Letter: Dear Fellows

August 29, 31, 2007

Dear Fellows,

This letter should be a little later than usual because I’m actually writing it on Friday instead of Wednesday. Wednesday was a pretty uneventful p-day. We didn’t go grocery shopping because we hadn’t been paid, of this month and we could hardly do laundry. So right after studying in the morning we took a three hour hap, which is the first real nap I’ve taken since I went into the MTC. For once I actually felt rested, so it figures I would ruin it by getting one of the worst night of sleep I’ve ever had. Anyway, that kind of went over my letter writing time. In fact we went to the library when I was doing laundry and I wasn’t in my proselyting clothes. We just happened to run into the Branch President’s family when we were leaving and all the kids were yelling, “Elder Olson’s in jeans”. It was kind of awkward.

The first week of the first transfer is almost over, and I just found out that everyone in my MTC district either got transferred or got new companions, except for the only other guy in my Zone and I. In fact, apparently all the rest just kink of switched trainers, I’m not really sure why. Anyway, I’m excited to start this transfer with a little bit more experience, in fact I was a little over-excited and I got myself into some trouble.

In our interviews with the Mission President last week he stressed how there were a few different levels of missionaries. The first was those people who talk to a lot of people they see, the second was those people who talk to everyone that crosses their path, and the third were the missionaries who were “hunters of men” and would search for people to talk to, every hour of the day and talk to everyone in visible range. So it was about 9:45 at night and my companion and I were talking about how we needed to be better at hunting and even pull over the car when we’re driving to talk to people on the street. So after dropping by an investigator we were driving home and saw a guy unloading his car. It was 9:55 and we had about 5 minutes left so we pulled over and ran over to talk to him. While I was talking to him, Elder Brennan went to talk to some other people. The guy I talked to told us we could come back and just then I saw a lady on a bike to by, so I yelled after her car and asked if I could give her a copy of the Book of Mormon. She told me I could if I could catch her. I thought about it for about 3 seconds as I saw her get further away before I bolted after her. My pens flew out of my pocket and pass along and scripture memorization cards were floating behind me. I caught up to her and tried to hand her the Book but she almost crashed so she told me to wait a second until she got to her house. It turned out to be about a 5 minutes heavy run. By the time I had given her the Book I realized I had left my companion a few streets back so I bolted back to the car. When I got back to the car he wasn’t there so I started looking for my pen when I heard someone yell, “Newbie!! From back the way I had come from. It turned out that just after I ran away he had come back to the car and was amazed to see that I was no where in sight. He immediately thought that possibly I had got into some kind of a fight with the guy that I had been talking to. Then he saw my pen and cards strewn all over the street and that pretty much convinced him that I’d been kidnapped. He got really scared, picked up my stuff and went to the investigator’s house to call the Mission President and tell him he had no idea where I was. He thought that I was going to be dead after only being one transfer out and that he was going to be sent home. After we finally got to the apartment and called the President to tell him I wasn’t dead, everything was fine. Elder Brennan told him that it was the scariest experience of his mission, and President Callister said, “Now you know what it is like to be a parent.” I felt really bad for scaring everybody around me but that’s alright. It was actually pretty scary just being without a companion for a little bit. It is amazing how you get used to never being alone.

Anyway, that’s my story for the week, so now I want to hear a crazy story from you guys. Hope your doing well and I miss you all.

Love, Josh

(sorry about the handwriting)

(cute picture of a square cow)