5/27/07

What’s new with you Chochy?

It’s another week and another letter. It’s of course late on Sunday night. 11:30 PM to be exact. Just what you’d expect from me, eh? Suzanne and I took a drive up to Syracuse where my boss lives to see some houses in his neighborhood that are for sale. He’s been trying to get us up there since it’s so cheap being out of the city limits. It’s right on the Glen Eagle golf course and super nice houses for what we would be able to sell our house for. But man! Could it take longer to get up there and back? Seriously, we burned more than a ¼ tank on the trip. He said that we could carpool so not to let that influence my decision. We’ll see what some of the prices look like as we look into them this week. We mostly just wanted to try out the drive and see what the location looked like. We are right by antelope drive that takes you out to antelope island. So it’s up there a bit.

John and I are going fishing at the Berry tomorrow. I need to get to sleep since I need to wake up in about 4 hours. Man, that’s going to be an early wake up! So I won’t get your letter till I get home, but I’ll be thinking of you and that I’ve got a letter to check out when I get back. So as you are reading this right now, I’m out on the lake slaying trout. It will be nice! It’s been nice and cool up there, not too hot yet. The fish are all hungry too coming off a long winter and ice cover. Should be pretty active. I’m excited.

We did the Elder’s Quorum Pinewood Derby on Friday night. I promised to let you know the results of that. Well, I made mine in an inverted plane shape, so it was the shape of an airplane wing to create some lift, with the weight up in the front, some cool stickers that I got from a Comcast internet mailer I got. It had stickers like Lightning bolts which I used, some checker flags which I used, some wings and some fire blazing stickers that I didn’t use, but it also had a sticker that said “soup up your modem” which I strategically cut up so that it said YOUR MOM. So that was the name of my car… YOUR MOM ha ha. That’s how it read in the brackets on the board and whenever I got called up to race, it would be like this: number 8, Vintage Green, Number 14, and Your Mom is up next. Or in the semi finals, we have Big Money racing Your Mom! It was awesome! Well, I took 4^th. Nothing to be proud of really, but I found out my car went way faster when I raced it backwards, so the weight in the back. In fact, all the winners had the weight in the back. DANG! I thought the strategy was to race with weight in the front. Oh well. I learned my lesson too late. These guys also had their tires lathed so they were super thin, they had a 3 point contact too where one of the front tires sits up hire and doesn’t even touch. What’s up with this stuff man? I didn’t know about all these strategies, but oh well, I still came in 4^th beating out all the legit cars and that was after learning too late that my car was faster backwards. It was fun anyway and that’s what counts. One guy did bring a CO2 car though and holy cow, that thing beat all other cars by half the time and that was giving them all a 2 second head start because after the gate dropped, he had to punch his cartridge. Obviously it wasn’t considered legit, but it was fun to watch. It hit the bottom so hard and fast, that even with a big sponge buffer at the bottom it crushed his car to bits, blowing his axels and wheels off and even splintering his wood to bits by the 3^rd launch. It was sweet though.

Today in church we had a kid show up without his parents. He just sat in the row by himself ahead of us. After the first speaker got done, he went up there and sat on the stand. After the second speaker got done with her 15 minute talk that he waited patiently for, the chorister stood up for our closing hymn and he didn’t see her, so he stood up to the microphone. The bishop flagged the chorister to hold off and let him talk. The kid just started talking about how his parents used to go to church before he knew anything about it but then quit and he wanted to know more about church and said it was time we all started teaching him and bore his testimony of being thankful to heavenly father for helping him find his way, etc. it was cool, this kid is only like 10 if that. Maybe 11. So hopefully someone gets that kid some missionaries.

Let’s get to your quote of the week…

In a mission environment of order and discipline where all that is done is in harmony with the spirit, the missionary experiences a great transformation. The heavens open. Powers are showered out. Mysteries are revealed. Habits are improved. Sanctification begins. Through this process the missionary becomes a vessel of light that can shine forth the gospel of Jesus Christ in a world in darkness.

- William R. Bradford

I went with this one today because we did a lesson on being instruments in the hands of God. I always liked that concept and aspire to be just that and in fact, pray for that opportunity on a regular basis. I like this quote because it speaks to how missionaries are transformed into more effective instruments in the hands of God. I love watching that transformation take place more effectively each week in your letters. Keep up that great transformation. Keep up all the hard work. I love seeing how well you envelope yourself in the work and lose yourself so well from the rest of the world in darkness. You are a great example to your family back home. Thanks for being that example and one that we can constantly point out to Brinlee and Aynslee.

Sorry this is so short and sweet. I need to get to bed. It’s midnight and I literally only have a 4 hour sleep in store for me tonight. I’ll let you know about the fishing trip next week and hopefully will have some killer pics to send your way of some trophies. John has been up there since Thursday and hasn’t landed a single fish. His dad caught 2 and that’s it. John has had two on his line but lost them both. Ha ha. John has bad luck fishing or has no skills. I haven’t been able to tell yet. But my luck of the Berry will change things up tomorrow.

Catch you next week. Love and miss you always.

T-Rav