Letter from October 21

Hey Family

                    This week has been fairly good. First to answer some of your questions. I received the Hold to the Rod award by memorizing 42 scriptures. It is really cool and now I can recite scriptures so that makes it super cool.

Earning the Hold to the Rod Award

Marion is a smaller town. It is kinda split in two by the freeway so we go under the freeway all the time. It is as close to west Memphis as Orem is to Provo. West Memphis is right on the other side of the bridge over the Mississippi River. We go to the West Memphis Branch. There are about 60 people in sacrament each week. There are lots of awesome members and they seem to all really like the missionaries. We live in a nice 2 bed 2 bath apartment on the golf course. The only down side is you have to go on the highway to leave and we are on bike week this next week, so I will try not to get hit by anything.

      OK now on to my week. On Monday we emailed and played some Risk. The version we were playing is called 2210 Risk and you can nuke others so that was awesome. Then we went to the Crickmores for dinner and tried to see some people. Tuesday we helped this girl named Alex move almost all day. It was super fun but some tiring work. On Wednesday we had specialized training. We went with the WM (West Memphis) Elders to Bartlett for that. It was lots of fun and they talked about how we need to use the Book of Mormon more in everything we do. We have also started a thing where we carry a Book of Mormon in our hand at all times. It has really helped us give out more Books of Mormon. After specialized training we went to the church and had a missionary correlation meeting. We should be getting more members to go out with us. Then on Thursday we went finding all day. We went to this sketchy part of town and walked around talking to people outside. We met this guy named Chris and set up a return appointment for the next day. We found some others and have appointments to go see them this next week. Friday we went over to the WM Elders' apartment for lunch and games. Afterward, Elder Anderson (the District Leader) decided that he wanted to do exchanges. So Elder Anderson and I went to Marion while Elder Oveson and Elder North stayed in WM. We had a couple of appointments but they all fell though except for Chris. We went and we taught him and his wife and her brother. Then we said a prayer at the end with his whole family. There are 9 people in the family. The dad, Chris, mom, Lovie, mom's brother, Demond, son, Chauncey, 4 Daughters, Janerica, Jerinautica, Jerranisha, and Shequisha, and grandson, Mario. It was super awesome and we are going back this week to teach them more and see if they will come to church. On Sunday, I gave a talk on the sacrament and how important it is to be reverent before and during the sacrament. It was a good talk and I liked what I read out of Gospel Principles that it is a time to repent and you need to go into Sacrament meeting with a reverent heart wanting to repent. We then taught Gospel Principles and that was on the spirit world. It was a good lesson.

           Whew....that's all for my week. It has been fun, busy and tiring. I hope you all have a great week and a fun time at school and work.

Elder Talbert