Mar 4, 2012

Hey, I am glad to hear of your revelation about being impatient waiting in airports. For some reason, I am always impatient with people who are impatient in those situations. I just think it's really dumb of them to get worked up about something that they have no control over. And I think that is a life lesson, that there is no reason to get upset about something that is out of your control. That principle has definitely helped me on my mission. Because sometimes I wonder why people use their agency in such stupid ways, but it's not like I can change that. How did you send me that email if you were on a plane? It's been great to hear about how good alyssas bball is, but too bad about Jacksons team. I haven't heard from those kids in forever! How are they doing?Haha and I can't believe you are talking to me about how good of a feeling it is to walk through the front door of your home after being away for a long time. That will be the strangest feeling, but one I won't experience for about 16 more months. I am pretty sure I have that talk, Your Mission will Change Everything, already on my iPod. But I have never listened to it, so I will try to find time to listen to it this week. I just never seem to have any free time these days. I am really struggling to find time to write in my journal every day, but so far I still have not missed any. I considered for a while sending my first journal home, which I filled up around my 6 month mark, for you guys to read. But I decided against it, and you will have to wait until I am home to look through it. What is really good about Petterson is that he is almost as clean as me. He likes the house to be really clean, which is such a welcome break from the untidiness of my last companion. It is strange how every companion has different things you like about them and different things you dislike. I am still waiting for a companion who I really click with, and feel like we have made a lifelong bond. I really felt that, and still feel that, with Simmons, but since then I feel like that connection just hasn't been there. I have a lot of people emailing me... but as time goes on, they email less and less. So I used to get a weekly email, but now I am getting like a monthly email from a lot of my friends, and when they all come on the same week it means I have to try to reply quickly because I want them to reply quickly. But it still doesn't really work. What everyone says is that the first 6 months everyone writes to you, then they all forget about you in the middle year, and then the last 6 months they start to write again in anticipation of you coming home. So I will have to wait for those last 6 months I guess. Dad actually shared quite a lot of his stories with me before he left. I think we had a couple long road trips together where he told me a bunch of mission stories. I loved it. That is crazy how much Tyler struggled at first. Is he doing better now? That does sound like a really tough mission to be in... I don't care if I don't baptize 100 people, I am glad that I get to live in a developed country. I don't know if I could have served 2 years there, I might have called it quits. So its a good thing I was chosen to come to England. That is crazy how 9 of the 12 have gone home... I wonder if worldwide more missionaries are not finishing there missions. Because out of the 34 in my MTC group, I think like 5 or 6 have already gone home as well. Ernest finally came to church yesterday! He was sick of his old job and how he always had to work on Sundays, so he went to London on MOnday to look for a new job. He found a really good one and was really excited that now he could come to church. The only problem is that now he has moved to East London, and he is coming back to Slough on the weekends to live with his cousins here. We were like Ernest... this really doesn't solve the problem. He is living partly in the other mission now, so we might refer him to those missionaries or we might just baptize him here. We don't really know yet. He should be getting baptized next sunday, but because our bishop is paranoid about people going less active, he needs to come three weeks instead of just two. We also had some miracles with all our new Nepalese friends... they had us over Friday night and made us a big Nepalese food feast. We had an awesome night with them, and they want to do more studies and then be baptized, which will be awesome. And the Baral's are making progress. We went over to their house Friday morning at 1030, and Dr. Baral was as drunk as always. We rebuked him, taught him the restoration anyways, and then commited him to be sober the next morning when we would come back at 1030 to see him. When we had to leave, he said he wanted to walk us home. About half way home, we walked by a liquor store and he was like 'well guys, I will go home now, see you later.' I guessed immediatly what he was thinking, so as we walked away I walked backwards so I could watch him. He walked for a coulpe of steps back towards his house, and then glanced over his shoulder at us. He saw I was watching him, and so he started to wave goodbye to us. I waved and then turned around and started walking home, but glanced back a few seconds later, just in time to see him try to duck into the liquor store. I turned around and sprinted back to the store. I ran in, grabbed his arms, and dragged him out of the shop. We then walked him back to his house, and reminded him that he had just promised like 5 mintues ago that he would not drink again before we saw him the next morning. So I bet Petterson 100:1 odds that he would be drunk when we went back over. And miracle of miracles, we got there and he was sober. He was shaking horribly, and really on edge, but he hadn't drank, which was amazing. We watched the restoration film, talked more about the gospel, and his wife was much happier and she made us a big Nepalese feast for lunch. So perhaps there is still hope for Dr. Baral. He showed us his Ph.D. thesis paper, and it was amazing. It had a proper cover, it was like 200 pages long, and the physics in that thing was so far beyond anything I could comprehend. There would be like 4 pages in a row of just symbols that was all just one massive equation. It was all about the physics and the fluidity of glacier ice flow. I don't know what happened for him to fall to the point he is at now, but if he stops drinking he is a genius and has such amazing potential. The work here is going great, and the Lord is really blessing us. Good luck with you school/paper this week! I'm sure you will do great. Love Elder Steed