February 8, 2010

This week I've received more mail and e-mail from friends than I have ever had. Brian, it's so good to hear from you, and that you're working really hard in school. I hope all is well. You need to send me your e-mail. I'm going to try to reply to the message you sent me, but I don't know if it will work. I was wondering about how I was going to get ahold of you because I can't get onto facebook or anything like that.
Mother, I know you asked me some questions on the letter you mailed to me but I forgot to bring it (as usual). So I'll try to fill in the blanks. The house looks good, it looks like the project went up pretty fast and easy. Melanie, how on earth did you get those nasty dread locks to stay? They look pretty much rockin! Keep on keepin' on!!!
My week has just gone by so fast. Elder Eldredge and I had our first dinner appointment on Wednesday. It was with a family with 6 kids, the Nears. They are the biggest family in the branch and also make up of 25% of the branch on their own. Their oldest son, Logan, is 21 and just received his mission call to Canada, (Chinese speaking, who knew?). So he asked us if he could go out with us for a day, from 8 in the morning to 9 at night. It was approved by the mission president so this week some time he's going out with us. It's going to be sweet because we'll have someone to drive us around all day. This week we had about 12 appointments lined up throughout the week, but only one of them came through.
So I'm getting used to tracting and knocking on doors. My companion, in his last area, became addicted to Pokemon cards and soon thereafter he got me into it (I never would have thought I would). It's actually a good pastime during fast Sunday when you only have an hour left of fasting and have to keep busy doing something. We were tracting that afternoon but we decided to come in about 6 because with the Superbowl on, people were getting mad at us for "disturbing them". We then took our studies from 7-9 that night since we had church in the morning. ( I know the colts won, booo! GO SAINTS!!)
Family, I'm sending the memory card home since I can't seem to get the pictures done while I'm at the store. I hope to hear from you soon and have a Happy Valentine's day. Family, I Love you all and can't wait to hear from you.
LOVE, ELDER HALE

(Apparently, Brady didn't get the full news report on the Superbowl last night!)