15 November 2011

Hi family!

First off, I'd like to make a "public" Happy Birthday wish to Mom for tomorrow!!

It's been a good week this week. This morning for P-Day we went to the Music of Making Music, next to Legoland and the Flower Fields of Carlsbad (Mom, you'd like it here!). It was so fun there! We walked in, and there were probably a couple hundred instruments in there, old and some new. There were all sorts of guitars (I took pictures) and several trombones! There were a few spots you could play some instruments, so I played two electric drumsets, a slide guitar, a bass guitar, a weird noise thing I didn't even know what it was, a banjo, and a synthesizer. It was so fun! Elder Herald and I played some songs together. Unfortunately they didn't allow people to play wind instruments, but that makes sense.. At the end they have a gift shop, and I got a post card. It cost 54 cents, but the cash register glitched and said I paid over 7 billion dollars for it. It was pretty funny! I wish I had that much! Some people here probably do.

It seemed like we didn't have much time for proselyting in the daytime this week, because of zone conference, P-Day, Elder Herald getting sick from McDonalds that a member got us, weekly planning, and me getting my back pain to flare up again (it's gone now, don't worry).

Yesterday we had our usual lemonade stand, except 30 minutes before Carlsbad High got out (by the way, I don't know if I mentioned, but Tony Hawk and Shawn White both went there!) it got really cold, so we decided to make our chilled lemonade hot. Some people loved it, some spat it out pretty quick. Most people weren't expecting it. We modified our "free lemonade" sign to "free hot lemonade" but most people didn't see I guess. We'll probably just stick to hot chocolate on cold days! Most of the non-LDS kids at the school call it Mormonade. It's a pretty big deal here! We didn't have the stand last Monday because of zone conference, and we got a lot of complaints from member kids at seminary!

We weren't able to meet with Tatsiana this week because she was working late and was too sick to come to church. We will have to move her baptism date back, probably to the 10th of Dec. We finally have a lesson with her tonight, and we are excited for that! It's been almost 2 weeks since our last lesson with her.

Still no other new investigators, but we met with Chris and Joann [edit] last night. Chris had a really bad asthma attack the night before and apparently almost died because of it. To counter that, they put him on some steroids, and one of the side-effects is that he will have a REALLY short temper. So it was. We got to the door, and his mom had to be persistent in have him stop playing his new Call of Duty (? out of the loop) game to meet with us. Eventually he threw his controller on the ground and stomped to a chair and sat down. It was a rough start to the lesson but eventually it worked out okay. Chris is struggling a lot keeping some commandments, but he is a good kid. Hopefully he can change his life around and notice how happy he can be.

Yesterday we got 3 phone calls during a lesson with Brother Waddell (an older high priest in the ward. Interesting note, his son is Elder Chris Waddell in the Quorum of the Seventy). Brother Vigil called us (a good friend of Bro Waddell) and Brother W told me to answer. Brother Vigil sounded a little irritated and said "I'm down here at the village pie shoppe waiting for you to come to dinner! You have 15 minutes to be here or I'm leaving." We had not previously set up this dinner, so we were caught off guard. We told Brother Waddell and he laughed and told us to go. We zoomed downtown to the pie shoppe and there was Brother Vigil waiting for us. He smiled and said "I woke up and I was hungry, so I came here and wanted to feed you guys. Well what are you waiting for? Let's eat!" We love Brother Vigil!

Last Wednesday the U of U Marching band sent me another letter! This time I didn't recognize about half of the signatures. There were several people that said "I can't wait to meet you!" One guy said "Jon I miss your sweet trombone and tuba magic!" I wasn't aware that I had played any tuba in college, but it's good to be remembered! They have sent me 3 letters so far. It's really good to know they haven't forgotten me!

This week I have again learned how much God loves His children. With my new responsibility, I have the charge of helping all the missionaries in the district learn and grow, and be better. There are very diverse backgrounds and personalities, and everyone has different challenges. There are a couple missionaries that sometimes make me want to strangle them for making some very dumb decisions. I always pray before I talk to fellow missionaries when there is a situation to help them. Every time when I am upset for a dumb decision they made, the Lord tells me to love them. Be patient, and love them. It amazes me how much He loves His children. It's a wonder how patient He is with me, no matter how much I can make mistakes. The work is great, and with God's help we can do everything.

I hope you all are having a great week! I hope you stay warm, those of you up north. It's pretty brutal weather here, too. The sun is only out about 2/3 of the day, and the thermometer is almost bottomed out at 65 degrees. The occasional sprinkle of rain makes the roads treacherous. Only the bravest venture out into the elements.

Have a good week!

Elder Jon La Follette