3/23/08

E.A.

What’s going on this week? It’s Easter today. We just had our little family Easter celebration and easter egg hunt. The girls got new dresses and look super cute today. I took some video and since John has been too busy to get with him to make your DVD, that will now be included on your video too. I’ll see if we can’t get together this week and get that wrapped up and sent off. It’s been yet another busy week at work. I have let 8 people go this month. That’s a heap! Then of course, I have to replace them, so that keeps me hopping as well. I had to have the cops involved in the termination of one and then he came back and I had to have him removed this week from the basketball gym, again by his friends in blue. I can see him becoming more of a problem unless he got the message one of these last times. I told him he has a no rehire and no trespass on our campus, so hopefully he’ll stay away now. I’m not sure if I wrote in my last letter about Suzanne’s cousin Brad. He was in a car accident on his way to a job down in Lake Powell and was killed. He was just about to have his 27^th Birthday in two days from that wreck. It’s pretty sad. We went to his funeral yesterday and it was nice, but again, really sad. Monica had her baby this week too. So the Emery’s lost one and gained one. Bitter Sweet. We did our Easter Celebrations with them yesterday and will do our Easter with our family today after church. I think the whole family is coming. I will have to find out as soon as Ma and Pa get back from church. I don’t like waiting till 1:00 for our Church to start. That’s just too late.

It’s been getting nice and spring like around here finally. That’s a great thing. You know my feelings of winter this year. So I’m excited about Spring. Not excited about Summer coming, but at least that means you will be home even sooner. But I need to get thinking about doing some landscaping in my yard pretty soon. That’s not something I’m really excited about.

It was good to hear from you this week. Not a whole lotta letter, but enough to stay my hand and get me off your back. So I appreciate you writing. Are you sending that letter of you and Elder Foster soon? That will be a cool thing for the Blog. You are about 50 visits away from your 6,000^th visitor. That’s pretty impressive. If I had put an Adsense link on there, I could have made some serious coin. Not anything to make me rich of course, but enough to make me smile. I still could, but I don’t want to turn your blog into something commercial. So I don’t think I will. It might do an ad for something questionable that I don’t want on your blog, so I won’t do it.

John’s woman still had not given him an answer as of last night (Saturday night). He asked her last Friday, so he was on a week and one day of no answer. So he took the ring back and they are not dating or talking until she figures it out if ever. Poor John. Who leaves a guy hanging for that long? Ridiculous the amount of monkey business he put up with. Hopefully it works out the way it should.

When are your next transfers? Is Elder Lee going home on this transfer? What kind of changes are you looking at this time? It seems like both Elder Lee and Van Leeuwen were going home.

I received an opportunity to take a job with JC Penney this week but after talking it over with their recruiter over the course of a few days, I decided to turn it down. It would have been located in Spanish Fork for the first 1-3 years and then sometime after the first year up to the 3^rd year, it would have relocated to Dallas TX. First of all, that would have been an impossible commute of well over a full hour to get there on the best day of no traffic. Forget it when I’m driving in rush hour or bad weather or both. We would have had to move to Utah County to live closer. Second, I don’t want to leave Utah for a job. So that may be a career limiting decision, but one that I have made for now, so anyway… It would have been a lot more money, but money isn’t everything. So that’s where we are at for now.

Well, it’s time for Church, so I’m going to head for now. Then it’s time to go to Ma’s and Pa’s shortly after, so I will catch you later on tonight to finish this up.

Ahhhhhhhhhight, just got home from Ma’s and Pa’s. that was a fun night. I was going to read your e-mail to Mom and Dad here at my house after church, but only had a half hour to lay down for a nap, so I decided to wait to read it at their house since I was sure they printed it off. I was a little bummed I didn’t get an e-mail. So I read your e-mail there and it was good. I was asked to go copy Grandpa’s world religions chart I brought him for Mom and Suzanne. So I went in on the computer and did it. While I was on, I checked my college basketball tourney bracket and while I was online, I checked my Gmail too and was pleasantly surprised I had an e-mail from you. So I printed it off for the family to read too. They were all pretty happy to get a double feature tonight. So thanks for writing me. I’ll respond to your e-mail now.

As far as the family function, it was way fun getting everyone together tonight. We don’t do it enough. Shelli snapped some good pictures of everyone and just e-mailed them over to me just now I see. They are all WAY cute. The kids are getting so big it is crazy! Everyone had a good time tonight. The food was way good, in fact, I ate too much and am having a fat night tonight. I feel way fat and bloated. Mom gave me a Joseph Smith book for Easter. I’m excited to read it. It’s not a thick one by any means, I’ll probably take it down in a few sittings, but it looks good for sure. We gave Gramps a blessing tonight for his eye surgery coming up this Thursday. So that was good. Dad broke down the history of Christianity for Staci while Gramps did some toe surgery on her foot. He made some charts and a time line and stuff and I filled in some blanks as he went. You would have liked to get in on that action. Sounds like you did vast amounts of traveling this week, eh? Sounds busy. The busier the better too. You always feel so fulfilled and accomplished when you wrap up a full, busy day, day after day. I love that feeling!! I loved it on my mission like crazy!

We love our new house. It’s not that Kingdom Come-ish. It’s only a half hour from Ma’s and Pa’s. not bad at all. Our house is exactly twice as big with Square footage and a much bigger yard too. Oh, you just answered my Elder Lee question too that he is going home. I’m sure you already know who your new comp will be. So here is the new getting to know you thing:

Full Name:

Where are you from:

What were your hobbies back at home:

Where did you work?:

Favorite thing about your mission:

Favorite restaurant to eat:

Favorite TV shows back home:

Favorite Music:

Favorite Scripture:

Girlfriend back home:

Favorite cold Cereal:

Favorite Book aside from any of the scriptures:

What do you have to say to Mike’s large world wide following?

That should do for now. That will be good to get back. Thanks for thinking of good things to post on your blog. Have you looked at it since you’ve been out there?

Your question about transfers, I never had the privilege of working on transfers directly with the president at least in the office, on the board and doing all the discussion about it. But we were the main recommendation givers and nullifiers of ideas he had. Every week when we returned from the field, we would stay in the mission home one night a week to do our laundry at the mission presidents home, take a shower, unpack and repack our bags and he’d cook us breakfast before we headed out the following day and we’d talk shop over breakfast. He would ask us about specific elders/sisters, leaders, ideas for new leaders, trainers, etc. and he’d tell us who he was considering for anything and ask us if we felt it was a good idea and what we knew about them since we were the main finger on the pulse of all things going on out there. Then he would give us our traveling assignment and where we would be working that week, with whom, and what he wanted accomplished and brought back to him. It was a definite pattern of Heavenly Father to give an assignment, have us go down, and return and report our progress of the assignment. It was an awesome experience every single week to see the things he had envisioned happen based on the assignment given and to see his plans unfold as assignments were carried out. So we had the direct line of influence over some transfers and if we felt like it wasn’t a good move and made that recommendation, a lot of times those assignments were not made. However, they were usually on the bubble anyway and not something that was set in stone. Those he was firm on, were always the right choice and never a mistake was made as far as I could ever tell. But there were a very select few decision we were not made privy to by the president that the office APs knew about since they helped make those with him. But usually we would get it out of those guys since we were all tight and worked so closely with them anyway. The office APs were all either a companion of mine or a roommate of mine that I was a very close friend with. I hung in elite circles my whole mission as I noticed you have as well. I think that is a huge part of both of our success on our mission, is that we chose well the missionaries, leaders, hard workers, etc. that we would associate with and stuck with them. There are plenty of less than hard working, somewhat lazy, less motivated, etc. missionaries that seem to grumble and murmur and gossip a lot more than the hard workers. Associating and affiliating ourselves with those missionaries definitely serves as an anchor to our progress. They are good project missionaries that are fun to see if you can take an old beater out of the dump so to speak, and work on it, give it some care and love and detailed work and see if you can turn an old clunker into a cruisy little muscle car again. I don’t remember if I received a lot of revelation in the shower on my mission, but I do find I get a lot of personal planning done in there in my every day life now. I think about things that I will need to accomplish that day in there now. Funny that it is where you are receiving a lot now. Ha ha. What did you get figured out for your future recently? You’ll have to fill me in on all the transfer scoop once it’s all figured out.

Check this out, I got an e-mail late last night from a girl that I found and taught in Midtown Manhattan with Elder Wilson. She found me on Mission.net and clicked on my blog. She left a comment on there saying where she found me and asked if I remembered finding and teaching her. I remember her name and face and some of the situation she was in. She sent me a MySpace page. So I e-mailed her back asking some more details, but couldn’t help but notice her information on there saying she attended BYU Idaho. So I’m guessing she ended up getting baptized, and came out west to go to school among the other young LDS folk like herself. So I’m excited to touch base with her and see what happened from the time I found and taught her till now. I don’t seem to have anything about her in my journal, but as I mentioned, my journal is my one and only regret from my mission that I did not do well. I wish I would have written in it every day. Dang!!!

Yo, I just checked my Myspace page and had a message from her waiting for me. Here is what is said:

hi Travis,
i read your email earlier, but didn't have time to reply.., we started our day by dyeing the eggs, then had a little easter egg hunt at the park, then went to the bronx zoo. now, we're about to have dinner with my inlaws, so i can't make this long..
so, here's a quick rundown on what's been happening with me.. i finally got baptized on my 18th birthday (6/11/95), went to Ricks college (BYU-idaho) with Naia from summer of 96' till end of fall semester in 98', came back to nyc, met a guy whom i ended up marrying only 5mo after meeting him, and now i have 2 girls ages 5 and 7, and i've just been doing the typical stay-at-home mom thing, like being in the PTA and being a girls scouts leader.
12/98, i've been back to utah 2x (9/06 and 9/07) to visit Naia, since she ended up staying in UT after college. also, i've kept in touch with Wilson, Howse and Friese over the years..
ok, gotta go.. more details later! :)

Sunny

I remember teaching her roommate Naia too, so that is a double bonus. They both ended up getting baptized. How awesome is that?

I need to get some contact info for those missionaries. I lost track of Wilson. I liked him as a companion. I was roommates with Howse and I don’t really remember Friese. But I’m pretty stoked right now. I’ll write her back and look forward to more scoop. I’ll keep you posted. Those kinds of letters are super cool to get when you get home as you can imagine.

As I was reading in my journal this afternoon before going to Ma’s and Pa’s, I was pretty amped to read about some of the cool examples of the Lord accomplishing his work through young, inexperienced means, all the while, I was the beneficiary of such great blessings by being that tool he chose to use for certain people. Pretty amazing to look back on some of that stuff that cements your testimony into an unstoppable, unshakable testimony. You tend to forget some of the details in the whirlwind of life after the mission, so to read that journal on some of the miracles you almost begin to take for granted after seeing so many out there is such a pearl of great price in your post mission life. I cherish it like no other!!!

Well, it’s 11:00 and I have a tired buzz going. It has been a busy, run around weekend and I’m ready to crash. I better end it and send it. That’s a cool phrase… End It and Send It. Have a great week wrapping up Transfers. Thanks for your e-mail. All I need is a few good paragraphs full of information and I can blast out 4 more pages to you no problem with good scoop.

Here is your quote of the week to end on…

“The two-fold nature of the purpose of missionary work: first, to sanctify the missionary himself, and second, to bring converts to a knowledge of the truths of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and to baptism into His church – which is the sure and natural product of a missionary who is in the process of sanctification.”

- William R. Bradford

I have seen you truly sanctify yourself in the time you have been out there. You have truly accomplished this first step, but it is a continuous step at that. So continue to sanctify yourself in all you do. The second step as this quote says, will play itself out as a natural product of your sanctification process. Exhort the missionaries under your stewardship to do the same.

Your North Carolina Tar Heels are looking strong in the tournament. They are in the sweet 16 now. Well, it’s been good to hear from you this week. It has re-energized me if you can’t tell. Just so you know the value of your letters. Thanks for cranking that out to me. I know you tried before and I don’t hold you responsible for the technical difficulties of the computer last time. I know you got pretty beat up over that, but you see the importance of your letters to us through that kind of energy we put out there when we are sans letters or e-mail from your bones. You made my week just with that one e-mail. I can’t wait to hear from you again next week with the news of what transpired in transfers etc. You have a lot of questions to reply back too, so make sure you have this e-mail ready to go when you write back to hit up all that I’m looking for. I hope you had a great Easter and that you have a great week coming up.

Love you,

Trav