hello my family! my little heart is filled!...i have been going through pictures...reading weekend update entries and loving it all! thank you for all the good letters...i am glad that everything is moving on smoothly without me. it was fun to go through and see who has long hair who had long hair and who looks different who is getting taller and the whole works! mom...you cut you hair!...i saw that from the weekend update and it was so crazy how much you look like your mother in the one picture! i love you mom! i got a good laugh out of seeing kendricks picture of him trying his best to fit into my shorts....with the stick pushing out on eitherside! i take it that the other picture (with the whole family) kendrick has a big rock jammed in the back of the shorts...kendrick...you little chipowa! so those were amazing pictures provided by anna. i loved it!
this week was alright...good i guess you could call it. we ended the week with president gasser and his wife coming down to speak in our little branch...it went really well with the more experienced missionaries translating for them. it is really interesting to see the translating process...the gassers would use a word that the missionary wouldnt know and another missionary would help him out....you just take everyones knowledge of the language and use it to move the translation right along without skipping a beat. i was conducting the meeting so i didnt have to translate in sacrament meeting for the gassers but i did have to translate for the president in a couple of interviews that he held for a couple of men here in the city to recieve advancements in priesthood. have passing the interviews the whole branch plus missionaires (about 20 people) gathered in a little room and were able to watch as one recieved the melchizedek priesthood and the other the aaronic priesthood. it was really powerful and exciting to watch as there are now 2 melchizedek priesthood holders in this small city. so that is that...afterward we had interviews with president and he told me that i will be here for a while but that it will not be my last area before i go home. so we will see how things shake down.
this last week i went on splits with the finnish elder...it was really fun and we tore it up in gyula...well i dont know if we tore it up but i guess thats what you say when you have a great day here on the mission. while i was there we met with a man and his cousin that spoke finnish. the kid was so excited because he has been out for 3 months and hasnt spoken to anyone that speaks finnish...so we met up with the guy and they spoke finnish for a while while i talked with his cousin in hugarian who didnt know finnish...so we had finnish, hungarian, and a few english words here and there becuase we all knew english to some degree...when it came right down to it we settled on the most common ground that we all had with each other which was hungarian. pretty fun huh? i was grinning from ear to ear just amazed at the crazy situation that i was in. it was also good to see that they were excited to hear the gospel and not just talk finnish or english with us.
so i think that i am about to wrap this up but i just want to tell you all that i now have my old bike back now and am dropping out of the tour de france of this next season...
the day me and my companion got my bike back we took a tumble in the ditch ...my companion was trying to pass me on a narrow side walk and i wasnt having any of that so i ended up grabbing his arm not letting him pass...then he gabbed my arm so that we couldnt pass each other...the result...we went barreling in the ditch and i ripped my pants putting a basball sized bruise on my thigh...we were laughing so hard that i didnt really feel it...the bruise is going away though.
ill be more careful next time:)
i love you all and miss you! keep up the good work...
love me
