Birfday in 9 days!

Hey hey! To begin with I’m fine. I'm not sure if you guys heard or not but supposedly Sumter (the city I’m serving in) made national news about a shooting on Halloween. A father with his sons went downtown to Columbia I think and did all this fun organized Halloween stuff and on their way home decided to knock on some houses in Sumter. They came to one house because the light was on and when they knocked a man opened the door and shot at them with an ak-47 killing one of his kids. Also there was a gang war or whatever and something like 9 people died. Not only that but a member’s granddaughter went to the hospital because she was in a car accident where another car broadsided her so Halloween night in Sumter is mega dangerous. It’s a good thing that missionaries do not go out on Halloween night! But we did get permission to go to the ward trunk or treat and it was the best one I have ever been too! There were TONS of people there considering Sumter only has 1 ward of like 150ish people. They had like hot dogs and nachos and pumpkin carving contest, pie eating contest and all kinds of stuff like that! We were there because we were expecting an investigator family of 6 to come but they didn’t. We’ll be teaching them some more this week, they are a way cool family but never make it to church. So I really hope I don’t leave this coming transfer and I hope elder Jones and I stay together for at least one more transfer but if not it will all be good.

We had to drop Hezekiah, he was totally not progressing. Missionaries have been teaching him since like June and really nothing good is coming out of it at all. Brother Newkirk is way awesome! (The guy I baptized last weekend) we have him setup on the "family mission plan" which is where the families help us find people to teach and his family is slowly coming along we love them, they rock. He has two daughters and two sons, and they are just way awesome and really down to earth, normal people.

Oh! How did Kathryn’s birthday go? Tell her I said happy birthday and thanks Sarah for the actual letter! That was way cool! I know everyone is busy but honestly the emails are stinking. I would like people to write me a real letter? Hate to be rude, but WRITE ME PEOPLE!


I’ve only been on my mission for what.. 5 weeks now and baptized someone who was 300lbs! The baptism took 3 times before it was correct, but that wasn’t really my fault or anything.

Ok ok, I’ll cut you guys some slack especially because mom has been recovering from her surgery. I need letters! I just want to hear from everyone. Letters are only supposed to be on a shortage around the 1 year mark so let’s get writing people!

In other news, elder Jones and I have a baptism coming up this weekend for a way cool lady! I think I probably talked about her before, Sister Dargan, she is married to a member and they are way cool! We also met this awesome guy on Saturday night named Will Smith, err William Smith. We met him just by knocking and shared the message of the restoration with him and invited him to church and he said "yeah ill come just get me a ride" so that was cool that doesn’t happen TOO often. Then when he got to church on Sunday he only had way cool things to say like "so when is my baptism this month?; is the baptism in the temples; I’m going to bring my wife and kids after next week; I’ve been married to my wife for 40 years, and that’s the only way to do it, you go through rough times but you stick together!" That last comment he brought up was after we talked about "Eternal Marriage" in gospel principles.

Anyway... did I tell you I went on exchanges again? I biked all day long with Elder Cram, it was way cool and a total blast biking is fun, but tough. Also the senior missionaries Elder and Sister Hixon, who live in our apartment complex, made breakfast for the 4 elders today "for my birthday" because next Tuesday is the end of their mission! They are way awesome!

But anyway! I'm doing well and the work is progressing! Being a missionary is awesome, it really gets me thinking about the future a lot, and the type of things I want to do and who I want to be... I’m stoked. Time flies by WAY fast when you are busy a week seriously seems like a day... it’s crazy. I could easily say it feels like I’ve only been out a week now... and it looks like I’m coming up on like 3 months now... I know that’s NOTHING, but it’s crazy at the same time.

I love and miss you all! Take care and recover quickly mom! Oh yeah and how weird is it that in 9 days I won’t be a 'teenager' anymore. Crazy and sort of depressing, but not. I think that’s probably why you have to be 21 to drink, because they want you to be depressed for a year and then the next year you can drink those depressions away.. That’s probably not true but I wouldn’t put it past the world to do something like that.

Oh yeah, let me know who’s the new president next week?

Anyway! Until next week!

Loveth yours!