email dated Sept. 13, 2001

Hey mom! i was glad i got to talk to you on monday! sorry that the pay phone was being stupid.. but ya i was really glad to hear yours and dads voice! i hope everything in oregon is going well! so i'm in a town called silverdale its basically across the water from seattle. its sooo pretty here! its nuts! well after i got off o the plane i came to the stake center in tacoma where we had some orientation stuff and then we got our trainer companions and mine is really awesome! she is from san diego and we like a lot of the same stuff which is nice haha and she's only been here for 12 weeks and shes already a trainer so she must be awesome! haha on our first day we went tracting or finding as they call it here and alot of people said no, they already go to a church and that they have missionaries knock on their door all the time and they are tired of it but the thing is, is its not LDS missionaries so we have a little bit of competition haha but i doubt the other missionaries can give them salvation... just kidding. well actually i'm not kidding but still. anyways so we found this one lady who is a member but hasn't been to church in years so we set up an appointment to come back to visit with her next week on tuesday which will be good! and then we ran into a guy who isn't a memeber but he loves trunk or treat haha and we invited him to come on halloween and he said he most definitely would. after finding we had a lesson with a boy named taylor and he is 16 and  so awesome! he is so willing to do everything we ask him and he wouldve been babptized forever ago but his parents don't want him too so we are working on them. today we have a church tour with them that will hopefully change their mind. a church tour is something they do here where they take investigators to the church and basically give them a tour of it and explain pictures and show them the chapel and baptismal font and stuff and its proven to be really successful so hopefull it will be today! well after that we met with a couple of members and we just shared a brief message with them and then went home. and today we had zone meeting which is good. we meet with all of the elders in our zone and set goals and work on some stuff and its really motivating and fun. then we went to a lesson with a woman named amanda and she was baptized at 12 and then went inactive later on in her life and the sister missionaries before me have been teaching her and hse loves coming back to church and has a strong desire to repent of everything and start a new leaf. its awesome! today i shared with her a scripture in john 14:16-18 about the holy ghost being a comforter and how he can help her change and now that shes changing he can now be in her life and it was really good! so everyone hugs here..... so you will be glad when i get home cause i'm sure i'll love hugging by then or i'll be super sick of it.. hahah welp my p days are on monday but our mission president said we could email today cause we didn't get a chance too yesterday. oh did you by chance call the bank about my card? just wondering cause i forgot to ask you on the phone yesterday! well i hope oregon is fun and i love you and miss you!