Dear Mom,

I did watch that world wide training. And yes, I did recognize Jessie Beck. I thought that was pretty cool. I wonder if Josh would recognize any of those members maybe from one of his areas he served in.. I absolutely loved that whole broadcast!! I loved how Elder Nelson said that we should not have time to knock on doors. Knocking on doors is about the least effective thing that we can do, besides just sitting at home. That makes missionary work so much better if have that much member involvement. We have so many members out here now that they should be so involved in missionary work all the time. I really liked that video of that missionary family. Does Dad still know where his missionary tags are? I'm going to do what the dad did in that video. I'm going to put my tag on my scriptures after my mission. I really want to be able to watch that whole broadcast over again. Unfortunately, I don't know how many of our members saw the broadcast. Another thing a lot of members say out here is that their family and friends aren't ready. That they've already tried and they just need more time. I can't remember exactly who said in in that conference, but somebody said that we can't say if they're ready or not. I loved that broadcast because it felt like a mini-general conference with the focus of missionary work; missionary work for members and full-time missionaries. I'm really worried about missionary work back at home. I don't know how much I can really do. I'm sure I'll figure out something.

That's awesome that Kelsie is in Greece now. I didn't even realize that was coming up so soon! I hope she sends me some cool pictures of Greece! Do you know if she's going to church there? That would be awesome to spend three hours of church all in Greek. I think that there would be some an authentic feel to it. To be able to be over there where the ancient Apostles preached the Gospel in the Meridian of Time.

Good to hear that Nicole went on her mission. Cool to hear about Kendra! Do you know that Mason guy at all?

So, I forgot to mention that we were going to go to the temple last week. We went on Tuesday! Way cool experience. I know I've only been to Manhattan a few times, but now it feels like I've spent so much time there. I only took a few pictures this time. The temple was amazing! After our session, I was able to talk to one of the counselors in the temple presidency to ask a few questions. I didn't really know that you could ask them just about anything in the temple. He answered a few questions, but before he had to get going to something else he had to do, he left me with a few questions as well!! Aaaahhhh!! Now I have to wait until December to ask those ones! I hope that I can stay actively participating in the temple when I get back. Also, New York City was way cool as always. This time, we took the New Jersey Transit train from Elizabeth, New Jersey to Penn Station. If we go to NYC, we have to visit Penn Station; it's crazy there! It's like a mall mixed with a giant train station. It's huge! There are so many things to do in NYC. Times Square was way cool as always. There are a few really cool stores that would be amazing to go into. Mission first!

Then on Wednesday, we visited with a part-member family. They have two kids who are 18 and 17 that speak only Spanish that aren't members. They don't really have much interest in religion at all, but we asked them if we could share with them why we do what we do. They had a LOT of questions. Some good questions. Some bad. The girl asked why we can't dance. We gave her a weird look, then she answered for us. She said that we (referring to everyone) shouldn't dance because when we do so, we are dancing for Satan. Then she asked us if our church prohibits dancing. It was a really weird question, and I'm sure she was just trying to prove to us that our church wasn't true. His big question was why we have the Book of Mormon. There seems to be a lot of people in this area that know us as having the "Mormon Bible". It's super annoying because they think that we don't use nor believe in the Bible. We wouldn't have our Church if it weren't for the Bible! Of course it's important. This guy in particular was trying to accuse us of never using the Bible in church services. He said that he's been to our Church before and we didn't ever use the Bible and that the Book of Mormon is way different than the Bible. I get so tired of people like that. We finished up the whole Restoration lesson, but then we figured out that he isn't willing to work for an answer. We made sure to tell him that he will never receive an answer if he isn't willing to work towards it. Most of the questions that these two kids had were all formed in a way that they were just questioning the church. We were talking about the lesson after we had left the home and it came to me that there is a difference between questioning and asking questions. They were questioning, not asking questions. Important difference, even for us as members.

Good week! This week should be pretty fun as well! This coming Wednesday, we have an All-Mission Conference. We're going to get new mission t-shirts!

Q of the W:

1.  Has anybody asked you 'why they changed the missionary age?'  If so, what do you tell them?

Actually, no one has asked me that.. If somebody did ask me that, I would just say that God is hastening his work by making it possible for more missionaries to go out

2.  What is the hardest thing for you about a transfer?

If I'm leaving, I don't like saying goodbye to people, and I don't like packing. If I'm staying and my companion is leaving, I don't like to be the only one that knows the area and the people. Usually it takes about 3-4 weeks for the new missionary in the area to start to get the area down. I'm still learning New Brunswick.

3.  Aren't you supposed to go to NYC this month?

Yes, I went last week :)

Love you mom! Miss you lots!

-Justin