Staying in Galveston another six weeks.

I miss Utah rain. I miss the smell. It rains here all the time. But we don't have a very good warning for rain. For one, missionaries can't listen to the weather, or read the newspaper for the weather, so we get our weekly weather report from Bob, a recent convert. He's awesome. I'm gonna miss him a lot.(I'll explain later.) So it could be sunny here and five minutes later, pour rain and then be sunny again. And the smell doesn't change. Neither does the temperature. In fact it gets hotter. But lately it's been nice. A cold front has come through, cut down on the humidity.
Every time we go to an investigators house, i'm always the one playing with the kids, if they have some. It's actually a lot of fun. But weird at the same time. Especially if they're like 3 and speak both spanish and english already.

Conference was awesome wasn't it? We had an investigator go to a saturday session and he loved it!! We were supposed to have a couple other people come but they ditched out. It's a shame. It's not every day we get the opportunity to hear from a prophet of God.

Haha you liked my call to Kasey? Good. Unfortunately it didn't work. Dang it. She was supposed to show up to conference as well, but of course she didn't. She's now saying she thinks she wants to wait to be baptized with the father of her children, which would be all fine and dandy if we were teaching him, and we would love to teach him, except... he's in jail right now. About to get out though... I'm worried about her for multiple reasons.

I killed Elder Drees. Or in other words, he goes home today. He plane leaves in like 2 hours. So we took him to Sugar land yesterday, and now i'm in a trio until my new comp tomorrow. And they're also splitting up my area into english and spanish, so i'll be a spanish only missionary, which stinks because then i technically can't go visit bob anymore or kasey... Or roy. So that stinks...I'll be here at least another six weeks.

Um.. shoot. I gotta go. We gotta leave soon. The sisters need to be somewhere at noon. And i still need to email the president. Love you all.

Zack

Yep, he has that Johnson Blood, bluntness and all.

We had baptism's scheduled, but unfortunately, they fell through. One of them tried to drop us, Maria, but we've got her reeled back in. Her thing was about the temple and the fact she wouldn't be able to go in for a year after she gets baptized. And Kasey, well Kasey's Kasey. We finally met with her again, and she wants to get baptized, but we hadn't taught her about the word of wisdom, and she doesn't necessarily like the fact about no alcohol. She can do it, but she's not happy about it. She was supposed to go to church on sunday, and when we called her saturday night, she said "Oh shoot. I can't go tomorrow. It's the Cowboy's and Texan's game. And i just bought a new bottle of Smirnoff" So after Elder Drees got off the phone with her, and told me about the alcohol, I called her back up and said "What the flip you buying alcohol for?!"

Her "For the game."
     Me "So? That's the worse excuse i've ever heard."

"But I want it for the game"

     "Yeah but you also want to get baptized, right?"

"Well yeah. But it's the game."

     "Would you want your kids drinking it."

"No, But that's why there's the age limit."

 

Needless to say, she didn't dump it down the drain like I told her to. But it was funny. Elder Drees said "I can't do that. I'm not straight forward like that. You can. If i did that to her. She'd probably cry. But just because of your accent, she likes you better. So you can pull that off." BTW, my accent's gotten thicker since i left. Being around all these Texans doesn't help.

I wanted to reply to everything, but i don't have time. I need to email President and give him the rundown of this week.

I love you all.

Zack., 

Hey Mom,

Ok. Last week was pretty good. We didn't have any baptisms on saturday unfortunately, but we've got some planned for next week, if the lady will pray about getting baptized. She's crazy, but she'll be good.

Um, no hurricanes yet. But the weathers been pretty crappy lately. I love the rain, but it's not consistent. It's mostly just windy and cloudy. Like blow you're bike off the road windy. Speaking of my bike, i'm getting my rear rim straightened today. I kinda hit a curb and blew my tire and when i got it fixed, i realized the rim was slightly bent as well. Not bad, but enough to make the tire wobble. I can ride it, but i want it fixed just in case.

Haha yeah, everythings fine and dandy here, except our apartment. It's not fit to live in I swear. It's so old, we still have gas heaters in there. And the carpet is so old along with everything else. We're also infested with roaches. It's so gross. It's a good thing we're only in there at night. It's nasty. We've been trying to kill them all, but there's a hundred to replace every one we've killed. It's not too bad though. Just nasty.

Hey hey, i almost forgot. I gave my first blessing in spanish today. Well, i annointed the oil in spanish. And then Elder Cui (it's pronounced like Tsui), who's from mainland China, like the hundredth missionary from china, his dad was baptized in Japan, did the sealing in English. It was cool.

Um... What else? Haha shoot, i dunno what else to say since i've said pretty much everything in my letters. Well, mi espanol esta llegando mejor. Puedo decir muchas cosas ahora y tambien entiendo mucho. My spanish is becoming better. I can say many things and i understand much. (In case you couldn't read that.)

Ok. I've gotta go. I love you all and i'll get pictures soon!! Take care!!

Elder Zack Sawyer

"You may all go to Hell, and I'll go to Texas"-Davy Crocket. (I saw it on a shirt another missionary was wearing last P day. His name is Elder Hart, and i actually graduated with him.)

Hey Mom and Family

My new P-Day is monday but we email on tuesday here because the library is closed on mondays. So that's why you hadn't gotten one yet.

Ok, so first off, my new address is

Elder Zack Sawyer (nothing changed there)

102 Strand #30

Galveston, Texas 77550

Yeah that's right. I'm in Galveston. My first time on an island. From what I understand, we're about 2 miles into the gulf of mexico off the mainland. My first area is a spanish/english area, so we're speaking both, which is nice. I keep thinking my spanish isn't improving at all, but then i remember, i've been here a total of 6 days, so i haven't even had time to improve much. I've only been with Elder Drees, my trainer, for 4 days, because one day was spent on exchanges with Elder Law, a zone leader, and he only speaks English. Everythings going good though. I can actually speak more spanish than i understand, so i can say almost whatever i want, but i can't understand very many people. Like there's a lady we're teaching named Maria, and i can't understand her at all. She speaks so softly and slurs her words so bad, I've pretty much given up hope of ever understanding her.

Lets see... It was great to talk to you guys on the phone. It was awesome!!

Ok this is totally random, but this old guy on the computer in front of me is like looking at profiles on facebook of girls a third of his age. It's weird.. Anyways. I've got my bike, and it's awesome. I ride it everyday, of course. But not all that far. We only cover the east part of the island. Which isn't all that much. But the people here are awesome. The latinos, theres actually less mexicans than you'd think, lots of Hondurans and people from Guatemala and El Salvador, it's interesting hearing all of the different accents. But the latinos are awesome. They'll all stop when we contact them and listen, because they're nice like that and they think it's awesome that us gringos are trying to learn their language. Well, i'm trying to learn the language. It's Elder Drees' last transfer so he speaks like it's his native language. But they're all willing to help me speak. I don't even have to know the person and they want to help. Haha even Charlie, who's always drunk when we go to try to talk to him will sit there and try to help me. He cracks me up. We've stopped by twice randomly to teach him and twice he's said he's been drinking. Well, last night he said it was just a continuation of Sundays party. And i believe it. He looked exactly the same last night as he did sunday night. So the latinos are cool, but the white people are mean. They don't want to talk to us. Elder Drees got the best excuse from a guy the other night. It was like a 60 year old guy getting into his Lexus and Elder Drees tried to contact him and he said My mom taught me not to talk to strangers. And he closed the door and sped off. It was hilarious.

Alright, well my first week was really cool. We had a baptism. She was actually an inverstigator of Elder Drees and his last comp, Elder Ennis, but Elder Drees said she was considered my investigator too now. So she was baptized on saturday. It was great. She was so excited.

So sundays are long. Haha. First, we gotta be to the church by 7:30 for meetings, then we've got the english ward first at nine and at ten the spanish ward starts. But their sacrament meeting is last, so i went to the whole block of english while my comp went on splits into the spanish classes. And then i went to the sacrament meeting with Elder Drees. Than we usually have meetings afterward, but they cancelled it last sunday, so we went and OYMed, or open your mouth. We have to talk to at least ten people a day, so an average of 70 a week per missionary. Then we went back to the church for lunch, apparently the ward does lunches there, i dunno exactly how often, but oh well. It was food. Then we went back to work and taught some lessons.

Oh, i was supposed to go home last night and hug you and dad and say thank you. At least thats what a guy last night told us to do. Elder Drees contacted a guy while i was talking to a lady from Kenya, which she was awesome, and I came in at the end of the conversation, and he's not a member, at least we don't think. But he has the ut-most, or upmost dangit i can't remember how it's spelled. Dangit! But anyways he has a lot of respect for us missionaries. He knew quite a bit about us. Well enough to know what we do. He said that all missionaries are special. We've all got this light, or glow, about us that people can see. And with our bright eyes and smiles, people know us right off. And when people walk away, they walk away because they're afraid we'll say the truth. And when they look back as they're walking away, they're not looking back to see if we're following, they're looking back because they want to see the glow again. He says we really make a difference. He even used our titles while talking about us, Elders. So he might as well have been a member, except he was carrying a case of beer. Haha. But he said to go home and hug our parents because we're special. And part of our up-bringing helped bring that out in us.

Oh what else? Oh, if you're going to send a package, send it to the mission office. The address that i sent that letter from. But letters you can send to my address. For a few weeks.

Oh, and so i can put you at rest, it is hurricane season, but they won't let us stay if one even comes in the area. Especially not us, because we're the islanders. We'd be evacuated quick. So no worries. If there is a problem, we're out of here.

I don't have much else to say... Other than the work and the days are hard, but i'm enjoying it for the most part. I haven't even thought about leaving. I don't want to. But i do miss home.

I love you all. Take care. Until next week.

Elder Zack Sawyer

P.S. Hey Ky, there was a cockroach in my shower this morning big enough to shoot. I should have taken a picture for you.

A day at the Temple for the Missionaries

I love this picture!

His MTC comp is a so tall he
 even makes Zack look short.

The Elders finally got to spend some time at the Provo Temple. Zack said it was so cool to go with all the other Elders.

Before and after his MTC haircut. Just a little shorter than I ever did it. No more fuzzy curls for him.

I asked Zack to get a picture of him with the Mission Training Center sign and apparently they took it down while they widen the road. But hey, at least he did as I asked. Lol