Brian Email 5-26-05

Ok, a couple of things before I forget: Xing Li is getting baptized?!?
I knew he would eventually, he's an awesome kid. Congratuations to Bro.
Call too! It will be wierd coming home to so many changes. And it's
only going to get harder, I haven't even been out a year yet. And
another thing, Nicole Smith got married?? I hadn't heard that. And
dad, when you said "Michael in high school", that really freaked me out
pretty bad. He's actually going to be in high school when I come back.
I still think he should be in 4th grade or something.

Who are the seminary teachers now? I know Pres./Bro. Miner went to
Utah, and then Bro. Valencia (my favorite) got to be president. I guess
it's a good thing that he's going to Caldwell, he lives all the way out
in Middleton, it will be easier for him. But it's sad that he's
leaving. Are Bro's Golightly and Epperson still around? Who is the new
president? Give my congratulations to all the seminary graduates that I
know. Tell Josh hi.

I have some news this week. They put us on car share, so now we have to
ride bikes one week and then we get the car the next. This week is bike
week until Tuesday. We rode for about two hours straight yesterday, and
no one was home, so we went back home and then called Vicente and Maria
to see if they could pick us up for our appointment. We ended up
teaching them in our apartment, we read DyC 33 with them, and they liked
it a lot. They really like learning about the Pearl of Great Price and
Doctrine & Covenants. Vicente promised us last week that he would be at
church, but he didn't go. We went back to find out what happened, and
he said he was all ready, and his whole family was ready, but they were
waiting to go with Maria's sister. She kept saying she'd be right
there, and she kept not coming. Vicente got mad because they were going
to be late, and decided that he would rather stay home than go late and
angry. We were bummed about that, because they really need to come to
church.

And our buddy Galo Vera just moved into the sisters' area. He will be
there until the beginning of July, and he'll be moving back to Ecuador
then. We're trying to get him baptized before he leaves so that he can
share the gospel with his family there, and hopefully he can go back
with the Aaronic Priesthood too. He told us he wants to talk to his
family about the church, so we're trying to get him excited about it.
He has given up all his addictions, and he is living all the
commandments, he just needs to come to church. He lives a lot closer to
the church now, hopefully he can make it. He has been to church twice,
so he just needs to make the effort to go every week starting this week,
and he'll be ready.

Paula is close, but getting farther, I think. She has had baptismal
dates before, and she reads from the Book of Mormon every day. She
never goes to church though, and she has a lot of excuses. She can be
baptized as soon as she wants to, but we don't know how badly she wants
to anymore. We don't really know what else to do with her.

The weather here is nice, but hot. I sweated a good 2 liters yesterday,
I'm sure. We've been hitting the mid 80's as far as temperature, I
don't know what the humidity is like, but we have a lot. I don't run
out of breath as fast as I did riding bikes with Andy in Boise. We have
tons of oxygen because mountains don't exist here. Dad, could you find
out for me the elevation and population of Charlotte?

That's all for today, we have to go eat because we're starving right
now. Then we get to shop and clean the apartment and write some letters
and snack on Elder Marks's package. He got pumpkin chocolate chip
cookies. Those rock, my friend Mallory sent me a bunch in the MTC. But
yeah, I hope all's still well. I love you all.

Love, Elder Harris

P.S. I didn't say y'all the whole letter!