Thursday, April 7, 2011

HE WAS SO EXCITED, HE DIDN'T KNOW HE HAD SWORN

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 09:51:38 My family, I am really glad to hear that things are going well at home! I had a weird nagging feeling on Thursday night that something bad happened at home, so I was hoping that was just to help me remember how much I love my family and to express that: Dad, I am grateful for how much you love and support me as a missionary and family. For all of your effort to teach us righteously and provide for our needs. Mom, thank you for loving and serving us so much, even while I seemed so ungrateful. You are an angel. Whitney, I am so happy for you to be the cute mom you are. Thank you for being such a great big sister. I am excited to see Charli on her first birthday! And I am grateful for the wonderful father Kyle is and for the humor he has brought to the family. Jordan, you are my best friend. I am excited for all that you are doing to improve, and I'm excited to hang out with you again this summer. Hannah, I love you. It's so fun to see how much you are growing up through your emails and to hear about the fun you are having. And I'm grateful for Megan and the blessing she is in our family, to help us enjoy to small things and to grow in patience. And Jared, you are basically part of the family too now. You are awesome. Thanks for helping Jordan stay out of trouble. Overall, I had a very good week! Conference was amazing! There are too many good talks to say which were my favorites, but Elder Oaks, Elder Robbins, and President Uchtdorf from priesthood stick out in my mind and I took many notes through those talks. It sounds like I need to get married pretty quick when I get home, huh? We had an excellent zone leader council training on Friday about "finding", and the missionaries are getting excited. The weather warming up a little bit helps that too. Speaking of weather, 100 degrees is intense! We are just excited to be able to take off our coats. Our investigators are doing well. We had an awesome exchange with the Green Bay elders after zone leader council in which we were able to invite 2 people to be baptized, and they accepted. We also found 3 new investigators with them for them to teach. 2 of them were a nice couple who actually fed us dinner! They even had caffeine-free mountain dew. Who knew there was such a thing? One of the guys we invited to be baptized responded just the way the people responded in Mosiah 18:10-11. He literally clapped his hands for joy at the idea of having the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Except, instead of saying, "This is the desire of my heart!" he said, "@#$% Yeah!" So that was pretty classic. Haha. He was so excited, he didn't know he had sworn. Before that, he kept telling us that there was a presence or a spirit in the room, and it reminded him of an experience he had had several years earlier, which originally brought him to know God. Well the office sisters are anxious to get on the computer now, so I'll close this week's letter by once again saying that I love you so much! I love the Gospel and am so humbled to have it in my life and to have the amazing opportunity of sharing it with my brothers and sisters here in Wisconsin. I'll talk to you next week! Love, Elder Vogan