Nine Months Left!

Yo yo yo,

How is it going? That is funny that you saw me on TV haha. Beautiful!! Was it a legit shot, or just like the side of my face? I didn’t get to see it, so you'll have to paint me a mental picture. My week was crazy! Driving to Hoover last minute to get on TV, our trunk broke on the car so we had to drive to Hoover again to get it fixed, and then I got Chipotle :) And best of all, I embarrassed myself in front of the entire branch ... haha. Let’s just say I signed up for the talent show last week, and we were so busy we didn’t have time to prepare anything. So we show up to the chili cook off/talent show and we judge the chili, and then the talent starts. By the way, the whole week we were stressing out on what we should do and nothing felt right. We were going to sing a hymn, but that is lame. Then members of the branch said we should mime ... but we are horrible at that haha. So we sat there stressing out and all of a sudden it came to me. So we went to our branch president and asked him to download the instrumental version of YMCA. We get on stage, the suspense was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. I grab the mic ... and say "so we have been to y’alls house's sharing messages with you, and today we are going to share another message with you ... but in a different way. Enjoy...." and we go behind the stage curtain, cue the music to start and the curtain opens haha. We have our backs to the crowd and we are just like snapping our fingers to the music hahaha. And when it’s supposed to say "young man" in the legit song, I go up grab the mic and say "mormon" haha. After that, life was a blurr. All I know is that we freestlyed a mormon missionary/ mormon.org version of YMCA. And instead of making a YMCA with our arms we made a LDS and M.ORG haha. We took turns singing and dancing, and for the grand finale we made it rain mormon.org cards on the crowd haha. It was super embarrassing, but it’s all good. The gospel was shared that night. A member of the branch came up to us afterward and said "I could tell y’all used to party before your missions" hahaha Elder Ojelade and I were laughing so hard! Good stuff!!!! We deff earned some respect from the branch that night. Not every missionary would step up to the plate like that and just deliver! And now i want to see the recording of it ... I’m kind of scared to, though.

So yeah, my week was good haha. Sounds like you had a much better week up there in Utah! Seeing all the family and touring the new Brigham City temple. That is sweet! I am so excited to go to the temple this Wednesday!!! Gonna be the best. Have y’all heard anything about Lauren’s job application to that place in Dallas? And what comic book is she working on? That is exciting.

Sounds like Logan, Creighton, and Autumn are turning into fun kids haha. Autumn looks huge in the picture you sent me! How old is she nowadays? And when are Allison’s parents moving to Utah?

And I can’t believe Austin Bakker had his farewell talk. That is sweet he is going to dangerous cities! They are the most fun haha. You get to meet some exciting people. And Tyler and Trevor live in the ward boundaries again???? What?!! Shoot, I hope they are still there when I get home. I haven’t seen them in like 6 years. What did they look like? 

Things here are going great. We found an apartment like a mile from the church so that is good, and we should be able to move in after our temple trip on Wednesday. So, only a little while longer of driving all over the place. Jane is still doing pretty well, she is struggling a lot with other things outside of church so we are just trying to be as big a help as we can be. And we have been able to meet other people as well. We went tracting yesterday and met around 8 new people to teach. It was a good feeling to talk to strangers again, as weird as that sounds. We did a lot of running around this week, so I enjoyed just getting to work. I can’t wait till we actually live in our area. Also, one of our investigators we had back in the ward got baptized last Saturday. Her name is Kiki, and about 3 others we were teaching have baptismal dates for this month :) so Birmingham is doing great! It is still fun to be a missionary and I will send y’all some pics!

Gots to go!! Y’all have a good week and I will be praying for you! Thank you so much for sending me on a mission. It is the best experience for me ever! I'll let you know when I move and send you the new address. Talk to you soon. Love you!

Peace, love, chicken grease,

Elder Oppenlander