07/28/07

Hey Birthday boy,

How does it feel to be 20 now and out of your teens? I was over at Ma’s and Pa’s house tonight to update your Blog with Shelli’s pictures and birthday wishes since I’ve been doing a birthday segment on there. So I have had individuals putting pics and updates on there for you. Some peeps have put their birthday wishes on there too. So that’s been good. So What did you do out there for your B-day? Anything special? I guess it was transfers for you, right? No wait, that was the day before. So I hear you are in Greensville now. Is that right? Send me your exact mailing address and all of the scoop about your area. Don’t forget your companion bio. Here are the questions this round…

Name:

Where are you from:

Work history:

Hobbies/What do you like to do in your spare time:

Girlfriend back home:

Music:

TV shows:

What do you like best about your mission:

What do you like least about your mission:

How long have you been out:

Favorite cold cereal(s):

Favorite Fast Food joint:

What is your 5 year plan when you get home:

That should do for now. Looking forward to getting as much scoop as possible.

So after I got Shelli’s segment updated and showed Ma and Pa your pictures off your card finally, we went out on the deck and watched the torrential downpoor of a monsoon we had out there. It was crazy!! It was raining so hard, we had to yell at each other just to hear what we were saying and we were sitting chair to chair to chair. There was lots of lightening too like every 3 seconds another bolt. It was a crazy storm like I haven’t seen in who knows how long. It was a nice break from all of the super hot weather we’ve been getting.

Sorry I missed your letter last week. The first letter I’ve missed since the first day of the MTC. Dang dude!! Oh well, I didn’t have internet access up at Fish Lake like I thought I would. I took my computer up there just in case they had WiFi I could get on. But my cell phone lost coverage too. I couldn’t even get on my G-mail from my phone up there because of being out of range. So even my plan B was shot. Oh well. We had a good trip down there. Fish Lake is down by Capital Reef. It’s not Uintahs. Even though I think there’s a fish lake up there too. But this is a big, bottomless lake in a deserted volcano down there. They seriously have not found the bottom in most of that lake because it goes down all the way to the core practically. It will confuse every fish finder when you go on that lake, it’s weird. So we dropped or lines ALL the way down to the last color trolling knowing that we would not hit a snag. So that’s the plus side to that. You can catch big 40 pound Mackinaw lake trout in there. But I just caught all rainbows. 15 of them to be exact. Everyone else had a pretty successful go of it too, so we all caught our fair share of fish. Between all of us who caught fish, we only kept 3 total and cooked ‘em and ate ‘em. They were tasty. We all got a little sunburned. It was a tad bit hot for being high altitude, but it was a good time otherwise. Suzanne and I got a cabin while the rest of the Emery’s camped out and roughed it. It was nice with the two little girls to have a toilet, sink, and shower, not to mention beds and sturdy walls, door, and roof over our head. It stormed pretty good every day we were up there. Ha ha. Poor campers out there. So it was worth the 30 bucks extra for that action.

OK, It’s 12:31 AM on Friday night, time to hit the bed. I have a busy day tomorrow. I’ll check in with you later on.

Alrighty then, it’s now 10:00 PM on Saturday night. We have been packing up a bunch of junk, putting it all in Tupperware storage containers and I’ve taken two full truck loads of doubled up containers roped up in my truck over to the storage unit. So it’s starting to take shape of some less clutter around now. I think we’ll have someone come next week and take pictures to try to sell our house. We’ll have to see how far we get. It’s been pretty busy. We also had a family reunion for Suzanne’s family out in Herriman on their family farm and then we went to 5 parade of homes houses after that. So it’s been a fun filled day for sure. I’m sitting here typing with a bag of ice on my foot because I dropped a big, heavy, hard plastic container on it earlier in the garage. It was under the big full one, this one was empty, but it still weighs in at about 20 pounds. These are not the Tupperware kind with soft round edges. These are some industrial plastic containers Dad picked up somewhere and the bottom one fell out and landed edge side on the top of my foot. Right where that bone is on the top of the arch. I have a big blood vessel right there too that I must have burst open when it hit because it started welling up with a big blue bruise right then and swoll up pretty good. It hurt like a mother. So I’m trying to keep the swelling down. I don’t know why I was doing all this moving in the garage in my flip flops. Serves me right. I probably would have gotten away with just a typical bruise or something if I would have had shoes on to cushion most of that blow. But it was hard, sharp and heavy edge right on skin and bone with a big fat blood vessel in between.

We got our cable back on yesterday. That is a long story. Comcast came out and told me that I had to get their digital voice package because the standard option was going away. So they came over and chopped my cable to put in the phone. I didn’t know until they left and I went to watch some TV. So when I found out my cable was gone, I had to call them back and they said they couldn’t do a Saturday until 3 weeks out. So I was 3 weeks without any of my shows. Well, no biggie cuz I have them all on TiVo backed up a ways. So I had tons of TiVo options, but it bugged knowing that TiVo wasn’t picking up the new ones for the 3 weeks. I had someone at work hook me up with the newest So You Think You Can Dance. So I was covered there, and the cool thing is I was able to get my TiVo to find my other shows re-playing. So I didn’t miss a thing. Sweet! But it was nice having 3 weeks of no TV. I actually got more done and started reading more. I have put the PMG on hold temporarily so I can finish the Bourne Ultimatum. The third and final(?) in the serious of the Bourne series. The movie comes out August 3^rd. So I need to hurry and finish the book so I can go watch the movie and compare notes. The movie looks good. But I have loved both of the other Bourne shows. Bourne identity, Bourne Supremacy and now this one.

I just banged out the EQ newsletter. That took me about 10 minutes. It doesn’t take me long. I have it down to a science. I just use Microsoft Publisher to do it and it makes it pretty easy. So this week’s is done. It’s now 10:30. I’ll head to bed but I will check in tomorrow to wrap this up and put in the well wishes from the blog. Talk to you soon.

K, now it’s 9:00 PM Sunday night. It was a good day today. Church was good, I did my home teaching and got all 3 of my families done. Got some stuff done around the house and ate a good lunch and dinner. I missed my Sunday nap, but no bigs. So now it’s time to finish this letter up.

I have been reminiscing a bit now that it’s your year mark and your birthday time. I remembered that night we hung out in my living room for a while and talked, then moved it outside to my steps and hung out outside for a while. It started getting pretty cold though. We were both shivering and talking about crazy stuff like UFO’s and other such. Anyway, that was a cool night.

So what did you do this week? I read some letters over at Ma’s and Pa’s. They were pretty good. I can’t wait to hear all about your new area and new companion, etc. How did your transfers go?

Are you the sole DL up there or do you do double DLs? I don’t think you do? But Dad and I got conversing about duel ZLs. Do you do ZL companionships out there? We did in my mission. Where both me and my companion were ZLs for instance. But it was never a duel DL companionship. Kind of weird. I guess there are about 3 or 4 DLs to a ZL though, so might as well. I don’t know, I never really thought about that. But we were curious as to how it worked in your mission. Dad had Sister DLs and Sister ZLs though. That seems apostate to me, but what can you do. John’s mission had all the above and Sister APs that were somehow self appointed or maybe called by the President’s wife. However, that lasted about 6 months until a GA came out to tour the mission and TORE the mission he did when he found out about that. He ripped the President a new one on that and disbanded the little hierarchy of sisterhood post-haste.

Well, let me drop the Quote of the Week on you here and I’ll move into your birthday wishes from your Blog…

Two quotes this week as a make up for missing your letter last week…

“When a man is called to go on a mission and a field of labor is assigned him, he should say in his heart, not my will be done, but thine, O lord.”

- Joseph F. Smith

I chose this one based on moving from your beloved Lincolnton and into this new area. I’m sure you are taking it with great enthusiasm and look forward to the new challenges and experiences that lie ahead. You will always grow where you are planted and that is a great quality.

“To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is all-consuming and all-encompassing. It is no lukewarm endeavor. It is total commitment of our very being – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – to a love of the Lord.”

- Ezra Taft Benson

This is how I see you on your mission now. In church, the missionaries spoke to us for the first time in a long time. It was good to hear their testimonies. The one missionary started his mission in this stake and was here for 7 months. Now he is back to end his mission here. Kind of funny. I guess he has some unfinished business to do here. But he had a great testimony of his being in this area and this mission, even though he went to BYU before his mission and was not enthused about coming to Utah for his mission. Ha ha. But his testimony was good to hear and he has grown a great deal while he’s been here. I got thinking about your attitude and where you have grown on your mission. I have seen you embrace this commitment with all of your soul and have grown in your love of the Lord so much. Your testimony is evident to all of us and it’s great for us to hear it. The most important people you can share your testimony with, even though you do it on a multi-time per day basis to those around you, is your own family. Keep doing just that, it’s good for all of us to hear on a regular basis and I have appreciated those times when you let your testimony loose in your letters or whatever.

So here is a collection of comments coming in on your Blog for your B-day/Year Mark…

(since this is already on your blog, this section has been edited out to not be redundant)

I thought I’d have a little better response rate on the comments, but most peeps are afeared of posting stuff on here because they are friends and feel like this is a family exclusive site. I’m trying to get more participation from them, but I understand their discomfort. So there you go. It was fun to get these ones anyway.

I better let you go. But make sure you show me the love this week. We haven’t talked in two weeks now. So I need all the scoop I can get for blog worthy entries and updates for the fam. Also, once I have your physical mailing address to update the blog with, I’ll send your memory card and some birthday love your way. Talk to you soon.

Love you,

Trav

Memories from Staci

This one is a cute pic of Mike. A toe head with blue eyes and 2 dimples.

Mike was always a tease and always has a spastic look on his face when something happens.

We went to Flaming Gorge in '95 as a family. It was a lot of fun.

Aww! His two big sisters giving him a kiss on the cheek!

Mike loved trains! This was in Durango one summer and both him and Dad were in 7th Heaven.

19 years and 9 months ago

Always smilin'

Love,
Mom

Happy B-day from Shelli

Mike is always fun to watch with his nieces and nephew. You can see Brin adores him.

I love to hear Mike's conversations with Gus the cat. "My stinky fatty, oh you do be stinky!"

Mike and his sexy self. Stallion Grade A, hmmmmm?

We were the best of buds.

We used to have our little "camp outs" any chance we could get. On the deck, in the living room, in each other's rooms. One morning, as I was waking up in the living room, I looked at Mike, sleeping face down on the pillow. I couldn't resist taking a picture even if it meant walking carefully and slowly to my room to get my camera, without waking him up .

Happy 20th Birthday Mike!

To commemorate Mike's 20th birthday (July 26th) and to get ready for his year mark on his mission August 2nd, I think we should reminisce a little bit. Send in your comments, or pictures of Mike just before he left on his mission and tell us something that you miss, something that you remember, or anything you want to say about Mike. You can either drop them in the comment link below, or send pictures and stories to Travsbox@gmail.com and I'll put them in posts to follow this one. I'll get us started with this one...

Thanks for bringing this picture over today Staci... Mike held out for a little over a month, till I got home from my mission so that I could baptize him. He was one of the lucky few to do this down at the Tabernacle on Temple Square when they still did baptisms there.

This fishing trip was about this time last year. His last he would go on as a pre-missionary. As you can see by this picture, we all caught some big trout and had a blast. As I just got home from another successful fishing trip today, I can't help but remember exactly a year ago fishing with Mike.


The day we all headed down to say goodbye at the MTC was a mix of emotions. Again, almost exactly a year ago on August 2nd. We were all sharing the excited energy that Mike had that day, then came the spiritual high at the MTC, and the tearful goodbye at the end. We all went to Mimi's in Provo afterward and it just wasn't the same without Mike. As much as we all enjoy our family functions, it's still just a little different without him there.

The last walk into the chapel at the MTC. You can see the confidence in his face. I love this picture. Happy Birthday Mike. I love you. See you in one short year!

07/15/07

What’s shakin’ Homey? It’s that time again. In fact, it’s way early for me lately. It’s Friday night at 10:22 PM. I’m not sure why I feel inclined to give you the day and time all the time, but you get it anyway. How was your week this week? Mine was pretty good. I’m liking my Monday’s off. I won’t so much like this Monday. Or Tuesday or Wednesday for that matter. Suzanne will be in the land of my favorite Football team for 3 days. So I’m left fending for my own with two needy girls. I hope I make it OK. Man, that’s a lot of work to do on my own. I babby about this every time Suzanne goes somewhere, but she’s a champ every time I go somewhere for an extended period of time. I’m not as strong as a parent as she is. Thank goodness for good women in our lives. She is such a huge strength where I am a slacker!! Then at the end of the week, we’ll be in fish lake. So that will be cool. I’m excited to fish that lake. Mainly because I haven’t ever fished it before and second, how can you go wrong fishing a lake named FISH LAKE?

Let me jump into your last e-mails and respond to anything there…

So what did you find out about voting? Anything yet? So that Biltmore house is just 8 bucks to take a tour. It’s nowhere near 40. I guess you could drop 40 in one day though if you did every tour they offer and bought some souvies and stuff, but that would take you more than a full day to see everything there on all the tours.

Kevin at the family reunion is the Kevin of Kevin and Natalie fame. They live down in American Fork area. I don’t know much more than that. But we usually end up talking more than most for some reason.

About the tie pin, I never wore one, but it’s not that we couldn’t. Again, what’s up with the super restrictive rules? There must have been a lot of abuse of every aspect out there before and it got cracked down on hard core. I can’t think of why a tie pin would be outlawed. Anyway, I was asking because I had a brand new one I was going to send out to you, but I guess I’ll just wear it on occasion. I wear my U of U one now and then. It’s just a cool gold block letter U. But the one I just got is from the family reunion. I won it at the park when they asked anyone with a family member on a mission right now. I was seriously the only one there with a family member in the mission field, so you helped me score that. That’s why I was going to send it out to you, but there were a bunch of lame prizes, but this one caught my eye because it’s a sweet black backdrop with a silver outline of Ammon holding his sword as if ready to deflect the evil horde of sheep scatterers. It really is sweet and because it is my guy from the B of M, it would have reminded you of me and it’s symbolic of you fending off the evil forces that would scatter and distract your work you are doing and have yet to do. It’s super cool! So I will be happy to wear it.

As far as the house goes, I think we may just end up waiting for a while longer. Suzanne is having some issues with work and wanting to stay home and quit, so if that’s the case, we can’t move. We can make it on my income alone if we stay in this house. But no way if we move to a big and fancy new bounder. So we’ll see what happens there, but my guess is we will be staying here longer than expected. I’ll update if there is anything to update on as we go.

About my PMG study… I’m on like page 24 or maybe further. I haven’t kept track of the pages really, but it’s in the middle of the personal study section anyway. I would feel like I’m going slow and not doing all that well, but I have been taking my sweet time digesting every little word in that book and looking up and referencing every scripture reference it gives. So I’m feasting on it rather than just reading it. It’s been good. I think I’ll get more out of it the further I go. That whole first section is really geared toward missionary work specifically and how to be a missionary, but the personal study section has been great and I can tell the rest of it will get better for my life as I go further in it. Where is everyone else? Have they all been reporting back? I haven’t done any follow up with anyone since I knew you would be. You will have much more influential powers anyway, so I’m leaving that all up to you. But I’m working on it.

So what’s up with your two member referrals? How did those appointments go? Any progress being made? That’s awesome that you are being blessed based on your goals, efforts, and of course prayers. Way to go. We are interested to hear how those progress, so keep us in the loop.

I’ve been taking Brinlee to swimming lessons lately at the Kearns Oquirrh Park Fitness Center on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She loves the crap out of it and is really cute with what she has been learning. I hate it though because it’s the indoor pool in the older building and there is no air at all and with as hot as it’s been and the water is so warm, it’s super muggy and hot in there. I mean to the point where it feels like I’m in a sauna with my clothes on and I seriously melt in there and sweat at least 2 pounds off by the time she’s getting out. I usually sit there and play games on my phone and try to distract myself from thinking about how hot and sweaty and sticky I am, but it doesn’t’ work all that well. So what is the funnel theory your President talked about in Zone Conf.? and what scripture references did he provide?

What did you do for the 4^th of July? Anything fun? See any fireworks? Did I tell you about the Bees game I went to on the 5^th? I don’t remember if I did or not. Since it’s FranklinCovey Field, we always have the sweet, so I took it for the 5^th and noshed down 3 jumbo dogs, a full sack of popcorn, 3 cokes, and some chips. Wow, I was full. Let’s not forget the watermelon. The game was good too. I have never seen the batter hit the ball into the runner that is running from 1^st to 2^nd base causing an automatic out of that runner being hit, but I saw it twice in that game. I was pretty amazed.

I finally started looking through your pics recently. I couldn’t help but notice that you ended up with a back pack after all my prodding to get a backpack before you left. Did you find that the messenger bag style wasn’t working all that well and that it’s just more of a pain than anything? Or what happened?

OK, I’m back, I took a break in the letter writing for a bit. It’s 12:43 AM Sunday morning right now. I had a busy Saturday. I folded laundry, watched the girls while Suzanne when downtown to her office to get her itinerary for her trip (did you figure out where she is going by the hint I gave you of the hometown of my favorite NFL team?) You better know that. I washed my truck outside and in, out in the front yard. Did some house cleaning, watched a couple of shows on TraVo, picked up some music (I’m up to 11,313 songs at last count), I updated your Blog. It’s up to 3768 visits at last count. I even managed a nap. So it was a good Saturday as far as Saturdays go. I guess I ought to go to bed though so I can get up for Church in the morning after getting the girls ready.

Let me drop in the Quote of the Week first while I’m thinking about it. I was thinking about when you got bushwhacked by some peeps with their minister there or something. I can’t remember all the details. You will have to remind me. But you bore testimony and bailed which was good. I got thinking about that this week because we were at lunch (some of the management team and me) and we were talking about some J-Dub stuff for some reason. Oh, because we were wondering if the Church was the biggest user of Scripture paper (typical exciting conversation for printers to discuss) and we as a church are by far not the largest printer, it’s the J-Dubs for all of their Watchtowers, magazines, pamphlets, etc. they pass out. So as we discussed the J-dubs I told them I would bring in my New World Transgression to show them some of the “research” I did on my mission. They were all curious to see some of the fruits of my labors, but I assured them as interesting as it is now, it was a waste of valuable study time for the first year of my mission before I realized I was wasting my time. In fact, all of the materials I had used in proving them wrong with their own literature, actually cost a young, impressionable elder in my district his testimony and ruined him for the rest of his mission because he delved too deep too fast in all of it. Anyway, I digress. Let me get back to the quote since I appreciated how you handled your situation.

“Who can argue with a testimony? Unbelievers may contend aobut our doctrine. They may wrest the scriptures to their destruction. They may explain away this or that from a purely intellectual standpoint, but they cannot overpower a testimony.”

- Bruce R. McConkie

I finally got to the point where I learned that was the best way to leave that situation. But you figured that out early on which is great. I'd love to hear you bear some powerful testimony out there in a situation like that. as family, it's hard to get your full testimony through letters. I'd love to see a day or week in the life of Elder Alexander, live, in action.

Ahhhhhhhhhight, it’s Sunday night at 10 PM now. I need to get to bed. We have an early start to get out of here with the girls ready for school, drop them off downtown and get Suzanne to the airport by 7:15 AM. Then I am meeting the Comcast goons here at 9:00 am to get the new digital voice package because they are canceling my old service. It’s all good though, some guy that came to my house to notify me told me they’d give me 6 months at 19.00/month. That’s half of what I pay now. Then it would go back to like 45.00 a month after that. Well, that’s 5/month more than I pay now which is a bummer. But I saw on a letter that was mailed to me the day after the dude came by that if I responded now to set up my installation, they would give me 12 months at 19/month. So I called and said that dude set me up at 6, but I wanted 12 months at 19 bucks according to the letter. They were happy to oblige. So I scored. Then after Comcast guy comes, I have a dentist appt. at 1:00 to get a new filling, another bummer, but it’s free of charge, which is good. Then I’ll come home, take a nap, then go pick up the girls around 4:00 and home by 5:00. I need to send you your picture card back along with a few pictures and other items. I’ll have to coordinate a package delivery soon. Any requests for your B-day? In the mean time, write back tomorrow. I’ll look forward to hearing the update.

Keep working hard. You make us all proud.

Love and miss you.

Trav

New Pics part 2

More pictures and yet another caption contest for you to chip in on. Let's get a little more participation from everyone out there on these.

D&C 39:20 Go forth baptizing with water, preparing the way before my face for the time of my coming

I've heard of missionary goggles, but WOW!!...

I think Mike is practicing to be a senior missionary in about 50 years or so.

Then, if you just set the timer like this, it should give us about...

Name the caption for this picture. Click the comments link below and enlighten us.

New Pics

Some new pictures for your perusal this week. Click any of them to enlarge and view. Drop your caption in the comment section of this post for the name the caption picture at the bottom.

They're called Monkey Bars for a reason

Catching up with Elder Herbert

Still a good friend

Why doesn't our church put up these catchy slogans every so often?

Make your own caption for this picture. Click the comments link below and let us have it.

07/07/07

Como?

What’s up this week Babs? How’s the missionaryin’? We are in the middle of Hein Family Reunion week. We are about to head back out to do that tonight at Grandpa’s chapel. I was up at the park by his house earlier to give the opening prayer and hang out with peeps. It was OK. I don’t know a lot of people there and there are some who are saying, Oh, Hi Travis. Then introducing me to others saying Travis is the oldest of Marv’s grand kids. I’m looking at all of them saying to myself, who the heck are you? I wish I was better at knowing people in the family. I can’t keep up with extended family like others can. Then throw on top of that Dad’s side of the family and then throw on top of that Suzanne’s mom’s side and dad’s side both. I have a lot of family members to remember names and faces for. I think I’m going to stand up and do the talent show. Should be interesting. But every family has to have some kind of talent represented. So we’ll see what I can come up with. Well, I have to go get the truck ready for Matt to take up to Brigham City and back just to get a bed. I don’t think he’ll make it home till 10:00 PM tonight. I don’t know why he’s doing it this late. It’s 4:30 right now. That’s a long ride on my truck. Oh well. Catch you tonight when we get back.

Ahhhhight, I’m back, it’s 10:12 PM. It was a long time of reunionizing. But it was nice. The dinner was pretty good. We played some Uno at our table. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good game of Uno going. Brinlee had a good time dancing out on the dance floor they had, with Amanda. All in all it was pretty fun. I got some good pictures from Kevin who made a CD of the whole reunion. He did some good family pictures too, so I’m pretty stoked about those. If I send you a CD with photos on it, can you view those OK? Do you have access to a computer and CD ROM to look at those? Let me know.

I had that Halo party last night. I just went till 1:00 AM and packed it in. I could have gone longer, we were having fun and my team was winning pretty steadily, but I wanted to leave on a high note and that was it when I left. I would have started declining I think and would have stopped having fun eventually. We had 18 guys there all on their X boxes. Jason, who you met that one night must have had a pretty high power bill for that night I’ll bet you. A lot of those guys left and even said they stopped having fun a long time ago. So I didn’t want to get to that point. But I was coming in 4^th or 5^th, pretty steadily almost every rumble pit slayer style game we played. Out of 18, that was not bad. Those guys that kept coming in above me were the usual suspects who play all the time still and clean up. I haven’t played in at least 6 months if not more I estimated. So I did pretty well by my own standards.

We looked at more houses today. I think we will be close to pulling the trigger sooner than later. I am 90% sure we will be in a new house when you get home. We’ll see since I’m still a bit hesitant, but Suzanne has given us enough momentum that I may not be able to stop this snowball from rollin’ now.

Let me axe you a question… (do you ever get that down there? Let me AXE you a question? I got that every time I talked to any dark skinned brother in NYC) I actually started saying it to the point that it took me several months after being home to realize it enough to make an effort to stop it. It still pops up every now and then, it’s weird) Anyway, the question is do you ever wear tie pins out there? You know, a pin to keep your two ends together instead of having them flop apart and go every which way? Just curious. Let me know in your next letter.

K, I’m dog tired, so I’m going to hit it for the night. I’ll check you tomorrow after meetings.

Well, it’s Sunday at 12:00 midnight. So technically it’s Monday morning now. Sheesh! I’m getting swollen glands in my throat right now too, so I should really go to bed, but I need to finish this up and send it off. I’m taking the day off again tomorrow to sand down and re-stain my deck. It’s in bad beater shape. My house is pretty ghetto right now. It needs some serious fixer upper work done right now, or I’m not going to be able to sell it for jack!

It’s a busy day tomorrow, so I’ll bail. First I better get your quote of the week out there.

“The work is demanding, the impact everlasting. This is no time for summer soldiers in the army of the Lord.”

-Thomas S. Monson

I put this in because I know you subscribe to the same point of view. It gets frustrating when you see missionaries out there who don’t put in their best effort. They are summer soldiers. They fight the fight when it’s convenient for them. But you as missionaries are on the Lord’s schedule. You need to put in the amount of work demanded. The cause is eternally important. The impact you make as a missionary is everlasting on every person you come in contact with. Keep up the hard work. We are so proud of you.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you tomorrow. Have a great week. Let us know everything that’s been going on this last week and how the work is going in your area.

Love,

Trav

Newspaper article

Mike and his companion were featured in the Lincoln Times-News and it was actually a great wright up. Here is the article, just scanned in. You will have to click each image to zoom in large enough to read.

7/01/07

Well, it’s that time once again for the weekly letter. Weeks go by so fast, it’s unbelievable. It’s Sunday at 3:44 PM right now. So I’m getting an earlier start than usual. I got your package the other day with the newspaper article and your pictures in it. So that’s cool. I’ll have plenty to update your blog with now. I’ll scan in the newspaper article first and post that since that is pretty sweet. I haven’t even looked at the pictures yet, but will get to that tomorrow. I have tomorrow off, so I’ll get a lot done, including copying your pics to DVDs and updating your blog.

We went to Taylorsville Dayzz last night. Always a good time. Worth making it a yearly tradition anyway. I saw a ton of peeps from the old hood there. It was fun to catch up with everyone. In fact, I was so busy talking to numerous other peeps that I hardly spent any time around the Emery clan. I felt bad about that. But it was fun. The fireworks were awesome as usual. Best fireworks in the valley. If you combined Murray Park, Sugar house park, and every other 4^th of july show, you still would not stack up to the T-Ville dayzz show, that’s how surprisingly good it always is. They must put tens of thousands of dollars into that show, easily. Anyway, Brinlee always has a good time with that too, but she lost her balloon at the end of the night and watched it float up into the dark abyss and freaked out. I remember when I was a little kid, losing a balloon and watching it float and never stop and go so high and I got so freaked out by that. I cried until I ran out of tears. Ever since then, whenever I am outside holding a balloon, I have always had the hardest death grip on the string to where my fingers turn white or blue. It’s funny that Brinlee seems to have my same feelings about balloons drifting off and feeling scared and sorry for that poor balloon. We also did a little more house looking yesterday, in fact, had a realtor at our house giving us an appraisal to see what we could sell ours for. So its’ getting more serious it seems like. Again, this is no talky to the rest of the family on this subject because I don’t want anyone freaking out about us moving away. It’s still not even close I don’t think. I’m still not into moving, but I am beginning to think now that we might be in a new house by the time you come home. I’m looking close by like the WJ, South Jordan, and Riverton, but Suzanne is liking Kaysville and Farmington which are forever away and a commuters nightmare. So we’ll see. The good news about it all is we are going to walk away with more equity than we even bought our house for originally, how crazy is that? That’s how much prices have gone up on houses around town. While we are on the no talky stuff, I had my second interview with Target and I think I subliminally sabotaged it. I mean, it went OK, but I didn’t put any effort into it and just let it go at that. As a result, I wasn’t selected to get flown out to interview and I was actually relieved. I would have felt guilty taking it any further knowing that I wouldn’t accept a formal offer anyway. I don’t need to distract myself with other jobs right now. I’m still loving mine and it’s actually raise time next month anyway. So I need to focus and get ready for evaluation time.

How’s the work going for you this week? I’ll respond to your letter now…

So what is up with the crazy evil guy at the library? I’ll have to check with Ma and Pa if they got your boxes yet. I haven’t heard a peep out of them about anything. About registering to vote, I would have mom and dad look into it since you will have to do a absentee vote or something since you are still registered at their address and you would vote still as a citizen of Utah, but you would have to do an absentee being away from your home. See what they can dig up and they might actually have to do it for you or maybe can give them a change of address form to your mission office or … I’m not sure. Sorry. I don’t think there was a vote while I was out, so I didn’t have to mess with it. Yeah, there wasn’t. There was the 92 vote and I left the year after. So I didn’t have to worry about it. Does that seem weird that I was out so long ago? I’ve been home for 12 years. How crazy is that? Well, on September 28^th this year will be my 12 year home coming anniversary. So it sounds like you had a productive week last week. Lot’s of finding going on. Did any of those pan out after teaching them? Any progress being made with any of them? I was just reading about the Biltmore estates in Asheville, NC. The largest home in the United States. It has 250 + bedrooms, not to mention tons of grand rooms for entertaining and dining, etc. Is that in your zone? Is that something you can go see? They do tours and stuff. It has 65 fireplaces and a dining room that looks like the one in Harry Potter movies. It has a bowling alley and massive indoor swimming pool. It was built by the Vanderbilts like 100 years ago and has still not been surpassed in size by any home in the US. Pretty impressive.

In the quote of the week I picked this week, it’s not stemming from anything necessarily. I just liked this one when I read it so I’m tossing it in.

“The principles of the gospel should be presented to men in humility, in the simplest forms of speech, without presumption or arrogance and in the spirit of the mission of Christ. By earnestness and simplicity missionaries will establish themselves in the truth, and their testimonies will convince others. They will touch the hearts of the people and will have the pleasure of seeing them come to an understanding of their message. The spirit of the gospel will shine forth from their souls and others will partake of their light and rejoice therein.”

- Joseph F. Smith

Have you done any follow up with anyone in the family about their PMG studies? Just curious to see if anyone else is reading it yet. I haven’t inquired, but can occasionally if you need me to. But it’s more effective coming from you, so maybe we better leave that in your corner. I’d love to see Mom and Dad both read it cover to cover. Stosh both read it together or separate, either way, and Shelli to read it too. So let me know if you get any updates there.

How’s your bike performing for you?

Did you get new shoes finally? What kind and how are they working out?

Oh, we are having our first Xbox party in Months and months over at my friend in the ward’s house this Friday. I’m going to be super rusty. Maybe I’ll bring Austin again just for kicks. We’ll play mostly halo 2, but there are a few other games we’ll be playing, including Guitar hero. I have no idea what the rage is on that game, but people are seriously addicted to it for some reason. We’ll play some gears of war which is fun and a few other games, but I might just do the Halo portion and bail. Not really up for staying till 3:00 AM on a night full of second best games. You know? I need to be saving up for my 360 for when Halo 3 comes out in Sept. maybe that will be what I’m asking for for my B-day.

Well, thanks for sharing your experiences with us again this week. Thanks for the pics too. I’ll get to looking at them tomorrow sometime after I read your new e-mail. Looking forward to that as always. Keep up the good work. Keep focusing solely on what’s important, and maintain the spirit in your companionship always. You are a freakin’ stud and I am so proud to be your brother. You are doing such great work out there and I appreciate the blessings that come from that. I don’t deserve 1/100^th of the blessings I get, but I’ll take them as long as they’ll come. I’m so appreciative of every one of my blessings and tender mercies that me and my family enjoy on a daily basis. You are a part of that and I thank you. We still pray for you every night and for your continues success. Keep hunting and kick up a few more investigators this week.

We love you and miss you.

Trav