Jared is loving Gadsden, Alabama. The following is an excerpt from his letter today:
"WOW!!!!!!!!!, This week has been great!!!!!! We had 2 investigators at church, Connie Brown and Candy Burns. It was Candy’s first time coming to church. She was able to come with her motherinlaw who is an inactive member. Candy’s husband is in Afghanistan for a year. So both of them came to church and really loved it. We are going to teach her the Plan of Salvation this Friday and are really excited.
"Last Thursday was multi-zone. It was really awesome. I played the piano for it. That was really fun. I guess I’m one of the best in the mission. I don’t think so but I enjoy playing. Thanks mom and dad for all the time and energy you put into me learning the piano and paying for lessons. I will forever be indebted to yall. Yall are the best parents ever!!!! One of the speakers at the conference is a CEO for a investigation/spy firm up in Hunstville that works for the government. He taught us how to reduce our differences by mirroring them physically as well as speech and tone of our voice. It was really interesting. I felt like I was in training to become a spy or something. It was way cool.
Thursday night we played basketball. We play every Thursday night. It is really fun. It’s a killer though, afterwards I’m exhausted. Oh, side note, I broke 6 feet, I am now 6 feet and a quarter. Yea, but still not taller than dad. I’m working on it dad, don’t you worry, I’ll be taller than you one day, even if that means you have to shrink more. Haha jk.
"Friday night we had a great lesson with Phil Williams. We were able to give him a church tour Monday and it went really well. His entire family is actually LDS but he never joined. He lives by himself now and is divorced. He actually has 2 prosthetic legs so that was interesting. The church tour went really well and he loved it. We will be teaching him again this Friday and hopefully he’ll come to church. I’m really excited for that."
I am certainly proud of him as a missionary. He has continued to maintain an extremely positive attitude which can be seen in the success he has in each area he serves in. It is hard to believe that he has been out for almost 10 months. With each month the time goes by faster.
Ruby was not happy about things being torn up. Today he spent the entire day after we got back from church with Jonathan. Jonathan is his security blanket. During the construction or deconstruction activities yesterday, he would just sulk around and scowl at us. Maybe he liked the carpet more than we did...
I decided Saturday morning that I was finally up to tearing apart my house again in hopes of enhancing it. Over a year ago I bought the hardwood flooring to do the entry way stairs and hall. It has been since sitting out in my garage waiting patiently for me to do something with it. Jonathan and Sarah were both big helps in getting the old carpet, pad, nails and staples out. Jonathan is a hard worker and helped me do a lot of the work on the cabin and house in Oregon. Sarah also likes to jump in and helped a lot until she had to leave for a study group. Isaac (our 4 year old neighbor) came over and helped pull staples and haul pad and debris out the front door. We rewarded him with peanut better cookies and a glass a milk. He loves to work and comes over whenever we have something going on and wants to know what he can do. Around dinner time we had to take a break and go get some Mexican food at Casa Del Rey in Grantsville. Later in the evening we had to take a second break and go get hot fudge sundays at McDonalds. I was able to get the floor started. After a few slats I put too much pressure on my staple gun (special gun for this type of flooring) and broke the alignment bracket (I guess it wasn't design to keep a person of my stature from falling over - aah the difficulties of age). After some quick research on the internet we headed down to Home Depot to buy some Gorilla Super Glue. It promised me in their add that it would provide a workable bond within 5 minutes. Well, they were right. I was able to work until my back told me to quit. I guess all the work took a toll on me. After church this afternoon I took a four hour nap. I guess I will piecemeal the work the rest of the week to finish it up. It is going to look really nice when it is done. It looked so nice getting the nasty carpet off the stairs and out of the hall we commented that we should have done that back when we bought the wood and it would have been better than living with the carpet all this time.
Winter is still with us here in Tooele, Utah. Spring teases us for a few hours or maybe even a day and then the snow piles up again. This morning as we left for church I noticed the primrose and Pasqua flowers starting to bloom. They have beautiful blossoms that emerge even before the crocus. I'm waiting for the snow to melt of the back patio to I can see if the Helleborus is starting to bloom. But even as we had a beautiful springlike day today, The forecasters are telling of more snow falling tonight.
This is Sarah and her date for the Tooele High School Girl's Day Dance. We had twelve kids at our house for dinner. It was a blast.
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