CELEBRATING my ONE YEAR MARK!!

This week has been GREAT! Tuesday we drove to transfer meeting and i was able to visit with lots of missionaries that I just miss so much! I was also able to get my new companion... Elder Ricks! He is from Lindon Utah right next to Provo. Throughout my whole mission i haven't really had missionaries that i haven't really gotten along with but i love my companion and he is so much fun to work with and we can get along just great! So after leaving transfer meeting we headed down to Duncanville my new area! On the way we were super hungry so we ate at this place called Burguesa burger which is in oak cliff which is a very sketchy part of town. but this place was a Mexican burger joint and they made very good burgers! We got to our apartment and i got settled in and unpacked some of my stuff and guess what i sleep on.... a water bed! hahaha! oh man that was funny! its pretty comfortable too! The rest of the day we went out and worked and talked to lots of people!

Wednesday we had district meeting at the church and Elder Ricks is the new district leader so he gave his first official training and it went great! There is also a senior couple that is in our District and they are from Nampa, Idaho! So i was able to talk with them for a while and found out that they graduated from Meridian High long ago! They said about a 100 years ago.. that was funny. Our ward mission leader is out of town with his wife Right now so we are house sitting for him and we have to water all of his plants and also pick the tomatoes out of his garden.. that reminds me of working in our garden back home. We had weekly planning Thursday and that was a good way for me to learn more about the area and the people we are teaching. Later that night we went to teach on of our investigators. Her name is Sandra Rogers and she lives off a street called Gannon Ln. which is a very rough part of our area.. She is a black lady who had no toes on her left foot and she has 4 teeth and is super humble! A couple of weeks ago the missionaries shared the stop smoking program with her and she has been smoke free for over 2 weeks now.

Friday we mowed our ward mission leaders lawn and then we went out for the day trying to visit some less active people and we also dropped by some referrals that we had.. on of the referrals was growing a marijuana plant outside on his front doorstep! That just tells you the kind of area i am serving in now! We also had a lesson with another one of our investigators named Robert Good and we don't really know what we want to do with him because he says he knows the church is true and that the book of Mormon is true but he doesn't really put forth the effort in wanting to be baptized anytime soon! So that's the deal with him. Sunday was a great day at church.. I always love the first Sundays of being new in an area cause i get to meet new people.. The Mountain Creek Ward starts at 11 in the morning and we also cover a Young Single Adults Branch that meets at 1. So we are at church from 10 to 4 every Sunday. Well earlier this week my companion said.. "oh by the way.. we have to give talks in the singles ward this Sunday"! I have given so many talks on my mission its unreal! That is also the second time that has happened to me.. i get transferred to a new area and have to speak the following Sunday. It was a good talk though and i felt it went pretty good! It was about 98 degrees when we got out of church so we went home to change out of our suits and guess what!!! Our Air Conditioning broke!!!! it was 90 degrees in our apartment and there was no way i was going to be staying there that night! Good thing we are house sitting and so we just stayed at our ward mission leaders home last night.. Sweating in your own home unless you are working out is not fun!!! anyways that's how my week went! I reach my year mark this Friday! so exciting! time is flying by!

Here's my Address:

700 W. Center St. #264
Duncanville, TX 75116

Transfer to Duncanville

Last Monday we did the Juggernaut challenge like i told you we were going to do.. oh man it was ridiculous! 12 Scoops of Blue Bell Ice Cream and 6 toppings later i had the biggest stomach ache ever! The ones that tried eating one by themselves was Elder Howell, Bro. White, Scott Meager and me.. and the only ones that could finish it was Elder Howell and I.. Scott Meager was so close to finishing and then he just got up and ran to the restroom to throw up! It was pretty funny! Tuesday night we went into Scurry which is a really far part of our area that we don't go to very often! But we went down there and we went on member exchanges and i went to give a few blessings and teach the new member discussions to my convert Emma Drummond and Elder Howell went to teach another part member family in the ward.

Wednesday was a pretty fun day. We had a Specialized Training and so we drove into Dallas and got to see President Durrant and a ton of other missionaries! That was super fun! During the training everyone was asked to come prepared to give a 5 minute talk on (Revelation through prayer) so i got up cause they asked for volunteers and gave my talk.. i thought it was pretty good and i also used some notes from my talk last Sunday which was on having gratitude through prayer.. I really think that in order to receive revelation from our prayers.. we need to be grateful for the things we do have! During our lunch at our training we had a bracket set up for everyone that was there for a Free Throw contest.. That was really fun to see missionaries compete.. of course i didn't win but it was still fun:)

Thursday was quite an experience for me! We had a lesson that night back in Scurry with another part member family.. the Mcginnis'.. and we were also supposed to have dinner with them too... well when we get there she wasn't even there and only her friend Willy was there.. well since she forgot about us we started to leave and she showed up.. so we stayed and she made us dinner and we ended up teaching Willy.. We were supposed to teach her daughter too but she wasn't there.. well anyways.. we taught the restoration to willy and he had a lot of deep doctrine questions! But the weirdest thing he said was that he had the Gold Plates and he has had them for about 8 years now and he has been deciphering them since then. He said they are probably worth more than any of the gold in the world and that he wanted to meet President Monson to talk to him about them! It was quite a strange experience!

The rest of the week wasn't too awesome but we did get a phone call Saturday morning from the mission housing coordinator and he said.. "so you know how they are closing down your area" we had no idea that was happening.. but he also said.. "I'm coming to get some of your furniture" so he came and took our desks, dressers, and couch! So anyways.. we went about our day knowing we were going to be transferred.. but no one called us all day until Sunday morning! So they are closing down the Forney & Kaufman area and wont have missionaries in these wards for at least the summer is my guess.. because there is about 20 missionaries leaving this transfer and only about 10 coming in. so there is not enough missionaries going to be in the mission to fill the spots so they have to close down some areas for a while.. ever since i came to this area.. the Kaufman ward hadn't baptized in 2 years and Elder Howell and I baptized for them:)! So now my new area is going to be Duncanville which is south Dallas. Aka. The Ghetto! So No letters from anyone this week until i send my new address next week in my email. Thanks!

June 4, 2012

So my week was pretty full of fun and exciting stuff! My companion woke up Tuesday morning and could not speak at all.. He lost his voice and it was gone for 3 days! So during those 3 days i was doing all the Teaching, Talking at dinner appointments and sharing messages with everyone we see and talk to! Tuesday night we had our last lesson with Emma Drummond! I taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ to her and i say i taught because my companion was speechless haha! After that lesson we stopped by a part-member family that i haven't met yet and instead of getting to know the non-member husband... His daughter kept talking to me and distracting me like saying.. look at my bruise and look at my toes and look at how much money my dad has in his wallet.. it was super annoying and i was a little irritated! ha!Wednesday Elder Howell wasn't feeling too well so we stayed in the apartment till about 2.. and then we went to visit Sister Melissa Turnbow who was recently inactive and has started coming back to church and now working her way back to the temple!

Thursday was weekly planning and after that we went down to a part of our area called Kaufman. We stopped by a family called the JJackson's and i guess she is a babysitter and when we walked up to the door a lady that was dropping her son off to be babysat came to the door and told sister Jackson's daughter that she would handle this.. and told us.. "i am spirit filled and i am a Pentecostal and you guys can go somewhere else" so i told her "That's great! and we are here to see the Jackson's not you!" So Leona the daughter said that her mom would be home in 5 minutes and we could try back then! So we came back 5 minutes later and had a good chat with Sis. Jackson while that lady gave us the stare down on the couch! it was pretty funny! After like 10 minutes the lady left to work.. i guess she didn't know that the Jackson's were LDS! I ended up giving the daughter Leona  a blessing of comfort cause she is going to Brazil with the foreign exchange student that lives with them.. The hardest part of the blessing was the daughters name. (Leona Jean Shanda Masheek Jackson) Crazy! As we got to know Sis. Jackson we found out that she is a convert and she loves the missionaries and the funny part of all of that is.. Her name is Beverly and her daughters nick-name is Pookie!!

Kaufman is the only part of our area that has a Wells Fargo so we stopped in so i could cash a check and there systems were down they couldn't look up my account number since i have no idea what it was.. so she asked me if she could call anyone that would know and i told her my Brother Shea since he is a Wells Fargo Personal Banker! so she calls up Shea and he got my number and of course he wanted to talk to me so i got to talk to him for a couple seconds! that was way cool! Friday we had a lesson with a guy named Jess Moore and he has gone through all the lessons before and knows the Book of Mormon is true but cant get past the fact that we only have one True Prophet and not many! so i don't know what to do with him.. Hes way cool though and does a lot of studying with different religions!

Saturday we had our Baptism for little Emma Drummond and that was way awesome! A big turn out too! She was confirmed the following morning in Sacrament meeting and that was so awesome to see and be apart of.. During Gospel Principles class we ended up having to leave church early cause i guess something was wrong with the sewage in the church and it backs up a couple times a year! So that was pretty lame to leave church early! I know y'all are thinking that.. the Dilan i know would have been super happy to leave church early back home.. but i can tell you that the new Dilan wasn't haha! Sunday night we had dinner with the Moreirras and they have 10 children! not all living at home but still a lot and their house was destroyed.. it was super nasty! i don't ever want to live like that! And last but not least we went to Anna Voss's house this morning and she is a CPR Instructor and i am now CPR Certified:)! Oh one more thing.. Our walls of our apartment are super thin and i woke up the other morning to our downstairs neighbor snoring like a freight train! haha!

May 28, 2012

This week has been great! Last Monday we went to a farewell party for this member named Tanner Done who just left on his mission for Pittsburgh Pennsylvania! He was pretty cool for only knowing him for a couple weeks! I went to bed that night not feeling too well and i woke up not feeling too well either.. so i slept in and then we went to District Meeting.. The rest of the day we took it slower and then we had our baptism interview for Emma Drummond who is a 9 year old getting baptized on Saturday this weekend! We are pretty excited! Wednesday we were both sick so we stayed in all day until dinner.. we had to go to dinner because it was with a less active member who has daughters that were baptized not too long ago.

We were supposed to have a lesson this last Tuesday and Thursday with this referral that we received but he wasn't home both times so we don't know what we are going to do with him. We did have a lesson Thursday night with our other baptism date Ryle Burch.  Right after teaching him we went with our Ward Mission Leader Bro. Salgado to go teach Tina Lang our investigator.

 

 The whole rest of the week was dropping by less Active members.  

 

Weird and Crazy week!

This week has been a little slower than my weeks in my last area. I am still trying to get to know the area and find out where the heck i am at.. i have only been here for 2 weeks now and i feel so lost.. but most missionaries do when they go to a new area! Tuesday morning we went back to The Engels house (the one who let us email) and we mowed her lawn for her! and then she took us out to taco bell:). later that day we dropped by a less active member named Melissa Turnbow and she is a convert of about 5 or so years ago and is wanting to get back to church and back to the temple! We had a lesson with our investigator Emma Drummond that night and she is 9 years old. We set a baptism date with her last week for June 2nd and she is super excited for that! We went over the baptismal interview questions with her and she had no problem answering all the questions correctly!

On Wednesday we drove into Dallas for a Zone Conference and that was really fun! Instead of sitting down in the same seat for 6 hours and listening to lessons and all that jazz.. we were put into groups and we went from class to class learning about different stuff.. The main theme for this zone conference was Obedience and i think that is something every missionary can work on haha! It was also fun because i got to see a lot of other missionaries that i haven't seen in a while! one being Elder Sinclair my trainer! He was telling me that i need to go to BYU-IDAHO after the mission with him! I have no idea what i am doing after the mission yet! i still have 13 months to go! Apparently my companion told president that my talk with family was a little longer than usual and so president talked with me and scolded me:/! I'm not the kind of missionary that is going to tell on another missionary but whatever!

Thursday was weekly planning and then we went tracting for a while on a rich street.. i dont know why my companion picked that street but no one was willing to listen to us! not humble at all! We had a lesson with another one of our investigators that night named Tina! Apparently she has been meeting with the missionaries for a while and she knows the book of mormon is true but she works on Sundays and can not get it off! So i dont know what to do with her.. Friday was an alright day but kind of slow until our lesson with Ryle Burch! his name is pronounced Riley but spelled different! He is 13 and his mom is a member and they just moved to texas like 3 months ago from Colorado! Ryle met with the missionaries up there and is now meeting with us down here:) He wants to be baptized and we set a baptism date for him on June 16th! It was a struggle at first trying to get him to commit because he was shooting for a baptism towards the end of the year or into 2014! That was a little strange!

Saturday was such a weird day! So like i said.. We went to visit the lady in the Insane Asylum Hospital which is in Terrell Texas!! Terrell is like the Jacksonville of my area now..(The Ghetto)! We first had to Register to see her and then after we went in to get her.. her nurse told us that we had 3 hours to visit if we wanted to and there was no way i was gonna stay with this CRAZY for that long! So after meeting Kim Henley is her name! we walked out side and we asked her how long she had been in the church and she said her whole life.. and she said that she had a son that served a mission in Brazil.. and we asked her how long ago was that and she said.. well hes 24 right now.. and we didnt say anything because we figured she was calculating in her head how long ago he served and then she said.. This Visit is over! and so we walked her back to where we picked her up and this guy had to come unlock the door with a key and then we left! I felt so weird and creeped out after that very strange visit! We visited with a member that lives a couple blocks away from that place and we told him about our visit and he said that they hear sirens go off every now and then.. and when they go off he says that means someone is trying to escape! That is Creepy! So i also found out that the actor Jamie Foxx is from Terrell too! That was pretty cool! The whole rest of the day we were running into creepy people and i just felt super weird the rest of the day!

We had Stake Conference on Sunday and now the Forney ward is in a new stake that just got made! How many missionaries can say that they serve in 2 wards and 2 seperate stakes?? not many!:) But nothing too exciting happened later on that day.. apparently there was supposed to be an Eclipse but it was super cloudy so we missed it:(! But that was my exciting week for you:)

New area: Forney and Kaufman

This letter probably isnt going to be super long because i talked with mostly everyone yesterday so i will keep it short and simple! My new area is Forney and Kaufman but i'm not sure how long i will be in this area because Forney ward is joining together with a few other wards and creating a new stake and so considering that zones are made up of stakes and Forney and Kaufman will be in 2 separate stakes. I will probably not be covering those 2 wards for very long. The area that i am in is the biggest city area in the mission and it is still borderline East Texas. If i could stay out in East Texas for the rest of my mission i would defiantly take that in a heart beat! it is so much more prettier out there than the city. Too many people and traffic is horrible! My new companion is Elder Howell and he has been out for 20 months now so he is getting pretty old haha.. Anyways.. i dont really have any interesting stories today but i am sure i will have some for you next week, considering we are going to visit an inactive member who lives in a insane mental institution! I am pretty excited about that haha!

Police groundhog story - Transferring to Forney and Kaufman

This week was pretty good but slow. sorry this letter is a little short but i am in a hurry and i am also getting transferred after being in this area for 6 months! i am sad i am leaving this area but it has to happen at one point right? i am getting transferred to Forney and Kaufman.. it is part of the Dallas East Stake and i believe i am in my MTC companions district so that will be way fun! This week we taught just a little bit but that is alright. that happens sometimes in missionary work! on Saturday we helped this member that lives in Tyler and we tore up his whole kitchen floor! That was really fun and this member was also a sherriff so he told us a ton of his really cool police stories. He also had a video of one of his high speed chases that happened last year.. The guy they were chasing ended up stealing a police patrol car and they chased him for a good 20 minutes and then when the chase ended Brother Stricklands Ford F150 police truck was sitting in the front seat of the stolen patrol car! It was so cool! He showed us a lot of his police weapons that he has. One of the weapons was this massive shotgun and he was telling us this story.. So one day he was out in his garden and holes kept appearing everywhere from this Ground hog and he said that he saw some dirt come out of the ground and this ground hog popped his head up and was staring at him and he said usually he carries a gun on him but not this time.. so he ran inside and grabbed the first gun he could see and it so happened to be this huge shotgun.. so he ran outside and he said he blew this little ground hog like 2 or 3 feet below ground and smoke was coming out of every hole in his garden! I was laughing so hard at that story! Anyways.. apparently the police is preparing for war here because i guess Mexico is starting to come into Texas and kill people around the border. Brother Strickland says when they capture hispanics.. The hispanics say that they are not here to come to America but to take it over! so i guess thats whats going on right now. Yesterday was a slow day of packing and saying goodbye to lots and lots of people! My investigators were pretty sad but they understood that i needed to leave.  

Baptism for Paul Abendroth: April 28,2012

Monday we had a lesson with this black man named Sylvester Mosleyy.. I'm not quite sure how much he is progressing but he does tell us that he looks forward to us coming over every Monday night to see him. Tuesday night we met up with Paul Abendroth to set up his baptism for this week and he was super excited! He told us that he had a friend that told him that he was being baptized for all the wrong reasons and that he shouldn't go through with it and he told his friend.. despite what you say i am doing what i want to do! That was really cool to hear that and to know that Paul really knows this gospel is true! As far as Kandie, Anna and Rickey go.. they are still pretty neutral and not to sure how much progression there is there but still hope!

 

On Wednesday we were tracting some apartments and ended up getting kicked out of them.. apparently were not supposed to be doing that when i have a paper that says its a protected right under the first amendment.. apparently the constitution and all of that stuff don't matter to this country anymore.. who knew? We had a lesson during the afternoon with this lady named Minnie Morgan who we tracted out! She seemed pretty interested and we taught her the restoration and then she said that she is a member and used to have The Elders over to eat at her house when she was a kid. She does have a daughter that may be interested though so we will just have to see where that takes us. We got her information and requested her records to see if she really is a member and if she is not or we cant find her records then we will have to make a new record;) meaning baptize! haha.

 

Thursday was pretty slow.. But on Friday we went to this health care center where we visit a member that lives there.. She has MS so she cant walk or come to church so we visit her every week! We met a lady that was there temporarily because she broke her leg and we went to visit her that day too.. Her name is Colleen Ralson and i think i may have mentioned her in other emails but she read the Book of Mormon in 2 weeks and i think she just read it to find fault! Well when we were visiting her she was just arguing with us and the conversation was going no where and i was getting super frustrated so i just stood up and told her that werewere leaving and so we did and we are not going back!

 

Saturday was the best day this week! We had to be at the church at 9 to fill up the font cause it takes 2 hours to fill up! The Baptism for Paul started at 11 and there wasn't too much people there but the Spirit was strong! A man named Brother Scott Lloyd gave the talk on Baptism and it lasted 30 minutes! It was super long for a baptism talk when they are supposed to be like 5 minutes but it was super good! He went into detail about how baptism ties in with taking the sacrament! After the baptism my Ward Mission Leader told me that ever since i have been in this area we have been teaching like crazy! He said he remembers with previous missionaries that when he signed up to go out with them they would just do drop by's but with me we always have a lesson to go to! So that made me feel super good inside!

 

On Sunday we were standing at the doors waiting for Paul to come in and it was about 5 minutes until sacrament was going to start so i was getting a little scared thinking he might not show up but he did! And he was confirmed a member of the Church! That was really cool! I love seeing people change their lives for the better:) We are supposed to have another baptism for Kylie and Lexie this weekend but I'm not to sure how solid they are quite yet. so i guess you will find out next week! haha.. Before going home last night we stopped by to see Rickey in his trailer and i knocked on the door and he was yelling and sounded really pissed off! well he let us in and he was a little drunk but he sat and talked to us for 45 minutes about how Kandie his own sister lied to him.. Apparently she promised him work when he moved up here and right now he doesn't have a job so hes really angry with Kandie right now!

 

Well that's how my week went and i hope it was very entertaining:)

3rd talk in 6 months in same ward!

We had another great week! Tuesday night we had a lesson with our baptismal date Paul Abendroth. We taught him the main commandments that he needs to be following for baptism. Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, Tithing and Fast Offering and other ones. He said that he would follow all of them and keep them! He's getting baptized this saturday and we are so excited!

Wednesday we had Interviews with President Durrant and that was awesome! I love being able to see president.. sometimes i feel scared though cause i know hes the boss and i dont want to do anything stupid when he is around. well Elder Hedberg President that i write letters on other days besides mondays and so president talked to me about that and that irritated me a little.. so i was kind of mad at my companion that day and then he got mad at me cause i said i would be ready in 10 minutes when my hour lunch was finished so we were pretty much both mad at eachother and so i told him that we needed to resolve this concern and so we sat down and worked stuff out. There is no point in going out teaching if the spirit is not in our companionship.

On Thursday i went on an exchange with my Zone Leader Elder Mcomber. The reason for our exchange was so he could interview Paul.. well Pauls interview that night was super long. i think it was probably like 45 minutes long! After the interview we sat down and taught paul a few more commandments.. After we left Elder Mcomber said that we need to stay on Paul because during the interview when he was asking him if he is willing to obey the Word of Wisdom he said yeah.. i am not drinking caffeine and i even got decaf tea! Apparently when we taught him the word of wisdom he figured it was the caffeine that was bad not the tea.. even when we told him that drinking soda was not part of the word of wisdom. So Elder Mcomber told him that he needed to give him the tea and paul said that he bought a new gallon that day.. so Elder Mcomber made him promise to give the tea to his dad! Paul is very dedicated and i know he will be ready by Saturday!

The rest of the week went pretty good but nothing too exciting.. we had an investigator drop us but thats missionary work! But on Sunday Elder Hedberg and I had to give talks in the Whitehouse Ward and right when i stood up to give my talk.. this is what i said: "Good morning Brothers and Sisters. My name is Elder Christensen.. I have been serving for 10 months and I am from Boise Idaho.. Go Broncos"! hahaha.. then i said "i think i have set the record for the most times a missionary has spoken in this ward in 6 months.. this is my third! everyone was laughing:)! My talk was on how Prospective Missionaries prepare to serve full time missions. I felt like it went pretty good.. A member after told me that she needs to get that information from me because she has a son leaving on his mission soon!

Special message from Investigator.

This week has been great! After Preparation day last Monday we went to teach this man named Sylvester Mosely.. Hes a black man that we tracted into and so we went back and taught him The Restoration. It was a really good discussion with great questions and we left a Book of Mormon with him and we are going back tonight to teach him again.. Tuesday we had District Meeting and that was good. We went home to eat lunch after that because President Durrant has asked us not to eat lunch as a district anymore to save us more time for prosolyting! Later that night we had a lesson with a new investigator that we tracted into as well. Her name was Beverly Chandler and she is pretty interested in learning more and our discussion was good. We had a member go with us and his testimony was pretty powerful when he talked about Prophets and why we need them today!

On Wednesday we tracted all morning long and i got yelled at by an old grumpy man. It was so hard for me to not lose my temper and plow right through him. he made me pretty angry! We had dinner that night with the old stake president and his wife (The Nielsen's)! I love eating at their house. they are so funny but the only bad thing is.. is that he is a food pusher and by the time i leave their house i am stuffed! We had a lesson later that night with Kandie and Anna and we taught them about Tithing and Fast Offerings. that was a good lesson and i committed them to fast one day this week and for the purpose of quitting smoking... Thursday morning we had a lesson with Tom Deborello and it was great.. It is kind of irritating how he doesnt grasp the concept of a "God".. he says he pretty much needs physical proof and God is not going to come through the roof and appear to him so he needs to have lots of faith! Later that night we had another lesson with our baptismal date Paul Abendroth! He is so ready and is super excited! We finished teaching him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and our member that was with us.. Scott Lloyd was very bold with him! He was asking him alot of questions wanting to know if he really knows this is true and stuff like that! It was good for him though. One question Bro. Lloyd asked him was "Do you feel like you would be ready for baptism on April 28th?" and Paul replied "I already am ready!" That was so Awesome to hear!

Friday morning we met with our new investigator Colleen Ralson and we ended up giving her a Book of Mormon last week and when we met with her Friday she was already to Alma 20! I was shocked! But instead of teaching her the Plan of Salvation like we were planning on doing. We answered a lot of her questions. I dont think she is reading it for the right reasons but reading it so she can "try" and find fault! That was a little irritating. Later that afternoon we drove out to Jacksonville and picked up a member Bro. Jack Parmer (He is an 83 year old that was baptized last year). We drove to our investigators Jennifer Herrington and shared with her The Gospel of Jesus Christ.. She seems to be doing good but i think she needs a more solid testimony and she needs to quit smoking! Saturday was a good day but it seems like every Saturday we do a lot of tracting! We didnt have a dinner appointment so i called our investigator Kandie and asked her if she would feed us and she said she would. so we went over to her house for dinner and while she was getting her food ready she gave me a letter that she wrote and it said this:

Dear Elders:
I would just like to take the time to tell you how much i really appreciate everything that you and all of our other Elders do to make a differance in peoples lives. As a child i was broken.. i had a very abusive life between and alcoholic mother and a neglective father. It is true as a child you need to choose your own path and unfortunately my path was the very wrong path. i consistantly ended up in very abusive relationships (up till now) and suffered the loss of a very beautiful duaghter.. Amanda Lynn. I was blessed to carry her for nine months but unfortuantely her life was cut short almost as well as mine. God saved me for a reason and i really had a problem with that. i never understood why after all of the mistakes and bad paths i had put myself into. As time went by i was given another chance in life. i believe it was his destiny but i was blessed with two more daughters. after being blessed with both of them i fell again into the worst path you can imagine. i turned to drugs slowly but surely i saw and felt myself drifting away almost thinking there was no place in this world for such a mistake like me! Until one day i had a knock at my door and i met the most amazing people in the world! My first Elders.. Elder Lindsey and Elder Hawkey. They my Elders never judged me. They directed me and gave me the answer i was looking for.. I do belong! Jesus Said you are my child no matter what you have done in your past and as for the abusers and the people that have tried to detour me from my feelings. i have been given such an amazing gift to forgive them and to just go forward! That i have! For the first time in my life i feel as though i truely have a purpose in life thanks to my newest Angels.. Elder Christensen and Elder Hedberg! And of course The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints. You have truely touched my heart and gave me hope. New hope in life and the belief that i also will get to see my little girl Amanda Lynn again! I truely love Every single one of you with all of my heart and have got to say that i thank you from the bottom and the top of my heart! I love you! Thank you so much for making me feel so free.. so new! your sister/friend.. and growing closer to the lord- Kandie Towne!

After eating dinner we had a lesson with just Kandie because Anna was at work and she told us that she had been fasting all day for the desire to quit smoking! i was so excited to hear that and that reassured me that she really does want to change! Church was great yesterday and we had a lesson with Kylie and Lexie.. our investigators that Elder moses and I began teaching. we had not met with them in a while and so we had a lesson. we just read them the baptismal interview questions and they answered all of them right on the money! we figured out that the reason they were scared to get baptized was because they felt they were too old! we fixed that problem pretty darn quick and set a baptism date with them for May 5th! Cinco de Mayo! Later that night we had dinner with a less active family and this man used to play football for TCU! He played back when Ladainian Tomlinson played with them so that was pretty cool to hear! Well that was my week and i am tired haha!

Texas Tornadoes and Easter week

So this week has been awesome and i am so loving the mission! It is defiantly hard work but so rewarding! Tuesday we had a lesson with Kandie and Anna and i think it went alright. we taught them the Ten Commandments and Kandie was really happy that we did that cause she told us that Anna has been snooping around her house and stealing their stuff.. so there is something definatly going wrong there! We went in about 7:00 Tuesday night because a huge Thunderstorm was rolling in and also Tornado warnings! Dallas was hit earlier with 11 Tornados and destroyed a lot of property but luckily no one was killed! Me and my companion were standing out side looking at the skys and right about us there was a "Wall Cloud" forming about us. which means this cloud was forming in a circle and about to drop a tornado down on our appartment! That was way scary! but luckily it didnt! That whole night it Stormed until about 1! Then the next day it was completely clear! Wednesday we drove towards the Frankston area and we went to visit some less active members.. one member we stopped by lives with this man and they are not married but they live in this private subdivision with a private run way and everyone that lives there has their own hanger and own airplane. well... almost everyone. This member had an air plane and we got to see it and that was pretty cool! We stopped by this other members house and she was like 80 and on oxygen. her dogs came running out and barking and then all of a sudden we start hearing howling sounds. i ask her what that noise was and she said. "Oh thats my neighbors wolves!" Her neighbor is an Indian and has 5 Full Blooded Wolves in a cage in their backyard. It was kind of cool but kind of sketchy at the same time cause those wolves wanted to take a bite... or two out of me!
On thursday we went to this mans house and his name was Jim.. he called us the day before and was telling us that he needed help cause his neighbor said his house looked abandoned because of how tall the grass and weeds were that was growing in his yard. He had got our phone number from some missionaries like a year before. So we went over to his house and his yard was a mess! So we spent 2-3 hours mowing his lawn and making it somewhat better looking. He wasnt a member but i invited him to come to our service this sunday and he said he would but he didnt come! That night we had a lesson with Paul Abendroth and Jennifer Herrington both at 7. So we had to go on splits with some members. I went with Joe Odom the Stake Patriarch and Elder Hedberg went with Bishop Brent Hill! I taught Paul about the Word of Wisdom and half of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The only thing he has a problem with was drinking tea.. But everyone in Texas has a problem drinking Tea! I asked him how he felt about baptism still and he said. "i feel really good. i think i will be ready for the 28th" i was so excited to hear that! he also said that he believed Joseph Smith 100%! That was even better to hear!
Friday was a good day. We went back over to Kandies and Annas to stress the importance of coming to church and they keep making up excuses so if they dont start progressing. we may need to drop them and i dont want to do that! Cause i really love these people and want to see them make and keep Committments! After lunch we went on an Exchange and Elder Cardenaz (Spanish Elder) came with me to my area and we went to visit some people. That night we had a lesson with Zoe, Tad and Kallie Nackos. They are so ready to be baptized but there mom isnt a member and hasnt given permission yet:/! We watched the last session of Conference with them cause they didnt watch it. I colored a picture of Spongebob and Patrick while we watched it haha! I'm really working hard i swear!;)
Saturday Morning we went to visit this member in hospice and ended up teaching her neighbor that seems pretty interested. Her name is Colleen Ralson and she is only there for about 2 more weeks and then she goes back home. she broke her leg and thats why she was there. Later that night we went to visit Tom Deborrello! He wasnt home for our appointment earlier this week so we stopped in on him and had a lesson with him. He still doesnt know if there is a god and he prays to Jesus Christ not god. So we committed him to pray to God and ask him if he is there and he said he would do that.. so we will see what happens. Sunday was a fantastic Easter and was a very special day.. Where we get to remember our Savior Jesus Christ and what he did for us! I hope you had a good Easter as well!

"Texas doorbells" and Conference weekend

My week was awesome! Tuesday morning we had a lesson with one of our investigators named Tom Deborrello. He is 70 years old but looks early 50's. We taught him the plan of salvation and he told us that he wants to believe it but he just cant get past the concept that there is a god and he loves each and every one of us.. He tells us that he prays to Jesus Christ and can gain great comfort by doing that. so as of right now we need to find a way to wear he can feel the presence of God or see a sign that he really exists.. We tracted a lot that day and found a few potential people. We tracted in a trailer park and dogs everywhere.. every day i come home smelling like dog cause everyone here in Texas has a dog. We call them the "Texas Doorbell" cause every house we knock on you here barking inside haha. well later that night we tracted houses and a lady opened the door and let us right in.. Her name was Beverly Chandler haha.. My moms name and friends last name! weird right? well we got her information and now we hope we can get back in to teach her. We taught Kandie and Rickey later that night.. Anna was at work so she wasnt there.. we taught them the importance of praying and reading the scriptures.. they are coming along pretty well but we need to keep on them!

On Wednesday we had District meeting because of transfers and it was Elder Hedbergs first training.. it went well! That day we went to Bullard Ward boundaries and went to see less active members.. later that night we had a lesson with our investigator Paul Abendroth.. we taught him the Plan of Salvation and he really liked it and he wants all of this to be true! He met a girl online who is a member in Utah and this is how he became interested in the church.. I asked him to be baptized and he accepted:) He has a date set for April 28th so hopefully he will progress to that date. I know he will:) On Thursday we went over to a members house and helped her and her dad burn this huge burn pile.. it was probably 30 feet long and 15 feet wide and about 15 feet tall! this fire was huge hahaha. I loved this because y'all know me... i like to play with fire.. Pyromaniac!l I did not burn myself as i was throwing gas all over the fire;) but i did destroy this huge Fire ant hill by stabbing it with sticks that were on fire.. i got bitten a few times but not bad haha.

The rest of the week went pretty mellow until Saturday came! I love Conference!!! Every session of conference was fantastic! I think the Priesthood session was the best though.. it always is haha.. sorry all of you girls out there;)! we did not have any investigators come to the Saturday sessions but on Sunday Paul Abendroth came and watched the whole morning session and afterwards i asked him how he liked it and he said that he liked it a lot and that i brought up a lot of stuff going on in his life and he said that he was going to go home to take care of that.. I think he was talking about Repenting! I'm so excited.. He came back to the Afternoon session too and he really liked it! So we have another appointment with him this coming Tuesday and we are taking the patriarch with us:) My favorite quote from this conference was By Elder Donald L. Hallstrom and he said this at the end of his talk: We need to be fully converted to his church and fully converted to his gospel!

Visiting the Zoo, teaching in the thunderstorm, wrestling with goats, and ...more injuries

My week has been great! On Monday we went to the Tyler zoo and saw all different kinds of animals. that was really fun! and.. yes we are allowed to do that:) later that night we had a lesson at our investigators house. the one that just showed up to church. So we taught him the restoration with bro. tannery our ward mission leader.. Well Paul is his name and he is in the process of building his house and so he lives in a trailer right next to it. since his trailer is too small to sit in we sat on some lawn chairs outside and started teaching.. well while teaching it started thundering off in the distance and then it started sprinkling.. so we moved the chairs into his half built house which does have a roof on top of it. a Tin Roof to be exact.. you can probably tell where this is going. well as soon as we started teaching about joseph smith it started pouring rain and my ward mission leader was about 3 feet from our investigators face yelling at him because it was so loud because of the rain! hahaha. funny how that happens right? it was pretty funny though.. On wednesday we drove to Longview which is about 40 miles away from where we live.. We had a specialized training where we were trained by President Durrant and the assistants:) it was awesome! i love those meetings because they are so powerful and you get to see other missionaries and chat with them!

On Friday we had 2 lessons at 7 that night so we split off with members and i went to teach Jennifer Herrington with Bro. Price. She lives so far away from the church and it takes about 30 minutes to get to her house from the church.. well we read Alma 32 with her and its on faith! i love that chapter and explains faith very well.. well jennifer had a baptism date for april 7th but she needs to come to church 3 times and didnt last week so i reset her date for April 21st so hopefully she can make that date. She did come to church for the first time yesterday so we were excited to see her there! Saturday was a long day of tracting. I like tracting down County Roads which are roads where houses are far apart from eachother. i dont like knocking on houses that are right next to eachother. Well we were tracting saturday morning and i rolled my ankle but it was a bad one so we just kept tracting and then later down the street i step into a hole that i didnt see and rolled my ankle pretty bad. i was kind of mad because stuff like that happens to me all the time and no one else. (im referring to my companion haha).. well that night my ankle was double the size of my other one and now my ankle keeps popping. it doesnt hurt as much though.. we didnt get a transfer call saturday night so i guess im staying another transfer and Elder Hedberg is the new District Leader! He better not try to use that against me or somethins gonna happen. Hes already bossy as it is and i have to put him in his place!

Sunday was awesome and we had a very powerful testimony meeting in the bullard ward. i got up to bear my testimony. I love bearing my testimony to people. it doesnt scare me at all! That night we had dinner at the Atwoods house. The people that i got a hat from.. well they have over 300 acres of land and have a ton of animals. mostly goats though.. like 500 goats! well their 13 year olds son drove us around their land in a Ford F-250 truck. and i gotta say.. he was pretty good at it haha. They had to get all of their billy goats into a pen and so we helped them with that.. oh was that a task! after we got them in the pen we had to pull one out at a time so they could take a picture of them.. so i got in there and i was going to town on these goats! I grabbed them by the Horns and i was yanking them out of the pens haha. They tried resisting but were too weak for me;) Thats the week in the life of a missionary!

Allergy season arrives in Texas

The weather there does seem a bit crazy! but it is nothing like Texas weather. they always say.. if you dont like the weather then wait 10 minutes haha. that is so true. :)

My week has been crazy! but really slow because it was spring break here and a ton of my investigators were out of town for that. so our numbers didnt look so great:/! Umm... so spring has already started this year here in Texas and that means allergy season... yayyyyyy!!! NOT! every morning i wake up with a stuffed nose and our car is covered in pollen! it is horrible. Texas makes my allergies 3 times worse here than it does in idaho so it sucks!! So Tuesday we had district meeting and it was okay.. not as good as they usually are. it was on the effective use of the missionary planner and i already know how to use it so i guess it was just a refresher haha.

On Wednesday we went to Tyler to help the Tyler missionaries members by going to a storage unit and picking up this heavy shop table and some other stuff and taking it back to their house. after that we went to one of their investigators houses who is a Mexican and they made us some real Mexican food. it was so good! After that me and Elder Lefevre went on another exchange haha.. its like the 3rd one we have done this transfer. i love that missionary! he is so funny! we had dinner at a members house (walls) that night who has a really good looking daughter haha but she wasn't there:(! Friday was the only day we had a lesson and that was with Kandie and Anna. Rickey was sleeping so he wasnt there haha. but we did invite them to be baptized and they accepted so that was super cool! They will hopefully be baptized on April 21st if everything goes as planned! The rest of the week we tracted a ton and found a few potential people so hopefully we will start teaching them.

Saturday was when we tracted the most and that morning we tracted these trailer homes and this lady who was gardening out front came up to us and said "i know who you are.. you are Mormons!" she started yelling at us saying "your religion is false, the book of Mormon is not true, you should read you bible and not that trash!" She also said.. "do you know how joseph smith was killed" and i told her "that he was martyred in the Carthage jail" and she said "no he smuggled a gun in that jail and was shooting the guards so they fired back and killed him" hahah. she was way angry at us and i thought she was literally going to slap me!!! anyways.. we tracted all that day and then decided to go to this inactive members house and her son was there who was also inactive and they said they were going to Tyler for Chinese food and they invited us to join them! That was way nice of them.. Elder Hedberg prophesied that.. He said 2 hours earlier that maybe we will get dinner from an inactive family haha and we did:)!

On Sunday i helped the whitehouse ward bless the sacrament cause there was like no one there and so i helped:) its been a while since i have done that kind of stuff haha. But in Bullard ward a guy who i didnt recognize was there and my ward mission leader was talking to him and it ended up being a man who was investigating the church. He was actually a media referral that me and elder moses received when we were together. it was actually the first night we were together and my GPS took us to a road that didn't exist so we kinda dropped him.. well he showed up yesterday and stayed for the 3 hours and now we have an appointment with him tonight! we are excited! Later that night we did some less active work and visited this family who the dad is a high priest and used to be on the high council.. well he was very rude and told us to leave.. come to find out his wife wears skimpy clothing or whatever and someone made a comment like a year ago and that's what made them leave the church! pretty stupid! people don't realize that THE CHURCH IS PERFECT! NOT THE PEOPLE! so that was a little irritating! There you have it! my exciting week!

100% Rabbit Fur Cowboy hat, mysterious house with 8 cats and missing resident, Choctaw Indian and his "sweet grass"

First off i just wanna say that i absolutely hate daylight savings time when on a mission. well the springing forward one. the falling back is tons better! I had a member yesterday at church catch me yawning for like the 10th time! she told me that i have been yawning all day and that i needed to stop haha! But this week reminded me alot about plano.. Lots of tracting! oh so much funn!!! can you sense the sarcasm? On Tuesday we worked all day in Frankston Texas. That is where Brooks Atwood lives and works so we stopped into his hat store and i bought myself an all black 100% Rabbit Fur Cowboy Hat. so i am now one more step forward to officially becoming a real cowboy haha. i just need boots now:) We went out with the stake patriarch that night his name is Joe Odom. He knows so much its ridiculous! well we stopped by a member that has 2 types of cancer and he has like 2-4 months of living according to what the doctors say!:/
On Wednesday we were in Arp Texas and we stopped by a lot of inactive members and this one house we stopped at is a very nice house and he lives right on lake tyler. well we have stopped by this mans house a ton of times but i have only been there in the night so you cant really see anything. well that day we were there during the day and of course no answer.. but he has like 8 cats living in his house.. The same TV screen is on every time we go over there. his pool is almost black and has turtles living in it and his mail box is packed full and has a wasp nest growing on the mail! Me and my companion were like detectives haha. we were coming to the decision to where he just moved out of his house and left all of his stuff there.. or he killed his wife and then committed suicide and they are both dead in the house... what do you think? hahaha. but what are the cats living off of? their carcasses? sorry if you are getting nauseous at this point. well on to a better note.. we had a fantastic lesson that night with 3 of our investigators (kandie, anna, and rickey). we taught the restoration to them and then we invited kandie to give a kneeling prayer. it was so special and she said it was her first time and it was a perfect prayer!
Thursday was a lot of tracting and that night we had a lesson with Jennifer Herrington way out in the sticks of Jacksonville again. well we taught her the Plan of Salvation and then i committed her to baptism on April 7th and she accepted:).. she is a really quiet person but maybe thats just her personality. who knows? we had another lesson planned for Kandie, Anna, and Rickey on friday but they had to cancel because anna might have pneumonia and they had to take her to the hospital. The rest of the weekend was a little slow for us but while we were tracting yesterday a man across the street yelled and asked us how we were doing.. he also said we looked nice because we were in our suits. i think he was referring to me though cause im a boss:)! well this man was a Choctaw Indian and he let us in. well it went really bad because he was saying so much false doctrine. he didnt even believe god loved everyone! it was kind of sad. so i told him i find it hard to believe that our heavenly father would put us in families so we can grow and learn to love one another if he didnt love us. so that was pretty much the end of that.. he gave us some plants called sweet grass.. he said it was something they use in his tribe to get rid of bad stuff? Weird! Well that was my awesome week in a nut shell;)

Pictures from new area - Whitehouse

Beautiful weather in Texas!

I hope the weather is good where you are because it is B-E-A-UTIFUL! Me and my companion have been doing a lot better this week and im very grateful for that because it makes the work move slow and nothing really gets done because their is so much contention between eachother. so it has been tons better! On tuesday we had district meeting and it was great. it was more of a talk session than our district leader just teaching us. we talked about how we can work with less active and part member families more instead of tracting all the time and not seeing any success at all! So after district meeting.. me and the district always go to this real mexican food restaurant called Don Juans and always get Tortas. oh man they are so delicious! They are also the cheapest which is why we get them haha. they run about 3.50 for one. Well me and Elder Lefevre have been going on lots of exchanges lately if you hadnt noticed. because my companion doesnt have a license and Elder Lefevre cant drive because he got into a crash a couple of transfers ago. so when we go on exchanges with that companionship Elder Lefevre has to come with me and my companion Elder Hedberg goes with Elder Cardenaz.. Well we went on another exchange tuesday after district meeting and it was great! Me and Elder Lefevre worked a lot on the less actives in the ward and we ended up scheduling a few appointments with them. that night we had a member.. Bro. Price take us out to the sticks in jacksonville and met with a less active family and her son is inactive who has a non-member wife.. (you can probably see where this is going:)) Yep! we asked her to take the lessons and she said she was interested in learning more...:):)! So we scheduled an appointment for the following night! yay!

So on wednesday we exchanged companions back and we went to visit some of the less active families that we scheduled appointments with. that was very successful! we also went to our lesson that night to see Jennifer Herrington our new investigator. Bro. Brooks Atwood was the member that took us out. (He owns a really nice cowboy hat making company and i'm going to get a hat from him:) he charges half price for missionaries:)) well anyways. on the way out to our lesson of course the topic of politics came up and he is so conservative! He told us that he wishes this country would fall and that when it does he would bunker up at his house with all 15 AK-47's and enough ammo and food to feed 6 families for 2 years!!! hahaha. he also said that he would suck the blood from Obamas dying throat! It was super funny!! But on to a better note. we met with our investigator and taught her the restoration and the lesson went great. although im not sure how strong her knowledge is on the gospel or on our savior Jesus Christ! But thats why we are here and we will definantly fix that!:)

So we had another lesson with our other investigators Kandie, Rickey, and Anna.. that went well. we just finished the plan of salvation with them. Saturday morning we went to a Recent Converts house with the Elders and High Priests of the Bullard Ward and helped clean up his backyard. He is 83 years old and has not kept up with his back yard in who knows when. there was sticks everywhere. so we cleaned all that up and then we took it to a members house and burned it all! the fire was huge!! So yesterday was sunday and church was great! After church we went to our investigators Kandie, Rickey, and Anna's cause they invited us over for dinner. Rickey ended up smoking a turkey and Kandie made lots of italian food! it was so delicious! The downside of that event was.. they were all drinking and it made us as missionaries feel like crap cause the spirit was not there at all! so we didnt end up teaching the lesson we wanted to we just left after eating.. For the rest of the day i just did not want to do anything because of how bad i felt... but oh well! i got over that today:).

Meeting a General Authority, Elder Duncan

This week has been a rollercoaster of excitement and a companion who icant get along with quite yet.. On Wednesday we drove to Longview which is about an hour away for a Multi zone conference with General Authority Elder Kevin R. Duncan. He has been apart of the quorum of the Seventy for a year or less.. he was a mission president before that in the Santiago, Chile North Mission. It was great to be able to meet with a general authority and to ask him questions. He didnt come in to talk to us about what he wanted but he asked us what we wanted to learn and we spent about 5 hours on certain subjects that we felt like we could improve on. It was great and i definantly learned alot! Thursday night we went to Jacksonville to meet with Natalie Price and she is still struggling on quitting smoking but I told her that I know how special the power of the Priesthood is and I offered her a blessing and she accepted. In the past, she has always declined aPriesthood blessing but I testified how this blessing was a blessing from her Father in heaven and I know it would really help her. She asked me to give the blessing and that was a very spiritual experience. So while me and Elder Moses were together we did a lot of less activework in both wards.. and while we were visiting someone they were not home, but as we walked back to our car a lady from across the street yells "hey elders"! so we walked over there and found out that her name was Kandie Towne and she has been meeting with the elders since '98 and its been a while since she has seen us. Well on Thursday night i called to confirm our appointment with her for Friday night and she was crying on the phone for 30 minutes. She apparently got bad results back from a doctor and she was also saying how she really wants a change in her life. She said that her brother rickey and best friend Anna moved in with her and I heard her best friend in the background say.. tell them i really want to meet them and that i want a Book of Mormon! We told her that we really wanted to meet her too and she started to cry! So we went over on Friday and decided to teach the plan of salvation but only got through half of the lesson because there were questions going both ways and overall it was a very good discussion! They all said that alot of what we talked about cleared up a lot of things! So those are our new investigators that we are excited about teaching more.

New companion from Sweden and waking up at 12:30 am to teach an investigator.

I had a great week this week with my new companion! I picked him up on tuesday! His name is Elder Hedberg and he is from sweden! he has been out almost a year.. he turns a year old at the beginning of march. so he will be the third companion i have had that hit his year mark with me. After picking him up i brought him back home and let him unpack his stuff and then we went out for the day.. On wednesday night we had a rather weird appointment... It was with this referral we received from a member in the bullard ward. well this man lives in jacksonville in a senior residence/rehab center. well his name is Ronald Roach and he is 63 and we were talking to him about his religious background. well he told us he was saved about 15 years in a little black church.. the reason for him going to a little black church is because he says no one would accept him in any other church because of his voice... he told us when he sang he had a black man voice and he is white.. then he asked us if we wanted to hear him sing. and he just started singing to us. it was the funniest thing i have ever seen! it was so hard not to laugh haha. but as we taught him i felt kind of bad because apparently he has some stuff wrong with him and he cant remember very well so i dont know how much of our lesson he got out of it. i was teaching him to pray and i spent 5 minutes trying to tell him that we start a prayer by saying "dear heavenly father" and when i asked him how we started a prayer he would say "i forgot" and he just could never remember.. kind of sad..
i went on an exchange with my district leader elder lefevre on friday and we helped a 400 pound lady who is a recent convert mow her lawn because she is really not capable of doing that! but it was nice because it allowed us to do service instead of knocking doors for 3 hours.. you know.. the typical mormon missionary thing.. later that night we went to a spanish lesson and i just stood there listening. but when we left they were having a barbeque and spanish people always make tons of extras so they sent us home with tons of food! the best thing was a jalapeno pepper stuffed with cream cheese and then wrapped with bacon.. oh goodness its delicious! When i went to bed saturday night i was woken up at 12:30 by a potential investigator.. He asked me to talk to him about how his family can be eternal.. and i asked him if we could talk about it later that day and he said he wouldnt have time so i tried to concentrate while half asleep and was talking to him about how we will be a family forever and he also asked about tithing because he said he has been really successful his whole life.. it was a very strange conversation.. he told me that he will let me go back to bed while he sits alone in this huge ....... house.. he used a bad word but i wont repeat it.. i think he was drunk haha.
Church yesterday was great and everyone was very welcoming to elder hedberg.. A sister in the Bullard Ward is doing a biography thing on us and is going to publish it in the tyler newpaper. our pictures will be in it and everything.. pretty cool! We also had the opportunity in Elders Quorum to consecrate oil. that was a neat experience.. Before coming to email this morning we were at a members house doing laundry and he has a lot of property and he has a zip line that we were playing on. it was way cool. he even rode on the zipline and he is 73 years old haha. He also has this huge swing that you have to climb on this platform to get on because it has like a 45 degree arch. well i climbed higher thang the platform and when i jumped on it.. i fell off and ate it hard on the ground hahaha.. so there is my crazy injury story for the week.. i wasnt really hurt though. just banged up..