a rock star. Now today, we are having Mom, Dad, Shelby, Stosh and A-Jax (that’s my new nickname for him) It stuck that night we were watching him. I haven’t been able to call him anything else besides that now. And Gramps are all coming at 6:00. We have a cool Tinkerbell cake (her choice). We couldn’t talk her into any other kind of cake. She is big on Tinkerbell lately. It had to be custom made since there is nothing out there to make a Tinkerbell cake. But what are you going to do? Then Sunday night, the third party concludes with the Emery Clan. So she is one spoiled little 3 year old. It’s a 3 night celebration. It’s like Birthday Hanukkah for a 3 year old.

I’m in the process of re-caulking my dining room bay winders and hanging the last of the 3 new sets of blinds. The house looks pretty good with the new winders and blinds. I need to winterize the yard. It’s freezing-butt cold out there now. We have snow in the back yard on the north face of the house. It’s been there for a couple of days now. I still have to mow and edge one last time and turn off the water main.

Well, the family left and it’s almost 11:00 PM. It was a fun night. Brinlee got loaded up on mostly princess stuff. You might get some pictures of it later. I saw some of the pictures mom and dad are going to send to you. I should get to bed. We have to get up early and be to Ron’s and Patt’s ward at 9:00 to see Ron be sustained and set apart as the 1^st counselor in the bishopric. I’m hopeful in Fantasy Football this week. I’m in 1^st, but I’m tied with John right now for record and I’m only up by 17 pts. So I need to start racking up some pts. soon. I’ll get you the update tomorrow night when I finish this letter up.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhight, it’s 8:39 PM Sunday night. Time to wrap this bad boy up and send it off. It has been a long and tiring weekend full of birthday celebrations. I thought I might have more to put down, but I better go drop a deuce and go to bed. This big dog has been barking all night, but I’ve been at the Emery’s most of the night and I didn’t want to burden everyone with that action. So I have been ignoring the contractions all night. I don’t think I can ignore them anymore. This baby is coming whether I like it or not.

Final update on Fantasy football… Ghetto Fabulous wins. However, John racked up some serious score today, so he will more than likely take the lead. Oh well, I’m still right there. I’ll send you the grid next letter.

Team	W	L	T	PCT	GB	Strk	Wks	PF	Back	PA
Ghetto Fabulous	7	2	0	0.778	0	L1	1	934.0	0.0	808.5
Jake's G-Men	7	2	0	0.778	0	W5	1	916.5	17.5	798.0
The Bradiators	6	3	0	0.667	1	W2	2	923.0	11.0	847.5
Baybaz Ballaz	6	3	0	0.667	1	W1	3	866.5	67.5	844.5
Ice Cold	5	4	0	0.556	2	L1	0	865.0	69.0	821.5
Hip Waders	5	4	0	0.556	2	W2	1	842.0	92.0	777.5
Uonlywish Choppers	4	5	0	0.444	3	W1	0	749.0	185.0	867.0
Silent Assassins	3	6	0	0.333	4	L3	0	869.0	65.0	908.5
Money in the bank	1	8	0	0.111	6	L5	1	837.5	96.5	923.0
Buffalo Wings	1	8	0	0.111	6	L3	0	656.0	278.0	862.5

Money 57 Gm GMen 124.5

Choppers 110 Gm Bradiators 145.5

Assassins 91 Gm Baybaz 78

Waders 104 Wings 90

There you see the record before this week’s games and then you also see the scores for this week. So that should give you an idea of what is happening. Bradiators put up a HUGE score this week. In fact, his bench outscored my starters too. I’m at 95.5 right now with two players playing in the 4^th and 12 minutes remaining. So Brad surpasses me in points, but still a game behind. John beats me in points and stays tied with record since Austin put up a fight reminiscent of the French. I think his team retreated after the 2^nd quarter today. So John will take 1^st. Baybaz falls to 2 games behind though, Ice Cold falls 3 games behind me. Choppers fall 4 games. So the pack is beginning to thin a bit. It looks like Me, John and Brad are the top dogs that will be in a true dog fight to the end. How many times have I said the word Dog in this letter?

Well, it’s time to wrap this letter up and send it off. My Contractions are seriously about every 45 seconds now and if I’m not careful, I might start crowning and drawing pictures with my brown crayon tip on my white G’s.

I hope things are going great. Sounds like transfers are soon. Maybe even today, eh? So make sure you let me know as soon as you hear anything. Don’t have any concern about taking over your area. You know it well, you have been trained well. You are ready. This is wear you begin your next stage of growth by showing another missionary the ropes of the area, taking on the pace of the work, etc. If you get a dud for a companion, it’s your time to shine and show that missionary what’s up and bust his butt. You show your mission President that you can lead a slacker around, especially at such a young stage of your mission and he’ll have great things in store for you soon. Even if you get a stud companion, all the more reason to rip your area up and start setting the bar! I’ll talk to you soon. Love and miss you,

Trav