February 9, 2010

This was a short letter as he had to do his school applications for BYU.
ENJOY!

Hey family,


Sorry I don't have a whole lot of time, I'm trying to get the darn essay questions done. . . . But here is the latest on news in the mission.

First, what's a Ward Mission Leader secretary? lol. I've never heard of it before. I've heard of an assitant WML before, but not a secretary. lol. Do you have the Perry plan going? Almost NO wards out here do, which is REALLY sad. We need to get on the Perry plan!!!

TRANSFER NEWS:::::

Elder Dursteler and I are still companions, nothing too exciting is happening there. We'll have to see what happens next time. :-p My MTC companion Elder Overocker is now my district leader. :-)

This is really wierd: All of the the sister missionaries that I came out with. . . . they went home this morning. :-O They've all finished their missions already! What happened?! We came out last month. Oh, wait. What month is it? . . . I don't know. Sister Farnsworth came up to me last week to shake my hand and I didn't get why. I was thinking "that's kind of random." And then someone told me they were going home! Woah!

Any way, a lot happened this last week, and I don't have much time. Brother Stokum's daughter died this last week, so he was not baptized. The baptism will be this Saturday. (I felt really bad when I heard his daughter had died :-[ He's doing good, though.) He's such a good man. The baptism is 3:00 Saturday if he still feels up to it. He has a lot of faith, and it's helping him get through this.

I also had to speak at another funeral (not for the Stokum's) on the plan of salvation. That was a lot different of a setting then what I am used to. I followed the family in speaking, so the son spoke, the daughter spoke, then me. So when I got up everyone was crying. I did my best to share some uplifting remarks on life after death and how their mother is now in spirit paradise.

We found several new people to teach this last week, which is great.

Oh, and I want my major to be
Computer Science,
I think. . . . It sounds closest to what I am looking for.
I'll talk to Pres. Bassett about the other things. . . .

Love,
Jason

*** I also thought I would include part of Jason's essay question for BYU as it pertains to his mission. I hope he doesn't mind...
....As a missionary in Arizona, most of my companions were wonderful people that worked hard, and so I had a desire to do the same. I was eventually assigned to one companion in particular that didn't work quite as hard as the rest. This was very difficult for me to handle. I had a strong desire to work as hard as I could, but struggled at what to do to correct the problem. I prayed for help, and then I did my best to talk to him about working harder. I'm not very good at talking to people about problems, but I prayed hard and did the best that I could. The problem was not immediately resolved, but after a while he finally came around and the both of us accomplished some great things. I've learned that you can't make anyone change, but you can be a good example and pray for help; and when you do, miracles happen.