Elder Baldwin and Marcus

It snowed one day, gone the next!!

Wakefield, VA  Companion Exchanges

Elder McClure and Elder Baldwin
Companion Exchanges in Wakefield, VA

Wakefield, VA

Wakefield, VA Chapel
Old Quaker Building

Email #8

Good morning Family and Friends!!!

 

    This week has been a more successful week. Thank goodness!! We definitely needed some success after the last week. We were able to get 3 new investigators this week which is awesome! Marshall and his wife (Dont know her name :/ but we will get it today :). ) and another girl named Angelique. All three of them seem pretty interested in the church and what it has to offer. I'll start with Marshall and his wife....they are the couple that we stopped and helped cut the tree down. We had our first lesson with them last tuesday and it went really well. He has been a Jehovah's Witness for quite a few years and I dont know exactly what her religious background is. She actually didn't sit in on the lesson because she had to take a phone call at the beginning of it. But Marshall was very receptive to the message and the Restoration and sees some truth behind it. They are both very nice people and always express how grateful they are for having us over to talk to them especially when we did that random act of service for them. Marshall is having some health problems along with his wife. We have our 2nd lesson with them today on the Plan of Salvation and plan to extend the Baptism invite to them if the spirit directs us to do so.

   

    Angelique, our 3rd new investigator for the week, we somewhat tracted into. We didnt get a response to our door knock while actually tracting, but got a response to the pass-along card that we left her. She called us and we gave a brief description on what we do and  what we share. She invited us to come over and teach her about our church. We had our first lesson on Saturday and it went really well. She doesnt really have any religious background, but she is interested in learing about the Mormons. She gave birth to twins in May 2011 and one of them passed away. They were born pre-maturely and she is just now getting the other baby out of the hospital this week. Our next lesson with her is on saturday and we will be sharing the Plan of Salvation with her. We are hoping that as we teach her, the spirit will direct us on what we need to say so that we are able to address her concerns and answer her questions. She accepted our Baptismal invitation and set the day for April 7th. We are hoping that as we teach her these next few weeks that she will be able to gain a testimony of the gospel and keep the commitments she makes with us. I had a very good feeling giong into the lesson and had an even better feeling going out of it.  i cannot wait to see her progress and watch her interest in the Gospel grow as she finds out for herself the truth of the message we share.

   

    I did exchanges with Wakefield on Thursday-Friday after our District meeting. That was a huge learning experience for me, as well as the missionary i did exchanges with. It also made me appreciate my area even more! We got bashed pretty hard on Friday from a couple that we tracted into. FYI, we tracted atleast 6 hours when i was there...... and for those of you who have experienced tracting before, you know how i felt. haha. but anyways, This couple was just there to try and prove us wrong. They had no desire or interest in learning. all they wanted to do was motivate us to stop doing what we were doing and essentially "move on with our lives." So we are sitting in there just listening to this guy talk and talk and talk about how he has been saved and that there is no prophet on the earth because men are liars, and prophets are liars. He was throwing scriptures at us and my companion and i had no idea what to do besides just sit there and try to receive promptings from the spirit on what to say. After the man was done, his wife jumped in. This is the confusing part.... for some reason she brought up how Jesus was born of a virgin and Joseph Smith wasnt. I didnt see any relevance of that to what anyone of us were saying but she said it. I thought for a second that she was trying to say that we worship prohets, but she didnt want to choose for us who we worship. This whole conversation was a train wreck. anyways, at the end of this mess, the gentleman asked if we could have a prayer before we left so i said sure, why not? He then went on to give his reason for the prayer and said, "ok, good because i am going to pray for you two young men to be saved and for you to leave this message you have behind and to forget all about what you are trying to share." i relpied, "so you want to pray to god for us to leave our message behind and to pretty much move on with our lives?" he said, "yup" then i said in response, "well then, no thanks. We know what we have said today is true and that there is a prophet called to this earth to give us guidance and counsel to help us return to live in the presence of our heavenly father again." and that was the end of it. we walked out and and just pondered what the heck happened. we both were in awe. We said a prayer to bring the spirit back and moved on with our day. sometimes all we can do is bear witness to what we know is true. Our testimonies are the strongest part of the things we share. without knowing for a fact that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that the Book of Mormon is truly another testiment of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith was the prophet called to restore this true and only true church to the earth, we wont be effective missionaries. We have to know for ourselves the truth of the Gospel. It was a huge learning experience for me and it motivated me so much to continue what im doing.

   

     Other than that experience in Wakefield, i was able to witness a dog throw up twice right in front of me while talking to a man. That was pretty cool. haha. best part was that the other dog walked up to it and ate it!!!! hahahahaha. dogs are sweet. We also were able to eat at a restaraunt called La Hacienda. A member owns it and feeds the missionaries for free whenever they want. I got some Carne Asada that was pretty bueno and also got a couple Sopapillas! dad knows what those are from our hunts in texas. good stuff right there!

 

    Friday night we went to the Brunswick High School basketball game for the Regional Championship. They won, of course and Bro. Dilworth's nephew had an awesome game. He was dunking all over the place and i think scored 30 of the 68 points. He accepted the offer to play and Virginia State University and he is only a Junior. Going to those games are awesome. the environment is so crazy. the crowd gets so into it and sometimes i think im at a football game with the way the fans get all crazy. haha. its legit and its too bad they dont have anymore home games for the year. They go to Richmond to play in the State Championship. Bro dilworth will keep us updated though.

 

    It is hard to stretch money. especially since we dont get many dinner appointments from the members. we dont have any scheduled so far for march, but plan to send the dinner calendar around this sunday. hopefully some appointments will pop up. February was an Ok month. we had i think 2 a week? not too sure.  I will put my pictures on a cd this week to send home. i will also send a couple with this email.

 

    I dont know what i need to do with the ASL study. We weren't able to study at all this week becuase of our busy schedule. but we have it in the plans for this week. If you could look through my school stuff, i dont know if i save my books or not. i might have to buy some. Maybe ask Art Jarman what books will be good? I need to get some asap!

 

    Sounds like you all have been pretty busy! That is good! I got a letter from Addy this week. i already wrote her back today.

 

    Sounds like ian is still enjoying Volleyball. That is awesome that dad was able to bring Tyler Given over to hangout with him. I am sure they enjoyed themselves! What else has Ian been doing?  Sounds like Kennady is going to be a good little catcher huh? thats super cool! following her brother and dad! atta girl haha. give me the update on how their games go and how they do individually. i know they will do great!  The Grand Canyon trip sounds like a lot of fun! that will be sweet going there. i dont remember too much of it other than that it was beautiful! let me know how it goes! I love you all and miss you!!! Thanks for emailing me and i look forward to hearing from you soon!!!!

 

Love, Elder Baldwin

 

Email #7 continued

   I forgot to include a bunch of stuff in yesterdays email, same with Elder Buckley to his family so we decided to come to the library today to write another one. You might as well delete the other email i sent because i am very disappointed with the lack of effort i put into it. Please accept my apology.

We didnt do too much yesterday for p-day. There really isnt anything to do in Lawrenceville and we can't drive to South Hill or Emporia because we are limited on miles. We did our laundry at Bro. Aldersons house, worked for about 3 hours, 11am-2pm and had a lesson with 2 of our investigators. It went well, and they are seeming to understand the Book of Mormon more and more as we read it with them which is good!! One of them prayed about it after he read and he said that he is already seeing signs from praying. It was so awesome to hear that from him! Hopefully his testimony of it can grow after his experience. The other gal didnt read or pray, so we invited her to do that.   We cant really move on with teaching them until they read the book that holds all of the truths of our religion.

    Today we have an appointment with the gentleman we helped out in his front yard that one day. We went by his house this past week to see how he was doing and we sat in his living room and chatted for an hour and were able to meet his wife. We asked if he would be interested in learning about the gospel, but told us he had to run it by his wife first because they do everything together. He asked his wife right infront of us and gave him a "sure, why not?" We have a returning appointment with him this afternoon and we are going to teach him the restoration lesson. If the time is right, we will invite the both of them to be baptized but only if the spirit directs us to do so. After our appointment with Marshall, we are going over to a members house to help them move. I think they are moving to North Carolina??? I dont know for sure, but that will be good helping them pack up. He told us that he has been working with his neighbor to accept the missionaries into his home to take the discussions so he is going to take us over there to meet him. Hopefully we can set up a time to go meet with him!! The only problem is that they live at the very edge of our area boundary and takes us 30-40 minutes to get there which means going out there is going to eat up our miles. oh well, just as long as we get to teach someone, im okay with it!!! Thats about all that is happening for today... a member is dropping our dinner off at the church and then we are having a lesson with Woody, a recent convert, after dinner. We are going to show him "Prophet of the Restoration". I love that movie!

    The biggest exciting part for the week i left out of the email yesterday!!! So a great opportunity has risen from one of the members in the branch. Her name is Starr and is really struggling with her health. She had a cochlear implant, but had to have it removed ( i dont know for what reason) but, she is waiting for some financial help to get her new hearing aids that are $9500 a piece. Until then, her 10% hearing isnt going to do her well, especially since it is gradually decreasing. I heard of all of this from the Elders Quorum president's wife, Sis. Lewis. As she was telling me about Starr, she was saying how they are studying a couple times a week trying to learn sign language so that when the time comes to when she cant hear anymore, she can resort to signing to people. I immediately offered my willingness to help them learn as far as it is approved from President Perry. I contacted Pres. Perry the following Monday to get approval and of course, he approved it. So, I am now helping Starr out along with Sis. Lewis in learning ASL. I am very rusty, so it is a great opportunity for me to relearn a lot of what i learned at Lakewood High. I might even have to interpret for her in church if her hearing gets worse before i leave the area. So please keep me in your prayers so that i will be able to learn and pick up signing again!!! I will be eternally grateful! and also, please keep Starr in your prayers. Thank you so much!

  Thank you to everyone that sent me a package for Valentines!! They were awesome! the couch is full of all the treats that were inside of them! haha. I dont know how im going to be able to eat all of that stuff! 

   This week looks like it is going to be a full week which is good. We already have a lot of apointments set up and hopefully they dont fall through!! That is the most frustrating thing when you get a phone call saying that they have to reschedule, but that's part of the work. Just have to pick up whre you left off and move on from there. We are using a lot of the dvd videos to teach people. It is a great tool especially when you notice that they get more interested in watching something rather than listening to us teach. We try to get our investigators involved in the lesson by asking them questions and letting them talk a lot, but some of them dont want to do that. they would rather us sit there and talk the whole time which is not affective at all because we dont know if they are truly understanding what we are teaching! We are working on it though, and are definitely seeing improvement on our investigators behalf.

    The Snow is already melted from Sunday night. Lame huh? Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Sunday night was boring because we were in the apartment from 7 til we had to go to bed.  Well, Thats about all the news for this past week and for the following week. I love you all, and Miss you! Take care and i look forward to hearing from you next week!!!!

   

 Love,

       Elder Baldwin

As many of you know, Elder Baldwin took American Sign Language in High School for three years.  He really excelled in this and even received a Medal of Honor in Foreign Language for ASL at his Graduation.  Who knew that he would be using this on his mission.  The Lord works in mysterious ways and Elder Baldwin is definitely an instrument in His hands!!!  We are so thankful that he has this wonderful opportunity to use this talent in helping those in need!  What a blessing!!!!

Email #7

Good Afternoon!!!

So a member in the ward (Bro and Sis Lewis) let us come and use their computers to email home today. You are probably on the road back home, but I'll give you the run down for the week. 
We got snow yesterday!!!! a good 3-4 inches of it!! We had to go home early because Pres. Perry felt it was unsafe for us to be out driving on the icy/snowed over roads. Nothing really too special happened this week. We have to push Veronica's baptism back to march sometime. She wasnt able to make it to church this week because of work and she wasnt feeling well. We had a lot of lessons fall through this week, so we werent able to teach many people. Out of the people we were able to teach, 2 of them said yes to our baptismal invites so hopefully when we meet with them again on wednesday we can set them with a date. Im trying to think of what to write about, but nothing is coming to mind!!! 
We had a district meeting on thursday, which was pretty cool. The topic was baptismal invites and our training went really well. The whole point of it was to listen with our hearts so that we are able to address the concerns of our investigators about being baptized. We were able to use it in our lesson today with two of our investigators. the concern was "well i have already been baptized, why do i need to be baptized again?" so we had to explain about the priesthood the authority that comes from having the priesthood. They understood it after we explained it to them, but they want to keep reading and praying before they give us an answer. hopefully when we meet with them again, they will have received an answer and commit to baptism. 
I am doing a companionship exchange with Elder McClure in Wakefield. We are doing that on Thursday after our district meeting and will last til friday night. I was supposed to do one tomorrow with an elder from Rancho Cucamonga, Elder McDermott. He is a super cool guy and has been out one transfer longer than what ive been out. It fell through this morning because something came up in their scheduling that he couldnt miss. We have a full schedule full of appointments this week, so wish us luck!
The weather here is super weird. It rained all day yesterday til about 5pm and then it turned into snow. its 50 degrees today and all of the 4 inches of snow we got is already melted. Im pretty bummed because i love snow!!!!
So Jt's baptism was good? Was it good seeing everyone?  how was los al ward? Im sorry, i feel like im ranting on and im not giving any info on this past week. Hopefully this week will be more eventful and we will have more success!!!!! I love you all and miss you!!

Love,
Elder Baldwin

Pictures

Nametag

MTC District

Provo Temple

Elders Neumeyer, Baldwin, Durrant

Missionary Purpose

Elder Baldwin

First Ticket in Virginia

Thank you notes to members who have them for dinner
Elders Baldwin & Buckley

Thank you note

Thank you note

This Weeks pictures

Email #6

Well Good morn' to ya!

 

Got me a speeding ticket!!!! This week has been awesome! Not too much success with our investigators because our appointments kept falling through. But, with all of the fallen through appointments came an excellent opportunity to serve others. Because our schedule was so open through the day traveling to less-active members house, we found ourselves driving a lot more. We had just gotten done knocking on a door of an inactive family's house and nobody answered, so we left and started driving down the highway. We came up to a man outfront of his house cutting down a tree with his chainsaw and we ended up just passing him and waving at him. about 100 yards down the road, I told Elder buckley to turn around and lets help the guy out, he is an older gentleman and looks like he could use our help. So we turned around and got out of the car and offered him our help. He looked at us and laughed, so we took that as a yes and started loading the back of his truck with the branches. we spent a good hour and a half there helping him out, had a good conversation to get to know him a little bit. He lives at home with his wife and are battling skin cancer, and some other health problems and he told us that there needs to be more of "your type of people" around to make this world a better place. The man was really cool, very friendly, and is looking forward to us coming over sometime to maybe teach him about our church. The spirit sure does direct you to people and if it werent for me following the prompting i had received, we would have never met that man. It was a cool experience to just pull off to the side of the highway and to help someone we didnt even know.

 

Went and saw Billy again and he was telling us how one day he was watching a tv program on how drugs fry your brain like an egg on a frypan. He was actually smoking weed when watching the show and just sat on the couch and laughed at it. He then went on to tell us that weed makes you want to eat a lot and how one time he smoked and then went to mcdonalds and ordered 45 milkshakes, 30 orders of fries and so on, so forth. we gave him a restoration dvd to watch because he says he has nothing to do all day but watch movies and play with the cats, so we handed him one of those. hopefully he watches it sober and can feel the spirit. we will see.

 

So i got my Virginia Drivers license on Friday!!! pretty stoked about that! I drove for half of the day friday and all day saturday. We went to Emporia on Saturday and on the way there i got pulled over by the Greensville County Sherriff! hahahahahahahahaha!!! It was a 55 zone all along the highway and i had cruise control set at 58. I passed the 45mph sign without even seeing it, and was inside the 45 zone for about 150 yards. Elder Buckley says "oh, theres a cop right there" (not even realizing that i was speeding), the cop pulls out of the gas station, fish-tails it on the highway and at that point, i already knew he was coming for me. I laughed a little bit, and then he lit me up. Pulled over and handed him my temporary drivers license and told him "just got it yesterday sir" he laughed a little bit and then told me "ill see what i can do for ya." Now im thinking that im going to get out of a speeding ticket until i see him step out of his car with a pad of paper in his hand. i told Elder Buckley to take a picture of the sherriffs car behind us, and we took a little video also. It was so funny!!! One of those good mission stories i can tell years after im done. I called the courthouse to see how much this thing is going to be, and its only $6 for every mph over the speed limit plus a $61 processing fee. so its going to be like $120 or something because he helped me out a little bit and put i was going 56 in a 45 on the ticket. However, we went to CVS pharmacy to develop the picture of the cop car behind us and the lady working there knows us pretty well because we have invited her to church and everything and she tells us that she knows the officer that pulled me over and she will tell him to not go to court that day!!!! WOW! I was like for reals???? she said yup! just go to court that day and ill be sure he isnt there. So, im just praying that on April 6th, the Deputy with Greensville County Sherriff isnt at the Emporia Courthouse. Makes me feel a little bettter too that dad got a  speeding ticket on his mission! These little ho-dunk towns are speedtraps! 25mph every where, and they have nothing else to do but pull people over. 

 

We are still shooting for Feb 25th for Veronica's baptism. she has to go to church one more time, so if she isnt able to make it next week to church, we will have to push the baptismal date back to march sometime. hopefully she will be able to get work off to make it this sunday! we are praying for a miracle to happen. Marcus is still doing good, we watched prophet of the restoration with him last night at the church building and said that he wished he were there to punch the guys in the face who killed Joseph Smith. It is good in a way, because it shows that he has a testimony of Joseph Smith. Marcus is so cool, we play ball with him eonce a week to get him out and about and let me tell ya, he has a good shot! you could tell that he grew up playing streetball with the boys in the neighborhood.

 

We got a new investigator this week, and a couple more contacts too! We went to teach a lady and her son was in the house and sat in on the Plan of Salvation lesson and wants us to come back and teach him more! so we will be going over there tomorrow to teach the both of them. The other contacts we got were that man that we did service for on the highway and a family. the  family we met was at a christian bible study. we got invited to it by one of our former investigators, so we said sure why not! We got there and got preached to for about an hour about being healed. At the end of it, they invited anyone that needed to be healed to come up and pray with this guy and if we had enough faith, then he would heal us. It was a good experience to see other churches and how they taught, but the only thing i got out of it was reassurement that our church was the only true church here on the earth today and only through the power of God and the authority of the priesthood, may we be healed, only if it is God's will. but anyways, they pastor's wife of this church came up to us and invited us to her house, so we will be calling her this week sometime to set up an appointment. It will be interesting.  

 

Ian making the Volleyball team huh?! that is so cool! Im way stoked for you bro! You will do great! just continue to do your best and impress the coaches! let me know how your season goes and if you do end up dressing for Varsity! Man, im so excited for you!!!

 

Kennady also! how was meeting your coaches? and let me know how your first practice goes and how the team looks! That is so good that you are going out and playing softball again. You were always good at it and im so happy to see that you are continuing it. Practice hard! Church is very different out here! theres only like 60 people that show up to church and the building is very small! But the people are nice and we got the relief society president to get people to feed us more often! so that was good!!! we have to eat out here too people!! haha. But definitely let me know how the season goes! I love you!

 

So you all head out to california?! Man am i jealous! haha. That will be super fun and Disneyland will be a blast! give everyone a hug for me and tell them that i miss them! That is so crazy that JT is getting baptized!!! what an awesome time in his life! Im so excited for him and the decision he has made. Have fun in Califonia, and i will Email y'all next week! Stay safe and Have fun!!

 

Love, Elder Baldwin

 

Email #5 Lawrenceville, Emporia, & South Hill, Virginia

> Good morning y'all!
> 
> everything sounds well back at home. thats good to hear. Thats pretty
> exciting that Kennady is now signed up for softball and that she had
> a good tryout! Good job Kennady! you will do great! and im sure you
> will be put on a good team. Just practice hard and try to get better
> and better each day. Is Ian stoked for volleyball tryouts? Has he been
> practicing at all? I know he will make it. No doubt about it.
> Volleyball is a pretty fun sport, especially in the mtc when you are
> better than half of the people playing. some missionaries try their
> hardest, and thats all that matters ;) haha Just keep practicing and
> dedicate yourself to it.
> 
> I fasted yesterday for Dad. Got the impression that i needed to do
> that.  I pray every night for you and for everyone else!
> 
> So the Giants won huh? Must have been a pretty good game. We went over
> to a members house last night and the game just happened to be playing
> the same time we went over there. We got there in the middle of the
> 2nd quarter and left at about the beginning of the 4th quarter. Didnt
> watch much of it. We made some church cds we can listen to while we
> are driving from town to town.
> 
> So we had a zone meeting on friday. That was awesome. We have really
> good zone leaders and they taught us a lot about the role of the Holy
> Ghost in our investigators conversion. The spirit was definitely
> present and it opened my eyes even more to how powerful the spirit is
> when its teaching you. It is so awesome. If we can bring the spirit
> with us wherever we go, and constantly teach with it, there is not a
> doubt in my mind that we will start having more baptisms. When we went
> over out accountability reports for each district, we came to the
> conclusion that our zone alone will be having 14 baptisms within the
> next 2 months. it was so cool hearing about other districts success.
> one companionship in our district committed 6 people to baptism last
> week!!!! i was like woah! that is so awesome! As for Elder Buckley and
> I, we committed one! I was able to extend the invite to her and she
> gave me a "no prob!" haha. Her name is Veronica, Marcus' (recent convert) wife.

 So we are working with her to prepare her for
> baptism on the 25th of February. The only concern is that she works
> every sunday and isnt able to get it off for church. Where she works

 i guess their scheduling is done automatically on the
> computer and nobody is willing to switch with her. So please pray that
> a miracle will happen and that her work schedule will change so that
> she will be able to attend church. She has been once, and that was for
> Marcus' confirmation. She is committing to everything else and is
> definitely progressing, its just the church attendance that is going
> to be a problem.
> 
> We have a mission conference tomorrow up in Richmond. It will be nice
> to get a change of scenery in a more civilized area. It will be cool
> seeing grocery stores, restaraunts, and hotels, and all of that good
> city stuff. I guess the Health people are speaking to us. I dont know
> why though. haha. Elder Buckley and I are going to talk with Pres.
> Perry about our situation with Veronica and see what he says about it.
> Hopefully he will give us some good counsel to help the situtation.
> 
> I got my new camera. It is sweet. it takes really good pictures and I
> should be sending the old one back today. Thanks for sending out a
> package! I got Grandmas at the zone meeting on friday and it was
> stuffed full of goodies!!!! I also got one from Mikey and Sharon on
> friday!! I have so much good stuff to snack on now. along with some
> athletes foot cream! haah Thanks Mike! hopefully i wont be needing
> that! Being in a car will help a little bit im sure.
> 
> We went out to dinner with one of our investigators. Shes been
> investigating for a very long time i guess. She drove
> us down to south hill with her family and we ate at the "Down Home
> Buffet." Just from the name of the place, i knew i was in for a treat.
> Frog legs, Chicken Liver, Crawfish, Chitlens, etc. i didnt even know
> what to do with myself. I tried some Chicken liver, almost threw up.
> Looked at the crawfish, almost threw up. and watched her daughter eat
> frog legs, almost threw up. I ended up resorting to some good ol fried
> rice and chicken nuggets :) haha. The ride home was pretty cool
> though. I was going through the pictures on my camera and i came
> accross the Salt Lake Temple. she asked what it was, and i explained
> it to her. She asked if She could go inside, and i explained that to
> her too. Her kids really wanted to go to church, so she told us that
> she would go to church and bring the kids with her on sunday. after
> she said that, she told us that she really knows that she needs to get
> baptized. Her kids also want to be baptized. This week we are going to
> hopefully get in contact with her again and start teaching her and
> making sure that she is following through with her committments.
> hopefully within the next couple weeks, we can set 3 more people for
> baptism. 
> 
> They give us $145 a month on our Missionary Support Fund (MSF) card.
> its a regular visa card that the mission gives to us. which comees to
> a little less that $5 a day. ouch! its whatever though. whatever we
> buy, we just split the cost. like we went grocery shopping on
> wednesday and each of us only spent like $35 or something close to
> that. I cooked my first meal last night! good ol' spaghetti! it was so
> delicious. and we have left overs for tonight. Yummmmmmm! im going to
> cook those chicken tenders and noodle thing i made that one night for
> us. that should be pretty good also. i'll have to take pictures of the
> meals i make. they should be pretty interesting :)
> 
> So billy sounds pretty awesome huh? haha. he is a character.
> there was this guy in the library this morning when i walked in and he
> started talking to me. all i got out of our 2 minute conversation was
> that it was cold outside. he talked in some boom-ower talk. i just
> smiled and shook my head at him the whole time. it was hilarious.
> whats even more funny was that the lady that works here knew what he
> was saying!!! i was like, what the heck? how can you comprehend what
> the heck he was saying. all i could understand was "ya know" and "col'
> ou'sie" the rest was some jibberish that i wasnt even going to put any
> effort into trying to fugure out what he was saying. and he had like 3
> top teeth and one bottom tooth. I love it here. The people are great,
> and the branch really makes me fell like im at home.......if my home
> were in the middle of nowhere, and i was chasing pigs around the field
> all day. haha
> 
> I printed a bunch of pictures out, so i will be sending them in the
> mail shortly. so justkeep your eyes out for the camera package and the pictures. let me know how ian does in his tryouts. and

> what team kennady gets put on. i cant wait to hear about it!!!! Today
> is going to be busy! I have about 10 letters to respond to! my hand is
> going to be hurting tonight for sure! but i love mail! it makes the
> day 10x better when theres a letter in the mailbox for ya. keep em
> coming :) haha. I love you all, and thanks for the prayers! they are
> greatly apreciated.
> 
> Love always,
> Elder Baldwin
> 
>