profound e-mail forwards don't exist. Case in point:

Never Have Regrets

Think about this. You may not realize it, but it's 100% true.
1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.

2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.

3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you. [I THINK THIS IS A COMPLETE LIE. I guess if you truly hated someone that might be the case, but as it stands, most of the time people who "hate" you just are bugged by you.]

4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don't like you.
5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.

6. You mean the world to someone.
7. You are special and unique.

8. Someone that you don't even know exists, loves you.
9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.

10. When you think the world has turned its back on you, take a look around
11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.

NEVER HAVE REGRETS!!!!

take that for what its worth, BUT DON'T EVER FORWARD IT TO ANYONE. e-mail forwards and spam are the filth of the internet.

Epistles (profound stuff i write when i'm writing letters):

2 Shauna ch 1:

We had a good talk last sunday about goal setting. I really liked it alot. Some time i'm going to take a plan in to action that someone recocmended we do.

1: write down 5 goals for life in 2 minutes
2: 5 goals for the next year
3: 5 goals if i had only 6 months to live
4: specific ways i've tried to achieve the goals in steps 1-3 in 5 minutes.
I thought that talk was especially profound, so if i ever have to give a training (missionaries are supposed to train each other once in a while) i'll probably use that one.

wow yall, transfers!

my companion is gone. He went to... brooksville as a district leader. I'm bummed he's leaving, but my new companion (elder woods) comes in on wednesday.

Elder Gilbert is gone, and i'm just as bummed about that, because he was the person i needed to look to for spiritual strength. He's going to serve with elder staples in land o lakes. Elder Staples was in my MTC district and is from southern utah. (st. george/alton)

Elder Crosby is staying.... which isn't such a good thing. he's kind of a lazy missionary, and breaks some rules... but whatever. He's going to be companions with elder rice who i hear is strict and will kill crosby in to shape.

i'll write more, but this is the temp update.

DL IS SICK!!! he hates life. I hope that i never get sick on my mission. It's gotta suck pretty hardcore.

Oh yeah, the worst day of my mission so far: DOING NOTHING!!
we went on exchanges, and we didn't do anything, so i was frustrated

You know what's cool? i'm in a full car area, and i don't have to bike very much. They made me buy a bike, and i've ridden it once, but yeah, i'm glad to have it and i'm really thankful for my car. Dude, i think you want to go to a spring training game, and i'm still in auburndale/winterhaven (the two towns are pretty much the same), you might want to look in to going to a cleveland indians game. They do their springtraining right behind the apartments of some of the missionaries in my district. So yeah, if you ever feel the need to go to a spring training game in winterhaven florida, given i'm still here, you definetly should come down and do it.

Oh yeah, i still havent gotten a package my mom allegedly sent a week ago, so i figure that its probably in the mission office or something.

Maurice got confirmed yesterday, so w00t w00t to that.

Now i have time to break down my district:

elder crosby -- great baseball player, disobedient (watches tv, etc), might or might not be here for the right reasons, but who am i to judge.

elder mikesell -- great missionary. from morgan utah, and seems like it (not that thats a bad thing) really super competitive at sports. Obedient and cheerful.

elder washburn -- super cuh-razy strong. from mount plesant utah. pretty cool, and obedient. I dont know what else to say, he's really cool.

elder gilbert -- district leader (comps with crosby) and he's so super rad. I seriously want my sister to meet him, so he gets the major thumbs up. I don't think i've ever said that about anyone (introducing to my sister)

Elder Jones -- my companion. He's super rad, and obedient and feels the spirit, but isn't afraid to mess around. He understands the right amount of balance between work and play.

i dont know what to say, and i'm saying it all next thursday anyways, so yeah, talk to my parents, and i'll have my mom write what she wants.

oh yeah, i forgot to post the most obviously cool news, Maurice got baptized!

so i've been out 4 weeks ish, and we've had a baptism. Even though it was a "freebie", meaning i didn't teach him anything, it was still pretty cool.

HAHAHAHA! my district leader (elder gilbert, such a cool elder) said to tell my sister "wassup" so yeah, this is the public "wassup" from elder gilbert.

There are so many rad people in my district, i have so much more to say, but i'm out of time. Everyone is telling me to leave.

I need SueAnn's e-mail address, so let me know asap.

peace.

oh yeah, so listen to how awesome everyone is.

lets see, on wednesday, i wrote my brother rick and my sister sueann letters. I thought they would be mad because i haven't written them the entire time i've been in florida. The next day, thursday, i recieved a package and a letter from them both!! how cool is that?! its divine inspiration i promise. They just probably were very confused, because my letters didn't mention anything about anything in the letters.

On a side note, e-mail is easy, but i decided last week that i like letters better. its way cooler to get a billion letters in a week than a billion inbox hits a week. BUT its especailly cool to get both (hint hint). Family is cool because i can always just e-mail them back, but friends i'm supposed to write letters to. So if you leave an e-mail, i'll probably respond real quick and say "send your mailing address next time."

oh yeah on a side note, that is laugh out loud funny, all the elders want my sister. They think she's way good looking..... and its kind of like "AAHH I want to beat you up" but at the same time its cool. I keep telling them that they should write her.

thats it for now, i'm going to go write some epistles to my family and then when i'm done writing those, i'll probably post some insightful thing here.

peace.

I've been on my mission for 40 days. Jesus fasted for as long as i've been out.

by the way, i'm going to share this with you, because its really super amazing.

THE SPIRIT IS THE BEST GIFT EVER.

seriously, not even joking. I took for granted what happens when you're 8, and after you're baptized. The spirit was great, but i didn't really think about what it did/does for you. Its such an amazing thing that we have the opportunity to have. When i'm on a mission, its all i've got to teach people. Sure i'm pretty good at talking with people, sure i'm pretty ok at being logical, but you know what? to paraphrase chris farley, THAT DOESN'T AMOUNT TO JACK SQUAT, ON A MISSION. Seriously the gift of the holy ghost is such an amazing thing. Continue to live worthy of it, because sometimes i feel like i wouldn't neccessarily, and it wasn't there, and i didn't know how to recognize it. Pray a lot for the spirit, even when you go to school or something pray for the spirit. It teaches of truth, and helps you understand things. If you are in a class and don't get something, stop trying to understand it. Pray for the spirit, and pray that you'll be able to understand it. If its truth, or something you need to know, and you exercise faith, you will be blessed with knowledge. I swear on my life, its amazing. If you haven't read the book of mormon all the way through (or any volume of scripture or book for that matter), or don't understand it the way you want, pray for the spirit, and have faith. Oh man its just such an amazing gift that i took for granted before my mission. When i get back, i'm going to seriously be constantly praying, so don't look at me like i'm crazy. I did it before, but now i'm going to do it even more. Heavenly Father loves all of us, and he's just waiting for us to show that we love him back by excercising faith (an consequently good works) for him to bless us even greater.

anyways, thats my discourse, and it turned out better than i thought it would, and i didn't even intend for it to sound like that, and i hope you can understand it the right way. The main point is: THE CHURCH IS TRUE, and you can find out by the spirit. The holy ghost testifys of truth, and will help you in your life so much.

This week we had mission conference on monday, it was for christmas. We tried to watch joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat, but that was one of the stupidest shows ive ever seen. Anyways, p-day got moved to tuesday, so this slow update.

PS I apologize for not writing. I'm going to today, its my goal for the day. I'm going to write all today, and then tomarrow night as much as i can. Thanks.

This was an e-mail i sent my mom, and i'm literally copying it and pasting it.

Our water in auburndale is ok, its really chlorinated though. It tastes like swimming pool and its kind of annoying. I'm getting used to it, but when i get out of the shower sometimes i smell like i just went swimming and thats just straight up annoying.

Our main mode of transportation is car, we're in a full car area so i don't have to use that bike i just bought. Our apartment is really nice, its nice if not nicer than my WSU apartment, so its pretty rad to live there. Two sundays ago i spoke in church, and gave a talk on service. It went fairly well, because i didn't have any mission experience to relay, it went as well as expected.

Tell everyone i'm really sorry about not writing them. This transfer (the 6 week periods are called transfers) its really super busy. We have something coming up every week, so usually my letter writing gets delayed. I'm going to write everyone today, if i can think of enough creative things to say. Tell rick that i miss him a lot, and SueAnn especially.

So last week was really eventful, i'm going to maybe scare you here, but don't be afraid i have the spirit and thats all i need. I'm kind of in the ghetto. There is this place in winterhaven (part of my area) and its called inwood. Inwood is a straight up crazy place. its like .5 ghetto and .5 redneck. Its way weird and interesting how these people can co exist together. They're really funny and annoying all at the same time. I prefer tracting in the ghetto/redneckville though, because the people are pretty loving and decent. Well, except for thursday. I was going up to this guy to talk to him and he yells out "no" and i try to explain we're not jehova's witnesses or selling anything and he just freaks out and pulls out a gun. I was like.... whoa.... ok.... anyways..... walk down the street. So yeah, add that one to my mission portfolio.

We also have this great lady in our ward, her name is sister perry. She's this great black lady who converted from the church of christ to CJCLDS and so she has a really strong testimony. She buys all the auburndale missionaries ties from this gangsta/pimp store called lookin good. We went and picked out a tie, and then a guy at the tie store gave us an extra one for free because we always buy there! it was awesome.

well, i think thats about it for now. I think this was a good session so i'm going to copy and paste it to the blog. Thanks so much. Peace.

w00t.

hey yall, what up?

i'm back, for another week, and this week is chock full of stuff.

i've got some photos, so yeah thats exciting, i'll be emailing those pretty quickly. I'm going to try to figure out if i can host images on this site, but if not, then that will be not good. they're pretty small, the whole folder of 26 pictures is only 6 mb, so i can e-mail a few out to everyone.

This week's major developments:
tracted a lot, and committed one guy to baptism. Its on the 13th, so thats exciting. Also, my 3-some is turning back into a regular companionship. Apparently one of the elders that came out with me has hardcore knee problems, so he has to go home. Its kind of a bummer but ehh, i bet he'll be back. Elder Barney is going to take his place in Valrico, so he's out of the ghetto and to the rich neighborhoods.

I had a great thanksgiving at some member's house, they made us some really good food, so i was psyched. We also ate at this recent convert's house, and she made some awesome southern cooking.

Nothing else too major to mention, so i'll close by saying:

yo, the church is trizzue.

peace.