June 14, 2010

Hey guys,
Things are going well. We had zone conference this week down in Peoria again, it was President's last zone conference. It was hard to say goodbye to him. He has helped me out so much and right when we got know each other real well he has got to go and now I need to get used to the next one. But I did get the CD I was talking about the other week, the one from all of us missionaries going to Nauvoo for zone conference. Its way cool. I'll be sending that home in the near future. Sorry if I am very random and sporadic when I write you back, I get your letters early in the week and then totally forget most of what you had asked me about by the time Monday rolls around, so I brought your letter with me this time. I did get the shorts you sent, and THANK YOU for sending them, doing service with jeans on stinks. I sent the shirts off last Monday, so they should be getting to CTR clothing today. We'll see if they can get back to me soon. I was thinking about one thing this week that would be cool to have, Rachel you might help me out with this, the sound track to the RM. That would be great.
Saturday I think I had one of the meanest street contacts in a long time. There was a old black guy sitting on his porch and we shouted at him and he motioned up to come up on the porch. He was clearly drinking at 11 in the morning and so he went off about how many bibles he had sitting right there is his window. He also had a Book of Mormon, so we started to ask him about it. He suddenly started talking about all of us being brother even though we had different colors of skin. He then went off on a tangent about how there is a black man on the white house and how long it took for them to get there. As he said it, "...we came from the outhouse to the white house...and we are going to stay there for the next 200 years!" (this whole time we couldn't get in a word) He then proceeded to tell us that he came from a gang in Chicago and was a "thug" many many moon ago. And to cap it all off he said that if he ever sees us on that street again he's going to, and I quote, "...chitty chitty bang bang us" And then threatened to beat us up if we didn't get off his porch. All of this is coming from a 70+ year old man who hasn't been sober this whole year thus far. So I think that was the highlight of my week. There are some more but I don't have enough time to write them.
As for Investigators, none came to church, none are progressing at this point and none will keep a commitment. Its a shame really, I get pretty bummed about it every week, but hey its not my choice to deny salvation, I gave them the opportunity every week. So we are thinking we are going to have to do some weeding with our teaching pool and start planting some new seeds. We already taught a guy named Carl who whole-heartily believes every thing in the Plan of Salvation, so it's already looking good.
I've got to go but you should be getting a package from me for Fathers day, and thank you for the pictures of the wedding It looked fun.
I LOVE YOU ALL -Elder Hale