E-Mail to Mom

Elder Patterson (one of the AP's) and I

Here is another e-mail that Justin sent separately to Michelle this afternoon. It's really AMAZING how many people they are teaching!!! The reference to Christopher looking forward to the heat this summer will be his U.S. Army Basic Training at Ft. Benning, Georgia beginning June 30th (referenced here). And no... I was not familiar with "Chuukese," so I Wikipedia'd it and the link will take you there.

Dear Mom,

Thank you so much for your letters! I always really enjoy them. I think you and Mark are the only ones who have written my every single week so far, so thank you. Well maybe Steven has too, I don't remember. But thank you. It's good to hear that everything is going well.

Hunter and his mom

Things here are awesome. It really is a huge blessing to be able to teach so much. Especially, like I was telling Dad, to be able to be teaching so many families. It's been really easy to get the 40 lessons per week that our leaders have asked us to get. The tough part, though, is that we have enough people to teach that we could be teaching all day and probably be fine without having hardly any finding time. But the apostles have said that every companionship should talk to 20 people ("OTM's") every day, so we have to make sure to put in time to get that so we can be obedient to that commandment. It really is a blessing, though, because I know that there are thousands of missionaries out there who do nothing but tract and street contact all day, and we're struggling to find time to talk to 20 people a day. It's a problem I'm definitely not going to complain about. :) We've seen some major blessings from getting out and talking to everyone though. For instance, on Wednesday we were out walking around and OTM'ing (street contacting, for those who are relatively new. It stands for Open Thy Mouth. OTM also happens to stand for Oklahoma Tulsa Mission, or as we call it, Only True Mission) and we talked to this kid (he's 20) named Shawn on his porch. He said to come back the next day at the same time. We did, and taught him the first lesson. He was really into it and very readily agreed to be baptized when he finds out it's true. That was pretty cool, but that wasn't the end of the miracles. About half way into the lesson, his wife's friend Bridgette came over. (she thought Shawn's wife would've been home from work already, but she wasn't) So she sat down and we quickly reviewed what she missed then finished the lesson, and she was also really interested! Possibly even more than Shawn! She also accepted the baptism invitation.

Hunter and Bro. Gibson who baptized him

Then yesterday we went over to see Bridgette, and we were also able to teach her husband Carlos. She said that she hadn't thought he'd be very interested with his Catholic background, but it turned out he was, and he was really excited to read the Book of Mormon! So that's 2 new young couples that we started teaching this week (with 3 really young children between them). We were also able to OTM Bruce, and then went back and taught him and his wife Krystal on Saturday night. They're in their mid-20s, so that's 3 couples in their 20s that we started teaching this week, all of whom I honestly feel will end up getting baptized. It's really incredible how much the Lord has been blessing us.

Me with Hunter after his baptism. At the Gibson's house.

Everything else here is going great as well. On Friday I got to go on exchanges to Neosho, which is always fun, and we had some incredible storms this week, as did the rest of the country from what I hear. I love the thunderstorms out here. I'm going to miss those back in Idaho. The humidity that they bring is killer, though. Over the night we had our AC set at 68, and when we got up all of our windows were fogged up. I stepped outside (this was at 6:30 in the morning) and it was probably already in the 80s, with what had to be 100% humidity. It was just like a wall I walked in to when I went out. And then my glasses fogged up too! And it's supposed to get into the high 90s this week, so I'm not super excited for the weather this week. Once it gets to a certain point with the heat, nobody is outside either. Except for the Micronesians, but we can't get too far there since most of them don't speak English (or at least pretend not to) and we don't speak Chuukese. It'll be a fun week. Luckily we've got a car and a lot of people to teach so we won't be out in the heat too much. But Christopher has a lot to look forward to, spending the hottest, most humid part of the summer down in one of the hottest, most humid parts of the country. That will be fun... Well that's all for this week! I love you all!

Our District: Me, Otterstrom, Pack, Babbitt, Davis, Kowalk

Elder Kowalk