Things are going right on smoothly......

Monday was ANOTHER holiday so we didn't hear from Elder McLain until today. I always feel a little sad when I have to wait. However, Tim said "Look at it this way.....we get to hear from him one day sooner now."  That made me happy!


Hey Mom! 

I'm on for today. Man lots of news! Cool stuff for the most part. Good-to-know-stuff.

 

I'm happy to hear Grandma is doing alright! She doesn't deserve to trip on a curb but things happen so that's the way it goes. Give her my love. We had vietnamese food today. I bought a bowl of pho. It was just okay. However, the fried banana and ice cream dessert I bought was fabulous. Yes we are at the Princeton Library today. I think it was open on Monday but we were nowhere near the area and we're low on miles.

 

Our week was alright, low on lessons but somehow high numbers. We had a lot of investigators and less actives at church, which is always a good sign. It was a somewhat stressful Sunday because Johnson didn't get a ride so we had to go get him after church started because he was getting the Aaronic Priesthood (that went great). We also had an awesome ward correlation meeting where again I learned a lot from Brother Johnson and so I'm happy about that. We had three ward members make take home dinners for us and we went grocery shopping so now our fridge is packed. Some of it is philippino food so I am excited for that! Also, Johnson was interviewed to go to the temple on Saturday - he just has to get work off - and we get to go with him!! I hope that all works out. The only problem is that we planned a baptism for this saturday and sunday. It's going to be a busy weekend. 

Sorry.. nothing much on the week but the highlight was Sunday so that was a nice way to finish the week.

 

1. Met with President Jeppson. It was great! I had a lot to talk about and he had a lot for me. I came out with a new level of determination to work hard. That's usually how they go... :)

 

2. Yes it is getting hot here.

 

3. Yes we still have a car, but we walk mostly. Walking is nice anyway. I enjoy it more.

 

4. Picture - The one standing next to me was Elder Christensen and the one who joined was his old companion, Elder Story. It is Delaney's new step brother. I know and have met Elder Drewes but I do not know Elder Tanner. Timpview representation is higher than any other high school in this mission I believe.

 

5. I know Elder House. He's a champ. He was my old district leader before the districts split. He's a good guy!

 

Apparently Papa's Tomato Pies is the longest going family business in the US. We walk by it all the time and we had already planned to go there soon! It looks like it's pretty good. 

 

You can tell everyone hello back for me. You have my permission! I wouldn't mind going to Washington DC after my mission as long as you guys will go through Newark with me. It'll be neat!

 

Well, things are going just right on smoothly for the most part. Sorry I don't have more to write about! I'll have something more next week probably. We have a good week coming up.

 

I'll talk to yoo soon.

Love,

Tab

a cool experience!

Hi Mom!

So, I have to be quick but I can share a cool experience with you from this week:

On Tuesday Elder Mullenaux and I were walking through our area to meet up with two young men to teach a lesson to them. On our way, we were stopped by a crazy man who talked to us non stop for about 20 minutes. He was trying to convince us that he was a prophet, but it was pretty clear to me that he was not. Regardless, this contact set us back a bit on our way to our lesson but it happened to put us at the right place at the right time. As we walked I noticed a girl on the opposite side of the road who was looking at us, so we waved and went on our way. The rest of the day went on until about 8pm. We arrived at an appointment with Aang and Ardy, two of our awesome investigators. One of their friends was with them and her name was Josephina. Josephina told us she had seen an advertizement for mormon.org about 3 months ago and after checking it out she called and requested a Book of Mormon and a missionary visit, but nobody ever came. She did get a copy of the Book of Mormon, though. She had been hunting down the missionaries in Trenton for the last 3 months but could not find them anywhere! She told her friends, family, everyone to let her know if they ever saw the missionaries. Coincidentally, the girl we passed on Tuesday was a friend of Josephina and knew that Josephina was looking for us. Had we not talked to the crazy man earlier that day we never would have seen Josephina's friend. So as it turned out, Josephina was informed that there were missionaries in Trenton and as she was hanging out with Aang and Ardy that day she randomly asked if they had seen Mormon missionaries around. Of course, they told her that they were meeting with us for the past week or so and that she should come to the next appointment they had with us - that night at 8pm. We met Josephina that night and she was so excited to talk to us about our church. She was more than willing to act on the message and she is progressing well. Seemingly, she was being prepared for the last 3 months before we met her. I thought that was a pretty neat experience for her and us. I am so glad that we were in the right place at the right time in order for us to meet Josephina. 

And... now we're gonna baptize them all. so that's good. Aang and Ardy commited to read the Book of Mormon in 24 hours. Not consecutively, but nonetheless... 24 hours! Jos did too, but I doubt she'll make it. They are awesome. Richard is still doing great but he has been working a lot so we haven't been able to see him for almost a week. I think he is still just fine though. I'm happy that he even has a job. As far as other new investigators, we don't have many. But this week has been better than last weeks, so that's good.

I don't think I have any questions for you guys. Sorry I have to make it short! I have been bad at emailing so many people and waiting to write you last. I will write you second next week for sure.

I love you and sounds like things are going good but I hope they get better! Stay grafted into the true vine.

Love,

Tab

Hi dad!

I always appreciate you letters. I have been able to see my growth in this Gospel and as a missionary. Looking back, in such a short time I have made it a long way. And I have a lot to go. I think of people who go to Catholic Seminary... 10 years to qualify them for their ministry. Not to compare, but I appreciate that in this Church we believe that the Lord trusts unlearned 18 and 19 year old men and women. So much so, He even gives them His power so long as they are worthy to hold it. Pretty amazing, right? I love to read D&C 121 and evaluate myself... I love knowing that my ability to call upon the powers of Heaven is completely on me, that God has laid everything out for each of us to obtain. That knowledge gives me hope and leads me to repent, to work, to do everything because I know that immediately, like it says in Mosiah?, the power of the Atonement shall have an effect on me.

Well I have to say hi to mom. Say congrats to Colby... he's the man. I like your bike!

Love,

Tab

Take advantage of the opportunity to work!

After talking for almost an hour and a half yesterday, there wasn't much to say today. Our letters were short but I didn't mind. Two days in a row is heaven! 

Hi Mom!

 

I'll be quick today cause you'll get my letter and I talked to you yesterday so... I don't have much to talk about. It sounds like you had a redneck picnic - was that Chase's idea?  KFC and the outdoors and horseshoes. Nice.

 

Well I hope that we can start working again soon cause the days are going by slow, and the weeks even slower! It's nice to be able to work hard, I guess I never appreciated that before. Perhaps that is my lesson to be learned - taking advantage of the opportunity to work! I'll make sure to do better at that.

 

Yep, so I'll enjoy Tejas Roadhouse. I will pig out haha. I usually do. In fact I have gained some poundage... I weigh 170 lbs! I got a little gut.

 

Well that's about it for me. I will let you know when I get my package!

 

I love you guys!

 

Have a great week,

Tab

Tim's letter was another one of those with great advice! Just wanted to share it too. Sometimes when the going gets tough, we need to remember to still give it our best.

Tab,

It was great to talk with you yesterday.  I'm sorry that I haven't written you yet.

I was thinking about your current situation and want you to know that even though your ability to get out and work as hard as you want is limited because of your companion's illness, that you can still be fully consecrated to the work and that you can serve with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. If you are stuck in your apartment, study as if you were in the MTC. If you can't visit your inactive members, call them on the phone. Seek inspiration about how you can further your work in the circumstances you are in. 

On of my favorite passages of scripture is toward the end of Alma 37 where Alma talks about the Liahona. Elder Bednar gave a great talk where he teaches that the Liahona is a type or metaphor for the Holy Ghost. This passage of scripture teaches that the Liahona work by small means. In an earlier chapter of Alma (chapter 7 I think), it teaches that these small means are faith and diligence.  So my counsel to you is to find ways to be totally faithful (totally loyal to the Savior as Bro. Burr teaches) and to be fully diligent. If you do these things, the Holy Ghost will lead you and guide you through your current challenges.

God bless you Tab.

Love,

Dad

Tab's reply.....

Thank you dad. I appreciate your help. I will use it! 

I love you,

Tab

Some things are worth waiting for!

Finally...... It's Mother's Day and I got to talk to my boy! It was definitely worth the wait. As much as I miss him, I love what he's doing. Eight months down. A few more to go. But for today, I am one happy mom!

A pretty great week!

Mondays are the BEST!! I got my "Hi mom!" and now I'm good to go until Mother's Day. It's amazing how when the work is going so well and people are accepting of the gospel message, it can make life so great! I can just hear it in Tab's letter. What a wonderful way to start off the month of May!


Hi mom!

This week was pretty great! We found a lot on new people to teach, and two of them are extra special. Their names are Aang and Ardy. We met them through a referral we received from our most recent convert, Johnson. Johnson had talked to them previously about how much his baptism meant to him and how much he loves being a part of this church, and Aang and Ardy wanted to know more. It is awesome - Aang and Ardy are so ready to accept the restored Gospel, and they only had a week or so to marinate on what Johnson had said before we first met them. They told us they wanted to get baptized. Teaching them has been a little difficult, but we were able to visit them three times last week and they came to church yesterday. I was so excited that they made it. What was even more, sacrament meeting was a really neat experience. Johnson was confirmed by our bishop and afterward he bore his testimony saying how much he treasured his knowledge of the truth. Courage also bore his testimony. All the african members in our ward bore their testimonies - it was super great. It seemed as though the meeting was tailored to Aang's and Ardy's needs. And mine too!  I enjoyed this Sunday so much. So that topped off our good week. 

So, to answer your questions: Yes I received the package from England. Thank you! I wrote you guys a letter and it has a lot more detail about what's been going on lately. I did that because I anticipated that I wouldn't have much time today to email... we are playing volleyball at 1 and it's noon and we still haven't gone shopping. Sorry I have to be brief! I know you'll like the letter though. Anything else you have questions about, let me know and I'll fill you in. I can't think of any questions for the family... Is Regan engaged yet? Tell her she should do that. Ummm, has dad thought about getting a new car yet? You can tell him I like those new Honda Accords, the 4 door ones. I doubt that will help, he's pretty slow to make decisions so by the time he makes up his mind the new ones will be coming out, bigger and better. Haha. How about the yard? Hopefully everythting is going good for you, too.

 

Well I have to go for now. I love you guys! How's the ward? Say hi to them for me. Tell Bro and Sis Rasband I appreciated their letter to me. I'll try to write them back.

 

Love ,

Tab

And it's Trenton for another transfer!

Transfers again but Elder McLain will remain in Trenton. He said there is lots of work to do. And the countdown begins.......two weeks until Mother's Day! And that means I GET TO TALK TO MY BOY!!  I think that will be my favorite gift.

Hi Mom!

Yes computer time is up to 2 hours! It IS nice.

Thanks for writing! Clark and Reese and I used to talk in unconjugated verbs back in the day... We still do haha. It looks like you had a good time in Paris! I got the box you sent (not sure if that's the one you sent from England) but it had beef jerky and 7 layer bars and all that jazz in there. It was a fantastic box.! I think the 7 layer bars are the best treat in the world. I may not need any for a while but next time Regan sends some, have her send the Rhubarb ones and the fudge brownie bars. That way we get some diversity going on, and I won't get sick of the 7 layer bars.

 

Ok, moving on. You're right, there's nothing like coming home. Not that that is in the forefront of my mind, but I do love that feeling.

 

We didn't have a baptism this week because the Stake President counciled our bishop to hold off. Fortunately, that is only one more week to wait for Richard. After that, we will know what will be the outcome of his situation and it will be more clear how we can best help him after baptism. I'm not sure what waiting until after the 7th will do, because regardless Richard will get baptized into the other ward, but we will listen to our leaders. I'm not worried and I know everything will work out better that way. Richard is really patient.

 

Yes, we are almost finished updating our ward list. We have found that many of the members have moved away. I guess that's good and bad news. But the ward council is all in on helping us find the rest of the members we don't know about. They have planned a night where each home teaching companionship will go out on a sunday afternoon and visit two names. That should get done in ~2 hours and will give us a large update. It shouldn't be long before we figure out where every one in our boundary is. Our biggest focus now is learning how to do missionary work through the ward. I'm not good at it, but the ward is working on doing their part to help us so we've got to keep up.

 

So to answer your questions:

- ummm I think I'm good. I can make rice just fine in a pot.

- We have a crockpot actually. So we're good on that.

- My white shirts are good for the most part. I have one long sleeve that I have had for a few years that is beginning to fray on the front. I just trimmed the strings and it looks fine now. That's about the worst of it. I don't need any new ones. However I could use new white and red tall tees (3X). Just one of each. No rush. Whenever you send the next package that it could fit in.

- I'm not sure if I got your package from England yet. It doesn't look like the package I just got was sent via airmail. But I'll let you know next week when I am sure.

- They are good, and perfect for basketball on Saturdays. But they are annoying because my shirt always comes untucked. They are like zero friction. So I think I'll just stick with Cotton Poly or what not, but with the wider neck. For when I need new pairs... I don't like the neck on the ones I have because they show when I am wearing a normal t-shirt. But they don't show when I am wearing a button up shirt so they are fine for now. Maybe in like a month or two I will need new ones, and I'll get a size large with the wider neck.

 

So my companion I think is good now but we still have a car for another few days. I think they'll just give it to the missionaries who will be opening up the new areas in this zone. We'll start walking again which I am happy about.

 

I have talked to all the T-Birds here. Elder Christensen, Elder Wells, Elder Key, Sister Collins and Sister Boshard. I think there is another few but I can't think of them. I think our high school has more here than any other high school, so that's good. And we'll get more soon! That's always exciting. I am happy for Chase deciding to serve a mission. That is going to turn his life around for the better. I knew he had it in him, and I am sure that Landon influenced him more than anything else. Which is a great thing, cause this work is true! I guess the Spirit worked on him.

 

I am reading the New Testament and some of the Old Testament and The Book of Mormon, still. So one day I'll study from one and the next I'll study from the other. It's been good - I have learned a lot from the New Testament. Old Testament, not so much yet. The books of Moses are interesting. Occasionally I'll cross reference in the D&C too, so I'm all over the place. Except in the Pearl of Great Price. I don't read that very often.

 

So you're getting a new calling. Maybe you'll be an artificial investigator in the MTC! I hated them! Cause they were either way too easily swayed into joining the Church or they were way too difficult. I guess that's sorta like the real world, but it was always hard to teach someone as an investigator when you can see that they are wearing church garments.

 

I can't think of anything else I wanted to mention. A new transfer! That will be nice. Almost nobody in our zone is leaving so that's good. A Chic-Fil-A gift card would be cool if you found one. That's the best place around here. I love it.

 

Ok gotta jet. I love you guys!

 

Love,

Tab

Tim's letter.....

Hi Dad!

 

I too am excited that I get to email for a little bit longer now. I usually am one of the two who all the other missionaries wait on before leaving the library. It has never been a big problem, but now I won't have to worry about them bugging me to finish up ;) I might be a really slow typist.

 

Well,  this is the end of another transfer. I am happy to some extent but also dissatisfied. Not as satisfied as I have been with transfers in the past, of the few that I have been through. I am happy that we got to see a baptism in this transfer and soon we will have another - Richard  - that I am really looking forward to. I wish that we could have worked harder. I've got to learn better how to do missionary work from home... phone calls, forms, planning, etc. Fortunately we got to do more work in this last week and in the past two days I have received a huge amount of motivation from ward leaders and their examples. We have an awesome ward missionary, Brother Jeff Johnson, who is returned missionary that never seemed to have lost the spirit of missionary work. I love him. He's really funny too. I think he is a BYU Alumni.

 

We had a correlation meeting last night with our ward mission leader, the Bishop, one of the ward missionaries and the zone leaders. That was a huge help to Elder Mullenaux and I. Their inspiration gave us a direction for the work we are doing in the Trenton area. I forgot my planner and backpack, so I took as many notes as I could on a mormon.org card. It was a great meeting. We also got fed by The Pethos. Sis Petho made chili rellanos and rice and beans, with flan as dessert. It was really good. I stuffed myself to the point where it was hard to give the lesson afterward because I could hardly focus or talk. I'm sure you remember a little bit what that is like. It went well.

 

I am excited for the new transfer. I am hoping that I can humble myself a little bit. In the movie "Between Heaven and Earth", Truman Madsen introduced a concept called "holy envy". I'm working on that.

 

Well I've got to write to Mom now. Thank you for you letter! I enjoyed it. I'm happy that I have a little bit more time to write home now. I look forward to hearing from you next week. Let me know how the yard work goes ;)

 

Love,

Tab

Another baptism

Tab had another baptism this past week! It's so exciting to hear and I love seeing pictures of newly baptized members. He continues to do good work!

Hi Mom!

How are you?

This week was pretty good. We have a car now! Probably not for very long, but still good. So we have been able to get more work done. We don't have many investigators and trying to find all of the potential investigators that are written down takes a lot of time. But usually we can find someone to teach. Our biggest focus this week was finding all the members in our area. Because of a split in the ward boundaries about 20 years ago, a lot of the records have been tossed around and a lot of young members went inactive. They moved the meeting place from Trenton to Pennsylvania to Princeton. I could see why that would be a mess. Anyway, we have done a decent job at updating the records in our ward. It has taken some time and we haven't finished but it will save a lot of missionaries time in the future. Also, we get the chance to meet new people to teach. So that's good.

This week we also had a baptism! Courage baptized his friend Johnson Browne, who we have been teaching for about a month or so. Courage was a huge help. Johnson is really cool and he was warmly welcomed into the ward. We actually had a linger-longer activity right before his baptism so it made for a large turnout of ward members that attended the service. That's always nice. Johnson's father and Grandmother also attended, which is a really good thing. They aren't investigators, but they enjoyed it and that was a sign that they supported his decision. I am happy for Johnson. That group of friends in the picture is a tight group. Two of them are less active, Hakeem and Fritz, but I get the feeling that this experience will help them return to full activity in the Church. I know they feel good when they are at church. That is an awesome bunch.

If I haven't already, I wanted to say thanks for the packages and letters! They were great. Grandma and Grandpa, thank you for continuing to write to me! I wish I had more time to write back. I love you guys.

I can't think of much else to write! Sorry. If you have any questions for me, let me know. Ok. Alright.

I love you guys! Have an awesome rest of the trip in England Mom! I will have a good week too.

Love,

Tab

Hi Dad,

So I think you're right about the consecration talk. I couldn't find it on LDS.org and the copy I have looks like it came from a missionary in the past. It is marked up but still perfectly readable. I'll see if I can fax it to you. Does long distance fax cost? There is a fax machine in our zone leader's apartment. Let me know where I should send it.

Well we had a slow week for teaching but we made a lot of progress updating our ward list. We spent two days going around and visiting the members that are unknown or inactive or less active. Sad to say, we found a lot of abandoned homes. We actually found three in a row on Friday. However, we did have a baptism this week for a young man named Johnson Browne. He is a friend of a strong member named Courage. Johnson is really cool and although it took a while for him to decide to be baptized, he knew it was right. The baptism went really well and the Spirit was felt. I enjoyed it very much. I also have pictures for you guys!

We plan to have another baptism this coming week on Saturday. It is for Brother Richard Valenzuela. He was interviewed by the Bishop yesterday and it was determined that he is ready. That was awesome news for us, because we know that it is one of Richard's strongest desires. He needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am excited for him!

Well I am still working on consecration, of course. It's getting a little bit easier. For example, one thing gets "checked off" and then I get to fully focus on another. I still have a lot to work on but I do feel accomplished.

Alright I have to write Mom now. Thanks for your loving advice! I appreciate it... keep it up. Have a good week!

Love,

Tab

Elder McLain and Elder Mulleneux with a group of 4 close friends. 

 The one on the far right was baptized by his friend in the white shirt.

Courage (r) baptized his best friend Johnson.