E.A.:
Before you settle in to start reading this, you better just print it out and read it at your convenience. It’s a long one. Lots of football recap, thanksgiving recap, etc.
How’s it going now that the protective wing of Elder Leavitt is not covering you anymore and you have this new companion? How do you like Elder Herbert? Give me as much detail as possible for your blog update this week. Basically, interview him and get all the scoop you think peeps would want to know. Here, let me lay out the interview and you can ask him the appropriate questions and fill them in on your next letter:
Full Name:
Where are you from? Where have you lived?:
Church Membership history:
Interests/Hobbies:
Girlfriend?:
What did he drive?:
Where has he worked?:
Music he likes:?
What areas has he served in so far?:
Something interesting/unique about him:
What he wants to do after his mission:
Get me the scoop on those and let me know in your next letter. Get some pics of him too to send home.
Thanks for sending me what your president interview went over. That was awesome to hear about. Mom and Dad ate that action up too! I of course agree with everything he said, I’m just happy to see that he has noticed that and seen that in you already. Sometimes it takes a President some time to get to know the newbies and feel them out for their testimonies, motivation levels, and leadership abilities, etc. That reminds me, I still need to whip up my discourse on leadership customized for you and your mission. I’ll get on that soon. I was going to wait till you became a DL, but I think I’ll start on that soon and assess the situation when I hear more about Elder Herbert.
Make sure to get filling up your journal soon. Don’t worry about space. I can send you a new journal anytime. I keep wishing I wrote in my journal every day. I only have like 70 pages to cover my whole mission. Man, that is a big regret. It’s so awesome to look back on the little details like investigators names, even names of families and family members that I baptized and actually forgot their names. All the details you can put in there, do it. Any feelings you have during the day or thoughts that come in your head, no matter how random, drop them in. it’s amazing when you get pondering something and write it down, you come upon a situation a week or two later and try to remember what you were pondering a while back. Going back to the journal is such a great tool because usually, that thought was put in your head for a reason. Fill that up yo! That’s going to be one of my new years resolutions this year, to write in there at least once a week. That’s adequate for a fat and lazy dad who doesn’t have all that many unique experiences outside of work and home. But for a missionary, a soldier in God’s army that’s out there on the front lines sees action every day that needs to be recorded for your sake and the sake of your family, future family and generations to come. Oh, I didn’t put day and time in here so you know what I’m doing right now. It’s 12:26 PM on Tuesday. I’m at work and should really be doing some work, rather than writing you, but it’s all good. I got a hankering and started this letter. I just did a blog update to tell everyone about your transfer news, but only saved it as a draft since I’m going to put a picture with it when I get home where I have your pictures on CD.
Oh, here is the latest in FF…
As you can see, the mighty have fallen and the fall thereof is great. I’m tied record wise with Bradiators, but I’m down 102.5 pts. WHAT??!! John is a game ahead of me and so many points. He just gets better with LaDanian scoring over 41 pts. A week for the last 3 weeks. Carson Palmer racking up pts in the high 30s too and the rest of his team in the 20s. It’s Rediculous, the amount of points he’s been racking up. Well, I best be up out. I have some serious work to get done. I’ll get back to this when I get home.
Well, now it’s Wednesday morning at 8:35. I’m back to work. I just found exactly where you took that picture at Travis and Montclaire Dr. Pretty cool. I just stumbled on it looking at a close up of Rock Hill on Google Earth. Tell me more places you are going, or where you live. Give me more streets to find it. I can’t find your street for some reason. I’ll show Mom and Dad, they will be really excited about that kind of thing. Write back with some directions from a big, main road and I’ll find it.
I planned my work Christmas party for Dec. 14th at 2:00 at Rodizio Grill. I scored too. My budget is $25/person and I finagled the party room at Rodizio, got the Full Rodizio meal for every person, which is all you can eat salad bar, all you can eat meat skewers as they pass around (you know how that works there, right?) and I still had enough money left over to give away over $1,000 dollars in cool gifts and prizes. It’s going to be crazy fun. I had a good time organizing it. I assembled a little Activities committee of people from each department and then we sat down, planned for Rodizio and I got on and worked the phones. This is what we came up with. I’m pretty happy about it. I’ve never eaten at Rodizio before, but I have heard all good things. I already have about $500 dollars worth of prizes, now I just need to go spend about $600-$700 more. That’s going to be a prize for nearly everyone and we have some good prizes too!! I’ll tell you how it goes and what we end up giving away after the party.
I have rounded up at least 9 peeps for our team tomorrow morning. We are all getting there at 8:00 AM and setting up the field, and warming up. I’ll make the introductions because I think if we introduce each other, people tend to not go for the highlight reels. I called Kyle and told him we changed it to 8:00 since the other team were all planning on that time. He is bringing the Monz boys. So that will be good. I called Parker, but no one answered. I left a message and he hasn’t called back. I’d be surprised if he came. But we’ll see. Oh, get this, when I called Kyle back the second time to tell him about the change in time, he told me he was sitting in the E.R. waiting to be seen for tweaking his ankle and spraining it from falling off a foundation. I told him he had to be kidding me and he said he wished he was. He was going to try to take it easy and wrap it up and try to get healed enough for the game. I think he’s still good to go, but he might be a little gimpy. We are having Suzanne’s family Thanksgiving dinner and B-day’s for Monica and Neil too. So Thursday will be a busy Thanksgiving with the game and the festivities following. Then Friday is our family’s thing over at Mom’s and Dad’s. I think Dave is eating with us too. Mom invited him to the football game, but he passed and said he was going to Sue’s and Dennis’ house on Thursday. I asked Dave if he had played some Foos with Dad and he said he didn’t even know there was a table at the house. I was pretty disappointed with Dad for not getting that option out there early on. If I had room in my house, I’d totally take the table over there. I’d put it to some good use. I’ll have to play when we go over on Friday. Well, I better get some work done. It’s a busy day at work since I’m off tomorrow and Friday, I have a lot to wrap up before the long 4 day weekend and I wouldn’t mind leaving a little bit early today either. Austin and I are going down to Lehi for an Xbox game night at 7:00 PM. I don’t want to be out too late though since I’ll have to wake up before 7:30 AM in the morning. I’ll let you know how that goes too. I’ll pick this up sometime on Thursday to update you on the game. So another bend in the Space/Time Continuum and you will know all about the Turkey Bowl. I have 24 hours to wait till we are playing. Sucks for me, cool for you! Later…
Well, the long wait is over. It’s 1:56 PM on Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving! I’m sure you are ready to read all about the Turkey Bowl. I bet Kyle writes you about it too and might send you some pics too. He was smart and brought a camera. John did too, but when he saw Kyle snapping pics didn’t get his out. I’ll have to e-mail Kyle and have him send me some pics. Actually, I just did. Here is what I just sent…
Kyle,
Thanks again for toughing through your injury and playing with us today. Thanks for bringing Tyler Monz and your other two friends. that helped a lot. We awarded you the Purple Heart award for playing as well as you did with a sprained ankle all braced and wrapped up, not to mention your too facials you took. You are a good player man, on Offense and Defense. You and Mike both tackle guys twice your size like they were nothin'. You are both beasts that way. I wish I knew that Brad's team were going to bring those 3 ringers. The Yale Row Team were freakin' good! They were super fast, could cut on a dime, and were way hard to bring down when we did catch them. If they are going to bring ringers like that, then we are bringing back Sii our big Tongan rugby player we brought last year and all his tongan rugby team buddies he can scare up for us. We'll show them ringers. At least those 3 Abercrombie models smelled good and made every tackle a pleasant experience.
Anyway, I saw you taking some pics, probably for Mike? Will you e-mail those to me too? I wanted to pass those around to the other guys. Go ahead and send those to Mike. He wants to live vicariously through us, he was way psyched for football every year. But I will e-mail them to the guys I know that came. I'd appreciate that.
Thanks again for helping to organize some guys and playing. We will miss you next year. Mike and Preston are big enough holes to fill on the team. but to have all 3 of you out will hurt bad next year.
Talk to you soon.
Trav
So now you have a sneak preview of what I’ll recap for you. Let me actually start with last night at the game night down in Lehi. We didn’t play any Halo. It was an Xbox 360 exclusive party. So I had to split screen with Austin and play on his box. We only played this new game called Gears of War. It’s pretty cool, but it’s not Halo. It’s way graphic too. When someone gets sniped in the head, it’s not like Halo, I mean heads actually explode right off of the shoulders, and your main battle rifle has a chainsaw thing built right on it like where a grenade launcher would be on an M-16 type thing, you know? So when you are up close in battle, instead of like a bayonet, you can chain saw the guts out of your enemy and they can’t break away from it, they are just helpless for the 3 seconds it takes you to gut them. Their face gets all scared and it’s pretty graphic. Depending on how you catch them, you will take them right in half, or you may just take from the left side of their neck down to under their right armpit off. And it falls to the ground before the rest of their body does. It’s a little bit too intense for some audiences. Austin turned his gore and language off, so we didn’t see all that those guys were seeing on their screens which was alright with me. Well, we played that till Midnight. I’m sure they were going to go till 3:00, but Austin and I wanted to call it a night, go home and get our football rest and get ready for an early wake up. Game night was OK, but not as fun as if we played Halo. So I got him home a little after midnight. I got up at 7:10 this morning to start carbo-loading. Then I downed a few cups of Gatorade for my electrolytes and what nots. It was like 60 degrees outside at midnight last night, but they said a snowstorm was rolling in and that’s why the warm before the storm was blowing in. I was nervous when I looked out the window, but it was beautiful. Some overcast, and some wind, but it was about the same temperature. 60 degrees and no sun in your eyes is PERFECT football weather. So I girded about my loins with my rib protectors, spine pad, cup and mouth guard. I felt good. Got in the truck and loaded in the Disturbed. I know you don’t like them as much as I do, but it was getting me riled! It was Ministry last year, so I changed it up. Next year I’ll probably just do a mix on the iPod like you did. So I made my way to the soccer parks going about 60 MPH before I knew it because I was so amped up. So I slowed it up there on on 48th west and dropped it about 10 MPH. I couldn’t get the foot off the gas. I pulled in and a couple of the guys from the other team were there. Clint and Austin pulled in right after me. I kept the music going on the song it was on which happened to be the MOST riling up song they do for football. I told you to put that one on your pump mix. Conflict. Where they are yelling about “you are my mortal enemy”, “I must eliminate my enemy”, etc. It was getting in their heads just a little bit. John rolled in shortly after and before we knew it, we had 15 people there ready to play. John and I coned off the field. It was of perfect size and proportion. As we got back together after setting up the field, my team was all chatting and joking around and this car pulls up. These 3 big guys get out and start making their way to us across the field (you know how we avoid all the troll hair, morning glory and bad sod patches in that close field to the parking lot and play on the further south one). Well, as they were jogging toward us, we were all sizing them up, trying to see who they were, and I am not embellishing this for good story purposes, the three of them were seriously jogging in unison and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my imagination, but they were in a dramatic slow motion fashion. I yelled to Brad and said, are these guys yours? He said yeah. As they trotted closer to us, it became evident that they were all of large stature, lean, mean, donning the latest under armor get ups and NFL endorsed receiver gloves, brand new cleats with metal spikes, and all 3 of them were seriously 6 feet and over Ambercrombie and Fitch models. I leaned over to my whole team that were trying to understand how they ran so elegantly in slow motion and said, who the freak are these guys? The Yale rowing team? A few laughs came out, but I think they were more of the nervous, impending doom sort of chortling. I went over to Brad (which was easy to do before they got there because after all, their slow motion dramatic, synchronized jogging was taking longer than expected to get them from point A to point B. and asked him, where did you get these guys? The Ivy League LaCrosse commission? He told me that they were east siders from Sandy. Well, I walked back over to my team (still before they got up to us and still jogging in unison) and as they were all still staring at their lean and mean good looks, told them, “let’s show them how we play on the west side”. A few more awkward laughs could barely be heard and we started bringing it all in. And I told everyone that we just have a few simple rules. First, there is no need to blow someone up who has the ball. Just make a tackle and do what you have to do, but there is no ESPN coverage of this game today, no highlight reels to make, and no need to light up the runner. 2nd rule is the 50 yard marker is the first down. 3rd and final rule is NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE on this filed hurts this guy and I pointed right at Austin. I told them that if he gets hurt, I will be hurt by a very angry and nervous mother in law. So if anyone hurts Austin, they are going to answer to me where I will deal out the same amount of physical harm that I will be inflicted with later on today. Then I told them that we had a couple of extra guys on my team and asked them if they wanted one of our guys. They strategically took Austin knowing that none of us were going to bust him down if he go the ball. It turned out to be a smart move. One of the Yale Rowers asked me if we were playing tackle on the kick offs. I said why not? He said, well, that’s where most people get hurt. I told him I don’t have a problem tackling on kick offs, but left it up to a vote. No one wanted to look like a wuss after I set the standard so they all decided to leave the tackling in place on kick offs but left an option in the clause to remove tackling to two hand touch if it gets ragged. Another Yale boy came up to me and asked if I wanted to Rock Paper Scissors for kick off. I said sure, then another Yale boy said best two out of three. I agreed and we proceeded to rock off. I was beat with two fell swoops of his hand and I could tell that this was some sort of dark irony and the day would continue to go the way of these model worthy preppy jocks. So they said they’d receive and we separated. You know my strategy of hitting the guy I scope out harder than he would hit me right off the bat on the kick off just to set the mood for the day, even if it’s not the runner. Well, after the kick, I had a clean line for one of the Yale boys and drew my bead. As soon as I was about to blow him up, disregarding all of my rules I just layed out, he juked me out of my cleats like I was standing still and I missed all form of contact. I was sent tumbling and he proceeded to mow down a couple of my guys on his way to what ended up being 10 yards from our end zone. The two guys got up and enacted their clause to make it two hand touch below the waste on kick offs. So that rule was changed a little quick, but after my humiliation I was fine with the rule change. Now I will highlight some of the key plays and players. There was another stellar play from the charmed ones where Yale QB threw to Mr. $50 dollar NFL endorsed and Terrell Owens autographed gloves and he made a leaping catch where he easily cleared about 11 feet of vertical and made this catch that left our mouths gaping. I started yelling, There are no Photographers, What did I tell you about trying to make the highlight reels? Knock it off!! It really was an amazing catch. I was beginning to get annoyed. Tyler Monz was our QB and he was awesome! I was impressed with his accuracy and distance he was getting on the ball. We dropped a few runs or short dump passes to John who served as our option back and he did his typical “all aboard” moves where he will stop for a tackler and let him deflect off his mass and end up clinging to his hips as he drags them along until a few back up tacklers can come climb aboard too. On one particular run though, John had a clinger already and was moving slower, when a Yale boy was coming full steam at him. He stopped for boarding and Yale boy cleaned his clock! John was not feeling the Yale boys either. We were all becoming annoyed. Kyle, as I mentioned sprained his ankle and would be a game time decision. Well, he braced up and wrapped up his ankle after nursing it the last couple of days and staying on crutches just to help it heal faster. You would never have known he had a brace on or that he sprained his ankle two days ago. Dude was a stud! Full blown. We gave him the Purple Heart award for playing so well under the circumstances. He took a big facial early on in the game and had a swollen cheek bone for the rest of the game. He ended up taking another one about midway through the game. But he was awesome. He was tackling like a beast. You and Kyle have an uncanny knack for tackling like guys twice your size. Oh, I forgot I put that in Kyle’s letter that you already read. Anyway, he was a stud. Tyler found me in the Endzone with a mismatch having Austin covering me. Tyler popped it in a little higher than Austin could reach and I had an easy touchdown. Neil caught one or two touchdowns, Clint had a touch down, Tyler had a nice rushing and stretched arm touch down and someone else got one too. Kyle’s friend. So it was spread out pretty well. I was very impressed with Austin too. I’ll come back to discuss Austin’s play as soon as I get back from the Emery’s. I need to go wake up Suzanne and Brinlee and head over there. I’ll check you back afterward.
Ahhhhhhhight, I’m back. Dinner was good. We were unloading the C-RV outside the Emery’s and the Missionaries were riding by. I said Hi Guys, to them and they said hi and before I knew it, they rode back toward me and got off their bikes and asked if they could help me in with the stuff. I told them sure and handed them some stuff. They came walking in and the whole Emery family were like Uhhhhhhhh, this is a bit un-announced. Are you guys staying for dinner? They thought we had invited the missionaries in and didn’t tell them or something. It was funny. So we cleared things up and they introduced themselves and said they were from San Jose California and Seattle Washington and then hit us all up for referrals. So that was a job well done and good use of their time and service. No one had any names to give, but it was a worthy effort. Before they left, we asked Brinlee who these two guys were. She was getting shy for some reason, but we asked her if they were the missionaries. She smiled big and nodded. I said like Unlce Mike? She smiled even bigger and nodded. They asked her if she knew where you were. She doesn’t get that kind of thing yet, so we told them she doesn’t know where he is, just that he wears a tie and rides a bike and wears a hat like you guys and I pointed at their helmets. Anyway, after a couple of laughs, I showed them to the door and shook their hands and wished them a happy Thanksgiving. They were on their way to a Thanksgiving Dinner somewhere when we saw them.
The turkey was good and all the fixins. We had a ping pong tournament to beat all ping pong tournaments. It was determined that I was the 2nd best player in the family. Believe it or not, Ron is the best. He is good! But everyone else fell to my paddle of fury. I was throwing down some mad top spin shots and showing them what’s up. But Ron and I were in full Hong Kong style Olympic Ping Pong action and I lost 21 to 19. So close, but as you know, there is no reward for second place. Actually, there was no reward for first place either, but what can you do? Austin, Rick and I ended the evening playing super Nintendo. No actually, I’m serious. We busted out the Super NES and played some super old school Donkey Kong and Double Dragon. The X-box 360 is on the TV where the rest of the family were watching Ice Age. Now we’ll have one more party at Mom’s and Pop’s with Dave and all of us. I guess Grandpa must be out of town. I don’t think he’s coming. But I’ll update you tomorrow after the party.
OK, back to football. I left off with Austin’s play. He had a couple of big tackles that were decent for his size and who he tackled. I saw Clint and Neil kind of brighten up with pride when they saw Austin out there on a couple of big ones. Then for some reason, Tyler Monz switched up with that friend of Clint’s that plays QB for us most times. Remember him? Anyway, he came in at QB and was chucking every pass behind every receiver and had more completions with the ground than anything. Well, he lobbed this duck about 5 feet behind me and Austin came on the coverage with me again and snatched that right out of the air and almost went the entire distance. If dude hit me in stride, I would have had a second TD, but Austin picked it and I tried to stop and twisted up my knee and went down. I watched Austin run all that way without anyone to catch him. Someone finally did, I think it was Clint. But Tyler Monz was put right back in at QB after that. Besides my TD, I had a couple of other catches that were respectable, but not note worthy necessarily. But my tackling went through the roof after I had finally had my fill of the Harvard Club seizing the day and “Carpe Dieming” my hole for the 10th time. I started going back to the basics and throwing some good old school wrap and tackle technique on them and shot their waste every time which worked. Every tackle I got from them was a pleasant experience from their expensive cologne. It was kind of a surreal situation, but whatever. I was the only one that would, let alone could, bring down the 3 ringers. Actually, I take that back, Kyle had some good tackles on them too. As mentioned before, I don’t know what school of tackling and defense technique you Elwood boys took, but you are all skilled in the art of a good body stopping tackle. It’s an art that is appreciated only by the true connoisseur. Everyone else just got out of their way and made it look like they were going to throw a shot and then just held up and let them through. So that is a hole we really could have used you on and you would have actually had a lot of fun doing it. I needed another middle linebacker to help me on those short passes and reverse draw runs they were using. But I had a blast once I got back to the basics and got in the thick of things again. I had a few other defensive plays that wouldn’t have made the shots of the week or anything, but a near interception that bobbled out of my fingers as I was 10 feet from any other player and 10 feet away from their end zone. I would have had the only defensive TD of the game, but it was just fingertips away from a grab. Frustrating! Mom actually came walking around the field and kept looking right at me, or so it seemed and I would wave to her and she just kept looking and walking. I wasn’t sure if she saw me and just ignored me as to not embarrass me in front of the boys, thinking they’d all break into mockery about my Mommy coming to see me, but I didn’t care. I waved every time it looked like she was looking at me, but no response. I asked her about it when I went over afterward. She said, I never saw you. I saw a guy wearing red that I thought must have been you but I wasn’t certain. I’m like MOM! The only guy wearing read was JOHN in his Alstott jersey. If you think John and I look that much alike… Well, that’s not the only bit of depressing comments I got. I had another guy on the field say that maybe they should keep Austin on our team so father and son can play together. I was quiet for a second trying to figure out who he was talking about, and when I noticed they were all looking at me, I quickly jumped in and said, wait, I’m not his dad, you realize that right?? He was like, oh, sorry, I just thought… I said, dude, if you seriously thought he was my son, I’m just going to open up the wrists right now and end it, because a dude at the Xbox party thought he was my son too. Seriously people, I’m gaining some weight, I’m looking a little older, but stop the insanity! When I got home, I could feel the tenderness in the old body of mine from all the tackles of the Row Team boys and a few of their tackles on me, so I popped these pills I got from Snowbird called SportLegs. They are made to absorb all your lactic acid and prevent the soreness in muscles from sports like skiing, etc. where you’d do a lot of body movement and have build up of lactic acid. It has worked like a charm, I’m telling you right now. Normally, this time of night on Thanksgiving, I’d be plenty aching, but I’m feeling like I just ran on the treadmill for 45 minutes is all. I’m just more tired than normal, but that might be the turkey talking. So I like that action. I might go for that again. I am chatting with John on messenger and he said, well, here’s the convo…
Travis: How are you feeling now that you've had some time to sit still for a bit? stiffening up at all? I'm still good, but we'll have to see if these pills last till morning. It's always the day after that I feel it the most.
Johnny: yea both knees hurt, neck hurts, sides hurt, ankle hurts, groin pulled.ect ect
Travis: what happened with the groin? I never saw any groin shots or strains.
Johnny: no just went on a burst run and pulled it. Plus went down funny on some body slams
Travis: you take any ibuprofen? keeps any swelling down in joints and muscles
Johnny: no goin all natural
I don’t know why he wants to brave it on his own, but whatever. He’ll really feel it in the morning. So we only had one injury the whole day and that was Dillon, Kyle’s long haired friend. Tyler Monz was chugging with a full head of steam to the end zone and Dillon was trying to block for him. Tyler juked the opposite way that Dillon expected and Dillon backed into Tyler as he tried jumping Dillon’s leg. He hit Dillon’s quad with some serious motion coming from his knee. That knee probably put about 500 PSI on Dillon’s Quad and homeboy just buckled and went down. I felt the thud from about 20 yards away. He was writhing for a bit, but we got him off the field. He tried coming back in after stretching it and walking it off for a couple of series, but he was never the same. He was gimpy bad. He will be feeling some tenderness for at least a week. I bet he has a deep purple bruise right in the middle of his quad right now. Maybe even a deep bone bruise or something. Well, the final score in the game was… What do you guess? With the Ambercrombie boys and all? We counted each TD as one point. So do a quick guess in your mind right now. What do you think? Wait for it… I was extremely proud of my little band of warriors. We came in at a respectable six to eight loss. We said first to eight after we were all getting pretty poopered out, so they were already almost 8. But we kept it pretty tight all game. Brad’s team was already pretty good. They didn’t need the row team to show up, but I’ll tell you what. I’m seriously going to bring in Sii and the Tongan Rugby team if I catch wind that they are coming back. I’m kidding. I don’t think I would just because it would become them versus them, instead of us verses them and I want to be involved in the plays. I just need to be more serious about whipping my bones into shape. I say it every year, but it’s a good renewal of that desire every thanksgiving.
I was talking with Dad about setting up the foosball table for tomorrow’s dinner. He said he would. It needed to get all cleaned off and some silicone on the bars I guess. So we’ll get Josh and Dad, and Dave and me down there and have the ultimate tournament of Foos like we did with ping pong tonight. It will be fun! I’m going to take your last letter you wrote to me over to the parental’s house tomorrow. Everyone will be able to read it then. I think Staci has one that I haven’t read yet, so I should TXT her to stop forgetting that and bring it tomorrow. She has forgotten it the last 2 times I’ve seen her.
I was going to ask you another Doctrinal question in this letter, but I’ll wait to get your response from the first one first. See what your take on the 3 Nephites was. But I’ll still drop in your quote of the week here…
I am dropping this one because I remember my situation of taking over my first area in Harlem when my trainer left after 2 months, actually, a month and a half of being out since 2 weeks was Hernia time in bed. I hardly felt adequate to take over and get a new companion. Especially Elder Stevens who had been out longer than me and seemed more like a fun focused missionary who was more interested in finding deals, selling stuff to other missionaries, and general wheeling and dealing at every chance he had. I didn’t want my area to fail. I didn’t know how to act with a new companion. That’s when I felt the urge to go to the roof and pray. I referred to this in one of my recent letters. One of the most spiritual experiences of my life, if not THE most intense I have had and will ever have. Anyway, I was determined to put my faith in the Lord and put in the work that he required of me as such a young missionary and just trust him to help us as a new companionship and me as still such a green missionary. Since you are in a new companionship, this may help to try to incorporate if you see reason to…
“Your greatest help will come from the Lord Himself as you supplicate and plead with Him in humble prayer. As you are driven to your knees again and again asking Him for divine help in your mission, you will feel the Spirit, you will get your answer from above, your mission will prosper spiritually because of your dependence and your reliance on Him.”
-Ezra Taft Benson
Well, it’s 11:05 PM on Thursday. I best be getting this old frame of mine to bed. It’s been through the annual gauntlet I love to put it through. It’s been almost a month since I’ve had any pop and I don’t have any desire to have any real soon. But I will likely ween myself back on to it soon. I need to try to stay as healthy as possible and the pop isn’t helping. I’ll see how much longer I can and will stay off of it now that Turkey Bowl is over. It will be fun over and Ma’s and Pa’s so I’ll be sure to recap it all for you tomorrow. I’m ending this at the bottom of page 9 now. This letter is going to be a long one. I’ll have to put a warning at the beginning of this for you to print and be on your way with something else. It will take half your P-day just to read this big bounder. But that’s how I roll. I bring the love every week! Do you want me to start tapering these back? Do they overwhelm you to some extent to have me go off this much? Or do you dig it OK? Let me know. I know I can be a bit too detailed sometimes and what I write may not be as interesting to others as what I thought about it. So just let me know. I don’t want to hog up a bunch of your time on P-days. Anyway, I’m going to head to bed. I’ll continue this tomorrow.
Hey Yo. Just got back from Mom’s and Dad’s. Dinner was good. Turkey was yummy, good stuffing, Orange rolls, the mashed potatoes were to die for with some tasty turkey gravy. It was Shelli, Staci and Josh and A-Jax. Me, Suz, Brin, Dave, and ma and pa. they had a ton of pies too of course. I had a Dr. Pepper, so there went my no caffeine/carbonation for the month. The spree has ended. I’m going to be drinking it a lot less now. It’s just that those were about the only options. Suzanne and I mostly just browsed the ads for day after thanksgiving while we were there, but I also put some music on the computer that Mom was asking about. Marc Cohn. He does a bunch of songs that you might know, but there are 5 or 6 that are really good! So I put those on for her. I met him in Manhattan one day. I don’t think I told you about that. Anyway, we swapped Mike letters and had a good night together. Suzanne got sick and we had to run home at 9:00 where she chucked all of the good dinner she ate earlier. Too bad. She thinks she just ate too much. We gave Squash a blessing tonight. He is having his surgery on Wednesday I guess. Dave anointed and I blessed. It was cool. Suzanne was going to have a blessing too for the pregnancy issues she’s been having and to help things go a little more smoothly and with the delivery and everything. But she had to get home for home toilet advantage where she’d feel a little more comfortable. So we’ll do that another night. Oh, on our way out of our drive way to go to Mom’s and Dad’s tonight, I noticed my rain gutter totally hanging off my house. I mean, it looks straight up Ghetto. So Dad is going to go with Lowes with me tomorrow and get this magic plumbers tape he raves about that he thinks will fix everything. So we’ll probably do that tomorrow.
Oh, check this out. I just checked my e-mail and got an e-mail from Troy Thrush. He just got his mission call the day after I sent my e-mail. He is going to Auckland, New Zealand. Cool eh? He will be sharing the smallish north island with Chad when Chad is in Wellington, otherwise, I think Chad will spend some quality time on the South island too. I think Troy is excited. Here is what he wrote…
Hey Trav,
Well good timing on the email aye, well i just got my mission call 2
days ago. Im going to the New Zealand, Auckland mission. I leave on
the 8th February. Yeh that will be great if ya can let mike know that
too. thanks heaps. i gotta go sorry but ill try and writa again soon.
take care,
Troy
There you have it. I’ll see if I can get addresses and stuff, but if you want me to pass anything along to him, let me know. He almost got delayed a bit on his mission. He brought a girl back with him to Australia after the season and they got pretty serious. Apparently it was going down a road that would have prevented him from going on his mission anytime soon. In fact, it still delayed him a bit longer than what he would have liked, so he sent her back home to the States and told her that his mission was more important right now. Good on him Mate! He’s good people. You know, I was going to give you fantasy football updates on here too, but I’m 11 pages into this thing and that is way too much already. I also did your Leadership discourse over the last couple of days and that was 13 pages. So I’m going to take both of these over to Mom’s and Dad’s, print them off and send them to you in the mail. That’s too much for you to deal with in one hour over the computer. I want you to be able to absorb the leadership deal over a couple of sittings. So you won’t get this when you might have expected. I’ll send you a little something over the e-mail to supplement though. Hope you enjoy.
Love and miss you. Keep up the hard work. Send me the details of E. Herbert and I’ll update the blog.
Love,
Trav
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