Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - Week 28

Good morning everyone!

So thanks to everyone writing and asking questions I actually have stuff to write about again. I have a few things that went on to so maybe this email will rival the last in length.

Thank you so much for the package that you sent me. The mac n' cheese is amazing! It isn't as big as the box stuff, but it tastes the same and I just have two at a time. I have decided to save the orange sodas for a special occasion. I don't know what that occasion will be but I'm waiting for it. And thank you so much for those cd's. I have started to listen to the Lectures on Faith. That is an amazing thing. I love it. I have really wanted to study faith lately and this has helped me so much. I'm excited to get to the other one too about Joseph Smith. So as usual I wrote down a list of things I want to talk about so I will probably just go straight down the list.

This last week we had interviews with President Belnap. I talked to him about how I felt I was never trained. He says, "Elder Garrick, what your saying is that you would like to be trained is that right?," I said yes, "Elder Garrick you don't want to go back to that. You know what you should be doing and now it is just a matter of doing it." Ah, he is right. I know what I should be doing I just have to do it. Sometimes I still don't feel like I know HOW to do it, but I am learning and I think I much better because I have had to learn on my own rather than someone hold my hand through everything. It made me think of the scripture John 7:17. I love this scripture and try and live by it all the time. That is not my scripture for the week though. I will send it in my letter to you guys. I was just gonna add it to the end of my email, but I guess I will send you a letter....if I have to. I also asked President if he heard anything about my visa. He said that he had. He said that normally if a missionary has not left for his mission by 5 or 6 months they get reassigned to the mission that they are temporarily serving in. He said that the church does not want to do that with us. I guess the Indian Government is just making a fuss over things. The church thinks that if they reassign us then the Indian Government will think that they don't ever have to do anything, that if they continue to put it off, the church will eventually go away. So I guess it’s good news that I won’t be reassigned, but it kinda stinks that it is taking this long and I still have no idea when I will leave. I am not sure if Elder Olsen and I are the only visa waiters here in this mission. I do know that they get a lot, but they usually leave within a couple weeks or a transfer at most.

That's cool you got to hear Elder Wright speak. He is a very good missionary. He is very sincere and he knows his stuff. That's very cool what the ward did. And he has probably been with his companion as long as I have been with Elder Cashin. This is our 3rd transfer together. That is 4 1/2 months together! It has been nice. We have fun. Yes Lynds it will be kinda weird to get a new comp but it might be a good change for me. Who know, I could possibly be a senior companion or a trainer next transfer. Oh boy! Oh and you asked me if I knew I was supposed to burn a tie at my six month mark. I did know that. I wanted to really bad, but Elder Cashin wouldn't let me. Party pooper. Maybe I will have to do it later.


Now I just wanted to update you on some of the cool lessons we had this week. Last Tuesday night we had another lesson with Larry Smith. We watched the Restoration DVD about Joseph Smith. It was really good. Larry is really starting to open up to us. I think he respects how I took his, let’s say yelling at me, very well and how we continue to come. He is a good guy, he is just concerned about his family. Gage has not been sitting in on the lessons lately. He was sick before and then he had a lot of homework to do. Hopefully he will tonight; although, I won’t be there because I am going on exchanges with some other missionaries tonight. We are teaching another lady. She is a single mom with two girls. She has been talking to a guy in Utah about the church and she went to temple square to meet him. She was a media referral and that’s how we found her. She is doing great. The guy she talks to has been giving her stuff to read in the Book of Mormon and she has questions when we go over. We taught her the plan of salvation and she understood everything and thought it was great. The problem is she is very hard to set an appointment with and we can’t do it right after the lesson because she has to check her calendar at work. She loves having us come over, she is just hard to get a hold of. Also we are teaching Orinda, who is 12 years old. Things have been kinda shaky with her, but she is doing her reading. On Sunday we taught her about the gospel of Jesus Christ (faith,repentance, baptism, holy ghost). She understood everything. I just felt like I should ask her if she would want to be baptized if she thought this was true. She said she would. After that the spirit was just booming in the room. I probably would have committed her to being baptized but I didn't want to do it without her moms permission. We have the lessons over at the bishops house. Instead we invited her to church. She said she would ask her mom. The bishops wife was just bawling, it was funny. But then I asked her if she would give the closing prayer. She didn't want to because she felt uncomfortable. I re-explained to her how to pray and she decided she would. She gave a beautiful prayer. I realized that is how you help people. To invite them to do things. When they actually do it, they feel the spirit. It reminds me of the time when I asked Adrian to pray too. That was 2 weeks before he was baptized. The day of his baptism he said he knew he wanted to two weeks ago, when he prayed. It’s amazing.

Hey tell Alex Anderson congrats on the call. Mexico, that will be exciting. The weather here is getting really warm. We still are supposed to wear our jackets but it is getting so dang hot. Oh by the way, I think I might be the only missionary in the whole world who has a tan jacket. Another missionary always jokes around with me and says, "Hey that is not a dark conservative color." I tell him that if he sends me to India I will get rid of the coat. Its a good coat though and it has worked out great for me. So Lynds I thought I would explain what I meant by "Taking it to the Grove" for my slow sister...jk. If someone has a concern or a question with something then what their real concern is that they don't believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that concern they have is because they think it was some man-made idea or commandment. If someone truly believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, then they would know that the commandment or truth is of God and that it will bless their life. It requires faith and prayer. So when I mean, "Take it to the Grove," I mean that person really needs to pray and ask God if Joseph Smith was a prophet and if the Book of Mormon is true. It all depends upon that. Hopefully that explained it better.

Well today we are going to a members home again. We have been there before, but their place is awesome. They always cook us food. Last time we had hot dogs and my favorite potatoes and chili and stuff and then we went outside and played basketball and volleyball and sat around a fire they made. It was fun. So we are going to do that again. Unfortunately I forgot my camera! We are going on exchanges right after p day so I have my other bag today and my camera is in my other bag. Blast! Maybe I'll have Elder Cashin take some pictures for me and I can steal them from him. Also the sister missionaries want to scrap book and teach the elders how. We were supposed to bring pictures but I forgot those too WHOOPS! Ah well I can have my seesters show me how later. Or I can have them do it for me right. So I don't think you have to send your email through g mail every week. This email is pretty good. I don't think there will be problems. Thanks for all your letters and support. They really do help me out a lot and brighten up my day. I will try to send some this week, but I'm not making any promises. If I do they might be really short. I try to write most of my stuff in my emails. I think this email might have surpassed the last email in length. New record! Well I hope everyone is having a great day today. Sorry no pictures, but maybe next week. Love you guys and I'll talk to ya later.

Love,
Elder Garrick