Zone Conference 9/19/2008

Mike attended a Zone Conference in Broomhall, PA Friday.  Part of the conference was roll playing.  Mike’s mission president took photos and posted them to his blog at Called to Serve.  It was nice to see Mike at work.

September 18, 2008

Hey Mom,

I’m really sorry, I don’t have much time to type today. We have been cutting our breaks and our P-day today early so we can spend more time with people who are starting to progress. I also had this list of everything I was going to write to you but unfortunately left it at home! LAME! Sorry.

We are doing really well. Things are slowly starting to pick up in the Pottstown ward. We had the most investigators at church this past week that this ward has had in over 8 months. We’re really excited about that. This ward has been providing some amazing referrals that we have been able to teach. This one young girl we will be preparing for baptism is a next door neighbor of one of the young women. The family is really excited. This girl has been coming to church for a little while but has never been taught. We’ll have some great things coming up here in the next little while.

We have been told as of Sunday that we are the next missionaries being placed with members.  Bishop Deursch has been working on it for a little while but the mission is really stressing it. They want us to be moved into a member home within the next three weeks or so. .. we’ll see what happens.

I went shopping and got a great deal on two pairs of shoes. One for walking and one for church only. For a while I couldn’t find a nice pair of shoes that weren’t way expensive but I did. I bought a pair of Bostonians at the Outlets and then a pair of Stacy Adams from Boscov’s, both on sale! Oh yeah!!

Tomorrow we are headed to Zone Conference in Broomall. It will be fun. I’m excited to see a bunch of people that I haven’t seen in a long time. Being up here in the Reading Zone is really different from the City. I know that you have been wanting me describe what the area is like… but I’m still trying. There are really nice neighborhoods with gigantic homes and then there is the city.  You just drive down the highways from township to township or through the fields to other little boroughs. It’s really nice and I like it.

Alright.. That’s it for now. I love you and hope all is going well at home. I’m glad you got to talk to Sister Gettle. She is such a sweetheart. We take her out teaching to get her out of the house every couple days. She’s a ward missionary so she loves it.

I love you!

Mike

September 4, 2008

Sorry I’m writing a little later than I usually do we’ve been out and about with a couple members that we have been working to reactivate. We went up into Amish country to a big buffet called Shady Maples.  This place was huge. It was pretty cool to drive through their town though. It is right next to where all those kids were shot in there schoolhouse. Really nice people.

I’m sorry last week’s e-mail was a little shorter than you would have liked. The library we normally go to is only 30 minutes a pop. Kinda lame.

My leg is feeling so much better this week. I have made sure to stretch it every day really well. I’m walking and even jogging every morning. I had ice on and off of it for hours at a time.

Our talks on Sunday went really well. My companion and I had the bulk of the meeting and then the second councilor closed it out. It was really cool. Our whole church meeting was just like a Zone Conference for members, led by the bishop. I was so impressed. Our ward leadership is amazing, especially our Ward Mission Leader, Brother Gardner.

Transfers came and went with no changes in my District other than our District Leader. One of my friends from the Philadelphia Spanish ward is now our district leader. Our district consists of Elder Olsen and me in Pottstown, Sisters Olson and McFarland in the Kutztown ward, and then our district leader and his companion Elders Gomez and Coleman  serve in one of the Reading English wards. It’s a great district with a lot of experienced missionaries. We hold our district meetings at the Reading Stake center every Monday at 1030am. Our schedule as you know has kinda been switched around a bit so that we have our district meeting for an hour and a half and then we have our weekly planning meet right after until 2 and then our break until 4. So that’s our new Monday schedule. Fun stuff.

Well everything else is going great. We have some troubles that come with serving in a suburban area, but what can you do?

My shoes are kinda getting worn down so I went to check out the outlets and checked prices. They were the usual outlet prices. I saw a couple things that I like so maybe I’ll go back and get some. I’m planning on getting a really nice pair of meeting shoes and then a nice pair of everyday shoes that will hold up. They seem to all run in the 59.99 to 79.99 range. So I don’t know I think I’ll keep looking. Let me know what you think.

How has geocaching been going? It’s really nice having a car and being out of the city. We have been in some beautiful places and been getting some nice pictures. Elder Olsen and I are so much alike. We love to be adventurous. My pictures are on the way. Elder Atkinson lost his card so I let him borrow mine and make copies of a lot of pictures. I just got my card back so I sent Julie a copy of the pictures and yours will come with a rough draft copy of my talk and some other things.

Alright. I’ve got to go for now. By the way, the answer to your question about sending anything to my apartment is YES, it is completely safe. They keep all the packages in the office and then stick a notice in your mailbox to let you know something’s waiting for you.

Love you much.
Mike