Crazy Last Two Weeks - sent July 25, 2011

Hey everyone,


Sorry I haven't written nearly as much as I should have this past while, some things have been going on that have been consuming my thoughts and energy.

About 10 days ago, I had surgery on a hernia, which was not a whole lot of fun to go through. If you are a thrill-seeker, I encourage you to not attempt to acquire a hernia and have it operated on. The operation has been pretty draining and when I feel pain its not the fun kind of adrenaline that courses through my body. I was down for about four days, and then I have been prescribed one week of light duty. So, its not as bad as they thought or thought would be after the surgery, but lately i have been feeling pretty nauseous from the pain medicine.

The work has been going well though. We just found out last Saturday that Elder Andersen and I are going to be in Springfield, Missouri together for one more transfer period(6 weeks), and so he'll be the one that "kills me off" or sends me home. I will have spent 9 months in this area! We were also told that we will be covering the Single's Ward for another 6 weeks, which is awesome! It's so great to be able to work with people your age at missionary work. They have that same fire that you have, and most of them understand missionary life because many of them have been not far away from their own full-time missions. In the family ward, we are still working very hard to get all of the recent coneverts and those less-active families to the temple on August 20. We are excited to be apart of their first temple experience, and i know the Lord will pour out His Spirit upon them to bring more joy and peace and direction in their lives than before. There is one person who were teaching who has been very unique to interact with. He is a Jewish man in his 30s and he came in contact with the church through a friend telling him to get in contact with full-time missionaries. Once we started teaching what the doctrine is of the church, he began to scratch his head because it was very new to him. Unlike most people here in Missouri, he has not had any negative publicity thrown at him abuot our faith, and because he is a Jew, he takes what critics say about other faiths with a huge grain of salt. But teaching him has been interesting, but also slow because we are first working on him building faith. He is a great guy with a good heart and he really enjoys us coming over and visiting with him. Please continue to pray for the people we are working with.

Its been great serving with Elder Andersen. Him and I are very much alike, and we have been getting some work done and having a blast along the way. We joke around a lot of the time, but we get serious when we are teaching. Both of us have similar interests, and so it never is dull with our conversation. I think he is so hilarious too. He always has me laughing with his crazy comments, but right now with my operation it really hurts to laugh :)

Well, thats all for now. This Elder Fellows signing off!!!