Beachhouse!

Well hello there again from the sunny, hot, humid, kind of nasty feeling, Florida!!!

This week was kind of a slow one. We had all of our lessons fall through that were scheduled with our investigators. But we are still trying and not letting it get us down. We try to make sure we always keep a good outlook on things and have fun even when things are hard. I really think that that is a good thing to learn.

This past Tuesday, the ward mission leader from the Citrus Ridge ward, Brother Staber, came down and took us out to eat. That is the area that Elder Arbuckle just came from. He took us to a place called The Beachhouse. It was probably the best eating experiences I've had. It was right on the beach. And we went at around 7:30 or so, just in time for the sunset. It was amazing. It was a bit pricey, but the food was amazing and the atmosphere was definitley worth it. The DJ, John Dewey, was awesome. He came and talked us for a while and mentioned how he had taking the lessons a few times. We tried to get him to do it again, but he was good with not. So we just talked. It was great.

This is John Dewey. He was pretty awesome!

And here is us and Brother Staber.

And that was our adventures for the week. Hope you all enjoyed! Let me know what's going on with y'all!

No A.C.!

So, things are going fairly well out here. This week we had pretty much all of our lessons fall through. But, that's missionary work. We were able to give a blessing to Debbie though. She was beat up last Friday by someone. And if I were to some how find this guy, I think I would beat him with a bat. I don't know why anyone would want to do something like that. She is such a nice lady. I guess that's why I won't ever find him. But she wasn't doing very well. So we went over a gave her a blessing. She felt a lot beter afterwards. Then we talked with her for a good 30-40 minutes after. It was good.



We weren't able to teach Terry at all this week. Weren't able to get a hold of her. But we are going to continue to try as time goes on.



This Sunday was an interesting one. Last Thursday, someone stole 4 of 6 air conditioners from the church. So we had a 25 minute sacrament meeting and that was it. And it was quite a warm one too. Especially in a suit. But we survived.



Then today, we were all at the church playing volleyball and 2 different news stations came to do a story on it. It's too bad that we don't know a whole lot about what happened. Well, our zone leaders do, but they didn't want to be on the news. So they gave the maintenance guys phone number. But it was interesting.

Here are some pretty Florida sunset photos. Enjoy!

Wow. It's been a while since I've updated. Sorry. I'll try to do better.

Well, this week is transfer week. We found out on Saturday what is going on. Every companionship in the zone in changing. With me, I am staying here in Bradenton and Elder Knudson is going to be a Zone Leader in Tampa. I am getting Edler Arbuckle. I have met him a few times at Zone Conferences and such. He seems like a pretty cool kid. I'm pretty excited. There are three people in our zone that are training. So that means three new people. Should be interesting. But fun.

This past week were able to get a hold of a lady that we at one point thought might be dead. We haven't been able to talk to at all this whole transfer and she has cancer, so we weren't sure. But we finally saw her and she has an awesome testimony of the church and wants to be baptized. She came to church yesterday. But she went to the Palmetto ward cause she has a friend there that took her. We are going to be teaching her and hopefully she will be baptized next week. I'm way excited.

We taught a few lessons to Terry. She has a strong testiony of the Book of Mormon. The only problem we have now is she won't come to church. She has missed the past few weeks. We talked to her on Saturday and said she was coming and then we can't get a hold of her Sunday morning. But we are going to keep trying.

Things with Amanda and her daughter are still kind of there. We haven't been able to see them in a while. But we are planning on trying to this week.

The first video you see here is of my companion, Elder Knudson, being his alter-ego, Xander, a huge computer nerd, playing with a light saber trying to block darts being shot at him from a nerf machine gun. It is quite entertaining. At least we think so.

This next video is of Elder Knudson dressed up as Optimus Prime. Really, we just found a bunch of cardboard boxes and taped them to him and a member had the helmet. It was rather fun.

Hope you enjoyed!

Family

This week was a fairly decent week. We were able to set a baptismal date for this coming Saturday! We are pretty stoked about that. We are not quite sure if the lady, Terry, is really aware that it's happening this week. When we talked about it yesterday at church she didn't seem to be. That is something we will be covering in our next lesson.

Yesterday, we were able to attend a baptism in the Spanish Branch. Once again didn't understand much of it. But I did enjoy it. Then after that, there was a 'farewell' party type thing for a girl leaving on her mission in a couple of weeks. It was a lot of fun. And there was a ton of food. It was great. She is going to be a great missionary.

This past week at our weekly Zone and District meeting, during district meeting, we talked a little bit about families. It made me think my family. Obviously. But I'd like to say what I thought of:

I am incredibly grateful to have the family that I have. One thing that is usually mentioned in the scriptures is '... the brother of...' Now, I remember a time when if someone referred to me as either 'Jordan's brother' or 'Adri's brother' or 'Derek's brother,' I would be kinda upset for the fact that nobody knew me as me. But I thought about that a bit, and I am grateful to be known as someones brother. It means that I fave a family. That there is someone there for me all the time. Someone to turn to when things get hard. Some people my think that my family is kind of crazy. And I would definitely not be the one to disagree. I would actually be the first one to agree with that. But that's one of the reasons I love them so much and wouldn't trade them for anything.

Love you guys!

Zone Conference

This week was a fairly busy week I suppose. We had quite a few lessons. And they were all pretty good. We also had zone Conferance this past Friday. That was an all day thing because it was in Bonita Springs which is about 2 hours or more away. We had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning. No fun. Then we drove about 100 miles to Port Charolotte where the mission van and truck picked us up and drove us the rest of the way to save on our miles. Both were packed full and we still had to take one car. But Zone Conferance was pretty good. There were a lot of missionaries that I didn't know there. Because it was with the most southern zone and the language zone as well. But it was fun. We didn't get back from that until about 6 or so. So our day was pretty much gone. Then that night we had scheduled a lesson but it fell through. We were exhausted so we went to bed early.

The next day we had a booth at the flea market. We do this every Saturday. And it is always quite interesting. We get to talk to a lot of people. And meet a lot of interesting people too. We were all still pretty tired from the previous day, but we held through. We were able to set up some times with people. Hopefully they will work out.

Yesterday we had a couple of people come to church. One was a guy named Kerly and his family. The missionaries here have been teaching him for about 2 weeks. But this was the first time I met him. We are going to be teaching him again tonight.

The other person was Nico. He is 19 and just moved from D.C. He is living with an old lady in our ward. I'm not sure the connection between them, but that doesn't really matter right now. We were able to give him a tour and first lesson before church started. He said that he enjoyed it and that he would be coming back next week. We are going to be teaching him sometime this week.

Also, we ate at a members house yesterday before a lesson. And they made us a lot of really good food. And we ate quite a bit of it. Then we went to the lesson. Where they just happened to make us a lot of food as well. When we walked in and I smelled the food, my stomach was like, 'Are you kidding me?' But we ate what we could. The food there was also really good. After eating we had a sort of Q and A desscussion. It went really well. Then we set up 2 more lessons with the family for this week. I think that things are going to go really well here. After the lesson, they told us that they had cake and ice cream. By then we were ready to explode because of the amount of food already in us. We were able to eat a little though. It was good.

I think that is all for now. Keep me updated on what's going on back there. :)

Transfers!

Hello again!

It is now transfer time once again! The thing I was expecting, and also quite a few other people, didn't happen. I was expecting to be going back to Apollo Beach for this upcoming transfer. But that is not happening. I was a bit disappointed by this. But it's ok. I am going to be serving in the Bradenton area with Elder Knudson, my MTC comp. So I am pretty excited. I am kinda sad to be leaving Sarasota. I wish I could've stayed longer. But maybe I'll get the cance to go back. I hoping for it. But we'll see what happens.

With yesterday being memorial day, our ward had a big party. We went to a park and had a bbq. It was a lot of fun. When we first got there, there weren't a whole lot of people there. But within about 30-40 minutes, there were quite a bit of people there. We played volleyball in the sand pits there most of the time. It was a blast. We had to leave early to go to a zone p-day. But we would've stayed all day if we could've but the zone would've been pretty upset.

For our zone p-day, we played dodgeball most of the time. And made hamburgers and hot dogs and such. It was a ton of fun. The Sisters were being quite vicious at dodgeball, which made things really interesting. But we had a lot of fun.

Ok. So this entry is pretty short. Well, that's ok. :)

Mothers Day!

So, yesterday was Mothers Day. And a few of the people that read this I was able to talk to. So.... Yeah. But I'll still write something for those of you that I didn't get to talk to.

This past week has been a fairly normal week. We did a lot of tracting. And even at 10 a.m. it is really hot. Usually around 85 degrees. And add a very high amount of humidity to that and you have yourself a natural sauna! One of the best things to knock doors in! But we still do it. And try not to complain, (key word being try.)

This past Saturday we baptized an 18 year old girl named Lucy. We have been working with her and her family for a few weeks now. She is a very shy girl and was extremely nervous about it. But she knew that it was the right thing to do. It was a really cool experience.

Then, yesterday, we were able to confirm her. Her mom was able to attend Sacrament Meeting to see, but then had to leave for work. What a great Mothers Day gift! We are going to continue to work with the rest of her family.

After church a family invited us and Lucy, her younger brother Bernardo, a recent convert named David and some other youth in the ward over to their house to do stuff. It was really fun. And it was great for Lucy and her brother. Lucy is getting to be a lot more comfortable around the ward and Bernardo is making a lot of new friends. After a while they decided that they wanted to get in the pool. And as missionaries, we can't do that. So we just sat there and talked with the parents and such. But it was a lot of fun.

And, as I kind of mentioned before, with it being Mothers Day, I was able to call my family! It was great. Only one more phone call for me out here in the mission field! Next Mothers Day I will be home! My sister had a really big surprise for me yesterday. She invited somebody out to my house to talk to. I was talking to her when the phone went wierd, then I call back and someone answered. At first I didn't recognize the voice. But then, after a bit, I realized that it was Cydne! It was awesome!

And now, I finally have the Attack of Chimpy Video. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

We had a lot of fun that day. As you can probably tell.