4-8-13

Family,

Dad, the number one thing that I have to say to you and the most important thing that I have to say to you is: MACK!!!!! 

That's all I need to say for the week. Haha, just kidding. I had an interesting week capped off with some great conference talks over the weekend. Short sleeve season has begun: today actually! So we are happy that it has begun even though the weather that you sent us says that it'll get pretty cold later this week. I might wear my short sleeve shirt anyways because I love short sleeves. So about a week and a half ago, if you remember me telling you last week, I got sick and had really low energy for about a day. Well I'm still feeling some little minor effects from it. I woke up yesterday morning with a massive soar throat and throughout the week I had a lingering soar throat. Thank goodness for ibuprofen. Along with that soar throat, the asthma returned. I haven't felt the asthma since middle school so I was kind of surprised to feel it. I thought I grew out of it. But I pulled through and just had a few coughs here and there. I was feeling it during the priesthood session pretty bad but not life threatening. I felt asthma every day throughout the week. 

On Tuesday, we had a very very very slow afternoon. Nobody was home and we used something like 45 miles that day when we should be using 33 a day. We made that up in the latter end of the week so don't worry. We had an appointment with our baptismal candidate later that day and confirmed his date for this coming Saturday, the 13th. This will be my 4th baptism and first since Jayce's birthday. So both Elder Andrus and I are pretty excited. He lives in some difficult circumstances so we're really proud of him. His family is baptist and hate us with a burning passion. But now that their son is being baptized, they have to respect us now. They will be coming to his baptism so we're excited. I'll tell you about an experience we had with him last night later. On Wednesday, we had an unplanned district meeting in the which I taught about chapter 10 in Preach My Gospel: Teaching Skills. That's a very useful chapter. Later, we had our single's branch correlation meeting at the same time as the youth going to the temple for youth baptisms. I am glad to have a temple so close now. In Wamego, it was a 2 hour trip and and all day activity. So Wednesday was kind of like a meh kind of day but we pulled through. I don't remember much from Thursday. Just that our weekly planning went a little longer than normal. On Friday we had an appointment with this one lady who knows that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that Joseph Smith is a prophet but refuses to go to church with us. She says that it has strengthened her faith to go back to her church: The Blue Springs Christian church. That church reminds me of the great and spacious building that both Nephi and Lehi saw because of its size. She makes me frustrated sometimes because she won't really commit to anything. Maybe we should drop her but we'll see. Later we went tracting with our baptismal candidate and his friend who introduced him to the church. He loves coming out with us because he home is nothing like to what he is about to do this coming Saturday. Later, I almost caused great damage to our car by scraping the curb by our ward mission leader's house. Luckily it was just a scratch and no dent or anything although it still might need fixing. Saturday was the day we were looking forward to this whole week. I was excited for both of the new temple locations in Cedar City (that's a small town!) and Rio De Janero, Brazil. Rio I was kind of surprised because of all the crime that's down there and cedar city because of the town's size and closeness to the St George temple. Saturday morning brought my favorite talk of the conference. Sister Dalton gave a great talk on I think the Law of Chastity. After the first session, we went and had lunch then helped move some furniture for a less-active member. She was going to take it to St. Louis for her son who's moving down there. After, we went home, changed, and went to the church for the next session. I don't really remember many talks from that session. Just Craig A Cardon's boss tie. He gave a good talk about Jesus Christ and stuff. I felt that the overall theme for this conference was strengthening the family. Before dinner we had an appointment with our baptismal candidate and set the whole Program. We are ready for it this coming Saturday. At the priesthood session I liked the 2 talks centered for the young men. It totally hit me hard that they need to prepare to serve and that I am glad to be serving now. When we got home that night, our neighbor was outside smoking with another neighbor and her friend who were both consoling her. She had a broken hand and was obviously distraught. Her husband apparently was drunk and tried to run her over. She asked us what motivates us to live. I said the Plan of Salvation and testified of Jesus Christ. She just cried and cried. I just love it when people throw their life problems at us. It happens about once a week. Elder Andrus said she was drunk but I don't know. I can never tell. Sunday was another interesting day. My favorite talk in the morning session was president Monson and especially his fire story. I laughed so hard. In the afternoon, it was harder to pay attention because I was beginning to become all conferenced out and run out of spirit fuel. But I enjoyed Elder Holland's talk. Is it okay that I don't understand the story where Christ healed the Father's only child? I thought it meant humbleness and asking the Lord to help your faith. But Elder Holland honestly confused me. After conference ended, we had dinner given to us to eat at home before an appointment with our baptismal candidate at 7. Right after we ended the opening prayer, his neighbors/landlords opened the door and, being not of our faith, bashed us to pieces giving us no chance to speak. The spirit was gone and they tell us how wrong we how. If someone tells us one more time that we're a cult, I'm going to laugh at them. You know what the real definition of a cult is right? Yeah, it's retarded. Once we finally shooed them off, we talked about lesson 4 a little and rehearsed the baptismal interview questions to him. He's ready but just needs to get out of that belittling environment. Every time he gets home and talks to his neighbors, they talk about religion. Not about sports or school or "how's your day?" but religion and how he shouldn't be talking to us. It hurts me more than anything to see such hard hearts in this world. Why is Satan so good at what he does? Anyways, after that appointment we went home in the pouring rain. This morning we got haircuts and we are just living life to the fullest! 

Thanks for the family update. I really appreciate it. How's Elder Galiza doing? I bet he would be in a huge culture shock. How's the ward doing? Am I going to recognize it in a year? I hope to be able to write a letter to Jayson today. Let's see how much time I get for doing so. Any baptisms in the PQ2 ward planned? Well, I unfortunately can't think of anything else to say. Just that I love you all and hope you have a great week this week. We have a million appointments tomorrow so hopefully they don't all fall through. Thanks again. Love,

Elder Sutherland

PS: "Hey have you seen Spongebob anywhere?"
"You mean Musclebob Buffpants? He's in there!"