September 19, 2011

What’s up?!!

Happy Monday to you as well! I love these P-days! :) Did Sandy Smith go to the same mission as JT? If so that’s cool! Shoot what did Zac forget in his call? I’ve been excited to hear where he is going to go. Been praying he gets called to Alabama Birmingham :) Shoot I’m excited to find out!! I knew you would like that laughing picture! It hurt so badly though, water was all up in my lungs and it was a struggle. Man, how often are you using that smoker?! Holy cow I’m so jealous that everyone is getting good food and I’m not haha. And I’m bummed I missed Jessica’s funeral. I got the letter on Saturday and it’s weird not being there and being able to comfort Jackie or anything but I know Zac and y’all took care of her. Sounds like the service was awesome though and I’m sure the bagpipes added some class to it. That’s awesome. but it’s got to be hard -- but I’m sure they’re glad she’s not in pain anymore and we have knowledge about the plan of salvation that will give them comfort. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately with Aunt Susan’s book and finding out about Jessica. I want to learn more about the plan of salvation. It gets me in a better mood knowing God loves us so much and set all of this up for us. You should study the plan of salvation mom. I know you said you miss both of your sisters so learn some more about it :)

Yeah I’m sure they had no idea who you were at the funeral until they said Chase’s parents’ haha. I’m famous ;) By the way, I did get the package and the scriptures are so cute haha. I love them and I finished reading the Book of Mormon for the first time all the way through by myself!!! I started in the MTC and finished on Saturday. Stop sending me all those fireballs haha. You’re going to give me cavities! And I don’t need stamps or anything. I just need to buy paper for letters. The GPS works amazingly and the EFY 2011 CD is so good. I only heard 3 songs so far but they were bueno. I haven’t written a letter to Becca in a long time so I’ll do that sometime soon as well. What’s up with her hand?? Man that stinks she has to have another operation on it. Oh yeah, Lauren took piano lessons from you not Nicole! Ok, well, good luck teaching her haha. And Jeffy and Courtney?????? What hahahahhahha haha Good for them. I haven’t given Aunt Susan’s book to the guy yet. I’ll drop it off one day when we're in that area again.

We’ve mostly been working around Columbus this week and I love it. They have old mansions from 1835 and stuff. So huge and pretty! I wouldn’t mind living in one of them at all haha. A lot of history down here in Mississippi. Cemeteries everywhere and it’s just classy. Thank you for the picture album by the way. We had our primary performance yesterday and at first I was bummed because no one was pulling a Jackson Hurt and being super loud on the microphone. Then the recent convert’s kid went up and blew the whole place up. I was like, yes! Finally haha. So that made my primary experience complete and it was cute. I didn’t have exchanges with Elder Clanton this week. The zone leaders came down to do a baptismal interview so I had a really short exchange with Elder Chow. He’s from Pacifica California by San Francisco and is about to go home. He’s a cool guy and I had fun. Only had 3 hours with him then they just spent the night and went home after the district meeting on Friday. Tomorrow Elder Clanton comes down and has exchanges with me. So that should be fun. What I bought at Wal-Mart....um funny story haha. Actually, not funny at all. Elder Holley bleached his shirts and I washed my pants right after....some leftover bleach was in the washer and all of my pants got ruined haha. So I went to Wal-Mart and bought 11 dollar pants. Got 4 pair of them and they are comfy and good. So that’s what I bought.

I’ll write to the bishop sometime and let him know how good I’m doing. This week has been pretty lame. Biking all over and no one was home ever haha. It’s been slow but we've been working hard and trying new things to find people to teach. We had a conference call last night from a professor at BYU telling us about evangelicals and how we can relate better to them and understand those we are teaching. It was a cool experience. We met a less active family last night too and they were cool at first telling me how they used to live in Corona and we talked about the 91 freeway and all the traffic. Then they said California Mormons are mean and started bashing on California the rest of the time haha. Aimed a lot of it at me and it was super funny haha. They hated the members there. So that’s what I get for living in "Zion" as they said. They told me a Stake President told them that California was Zion or something. haha So it was interesting. They fed me though so whatever. That’s what I get for wanting to share the gospel with them. :)

I’m still loving my mission and all of the experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have. It’s making me a stronger and better person and I’m so grateful for it. Don’t think I’ll be sad to leave and get on with my life. I’m getting all that I can from it and I’ll be ready to peace out and go home afterwards haha. But I still have 21 months left and I’m going to love it all. Thanks again for helping me get out here and encouraging me. Tell all those at home I love them and that the prayers are helping out a lot. Talk to y’all next week and I forgot half of the stuff I was going to say but whatever. haha. I’ll write you a letter if any of it is important.

Love you

Elder Oppenlander