February 17, 2010 (audio tape)

These are some excerpts from a tape that Brady sent home:
"Mission log - Stardate 561-3"
Here is some crazy news about July 1st, we just found this out at zone conference on Friday. President Erickson said effective July 1st, there will no longer be a Peoria Illinois mission. It is dissolving into the Des Moine Iowa and St Louis Missouri missions. So when I come home, I will be coming home from a different mission depending on where I'm at on July 1st, and that will be my new mission. So that was some crazy stuff.

Oh thank you for the ties. There is a rule - you can't have ugly ties, so you can't have polyester ties. But you've been sending me silk ties which are awesome so keep sending silk ties. We also get free ties from the Benevolent Society because we go there to do service and we get hooked up on ties when we go there. It's a place where people that need things like clothes , well like Goodwill, but it's free and people can come in once a month and pick out things they need. So last week we were in there organizing shoes and folding clothes and setting up lights.

Three appointments fell through today, but we tracted anyway because we're studs. Not much else for today besides eating donuts and being extremely cold right now.

Mother, you'll never guess this . . . but I'm in the choir. Me and Eldredge have been recruited to be in the branch choir, so we actually sing. You should hear me, I sing. It's amazing, I know. You'd never believe it (I don't know what Brady said for the next few minutes on the tape, because our whole family was howling with laughter!)

We went to the Arboretum - it's this huge nature place, it's an outdoor nature museum basically. This lady in her 70's bought a bunch of acreage and her house is there. When we are doing service work, usually what we go out and do is burn branches basically, but we didn't get to do it today. All we did today was go to this guy's house, pick up this. . . I don't know what you'd call it - this tub of worms. I guess they recycle . . . well, I guess worm's poo is like black gold. That's what they tell us. So they give paper shavings and lettuce to them and they make this . . . well. . . poo substance. Well anyhoo, we had to go pick up this tub of worms. So we got it from this guy's house out of his basement. Everyone around here has a basement which I think is weird. In our basement, oh my goodness our basement downstairs is scary. Every time I do laundry it scares me a little bit. Anyway, we went to his basement, got the worms and set it up for the nice people here. Then we went to the potting room and emptied out some nasty disgusting smelling dirt and washed the tubs out. We looked at some plants and talked to Dave. Dave is the nature guy there. We are going to baptize him. He doesn't know that yet. There's just a whole bunch of fun old people there that make us cookies every week. (Grandpa was listening to this tape with us. We were all loving Brady's stories, but I'm not sure what Grandpa was thinking. I think he was expecting a spiritual BYU devotional, but instead, we got stories of worm poo!)

Oh - you'll never guess this. Today was the first day I was flipped off! It was actually kind of exciting. It's number 1 for the mission accounting records.

We had to race home because Sister Brown is SO NICE. She made up Bar-B-Que ribs which we have not eaten yet, but we will eat - wait, excuse my language . . . FEAST upon!

So we walked over to Brother Tingley's house then we proceeded to walk to the church. That sounds like a neat little nice walk on a nice cold evening, but it was probably about a 45 minute walk. So we get there to the church. Everyone was busy with meetings, we couldn't get a ride to the youth activity another 3 miles down the road. So that didn't happen, we thought we were done for. Then luckily Caleb, he's a boy scout, 7th grade age, he walks in, in his scout uniform and he's like "where is everybody?" So I'm like "Man, everybody is at the Near's house." He's like "Dang it!" It was a blessing in disguise. He calls his father and proceeds to ask for a ride for all 3 of us. So we got a ride all the way to the Near's house, who were all ice skating out on the pond, combined activity with the Dewitt branch. So there are youth all over the pond, all playing hockey. So me and Eldredge threw down some skills on the pond. Eldredge was better than me, he went after the ball. I clearly did not, I just owned middle court. We mingled somewhat with the youth and then went inside for hot chocolate and treats. Our whole objective was to get a young man to get to church. He's 16. His 2 best friends are in the ward so we talked to Jake to go invite him to church. He halfway said he would, but I was like You and me - we are best pals. We are both basses in the choir and we have to stick together and hold our own - we're Basses! So we're pounding fists and stuff so I'm like "Jake - as a fellow bass, man, you need to invite him to church" So he said alright, I'll get him to church. (He's totally going to church, even if he doesn't know it yet)

Then we played this crazy Ninja game. Eldredge ninja-ed me out of the game after about half a minute. It's only because he's done Karate for 5 years. He's like a black belt. That doesn't matter. But he did win.

Caleb was talking to us on the way home. He likes us, totally looks up to us. He wants us to come over on the days we don't do anything. Which then I told him - "We do everything all day long. We do everything always." We're growing on the branch, the branch is growing on us.

So I left on my mission weighing a buck ninety five. 195 pounds. I got here and I weighed myself and I'm like 204. What the heck?! But this morning I weighed myself and I was 199.8 I'm still under 200 by 2/10ths of a pound. I'm blaming it on all the muscle I'm gaining. Everyone tells me this is a 40+ pound mission, but I'm NOT gaining 40 pounds on my mission. That can't happen, no way. (But I have eaten some massive steaks.)

Other than that, I'm doing great. "Over and out - Stardate 26148-A"