Update Update

The email came in next day! Don't know what happened, but here is yesterday's update (6/23/10). Make sure to look at the pictures after this post. Those came through even though the email didn't! Anyway here is the email:


Hello family,


I can't believe how fast my mission is going. It seems like I'm constantly emailing home these updates. We just got transfer calls for what would have been the last time if our mission wasn't getting combined. I'm grateful it is at this point. Elder Gonzalez and I will stay together. We'll also have Elder Rothlisberger for a couple of weeks until he flies out to his mission in Bulgaria. He was ill and is making a pit stop in Chicago. We will be covering the entire Ward, so that will be absolutely crazy. It will be neat to begin teaching those I taught last transfer again. Melbria was baptized this week, which went well. The Spirit was there very strongly. We had a great turnout. Even Caraline Hill came, and we talked with her about baptism. She has been thinking about it for a long time, and feels it is now time. She wants to get baptized in July! Awesome! She's thinking about July 24th, so we'll work with her for that day. We'll make her a baptismal calendar and give it to her Friday. She's also going to start making catfish again!


Anyways, here's a day to day for some of what's happened:


Last Wednesday was Zone Activity. It was very fun. We went to a field and played Chicagoball (softball with a squishy ball), football, and soccer. I got my package with the CDs! Thank you so much, Mom! They're perfect. After that, we went out to teach Melbria to help her get ready for her baptism. That went well. She was very excited for it.


Thursday was a good day. We had some good time to find and teach. We get pretty sweaty now when we tract because it's hot and humid. We met with Sister Prewitt, who is doing better. We also met with Alfreda, and had a great appointment! She's progressing. We talked a lot about church and baptism. We then got to meet with Kathy and Billy again. We had Brother Thomas there with us, and it went well. Billy is getting very excited! He loved learning, and is looking forward to coming to church. He couldn't that Sunday, but is going to come this Sunday. We then tried to teach some of Sister Tomasello's neighbors and watched the Finding Faith in Christ movie, which is great by the way. We went to the Motts in the evening, and had a great appointment. They're moving forward. We then had Melbria's baptismal interview. Both Melbria and Elder Ferrel can talk. It was about an hour long. They seemed to have a great time though, and we all had fun outside. There are a ton of kids in Melbria's neighborhood that just roam around everywhere.


Friday was a good day. We got our house inspected in the morning. We passed! We did some finding and had an appointment with Rick. We were so hot already, then he wanted to have the lesson outside. We've been broiled in our suit pants (and our long sleeve shirts that we tend to put on on what turn into the hottest of days), until we sweat half of our body weight out, then we've been steamed. We've had many hours to tract too! It's actually been great, we've met so many great people tracting. We had tracted into Rick a few weeks before actually. We then taught the Howorth family, who is less active, and helped them move some furniture. We then did some finding I would imagine, and got ready to teach Louis. A huge storm came in really fast right before we taught Louis. It was incredible how fast the weather changed. We enjoyed watching a seagull trying to fly to where we imagined his nest was in the wind. He was beating his wings so hard, but was going backwards, sideways, and every other way besides forwards. He got pushed really far away, then came back when there was a lull in the wind. Right when he almost got to where he wanted to go, the wind came back. He unfortunately couldn't make it home. We had dinner at the Leals, who are the family I had dinner with in Stockyards. They go to the Morgan Park Ward, but actually live in the Stockyards area. We got permission to go to there house.


Saturday was awesome. We got everything ready for the baptism. The hot water heater is broken, so we boiled some water too. It does give some hot water, but not very much. The baptism was excellent. One of the best I've ever been to. I gave a talk on baptism. Melbria bore her testimony at the end, and it was excellent. After that, we had some appointments fall through, so we went to visit Lebron. He's doing well. We did some stop bys and finding, and that was pretty much it for the day.


Sunday was a fairly slow day teaching wise. We had a great day at church. Melbria's confirmation went well. We went to the Jenkins for dinner after church. They are so awesome. We love going over there! After that, we went to the Motts. That was pretty much it for the day.


Monday was good. We got to visit the Motts and Melbria. We had a lot of time to find as well, because our other appointments fell through. It was hot. We had a good district meeting, and had some homemade ice cream a member made for us! Most of our day was finding.


Tuesday was excellent. We had our best appointment yet with Vera. She has stopped going to her old church, and is going to come to church with us on Sunday. She also wants to begin attending institute. She is doing so well, and we're excited she is progressing! We then had a lot of tracting before going to give a member a blessing. After that we had a lot more tracting! It's been nice to have time to do that. We've shifted our focus from some dead ends to finding new people, and have been blessed with the likes of Alfreda, Rick, Kathy and Billy, and others! We got another one Tuesday. We had about 30 minutes to find before meeting up with Brother Jenkins to do stop bys. We picked some hidden street that had overgrowth on the sidewalk. We figured no one had ever tracted the street, and even wondered why we were going to. At the house right after a cussing old man, we met what seems to be a golden family. The lady had a Book of Mormon in Georgia, but never got to take the lessons. She started crying when we told her who we were, and we had the strong feeling she had prayed for us, or at least something and we were the answer. We gave it to her, and set up an appointment after talking for some time. Her in law listened as we talked, and wondered about the unusual feeling she had as she listened to us teach and testify. She said she would get everyone in the family ready for our appointment this week! We're excited to see how it goes. I'm grateful we were led there by God. After that, we stopped by a less active with Brother Jenkins who told us how he had been thinking a lot lately about getting spiritual. Once again, we were led to the right person at exactly the right time. He was so amazed at the power of God to lead his servants. We're excited to meet with him. We also got to meet with the Rhodes, which was nice.


Today should be good! We're going to have a nerf war. Our District will only be us, and 1 set of Spanish Elders next transfer. The two Spanish areas are getting combined. Elder John and Elder Robinson will be there.


Things are great! The Gospel is true. I love you. Thanks for all you do.


Sincerely,


Elder Bradley E McMullin