I am an uncle now!

Hey mom! 

Hey guess who forgot their camera today!

this guy.

And I don't really have to much to write about either... I wrote dad a little bit about how the week went but it wasn't much. Nothing really too special happened this week. We met a goofy guy named Johan from Germany, and he said he would rather join a black or puertorican gang than the Mormon church because at least he wouldn't get messed with if he was in the gang. Ah man he was so funny I wish you could have met him. We also picked up a few new people to teach (Jeane, Itzel, and we are teaching Marcela again) so that's good. It's starting to warm up. 

Ruby.....hey I like her name! I am glad to see that she is is doing well! She's really cute. She looks exactly like Caitlin. I am an uncle now! This reminds me of the day I turned 18... I don't feel any different. 

Hey guess what! I found out that there is an Arby's near here! About five miles away. So we'll be going there one of these days. 

That's about all I've got. Sorry my emails have been really lame lately but I think it's because the work I am doing is pretty normal to me so I can't think of much that's exciting that I should write about! I'm getting old that's all. 

Hey I am happy that you passed your classes with A's! Well done. 

I have something for you to throw in my package! If you haven't sent it yet. If you have, just wait till you send a next package. But could you send my black RVCA pants? They are the only black pants I have if I remember right. They are not corduroys. If you can't find them, no worries. I have too many pants already. That and my old scripture case. The one with the white paint mark on it. I need something to put my regular sized scriptures in. I don't mind that it is messed up, and I don't need a new one. 

eh.... I think I am good. If you can manage to send a JDawg, a SLAB of White pizza and a cafe rio burrito and some chicken soft tacos from Del, then I'll take that ;)

Alright I will write back if you have any Q's for me.

Love,

Tab

Hey Dad!

interesting thought! I really liked it. ...You didn't copy it from somewhere did you? I am just kidding. I acquired a dictionary and it has been a helpful resource whenever I read anything by Elder Talmage. Sometimes I will use it when I am reading the scriptures. The definition of the word "beset" really surprised me. If you haven't already looked it up, you ought to. "Ignominious" was another word I had to look up.

The work in Long Branch is going alright. I am a little bit discouraged by the lack of less-active work he have available to do. There are only four or five less active members that I have met and only about three that I have taught and only one has come to church. It is difficult to contact them. We have some good investigators but finding has been slow. I would like to cycle through investigators more quickly than we do. We usually see each investigator once a week and so the progression is slow. We picked up three new investigators last week so that was good! I am enjoying my companion a lot and we work pretty hard together. We get between 40 and 90 street contacts a week. The other thing we need to work on in our area is getting semi-active members to full activity and not dependant on us. That is something I have struggled with my whole mission. How do I do that, especially with limited help from the ward? How do we get our ward council to listen to us? How do we motivate them to do their part? How do we work together effectively with the ward council when our ward mission leader is only relaying information from coordination meetings? Those are most of the things I thought about last week. I haven't put those questions into my prayers yet. I will :) For the most part, things are going alright. I do feel (slightly) that given how hard we've been trying, we should be seeing more success. I think this area has been the least rewarding area I have served in as far as baptisms go. And I realize baptisms aren't everything but that is a good indicator that investigators are progressing. 

You should learn how to assemble a wheel and when I get home you can teach me. I would also love to learn how to flyfish. So if you get the time you can brush up on that, haha. I know you're going to be extra busy especially with the new grandchild. I am glad everything went well!! I am excited to meet her. 

Well I don't really have much else to mention. If you can think of something to ask, I'll be here!

Love you,

Tab

it's a no caps day!

I love how he signed his letter today! 

hi mom! 

today is no caps day because i don't have time to capitalize letters. or use paragraphs. today elder perry is coming to visit our mission and so our email time was cut short so we can get things done before we leave. but i am still excited. i am fine cutting my email time to hear some elder perry, you know what i mean. 

well last week was kinda lame cause we had a mazillion appointments set up and most of them fell away. so, we had opportunities to teach a lot of new people and none of them really worked out. however, we met this new haitian guy named oxtave and he is sweet. he doesn't speak much english so we are teaching him at another haitian members home so she can translate for him. it's gonna be good. we also had stake conference this weekend and the saturday night meeting was great. it was not a very formal meeting - there were roleplays by the missionaries, videos, and a fair amount of laughing done - and I liked the way it turned out. ever since the "hastening the work of salvation" project came into play, things have changed a lot. the missionaries participate a lot more in stake meetings than they used to, at least here in nj. what are your stake conference meetings like?  i saw a lot of old companions at stake conference and i saw a lot of my friends from trenton! including jos and courage and marchelle. they are all doing really well. jos has had a lot of opposition from her dad (he is a catholic) so she hasn't been able to come to church as much but she still comes whenever she can. haha - she's been kicked out of her house twice already for it. but i think things are getting better for her. so that's good. i saw a lot of families from the princeton 2nd ward too. most of them were surprised that i could still remember their name. help colby out with remembering peoples' names because it has made a pretty big impact on my mission. no joke. when we meet people on the street and then see them again in a week or a month and i call them by name, they know that we think and care about them and more often than not we end up talking and teaching them. and the same goes with members... when we see them outside of church and i remember their name, they trust us and invite us over more often. i am serious! so anyway........

cool art! i hope your classes are going pretty well. which is your hardest class you are taking right now? 

most of my roommates come back within a transfer or the next. so the next 9 weeks. clark comes home 6 weeks after me I think and reese 12 weeks after that. 

nate looks like he is putting on some serious muscle that's awesome. i can't gain any mass (fat or muscle) if i try. so i don't try anymore. 

so sorry! i forgot my camera so i won't be able to send pictures today but i probably will be able to tomorrow, or sometime this week. i have some good ones. i got a fantastic letter from ellie snow this week. she is in the young women's group. i will probably write back but in case it isn't for a while you make sure you give her a big thank you. it was a sweet letter. and say hi to all my ward buddies for me. it looks like you have had a few move-ins in the last little while. and they changed our missionaries from elders to sisters... :( no good. just kidding haha. 

 

well take care now grandma mclain. i love you all! let me know if i can do anything for you. i am still looking for a souvenir shop around these parts. i haven't found one. occasionally i find stuff on the ground like spoons and glass bottles and lighters. and that's about it. until next week.

love,

uncle tab 

Still happy!

Lots of work, a new companion, pictures, a bit of randomness (Tab's specialty) and they all equal to a still happy kid! 


Hi Mom! 

Yerp I'm on already cause we just have an activity today so I came to the church early to get things done before the activity. We have between 10am and 6pm to shop, email, and then do whatever we want. So I think they're having an easter egg hunt or something like that with the missionaries in our zone, probably about 20 of us.

Question! can you look up Matilda McClain on Familysearch for me? There is a member here named Tom Keough and his great-great-grandma (or something like that) is named Matilda McClain and he is really interested in finding out if we are related. Ok that is almost impossible for you to help me with that little information so I will send you the identification number things. In the meantime, if you know any Matilda McClain's that are in our ancestry, let me know! 

Hey send me a photo of your arT! I wanna see how good it is and then show it off. 

My finger will be fine. it will just be a tiny bit crooked!

Hey check out the Because of Him video on mormon.org! it's really hipster and good.

iPads soon like one month prolly.

It seems like all the weeks that you are wasted by the weekend I am too! I was super tired come Saturday. We got a lot of walking and work done and then we contacted a lot of people. 

Facebook comes once the iPads come, but they'll prolly monitor it. 

My comp is great! here are some photos.....

I got your box :) hopefully you got my letter. Lately i feel like the things I have been mailing haven't been getting delivered so that's not good. 

Oh and if you would, send me some more of that GAP cologne or something good smelling. I ran out and I don't know where around here to buy some good stuff. TJ Maxx has nothing good haha.

Love you!

Tab

Hey Dad! 

Haha - I have listened to Elder Bednar's talk about 3 times in the last 24 hours. It's pretty great. I loved the insight he gave on the scripture from Matthew 11. I had never thought about covenants being the way we yoke ourselves with Christ. It makes sense! The part of his talk that you highlighted reminds me of a talk - I believe it was also Elder Bednar - that he gave in a BYU devotional that I went to with you. I remember learning about the enabling power of the Atonement, but anything in detail slips my mind. Maybe I am just making up the whole thing? No matter. I also enjoyed listening to "What Manner of Men?" one more time.

This week was pretty good. We taught a lot of lessons again and we contacted lots of people. I think it was somewhere around 80 or 90. One of them was a man that works at Taco Bell named Brian. He approached Elder Marchant and asked him a question about something silly but they ended up talking about the Book of Mormon and the Church. He's not in our area but the sisters have already taught him twice and he came to church yesterday and now he has a baptismal date. He already knows that the Book of Mormon is true and everything. And he isn't some crazy guy. He's pretty cool. He has three daughters from a previous marriage and he is currently engaged! We have found a couple good people through contacting.

Sadly, Marcela dropped us this week. She strongly disagrees with the Churches standpoint on gay marriage so she said she doesn't want to join the Church or have us visit anymore :( Coming from a 14 year old girl I found that quite silly, but I am glad that came up before she had been baptized. So it is what it is. Hopefully God has someone better in mind for us to teach that we will find soon! Kelly (not sure if I have mentioned her yet) came to church and she also has a baptismal date for May 18. She was pretty happy about that. She is from Chile, just FYI. We also invited a crazy Austrian lady named Karin to come to church and to our surprise she showed up, so that was good. There was a huge turnout for yesterday's Easter program (usually there are around 100 people at sacrament meeting at yesterday there was almost 200) so they had to bless water a second time after running out. Elder Marchant and I sung in the choir. It was a good day for investigators to come to church!

Well I hope you do alright with all the demands from this coming week. And I hope your back feels better. Is it related to the accident you were in several years ago? Go out there and do some missionary work!

Love you too

Tab

Love this face!

More randomness......

Gotta have a seagull!

New companion

I noticed Tab was on the computer and sent him a little message. He responded by saying......

oh Hey! 

you sneaky mom.............

Hi again Mom! 

This week was great! I have a great companion. He's like Elder Thompson who I love. Both are great. We didn't have any dinner dates during conference... SOMEONE planned a nice little mission-wide fast so we didn't get invited to the chinese restaurant with the ward. It was good though - the fast was good for us. It prepped me real nice for the Saturday session of conference. I loved conference!

The hand is good. I got my cast off like two weeks ago! I go to therapy twice a week and they have helped me get back to 60% mobility or so. It will keep getting better as the swelling goes down. I attached two photos. Did you get my letter? 

Man Clark writes to you more than he writes to me! That goon!

I do know Hadley. She was in my seminary class. That is really sad. Lot's of weird stuff has happened since I left!

You always say "don't worry".... I don't ever worry! Haha ain't nobody got time for that. 

Yeah Elder Thompson's got like 1 transfer left. Elder Marchant is like Elder Thompson. His first name is Braydon. 

I don't know what to write about! 

Love you,

Tab

Hi Dad! 

You are right - most of the weeks go by quickly but generally the length of the day, from my perspective, depends on how hard I work. Sometimes the weather changes things a little bit too. I would say that this week most of the days were pretty short! My new companion is Elder Marchant. He is from Warren, Utah. He is pretty funny. He reminds me quite a lot of Elder Thompson. I get along with him really well and he works hard and I am sure that we will get along very well. I am happy to be his companion. He knows how to contact people, too. 

I was able to watch all of conference. I really enjoyed the talks in the priesthood session. I liked Elder Oaks' and Elder Hallstrom's and Elder Uchtdorf's talks. All of Saturday was great. I was less engaged during the Sunday sessions of conference and so I didn't get as much from those talks. But I will be going back and reading them like you. What was your favorite?

Elder VanWagoner was transferred to East Orange driving! My old area. So I am happy for him and I am sure he is even happier. I talked to him about it after he left. He is going to say hi to all my friends there :)

Sandy Hook is just right up the road from our area! Will you be tutoring him over the internet? Yeah see if you can get us a referral :) maybe he'll take us out to lunch?

I had a difficult time coming up with goals for my consecration contract but I figured it out. I'm not trying to say that I am a perfect missionary, but I really didn't know what to put on the "things to be more obedient" section. I put a few, like having effective studies, keeping lessons to 45 min and writing in my journal more often. And contacting 10 people a day, which we have been doing. Elder Marchant gets down to the nitty gritty and just does it so that has motivated me to talk to more people. He's great. We'll find some good people. 

Well! I can't think of much else to talk about. I like the quote you shared with me -- that was a good talk. So I'll keep at it... I don't want a desolate house!

Love you,

Tab

Cast off.....

Healing nicely!