Mon 6/15/09 8:42 AM
Thank you for all the emails this week, I really enjoyed them! I'm sorry that I won't be able to reply to them though because I have really limited time today. So, I will just say, I'm sorry you were sick for awhile, Mom, and I really hope you are doing better! It's awesome to hear about Hannah's successful, little business too! And it was a lot of fun reading about Jordan's experience with the superactivity, haha. Pretty crazy though too! And I'm glad Dad is still doing alright with business. And I am glad to hear Megan's foot is healing properly, and that she still remembers me! I am so glad I have that cute video of her on my camera from the drive up when she was really happy. Yeah, I heard about that swine flu situation in the MTC. So I guess it was necessary to have the "no handshake" policy when I was there. The whole time I thought it was pretty ridiculous too. But yeah, I love both, emails and letters. Sometimes I won't be able to reply to emails, but so far I've gotten around to replying to the letters I've gotten.
Well there are alot of cool things from this week. Wednesday, Elder Vance went out to his leadership meeting, since he's the district leader; and there, they had men from the missionary department in Salt Lake who came and taught the leaders cool things about effective teaching and obedience, and they promised it would "quadruple the success of our mission". So that was exciting to hear. I learned this week that the Wisconsin Milwaukee mission has the record of being the "hardest" stateside mission, or the one with the least baptisms. At one point the missionaries here were so bad that they almost closed the mission, only a few years ago. But now, with President Barrett, I think we will begin to see a boom here, and this mission will become one of the best. I am really excited to be here at this time.
Our ward, the Muskego Lakes ward, is catching the spirit of missionary work very well. Many people are starting to bring friends to church, and give ideas of how our ward will be better with that. Last night, our ward mission leader, Brother Du Charme, said that the ward is becoming zion-ized through the efforts too. It's awesome! Elder Vance and I actually just moved into the Du Charme's house on Saturday night, and we are living there now. It's been really nice so far! I woke up early this morning, and went down to the basement where they have a nice home gym with a lot of machines and equipment, and worked out. I know we will save a lot of money living there, since they tell us everything is provided, and they don't want us to buy our own food anymore.
Another cool thing we did was go down to the Chicago temple on Saturday. It was awesome! (haha i feel like i have said that too many times in this email) We were invited to go down with a newly activated family we have been teaching, the Littles. Brother Little was receiving his endowment, so all of his family drove out from Snowflake, AZ to be there. I could tell the family was so happy to see their brother and son come back to the church - they were all in tears actually.
And then last night, Sunday night, I had the opportunity to give a blessing for the first time. It was pretty random how it happened. Elder Caldwell actually called me at around 7 and said there was a guy who's girlfriend was really sick, and they wanted her to receive a blessing as soon as possible. Elder Caldwell and his companion still don't have a car, so they asked us to do it, and they were actually in our area anyway. So we went to the house and met Forest and Myra, who had actually just moved in here from Texas and Idaho, both were inactive members of the church. So yeah, I was a bit nervous, not knowing what to say and everything, but the Spirit was very strong in that room, and I guess the words the words that were said gave her alot of comfort, and were similar to the feelings she had felt before the blessing. They didn't want us to leave after that, so we stayed and shared a message with them.
So that is the email for this week - alot of cool and awesome stuff going on! I hope I don't hear anything about Jordan wrecking the truck! I love you! Be good, and do your best to be good missionaries there at home. I really wish I would have done more of that before I came out here. If you could only see how the families of this ward are being strengthened, and the joy that they are experiencing from it. Okay, well I will write again next week! -Elder Vogan
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