YES IT'S COLD, BUT DO NOT FEAR! I KNOW HOW TO KEEP MYSELF WARM.

Oh this kid.....he's cold but no worries. And he looks forwards to coming home and driving his dad's old clunker truck! 

Hey Mom! 

Sorry about the email times - they'll be different every week. Nothing is consistent because we can't control when we get to the church, but I would say you could bet on noon being the time that I'm on most days.  

i HAVEN'T GOTTEN THE MAIL YET TODAY. THE MAIL GUY HAS LEFT THE PACKAGE IN THE PAST IF I WASN'T HOME. I HAVE USUALLY BEEN HOME WHEN HE GETS THERE IN THE MORNING, BUT IT SHOULD BE THERE.

OKAY! (JUST SO YOU KNOW, I'M NOT SCREAMING) haha. AND I AM WRITING IN CAPS BECAUSE THEN I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT CAPITALIZATION. WELL, I WROTE A FAIR AMOUNT TO DAD SO THIS EMAIL MAY CONTAIN LESS DETAIL THAN YOU WOULD LIKE BUT MY RESPONSE IS.....GO READ THE EMAIL I WROTE TO DAD. ANYWAY - WE HAD A DEEC WEEK. 

YES IT IS COLD. DO NOT FEAR, I DON'T ENJOY BEING COLD SO I WRAP UP IN COAT AND HAT AND GLOVES AND SCARF. I KNOW HOW TO KEEP MYSELF WARM YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY! YES IT IS COLDER BY THE OCEAN. PEOPLE WERE SURFING ON WEDNESDAY - THE DAY AFTER THE SKY RAINED A FOOT OF SNOW. GOOD OLE SURFERS ARE CRAZY THEY HAVE NO BRAINS.

SO I GOT BOTH OF THE PACKAGES YOU SENT ME - THE ONE FROM MAPLEWOOD (FINALLY) AND THE ONE WITH MY LEVIS IN IT. THANK YOU! I AM HAPPY I GOT THE BLACK  CORD LEVIS... THEY ARE WARM! I WOULD SAY THE RED CORDS FIT WELL ENOUGH TO KEEP, BUT THE REAL QUESTION IS: HOW MUCH DID YOU PAY FOR THEM? IF THEY WERE OVER 30 DOLLARS, I WOULD SUGGEST RETURNING THEM. PERHAPS.  BUT THEY FIT LOW ON MY HIPS BELOW THE HIP BONE, LIKE I WEAR PANTS ANYWAY. YES 07740 IS CORRECT.

MISSIONARIES IN THE AREA THAT I KNOW. SISTER COLLINS IS SERVING IN MY WARD - SO THAT'S GOOD. I'LL GET A PICTURE FOR YOU. OTHERWISE, I DON'T KNOW ANY OF THE OTHER MISSIONARIES. WE HAVE AN AWESOME ZONE LEADER NAMED ELDER BIGLER WHO IS ABOUT THE FUNNIEST GUY I'VE EVER MET. I LOVE HIM. 

POINT COLLAR SHIRTS ARE FINE! WHATEVER REALLY. ONE THING YOU CAN SEND WITH THE SHIRTS IS ONE OF THOSE ORIENTAL STORE KIWI KNIVES. THOSE ARE SUPER SHARP AND WE HAVE A SHARPENER. YOU SENT ME ONE BEFORE BUT IT WENT DULL AND SO I LEFT IT IN TRENTON. BUT WE HAVE A SHARPENER NOW. JUST ONE IS FINE. THOSE CHEAP ONES THAT ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY NICE AND SHARP. SHEETS ARE GOOD. I ACQUIRED NEW ONES A LITTLE BIT AGO AND THEY ARE GOOD. 

THAT'S ABOUT IT FOR STUFF THAT I DIDN'T TALK TO DAD ABOUT... ANYTHING NEW WITH YOU??

LOVE YOU,

TAB

Hi Dad! 

Thanks for your letter. There are a lot of things in it that I want to reply to. First, things in the new area. 

Elder VanWagoner (VW) and I have been enjoying being companions. As you know, it is not difficult to go out and work when you get along with your companion. We don't have as much to talk about as we did the first week or so, but still things are good. The only challenge I face is not wasting time in planning or studies by getting off topic on something interesting. I have a very short attention span. I have a hard time focusing on things. That has improved over my mission, however. I can easily spend an hour intensely studying the scriptures now. The other struggle we face and will face for a while is finding time to use the phone and street contacting. It is so cold that if I pull my hands out of my gloves to use the phone while we're walking to an appointment, I only have about a minute or so until I can't feel my fingers. So that's annoying. We spend so much time walking that it would be nice to have something to do on the way to appointments, like use the phone or talk to people. The other problem is that very few people are outside. And if they are, it's for some emergency or they are in a hurry to get out of the cold. I doubt anyone is just gandering through the city anxious to sit out in the cold and talk to us. So I have resorted to just leaving pass along cards on objects or handing them to people with a quick explanation and a goodbye! Walking areas are great, but in the winter is difficult to be efficient with time. 

I am glad Colby enjoys the truck. I love it too. I find it more fun to drive than the Mazda, but the Mazda looks nicer and has a better stereo (haha). Tell him to be nice to the truck so that it will be around when I get home :)

I would love an OT study guide. I may be able to find one in the library and rent it, however. I'll let you know by next week if you should have mom ship one to me.

Exciting things this week... it snowed a lot. That slowed things down for us a lot too. We had zone conference and it was awesome! The topic was repentance and using the scriptures - the same as the monthly focus. I loved it. Elder VanWagoner and I got to teach the missionaries about repentance with only a few minutes heads up. That was scary, but we did well. We saw Sister Brown this week and had a good lesson with her. She had surgery this week so we only saw her once. But she did come to church! We also saw Sister Pacheco once and we got out all her concerns. It wasn't a very structured lesson, but it worked well. Now we know what to teach and who to bring with us! I was somewhat frustrated (not really, more so disappointed) during the week because we set up a lot of appointments and probably 2/3 cancelled or juked each day. That is annoying in a walking area! We got over it though. We always seem to find something to do. We also had ward conference this last sunday and the lessons were much needed. This ward is great, but they lack a love for one another. It doesn't feel like a "ward family" at sacrament meetings. I'm not sure how to approach the situation because it has been brought up many times in ward council and not much ever happens and I don't want to sound like a try-hard missionary (I hope you know what I mean by that) by bringing it up again. However, it sure would make missionary work a lot easier if investigators felt welcomed at church.

     

I had an interview with President Jeppson today and I learned a lot. He is fantastic at what he does. I love him for it. 

That's about it! Most weeks are about the same - we do the same things - as you know. We found a couple new people to teach who were former investigators and I'll let you know when things pick up if they are keeping their commitments! 

I hope your conference goes well. No need to be nervous if you prepare well! 

Love,

Tab

p.s. Haha. I did find a neat scripture in Genesis this morning. It is JST Genesis 17:11. I had no idea that the age of accountability was around for so long. And, if you haven't read it before, JST Genesis 50 is a good one. 

The Old Testament......it baffles me.

Hi Mom! 

I'm on right now. I might be on for a little while so..........

psssshhhh Long Branch doesn't look very much like those pictures because 1) the hurricane and 2) it's winter.... I wish it looked like that. That last picture is not Long Branch, but the rest are! It doesn't look that cool, though. I took pictures and forgot my camera today sadly. sorry!

It's a good day so far! We do emails at the Eatontown chapel which is not closed on holidays. Yes we live near the church. It's like 3 miles away. We get to the grocery store and laundry with our zone leaders, they live about 30 min away but they pick us up. I am not playing hoops today, cause we're way behind on time. :( but next week I will. We did last week. I got super sore.

So this week was pretty good. We still had a fair amount of success but we got juked out of a lot of our appointments, especially on the weekend. That is frustrating in a walking area. It actually doesn't happen that often in a walking area. It seems that people are just home when we stop by. It's not like that in driving areas. It's either a blessing from God or we are just subconsciously better at planning. Anyway, it was sort of rotten this weekend because it was freezing so people aren't outside for us to talk to and teach. We went to the bike shop on our way to an appointment to get a new bike tire and I saw a $12,000 bike. It was a joke. It was a carbon fiber Pinarello dogma or something like that. They had a cheaper Specialized S-works that I thought looked cooler. Nice bikes. 

We have some solid investigators though! One of them we picked up on Sunday. We are working with a young man named Damond Brown who is super cool. He is almost 18 and he is a recently returning member and he wants to serve a mission. We are good buddies. He and his mom (who is not a member) came to church and she sat in on a lesson about family history and temple work. She loved it, so after church she asked us the details on how to prepare to get to the temple and be baptized. So we told her, and she said she would like for us to baptize her in two weeks. Then we told her that her son (who was ordained a priest that Sunday) could baptize her! And that she could go to the temple in February to do the work for her ancestors. It was somewhat odd because I felt like everything we told her was too good to be true. But... it's not, so that's good. Someone else we are teaching is a woman named Sister Pacheco. Her son was baptized about a month and a half ago. She comes to church every week and she wants to be baptized in May but each week we move up her baptismal date by a month so I am assuming she will eventually settle for a day in February. She is hesitant because she has church hopped like four times in the last year and she doesn't want to do it again. And her husband is not super interested in being taught right now so that doesn't help. Fortunately, her son is a champ and so that is a big push for her to join the church. So you can pray for Sister Brown and Sister Pacheco. We have a couple other investigators that I will tell you about next week.

Congrats to Regan! sounds like a neat job. 

Enjoy the holiday. Hope the burgers are fantastic. It's been a while since I have made a yummy burger. But I can make a god one, don't worry.

Love, TAB

Thanks Dad! 

I still am trying to read the Old Testament. This morning I read a few chapters in Genesis, something like chapters 18 to 22, and it baffled me. It is such a strange history. I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but the book of Genesis doesn't really appear to me to be "scripture"... at least compared to the Book of Mormon or the Gospels in the New Testament. Sometimes I'll find an insightful scripture or two, maybe a nice story to use in a lesson, but not much more. I have heard that the older the book of scripture, the more apostasies it has experienced. I don't know for a fact if that is true, but it seems true to me. Anyway - I will probably finish Genesis and move on to Isaiah or Ezekiel. I am really looking forward to reading the stories of Joseph in Egypt. 

One day you better take me to eat a Hellburger.

Love, 

Tab

 

Oops......wrong area. Barnaget!

Ooops! I made a mistake. Tab is not serving in Long Beach. He's in Long Branch! I called the mission home regarding a package that I sent to him that was at the post office. He left before he could pick it up. Sister Woodruff took care of it and let me know where he was transferred. I must have misunderstood her. Long Branch is just above Long Beach right on the ocean, just not as nice. Either way, he's still happy to be by the water. 

Ah man I am sorry to disappoint you but I am not in Long Beach hahaha. I am in Long Branch. It's not that pretty here. Long Beach is not in our mission. Just kidding Long Beach is in our mission but not in my zone. Barnegat! But Long Branch is on the coast! Yaaaay! You can google it.

So what's my area like? Houses and lots of Jewish people. 

Hey, so I am short on time because we don't really control our schedule since we don't have a car so I will try to finish my letter so at least you can hear a little bit about what's going on here with me and my companion in Long Branch. It's great - don't worry about me. We're doing good work! 

Ok here we go!

1. My address is: 73 Cedar Ave #58 Long Branch, NJ

2. It's in Zone 10. Zone X i.e. Zone eXile. Below Trenton, huge zone, no car.

3. Elder VanWagoner is my companion. He's about exactly the same person as me. Same interests in everything except he didn't play much video games and he is better at mountain biking. He's from Centerville, Utah.

4. No other missionaries within like 30 miles. But there are 8 missionaries serving in our small ward (~100 active members) and 7 missionaries in the spanish branch. So, lots of missionaries in the building at the same time haha.

5. We attend church in Eatontown, NJ.  Actually, I always wanted to serve in this ward so that's good.

6. We cover more or less the city of Long Branch. It's pretty small. It's a walking area. We're working on switching our area to Ashbury Park, which is pretty hoodish and much more work to do there and the sister's area covers it now so they don't go there because they'd get messed with. 

7. Nope! No longer a zone leader or trainer. I got released from both. 

8. This area did get hit by Hurricane Sandy but it's not really bad. Somehow this place recovered for the most part. It's right on the coast, so the boardwalk and the pier are entirely washed away, but the foundation still exists. Most of these buildings flooded but they fixed that all up.

9. No car.

10. No fast food chains. There is not really anything in our area besides a Dominos and a bunch of churrascos and a place called Surf Taco. And a good ole ALDI.

11. Quite a lot of baptisms actually in the last few months. Elder VanWagoner and I will whip some out this transfer though. 

12. I haven't gotten the package yet. Oddly, my companion didn't receive it until Thursday. We now live like 1.5 hours a way so he gave it to the zone leaders, they'll get it to me soon enough.

13. New apartment is deec. it's been a missionary apartment for a long time so it's quite beat up. Another reason that we are working on getting a new apartment. The lease expires on March 31! Then we're outta here!

14. I like the area quite a lot. But for a walking area not that many people live here. We're pretty short on active members, which is annoying. It's like residential stuff. I guess the best way to explain it is that I am not used to being around so many white people/not being in the hoods. But the work is pretty good for what it is! And Elder VanWagoner and I are doing work so that's good too.

Ok that's that. If I knew where to get you a sweatshirt I would but there's not really anything but houses here! Haha

Love you!

Tab

Hi Dad!

Haha - how did you not make it past Phoenix?? You'll have to explain that one to me. 

You would love my new companion. He would make a good addition to your department. He is a lot like me, but probably a bit more studious than I am. We have nearly everything in common, except that he will be going to Utah State instead of BYU after his mission. He's great. He did a lot of work for ATK or DATC or both... I believe that's the acronym. Anyway he worked a lot with carbon fiber fabrications. He used this thing called an autoclave - sounds pretty wild. He likes bikes a lot too, so we had a good discussion on that. He's a great missionary, too. He's only 6 months into his mission, and I think he will train next transfer. We will see. 

Weather was cold last week and we serve on the coast (Long Branch, sadly, not Long Beach) so it was slightly colder than it would be elsewhere. Long Branch isn't that beautiful haha. It is a neat area though. The ward is Eatontown - I have heard great things about Eatontown ward so I'm happy to be here. It might be a minute before I find out why because I didn't quite recognize it at church yesterday, but I'll find it. 

It may take me 6 months to get your tie to you but you will get it....

Love Tab :)

Water it is!

Elder McLain's new area! Long Beach, New Jersey. He secretly hoped to serve near water before his mission is over and I think it's safe to say he got what he hoped for. It's an island one mile wide and 18 miles long, one main street down the center of it, and has some of the most scenic white sand beaches on the east coast. This will be quite a change from where he's been serving for the past 15 months!

Surprise.......Being transferred!

Transfers are tomorrow and I don't think Tab was planning on being transferred but he was told to pack his bags and be at the mission home tomorrow. He's not sure where yet but says he secretly hopes to serve by the ocean before his mission is over.  Guess we'll see what happens.........

Hi Mom! 

I'm on right now.

Don't send any packages to my address anymore because I'm getting transferred! I don't know where yet. I assume that I'll get a great companion. I have hopes of going to Jersey City, so we'll see.  I find out where I am going tomorrow afternoon at transfer conference, which starts at 2pm our time. 

So yes, Elder Estipona is going home :( He is super sad. I can see it in his countenance even, that he is "dying" and he knows it. I've talked to him a lot recently though, and I know he likes that. He said that he will try to come to BYU to find a wife - haha. I hope to see him again!

A new calling - Primary again. Nice! I wish we could go to primary more often! We get to go sometimes when we're invited and the kids love us but usually we have investigators at church that we're trying to show around so we can't go where ever we want.

So I haven't set any goals yet for the new year, but I do have one thing I want to do that I can think of. I want to finish the Old Testament. I am in Genesis 11 right now and it is super boring/confusing. I will have to take time to sit down and think about worthwhile things I should and can do this year. We heard a great talk by Alex Boye about expectations and how that is the key to success so I'll not be setting goals, but expectations. I like Elder Uchtdorf's talk on LDS.org too. Go read it if you haven't!

Thanks for being so thankful for me. I love you too!

If I don't get the package today I'll still have tomorrow morning. If not then, I'll have Elder Pabla get it to me : ) no worries.

I still am finishing your letter and ties for Dad and Colby and who ever else I have supplies to make them for.

Hrmmmm...... I don't have much news from this week. It snowed a lot on Thursday/Friday and then it rained yesterday and today so now it's all gone. Yesterday was bad because it was freezing rain so Elder Pabla and I both took falls but his was much worse and much funnier. He was in like full sprint and flew onto his back, I was just standing and so I caught myself. Anyway, neither of us got hurt. Just a little sore. Thankfully, no one slipped while getting out of church. We found a bunch of new investigators this week! So that was good. But I am getting transferred so.... probably won't get to teach them ever again. It's alright. I'm just hoping that our members won't be upset that I didn't come by and tell them I was leaving. I didn't think I was going to leave! The best I can do for most of them is just text and say goodbye :)

Love you!

Tab

Hey Dad,

Awesome thought. Thank you for that. I am excited to hear more about your UAV project, too! That sounds really interesting. Are you still working with quad[ro]copters?

I'm also happy to hear that you didn't break any bones in your skiing accident. Did your beanie and goggles fly off? That seems to always happen to me. They get slung up into the air as I tumble down the mountain.

Oh, do you still have the same remote for the downstairs theater? I thought that it was already programmed to some degree. Maybe it was just the automatic program, and we never got into the nitty gritty. Anyway, you did well.

Be happy!

Love,

Tab

Zone 4 Christmas Party

Tab's zone at Jingle with the Jeppson's.......

And then the traditional goofy one.....Tab doing his signature pose!

Got another Christmas surprise!

A text popped up on my phone from someone I didn't know. When I opened it this is what it said....


Hey Sister McLain,

My name is Maggie. Your son is a missionary in my ward! I took this picture because he looked just like my grandpa in his sweater. He says hi and he loves you!

I'll try and send a few more sporadically : ) I'm sure any news from him and actually seeing him has got to be great! All my best friends are out so I kind of know the feeling. Happy New Year's to you! :)


And up popped this......another Christmas surprise! The best kind!

Getting back to normal.

Sounds like things are getting back to normal. Christmas is over, not much going on, trying to organize again, and looking for new investigators. So goes the new year! 

Hello!

So hey Mom! I don't feel like I have much to write... Reese and Clark aren't on the computer yet so I'm trying to figure that one out so I don't have a way to waste time emailing random people. So I guess that's good for you.

The rest of our week went well. We weren't able to teach many people but we still used our time wisely and did what we could so that's how it goes sometimes. Something we've been spending a lot of time doing lately is trying to find the young single adults who live in our area that aren't attending YSA activities or church. Also I'm trying to figure out who drew the ward boundaries for our ward and the east orange branch. They are a joke! They don't follow any streets. The east orange branch is just a circle that someone drew inside the maplewood ward boundaries, literally. I can't explain it well enough but the east orange branch is inside the maplewood ward boundary. It is frustrating.

I still haven't been able to finish your christmas letter! Today is our first free p-day in weeks so I think I'll be able to finish it today. We'll see! As for gifts, haha that might be a while. No time! Actually the missionaries in my district were complaining to me about that the other day... they told me that they had no time to themselves. I didn't know what to say! Hopefully it will get better soon.

Well I hope you enjoy the new semester. Like I have mentioned many times before, I miss being in school. I'm not sure why. By the way, I loved all my gifts!

College students get free amazon prime? What? I am a college student

Well that was a short email but I can't think of much else to write about! ermmmmmmmm

I guess i'll go for now. Love you all!

Tab