Creeping Death

Howdy Family.

I appreciate your comments Dad, that Joseph Smith quote was what President Hansen had shared with us when we posed the question to him. And I agree, it'd likely be less than effective. Though lately I haven't been worried too much about Giovanni, I've felt that he's not really concerned about that. He's just doing what he always does. Trying to find loopholes in everything, he really just wants to see if we know everything or not and I am quite tired of it. When we saw him last it was rather lame. We decided to read 2 Nephi 29 with him, which is a pretty hardcore chapter (A Bible! A Bible! we have a Bible and we need no more Bible! etc.) We read it with him and then shared our testimonies about the Book of Mormon. It shut him up pretty good. Then he tried to do the most lamest thing. He read the verse about the 'Great and Abominable Church, the Whore over all the Earth' and he looked up and said "I know what this is talking about!... It's talking about the Catholic Church isn't it?" We were like.... well... sort of... We then told him that it didn't really mean any specific Church but basically all evil institutions. Now this was the dumb part. He sat there for a minute and thought for a bit. Then asked us if our church was expected to grow within the next few years. I was about to say yes when I noticed that my companion didn't move. He sensed a trap, I closed my mouth and waited a bit. Elder Ordaz told him that yes it's going to grow but not not that rapidly, because we know as it says in Revelations that the Church of the Lamb will be few. Thus Elder Ordaz neatly avoided the trap and then Giovanni was forced to reveal it and said that he thought that this verse: 'Great and Abominable Church, the Whore over all the Earth' could be talking about us the Mormons. Pffffftttt.... Lame. This is what he does, he just tries to catch us in our words and find plot holes in the things we teach. I'm tired of it.

Soon Giovanni won't be my problem. Transfer calls are the end of this week and from the rumors and other gossip going around it would seem that I'm finally leaving Conroe, I hope so anyway. I'm way tired of this place.

This week President Hansen introduced a new stat, the "Invitation To Learn" stat or ITL. Which is basically a tracting stat as you have to "extend" an "invitation to learn" to 10 new people you have never met before every day. And it's 10 per person, not companionship so it's 20 per companionship each day. It's kind of dumb and all the missionaries here loath it but whatever.

Yup, that's about it. I assume that y'all are gonna to send me some sort of something for my birthday. If so could you please include some shorts? It's getting ridiculously hot and some shorts for p-days and other things (I already have like basketball shorts but I could use some to wear around). The particular pair I want is the camo shorts I have, I have two different pairs, send me the bigger one, the acercombiesthingandfitch one. Also I gave Austin permission to get into one of my boxes and he is going to get these 5 CDs of mine which are in fact missionary approved music, they're mostly classical soundtracks and Scandinavian folk music. 'Twould be nice if you could get those to me.

I almost have the package for you all ready, just need a couple more things, it was hard to find some of them. The pictures I attached are of the Houston Temple on a nice day. It's funny but that was the first time that we've been to the Temple and it wasn't raining or foggy, and some pictures of Aidan's friends that I met there. Well that's all I got for today next monday I should know where I'm going. Okay love you all, bye.