Brian Email 9-8-05

Dear family,

Things are going great here. I've been a little sick, just with a sore
throat, headaches, that kind of thing. I'm feeling a lot better, but I
did lose my voice. It's a good chance for my greenie to practice his
Spanish a lot more. He's really making good progress, he doesn't think
he is, but he's doing fine. He gets frustrated sometimes because people
don't understand what he's trying to say, and a lot of times he thinks
English is right and anything different is wrong. But that's ok, every
missionary goes through that stage, at least for a little while. We had
the Spanish Zone Leaders over for exchanges Tuesday night and Wednesday.
One of them, Elder Oxborrow, was my old district leader from Charlotte,
and the other, Elder Marks, was my companion right before I got
transferred out of Charlotte. They are both great missionaries and it
was so cool to work with them again. It's always fun being on exchanges
anyway, it's just something new to break up the routine. Elder Marks
told me that President Noel wants to make me a zone leader before May,
but I don't know if I want to believe that.

Gas prices here are sitting just under $3 now. There were some rumors
that it would hit $5 but they never happened. 3.29 was about the
highest we ever saw, and you can get it for 2.91 now. Good enough for
me. Spanish Zone Conference is happening this weekend, since it was
cancelled last week. I'm excited. I have two Spanish missionaries I
haven't met yet, and I have some old companions and districts to talk
to. We used to have Spanish Zone Conferences all the time back when my
trainer was Zone Leader, but there hasn't been one since I got in the
mission. I'm excited.

Everything is going more or less well. One interesting thing... We had
one lady Elfi who had a baptismal commitment at one point, and we went
over to see her one night and she told us that her husband was in jail
for beating her. A few nights later we were going to follow up with
Juan Carlos, our investigator who came to church a few weeks back. He
told us he couldn't talk to us because he had to go get his nephew out
of jail. Turns out Juan Carlos's nephew is Elfi's husband. Hmmm. It
was really funny and wierd to find that out. It's an interesting
situation.

Nancy is planning on being baptized on October 1st, between sessions of
conference. Her son isn't progressing at all, he still won't really
talk to us again, it's pretty sad. Our other investigators have stopped
reading/praying/thinking about God/everything else. We're going to have
to start over with a new set of investigators. We started tracting a
really really nice trailer park. It's the most beautiful setting for
the awfulest homes I've ever seen. I would only live in a trailer park
if it was this one. It really looks nice, and it's really quiet and
calm, no dogs, no KKK, nothing. It's weird, I've never seen anything
quite like it.

It sounds like you're all doing well, I'm having trouble thinking of
much to say, I've got a lot going through my mind, but with my headache
this morning, I'm not really playing with a full deck. I'm taking
Acidopholous and Zinc supplements, don't worry. (Those are Sister
Noel's favorite things to give sick missionaries, and they are great, I
like 'em. Sister Noel is the best) But I'm going to wrap this up.
Have a good week, I still pray for y'all. Take care.

Love, Brian