I played golf last Monday!

Hi Mom,

We did get to go "goffing." I played awful (~50) but I enjoyed it. My short game hasn't faded away yet, but I couldn't hit a driver or iron straight down the fairway to save my life. My nice draw has been replaced with a banana-like slice." (quoting myself) I only started with one ball and I didn't lose it! So that was the good part. 

Sounds like Vegas was HOT - haha. I probably would have stayed in St George with Colby. Las Vegas has some nice golf though. Did Colby stay there with any friends?

Well, I hope that Isaac gets to play at BYU. That'd be really neat. We'd go to school together! We've been playing soccer a lot with all the hispanic kids and I am still terrible. 

Chick-Fil-A peach shakes are pretty yummy. And the grilled chicken bacon sandwich is one of the yummiest fast food things I have ever eaten. You gotta try it. 

So yeah I'll probably stay here for transfers. Too many missionaries are already leaving our zone. I think it would be ridiculous to have me go too. Who knows though! The bigger kid in some of my photos is Ryan Stojka. He teams up with us like three days a week so we just hang out with him on Mondays. We're buds! He's 17 but he'll be going on a mission soon. The photo from church has him in it as well. He's great.

Haha - is that Chase sitting next to Regan in that photo of home?

Yeah send another Chicken Taco seasoning packet if you find one. Finding pork butt or shoulder is a task so I won't cook those as much but chicken is easy and we have a crock pot. 

I should have taken photos when we went golfing. BAH! Man. HA Elder Packham chucked a club by accident in a tree and it got stuck something like 80 feet in the air. I don't even know how he did that but it sure was funny. 

Yeah everything is good here. We've got one of the best members ever in our area of Point Pleasant. His name is Brother Rob Cinotti but we call him Uncle Cinotti because he's got this goofy italian accent and Elder Packham and I both concluded that we wish he was our adopted uncle. He's hilarious. I'll send you a photo next monday. I didn't snag any new photos this week... my b!

love you much!

Tab

PS I'll be around for a minute.  Then we're off to Barnegat Lighthouse again! it was too much fun. Gonna go get some Abalone shells. maybe.

Hi Dad!

Haha that was an interesting story you shared of your interview with President Reichman. I hope to play golf with him again. He is a good guy. I bet one day that he will be the Stake President. If not, he'll be a mission president. 

(Tim's story - I had a temple recommend interview with Pres. Reichman today. We chatted a bit and then he started through the interview questions and was going through them at 90 mph. He was almost done and lost his train of thought and had to take a few minutes to regroup. When he was done asking questions, he said he lost his  thought because he had images of you swinging a golf club come into his mind. And then he said Tab sure loved to play golf.)

We had a pretty good week. I've been working on doing meaningful things with my time and not just doing things that fill time. For example, meaningful planning. It is easy just to put in members and the same people we visited last week for our plans every day. It's easy to be lazy that way. But I've been trying to use the area book to plan more effectively and plan new places to go and new people to find. It takes more time but we've been seeing more blessings from it. My companion is awesome. He gets really pumped by Saturday or Sunday afternoon because that's right before we have to report our numbers. I work slowly but daily. But I'm learning how to be bold from him. From my perspective, he seems confrontational. I'm more on the opposite side of the scale. We even each other out. And we get along really well so that's nice. 

I just started rereading the Book of Mormon. I'd been spending a lot of time in the Doctrine and Covenants and the New Testament and as I started reading 1st Nephi I began to remember how much I like the Book of Mormon. It is very plain and I like that. I wish more people would read it. It even looks like a neat book. I think that if I had never seen it before and someone gave it to me, I would probably read it. 

By the way, I played golf last Monday. I played awful (~50) but I enjoyed it. My short game hasn't faded away yet, but I couldn't hit a driver or iron straight down the fairway to save my life. My nice draw has been replaced with a banana-like slice. 

well that's about it. 

Love you!

Tab

Lovin' Lakewood!

Visiting Barnegat Lighthouse

Beautiful Atlantic coast

The ocean

Starfish

It's all good!

Lakewood baptism

Tab the trigger cowboy!

Elder Packham

Rug with a face?

Tab is definitely in his HAPPY place today!

Got Tab's email today and I forgive him for being so short. I'm thinking he had a good p-day! He is definitely in his happy place. 

Hey ma!

no time to email today cause we're going to play gof! (Grandma Sharon)

but here are some photos. we had a baptism and so that was good : )  We went to eat for my birthday at Chickfiluh and I got a peach shake in remembrance of you....cause you're from the peach state. actually it was just the best looking one.

here are some photos though! we went to a lighthouse and we ate some good foods.

https://www.dropbox.com/home/mission%20ok/phots%207.20.14

Yes I enjoyed being with president taggart when I went on a day exchange with him! and then we hada  meeting called meet the taggart's and that is when I wore the umbrella hat. nice right? which is better, that or the cowboy hat or my blue dog ear hat? ​

I love you lots!

Tab​

Hey Dad!

What is URS? Did they do a flight test for you as well? Haha - I hope that you get some of the paint our of your jacket. I've been fortunate to keep both of my suits in pretty good shape. They are getting a little bit worn, especially my blue one. I really like my blue suit. 

Funny that Colby spoke on repentance in church... I did too. My talk was very short because the first time I was asked to speak in this ward I was up there rambling for nearly thirty minutes. Thankfully they gave me a chance to redeem myself. I think I did alright. I just talked about sin, what it is, and why we all need to repent. Elder Packham spoke about the principles of repentance. I had almost no time to prepare, but I guess that's how it goes as a missionary. We got a few compliments.

​I made some chicken tacos a while back and I used the seasoning packet that Mom sent to me. I forget the name of the place but it's something like Buster's or Bubba's. They were really yummy. I haven't used the pork seasoning/marinade yet. No main stores out here sell pork butt/shoulder. I miss me some home-smoked meats.

Well, I think we're going golfing today so my emails will be short. We had a rough week numbers wise, but we had a baptism. Igor was baptized. It was a really interesting service. I wish you could have seen it. He'll take a minute to come around to the way things are done in the church, but he was ready. I'm excited for him. He is like the greatest missionary ever waiting to happen.

Well, that's about it. I'll send you some photos from this week. We went to Barnegat lighthouse last Monday... That area (Surf City) reminds me a lot of St. Simons Island and Fernandina Beach. There are many expensive beach houses. Anyway-

Love you lots. Thanks for the birthday wishes and gifts!

Tab

Tab turns twenty-one!

When Tab left on his mission he was 19 years old. Since he's been out he turned twenty and I knew that I would never see him at that age. My saving grace was knowing that when he turned twenty-one I would get to see him again. His birthday is this Friday. I have refrained from doing a countdown but i will say.......it's getting close. Really close.

Hi Mom! Hi Dad!

I'm almost out of time today but I did have something I wrote to dad so I'll copy and paste it. Sounds like you have a lot of things going on lately. That's good. I like staying busy. ​

"Speaking of pioneers, I have been doing a lot of family history work lately. I go slowly and we don't have much time to do it, but I've made many additions thus far to Mom's side of the family tree. I really enjoy it.​ I've been hit with the Spirit of Elijah! I'm sure Grandma and Grandpa would be happy to hear that. Much of the work on Mom's side wouldn't be all that hard to do if I could get in contact with Grandma Sharon. I'm limited in the resources I can use.

Did Colby go to EFY? That would surprise me. How are Ryan and Sam doing? I know that EFY is a pretty big deal here in New Jersey - the ward will pay to send the youth to go because it will really help them with their preparation to serve missions. That's nice for the missionaries because all we have to do is convince them to set aside time and go!

The work has been pretty good lately. Week after week we do pretty well at finding new investigators. The difficult part of things here is getting them to progress quickly. However, this weekend we had an experience where I felt that my faith was strengthened and my expectations for miracles were raised.

We are teaching a less-active/part-member family called the Tifts. The mother is a member and the children are not. They are awesome and super nice to us. We just recently started teaching them. We had invited them to church but they were shaky about it and for the last two weeks they hadn't come. They told us they'd come when they felt ready. On Saturday night, we started teaching a young Haitian woman named Wilaine and we invited her to church and she said she'd come. However, she didn't have a ride. So, that night in our planning we said a prayer and quite quickly the thought came into my head to ask Sister Tift to bring Wilaine to church. Though I doubted that it would work, we still went for it. I couldn't think of a better way to get a less active member and our investigators to church! We sat there stumped for ~10 minutes because we had no idea how to ask Sister Tift so we prayed again and the idea came. Sister Tift responded saying that she'd be able to drop her off, but that she wouldn't be able to stay. Still, that was very generous so we took her up on the offer and we gave thanks and we went to bed. The next morning, we waited for Sister Tift to drop off Wilaine and wouldn't you know it, they all came to join us. Sister Tift, her daughters, Wilaine and her son got out of the car together and joined us for sacrament meeting. Miracle! That helped me to realize ways I can raise my expectations and see more miracles... one of the ways is to give people a responsibility!

That reminded me of President Monson's address titled "See Others as They May Become". You should read that one again.

That's just one thing from this week. If I had time I would write more. But hopefully that answers your question a little bit. Igor should be getting baptized here in the next two weeks! So that's good."

I did get your package this week with the goodies in it. Thank you for sending that! Sometimes I eat those for breakfast haha.

That's exciting about Isaac. Let me know how he does in his tryouts!

 LOve you too. ​

tab

Tab's new hat!

 Tab and his trigger!

It was an OK 4th of July........

Tab is a funny kid! So it's the fourth of July and he finds a pretty neat cowboy hat and wears it all day. Who does that??? Tab does! 

HEy Mom,

How was everyone's fourth of July? We saw some deec fireworks at Beachwood and they were just ok. Not as good as last year, but it was still pretty fun just to be out. I found a pretty neat cowboy hat so I wore that all day. We had a good day! 

There wasn't much to my 4th of July. There was a supposed hurricane that was going to hit on Friday so all the fireworks were cancelled. As it turned out, Friday night was a beautiful, clear night. But we went and saw some fireworks on Saturday so it worked out. They were okay fireworks. 

Yeah President Taggart is awesome. He is super duper different from President Jeppson. He works smarter. President Jeppson was a little bit of an old school knock doors work your socks off type of guy which was great too. I love both of them, regardless. Sister Taggart is still getting used to things. 

Tom's River is pretty good! We have lot's of people to teach. I will be here until I go home, I'm quite sure. There are plenty of people prepared and plenty of people in the area, but building up the ward is hard. It's a long story but I think things will progress here. It will just take time. It's odd, but we have some move ins that are sweet so things are getting better. And we'll be getting a new bishop soon. I like the area! We have plenty to do. 

I wish I could send you photos but I have not had my camera for two weeks! I left it in President Taggart's car. So when I do get it back, I will send you photos of our apartment. It's in a big complex called New Hampshire Commons. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.047037,-74.197289,3a,75y,271.13h,87.7t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sAHrNoAjzrjQbgB77WMGtRQ!2e0 That is an outside view of the buildings - we live in the back so you can't quite see our door. They're nice though. 

Sure, I'll go out to lunch for my birthday. It's just the two of us but I can bring along another two if you give me money ;) haha. We had a great time last year doing that on my birthday. We ate the Chicken Korma  this week and I didn't like it as much as the Masala. The yellow one tasted too much like squash and it was a little too sweet for my taste. But it was still yummy and we ate it all! Thank you for sending it! I'll be getting more probably today when we go to Target. We have a Walmart in our area too but I kind of like Target more. 

Nothing too new this week as far as teaching people goes. We had a good week though! 

Elder Jake Packham from Twin Falls, Idaho. We are definitely having a fun time together. 

Tell Colby to text my friend Zack Duke! So, Zack is one of our investigators. He lives in Brick, NJ with his Mom. His Dad is a member of the church and he lives in Provo. In the summers Zack goes to his Dad's house. I'd been teaching him for a couple weeks before the school year ended and he left to Utah. He is a quiet kid but he's friendly and he's a super good kid!

Oh man I am so lazy today. I don't feel like writing anymore! Sorry I was so short in writing! I didn't even write Clark or Reese haha. 

Well, I'm gonna go. 

Love you too! 

tab

A little bonding........

One of Tab's signature poses is the "trigger finger". Ruby decided to throw it right back at him. This one's for you for Uncle Tab!

Right back at cha Uncle Tab!