Dear Mom,

I think that those 5 families that Bishop asked you to choose are part of the Perry Push Plan. It's a reactivation/retention effort. I don't think that it's in Preach My Gospel. It'd be interesting to hear about that plan from Elder Perry himself. I've only heard about it. Our Bishop right now in our ward has assigned each companionship in the Union City ward with five families with which we will focus our less-active work. It seems to be working. We're starting to see a less-active family coming back to church. It's a very gradual process, but it's starting to work. The ward is going hard on home teachers and visiting teachers. The Bishop is visiting them and the missionaries (me) are going over there weekly with members from the ward. It's a big effort but they all came to church last week for the first time in a LONG time. Pretty great!

I'm a little sad to hear about Kameron as well. I remember he was in my German class during my senior year in high school and I remember that he would say that he hopes that he can go to Germany on his mission to learn German more easily. Oh well..

You should take a picture of the Called to Serve calendar. I'm getting to the point now that when people ask me how long I've been out their response is, "Wow! You've been out for a while. When do you go home?" It's been an interesting experience. Weird though. I still have to go through another fall and the beginning winter before I go home, but it's right around the corner. It's scary!! Then I have to start life...

This week we said goodbye to one of our investigators. Her name was Mabel. Her grandma lives just at the edge of our area. Her name is Rocio. She's from Columbia. She joined the church a few years back. She's the only member of the church in her family. When her granddaughter came to visit her for a month, we picked her up as an investigator. The lessons went great and she said that she believes that the Book of Mormon is true and she wants to eventually be baptized. However, we had one problem. She was going to move back to Spain where she was living previously. So this last Tuesday, she left to go back to Spain. We got her address in Spain and we had the Mission Office here send the information over to  one of the missions in Spain. I haven't heard anything yet as to if the missionaries have contacted her or not. But she's pretty much a guaranteed baptism! We prepared her well.

Also on Tuesday, I had lasagna for the second time on my mission. We went to a members house from the Dominican Republic. She cooked it very well! Still not as good as yours. I miss lasagna and other foods like that. But I don't know how I'm going to get hispanic food back in Utah, haha! Bitter sweet like always.

If you remember me mentioning Antonio Gonzalez, our ward mission leader. He had to go to the hospital the end of last week. He got pnemonia. He's doing alright, but he needs just a couple days in the hospital. A couple of us went to visit him on Saturday, and the rest of us went on Sunday after church to go visit him. He's an excellent ward mission leader and really helps us out a lot. He's a good friend of all the missionaries. He keeps in contact with almost all the missionaries. He doesn't have much family because of what happened to him when he was little. It's a crazy story, but all of it happened so that he could eventually get away to the United States and a few months later run into the missionaries! He's awesome!

Then yesterday for our preparation day, we went down into Hoboken. We went to the piers down there and I finally got the pictures that I wanted. I'll send some pictures to you. I'll have to do it one email at a time because the email can't send multiple of them because it makes the file too big... I don't know. I took a bunch of pictures for a panoramic view of the NYC skyline. Next time I'm at walmart, I'll print them off and put them together and see how it turns out. We spent some time just chilling at the pier just talking about life and gazing at the NYC skyline. It was a pretty awesome experience! I really want to do it again. Hopefully next time I can do it, I'll actually be able to go into New York. We also walked around Hoboken a little bit and went to some stores. We went into a pizza shop called Benny's and got pizza slices as big as a baby and also went to a 7-11 and I got a slurpee. It was probably one of the best pdays! It was very relaxing and wonderful. It'd be awesome to be able to spend a lot more time there, but eventually we had to walk back to the car and get back to work. That night, we found a less-active guy that hasn't been to church in many years. He welcomed us right in and agreed to letting us come back and teach him more. He knows about us missionaries and asked us a little bit about our missions. He's from Ecuador and I told him that my uncle Conrad served in Ecuador and said that he loves his country! He asked which part he served in, but I don't remember what part of Ecuador Uncle Conrad served in.

Great week this week! This week should be pretty good as well. Transfers are coming up not this weekend but the next. I'm probably going to get transfered. I'm going to miss this area!

Q of the W:

1.  I was watching the Today Show and they were at the Jersey Shore.  Apparently they have rebuilt that area and were celebrating.  Have you heard of anymore places that have overcome the hurricane?

I've just heard of the Jersey Shore. I also heard of Seaside Heights being completely destroyed. I don't know if that's up and running yet, but I heard that it's going to take another year or so to build it back up.

2.  On pday do you hang out with just your companion? or as a group?

Usually as a group. It makes it more exciting that way.

3.  Are there any huge water-parks where you are?  like our Seven Peaks?

Not that I heard of.

I forgot my PIN for my credit card..

PS. That's also super sad to hear about Channing. I became pretty good friends with him. He wanted to teach me how to ride motorcycles. He would always tell me how dangerous motorcycles were too... He kept asking me if I was going to buy a motorcycle or not. I kept telling him that for sure after the mission I was going to get one. I still want one, but I don't know if Channing will continue to ride them..

Love you mom! Talk to you soon!

-Justin