6/10/07

Greetings again young Elder,

It’s letter time again. It’s 4:00 PM Sunday. Just got home from Church, grilled up some Steaks on the grill and got to thinking about nap time soon. But better get this started so it’s up and ready for me to finish by later tonight. I finished up some Home Teaching interviews today after church. Still not sure why I’m doing that as a Secretary, but it’s all good. They have been cool to do. Get a feel for the families, get a feel for the companionships, see what I can do for them, offer a little counsel and then send them off with a prayer for their success and for inspiration for their stewardship.

Yesterday I went up to the Homestead and played in a golf tournament on their course. Wow, that was nice up there. It’s normally 90 bucks a person to play that course. Not only did we get a free round of golf, they fed us the best lunch I’ve had in a LONG time with awesome chicken breast, an amazing pulled pork sandwich, some yummy BBQ beans, this tasty pasta with tomato, mushrooms, artichokes, and some good sauce to go on it. Some pink lemonade and an assortment of cookies and brownies. We all got free hats, sleeve of Nike Distance balls, a Support our Troops bracelet, and free snack cart vouchers for when that rolled around. They also gave away thousands of dollars in prizes away. It was pretty amazing. I’m going to make that a tradition every year for sure. I didn’t go last year, but now that I know what I missed, I won’t ever miss that again. We played pretty well too. We ended up 1 under and I almost got the closest to the pin contest, missed by about 2 feet is all. That’s where you tee off and can pretty much hit the green from where you are, in this case it was almost 200 feet away and way downhill from us. I hit a soft 9 iron and it wasn’t quite enough, but it hit the cart path by the green, took a nice bounce and flopped just 2 feet shy of the best ball all day prior to us. Dags! Then I missed the longest drive by about 10 feet. I had been crushing it all day and this time, I got out one of my free Nike Distance balls since I had been playing with my cheapos, and full on killed it again, my longest drive by far of the day. Everyone in my group and the one next to us all said, “Oh, you won it right there”. But then we got up there and the sign from the previous longest shot was about 10 feet further. Holy cow some dude launched it! Oh well, I made a worthy effort anyway. It was beautiful up there. I can see why it’s so expensive to play on that course. All of our golf carts had big GPS screens on them too that showed you exact distance from tee box to the pin, from you and all the other golf cars on the course, gave pointers on where to hit it because of slopes and water hazards we may not have seen with the naked eye, out of bounds, etc. So that was cool to play with those. You kept your score on those too so you could watch a real time leader board. Pretty amazing!

Aynslee has been jumping in her jumper lately and really likes that. Brinlee has been carrying on pretty creative conversations. She has a pretty involved imagination.

I can’t believe I never got the newspaper article. What’s up with that? Did you send it to my house? I never got any kind of envelope or anything.

So how is that lady that you are trying to help her kick smoking and stuff? Any progress with her? She committed to baptism? How did E. Gardner like doing the commitment? How does he like Senior comp. duties? How were your interviews with Pres. Hobbs? Good as usual? Did you already get transfer calls? How long have you been with E. Gardner? Did you write Chad yet? You’ll have to let me know when you hear back from him. Give me some conversation fodder for my chats with Leon on Sundays. I think Chad’s brother is up in Washington now. He wasn’t at church, so I think he’s up there for the summer now.

Time for the quote of the week. Not much on my mind for topic, so I’m just going to throw this one in here.

“I challenge you to enjoy your call and to magnify it completely. Be happy and joyful in the service of the Lord. Love missionary work with all your heart. I promise you that as you magnify your call this will be the sweetest and most glorious experience you have had.”

-Ezra Taft Benson

Every week I hear from you, you let us all know that you are doing exactly that. You are happy and joyful as you are in the service of the Lord. You love missionary work, you are passionate about it and magnify it in everything that you do. You also recognize what blessings come from that kind of diligent work. Keep that up Mike. We are all so proud of you. We love to sit around and talk about you. Dad was telling me that he wished he was the missionary that I was and I reflected back to him that I wished I was the missionary that you are.

I guess I’ll check you next week. It’s 11:00, time to hit the hay.

Have a good week. I’ll look forward to hearing from you tomorrow to see if there is any news on transfers or anything.

Love you,

Trav