Beam me up Scotty

Hey Family,

                     This week has been awesome. On Tuesday I had my doctor appointment in Little Rock. The hospital is very confusing if you have never been there before. The whole hospital is color coded but they don't tell you where the color is in the hospital they just tell you which color to get to. They did the usual plus a longer echo. They also didn't know what my meds were so they asked me for those. Then at the end of the visit they gave me a list of all my meds and the doses. I thought that was funny because I told them what my meds were in the first place. The doctor visit went well and they said they want to see me every 3 months and that they can do the ALA-MAP for the annual so that is good. Also, I did get those prescriptions but I haven't sent them so I will do that tomorrow since the post office is closed today. From the doctor we went to Otter Creek to a zone meeting and after we got back from that it was already 2:00. Then the week just flew by till Saturday. 

                     On Saturday we had a special meeting with Elder Bednar. The meeting was a once in a lifetime thing. All the missionaries were there from the mission (which never happens). Along with all the missionaries, there was Elder Bednar, Elder Mains (one of the presidents of the quorum of the 70), Elder Bluth (one of the area 70), and Bishop Stevenson (the presiding Bishop of the church). The first part of the meeting, Elder Bednar talked about what we learned from the talks we read in preparation for the meeting. Then for the last couple hours we got to ask him questions. The only rule was don't ask stupid questions. His example was don't ask where the sword of Laban is because he doesn't know or care where it is. But the majority of the questions were about how to become better missionaries. One of the main things I liked that he said was that when we pray we need to pray to know what to do, not to know what to know. When Joseph Smith prayed he asked which church do I join not which church is true. If you know something that is great, yeah, you are smarter, but if you don't act on what you know its like reading the instructions to make cookies and getting all the stuff out and hoping they magically appear. If you don't combine the ingredients and cook the dough you will never get cookies. After the meeting, I met the Bakers. It was cool to meet them. Then yesterday we had stake conference and Elder Bednar spoke. For the first 15-20 minutes of his talk he talked about how the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. He also taught lessons 1,2, and 3  in about 10-15 min. He knew there would be lots of nonmembers there so he talked about how this is the only true religion. Then for the last hour or so, he talked about how we all need to become more Christlike. He gave lots of great examples of the Savior's life and how he was always helping others. One of the examples was when the Savior was fasting for forty days and forty nights and Satan was tempting him. After Satan had tempted Jesus the 3rd time it says he sent angels to comfort him. In the JST, it says Jesus sent angels to comfort John the Baptist because he had been thrown in prison. This is in Mathew 4: 1-12. 

      

                     This week has been a great week and I am glad to hear that you all got to go sledding. It looked like it was a lot of fun. Thanks for letting me know about Jared. I will have to write him. Thanks for all you do for me. Hope you all have a great week

                                                                                                                                Love Elder Talbert

Knock Knock Knock Penny

Hey Family  

                    This week has been good. Last Sunday, the bishopric gave one of the less active members in the ward a calling to be one of the counselors in the young men's. Part of the reason they gave him (Bro. McFadden) this calling was to try and get him active again. Well yesterday he came to church again and this time he brought two of his kids. I forgot to mention that his wife is not a member and some of his kids are not members. It was a great idea to bring him back to the church and now we are going to go and teach his whole family starting this week. 

                    We teach this couple named Ryan and Stephanie. The missionaries found them by helping them move. When the missionaries found them they were breaking all parts of the Word of Wisdom and they weren't married. Well right before I got here they got married and they have been trying to quit smoking and drinking. Well they both work a ton and they live a ways away so it has been hard to meet with them. We finally met with them again on Tuesday and they said that they still want to get baptized. They should have a date picked this Tuesday so that is exciting. On Thursday we went out teaching with one of the counselors in the bishopric. We had planned to see Mallory and her family but that morning we called to see if we could come over that evening and her kids were sick with the flu. We went over to see Edgar and his mom Shelita. We had a great lesson with them and Edgar should get baptized this month. Friday, we went and did service for a family that the sisters are teaching. We helped them paint their house. Well, almost the whole family is deaf so we had to learn a little bit of sign language. That was lots of fun and cool to learn. Otherwise this week  we have found lots of potential investigators.

                    It's great that you are all staying busy. Hope you all have fun tubing this next Saturday. I am kind of sad I can't go but I will be in a special meeting with Elder Bednar. I am very excited. It will be an awesome experience. Thanks Heather for the pictures. Don't play too many video games and have a great week.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       -Elder Talbert   

It's my horse, horse, just like in my dream

Hey Family 

               First off the whole subject thing is confusing. Everyone sends me a quote from a different movie so from now on I pick and next week send a movie quote from the one I send this week.

        

                My week has been great. Not much exciting has happened though. This week we have been trying to focus on getting members to go teaching with us. It has been about 60 degrees this week and it looks like it is spring. I am definitely NOT missing the snow. Yesterday we were supposed to have ward conference and Fast Sunday was going to be moved to the second week. On Saturday we got a text saying that ward conference had been canceled and it was Fast Sunday tomorrow. We discovered that a sister missionary serving in Oklahoma mission had gotten hit and was killed. She was from Arkansas and the stake presidency had decided to go to her home ward instead of having ward conference. Which was probably a better thing to go and do. On Tuesday there was a fairly bad storm and there had been sights of tornadoes around the state. After dinner we were advised to go in. Well me and Elder Jacobson went in and hung out and watched the storm but it never got that bad. Then the next day we were out visiting a less active and he asked if we heard the storm last night. We were like, it rained hard for like a minute but that was it. Well apparently it had gotten bad around 9, but I still think we somehow missed it. Which is too bad because I wanted to see a tornado. Today and last week I have been emailing Erik and I realized that he didn't even know where I was on my mission because I told him I was in Hot Springs and he thought I was in Arizona.

             Happy Birthday Kent, hope it was a great day and you were rooting for the Ravens (because they won). Mom, I don't know if you have the blog up and running but Jeff and Deborah want to read my emails. Thanks for letting me know about my Dr. visit. Well I'm out of things to say so I hope that you all have a great week.   

                                                                                                                                                              - Elder Talbert

                 

There's a Snake in my Boot

Joseph's letter from January 28

Hey Family

                 This week has been really good. On Monday we went over to a less active member's house for dinner and she has two foreign exchange students living with her. One is from China and the other is from North Korea. So for dinner we had food from North Korea. It was rice and leaves and a garlic stuff and dried squid and dried seaweed and bunch of other random foods. Well I tried all of it and the dried squid with the rice was my favorite. It was a very interesting meal. Then on Thursday we had district meeting and the president and the two AP's came and taught us. They taught us how to teach using pamphlets. Now we still use PMG (Preach My Gospel) a little but we give the investigators a pamphlet about what we are teaching and have them follow along and talk more then us. It works fairly well but sometimes it feels you don't give them enough info. Yesterday at church we had one of our investigators come. His name is Edger and he is 11. For the last hour of church we went in to young men's. It was weird because the young men's is so small they all meet together. It reminded me of the ward in Provo. We have been running low on miles this month so this past week we biked about 20-30 miles every day. It is really good exercise. Hot Springs is very hilly so you switch gears every other second. The weather out here has been fairly nice. It has been about 40-60 degrees every day this past week which was good since we biked every day.

                Dad wanted to know about our investigators so our top ones are: Edger and he needs to choose a day to be baptized and that's about it. Ryan and Stephanie, they need to obey the WOW (Word of Wisdom), but it is hard to meet with them because they live 10 miles away and are almost never home because of race season. Paul, he needs to come to church but he works every Sunday. Those are the closest. There are others but I can't think of them right now. 

              Mom, I did get the meds and I have been taking them every day also I will email the bishop. It is great that Aubrey and Lindsey are getting ready to go on their missions.

              Love 

                    Elder Talbert