Catching Up with Elder Volk

Dear Mom and Dad,


its good to hear from home. glad to see that i didnt have to suggest writing sunday night and that you guys figured that part out haha. (We are notoriously bad at remembering lately!)

i sent home a package last monday so you'll prolly get that soon. oh and the stereo that sis rowe sent out broke the other day. i'm in the process of taking it apart to see if i can fix it but we'll see how that goes. and as for treats, only like a bag of candy or something small, we get fed way too much here and i'm trying to cut back on my food intake haha. i dont think i've changed weight wise but just to make sure. (the package contained about 7 or more Nerf guns......he sent them all with a note declaring that only one was his and the rest were other Elder's who had passed through that apartment. He was getting rid of them all in an effort to be more obedient.......so along witht he guns came the books that he got at the going out of business sale at Border:-)


as for the report this week, nothing major. we went out. we knocked on doors. and we moved on haha. some lady told us that we should leave simi valley. she was trying to say it nicely but she wasnt very good at it haha. she told us we should go somewhere that doesnt have religion already, like africa and i was like, we've got missionaries there too
 
megan, i've had a couple members tell me that since your getting married while i'm gone, the deal is that you have to name your first kid after me. just sayin'. and yes, i'm currently wearing the shirt. (Megan and Jeff found Jake a t-shirt that says "Just Sayin" if you spent any more that 5 minutes with Jake he would say just that!)



so i guess everyone is busy with the wedding planning. (Ahhhhhhh stabbed right in the heart! Yes, we forgot to write!!)
 
first off i have to say thanks for emailing this week haha. there have been quite a few weeks were i havent gotten an email but last week was probably have to be the worst week to not get one, as i was excited to hear from people after my birthday haha. i suppose i should be yelling at megan for that one, since she decided to get married three days after my birthday. oh well, everyones good and happy so it doesnt matter (ya right, it doesn't matter)
 
as for the mission everything is going fine. we did unfortunately have one of the girls with a baptismal date say she wasnt ready yet so we only have five with a date now. three of them are getting baptized this weekend though so soon it'll be only two ha. the girl that dropped the date is only like nine years old, her dad is a less active member who has decided to come back and her mom is catholic, willing to let her kids go to church but not willing to go herself yet. the daughter it seems is a little torn between parents, though as far as we know neither of them are pressuring her into anything. the dad was also having some testimony issues with joseph smith so that probably affected her as well. we did have a really good lesson last


week and the dad said he got his answer and he's not worried anymore. funny what happens when people go on the internet (man's source) to find out information on religion (God's source). the other investigators are doing well, we did have a scare with another one of them since we want the family to be coming to church but they didnt come last week. they were there this week though which was good! the other guy is an older fellow who is pretty much going to get baptized even if we decided to teach him false doctrine, not that were do that though haha. he's pretty solid and everything we try to teach him he's like, yeah i know, it already makes sense
 
i'll be sending a package home today. um dont judge me by the contents. its nothing bad, just...dont judge me hahaha (this package held about 5 Halo figurines. Very cool. I can see why he bought them. And we did not judge! After all we are the worlds worst parents for forgetting to write to our missionary son on more that one occasion!)
 



as for christmas stuff, i can't really think of much of anything to ask for. i'm pretty good. as always more music is nice and i won't complain about ties. i'm good on shirts now though. i plan on wearing them out till the end of  the mission. oh and aaron if your reading this, i totally forgot to say you could send that statue if you wanted. but yeah if i think of anything i'll let you guys know. oh stamps would be good...those things are expensive, well not that i write anyone since i only hear from like two people via letters these day...(yes, for anyone reading this, i am calling people out!! haha (Ah Ha! So Jake's parents are not the only ones who forget to write!)  
so we had three baptisms on saturday! that was pretty cool. i will admit it was a little weird because i didnt do much in the way of teaching them, they already had the date set and were working on the baptism details when i came to the area. i felt like i was stealing Elder Johnston's (the elder before me) glory haha. but its all part of the experience i guess. the family went to a place in Ventura to celebrate afterwards but thats out of our area so we went to Olive Garden instead, since i got some pretty sweet gift cards there. funny thing is, while we were sitting there, a lady came up to us, put $40 on the table and said, lunch is on me elders. We didnt know what to do considering we're not allowed to take money anymore and she didn't give us time to explain that, she just walked away. so we decided to leave the money on the table, not touch, therefore we didnt accept it, and when we got the bill, we used sugar packets to slide the money in haha. so i still have money on the gift cards for another trip there! (Jake loves Olive Garden so we sent him gift cards there for his birthday)


so i found out this week that one of the Henderson's daughters is in the 1st ward that i serve in here in oxnard! pretty crazy! we had a visitor in sacrament meeting and after the meeting one of the members was talking to her and i overheard her say she was from maryland. so i brought it up and said i was from maryland too. she replies that might be why you look familiar, and then the sister that she was visiting goes, yeah his dads in the stake presidency. what?! haha i asked her how she knew that and she goes, i'm one of the Henderson's daughters. the sister that was visiting (i didnt catch her name, i'm really bad at that) was from the patuxent ward. we're eating at the daughters house this week, i'm pretty sure her name is lindsay edward now since she's married. that one blew my mind!


got your guys' messages, only have 25 min left before i have to log off though, you are slightly redeemed so far haha (we were frantically trying to get emails out to Jake before he sent his so we were online when he sent his and we got to go back and forth for a bit.)
 
Stay tuned for more..................................