February 21, 2011 Letter

OH DEAR,

     Wow so that basketball game was a little crazy huh?!?  Reminds me of that one where I had to get nine stitches and Brett Leavitt was clawed in the face.  Ha ha ha.  Okay so the reason that you didn't get an email last week was because I didn't have one from y'all.  So naturally I wouldn't write someone who didn't write me. =)

     So holiday's on the mission are terrible...they usually mean no mail, no one is home, and you have no appointments.  Yeah...I can't wait until I like holidays again.  So this week has been pretty interesting.  We are still getting the wards on track here and they are doing a lot better...but we still tract at least six hours of the day.  Yeah we meet some crazy people.  After we had told this black guy who we were and what we did he said, "You forgot to ask me two questions, 1. Do I go to church and 2. Am I saved."  Oh dear...sir...we didn't ask you those questions for a reason.  1.  This is the south, everyone here goes to a church, 2. I don't even want to try to begin to understand your story of being "saved".  That is all people talk about here is their story of being "saved".  I had heard that like once or twice before but that is all they say out here.  It doesn't make any sense to me.  So that is always fun to hear.  Then the other most popular thing that we get at doors is "I'm Baptist!"....okay...I'm Mormon...and?  I don't know how they justify their Christian denomination as an excuse to slam the door in another Christian's face.  It's whatever though.  Then you get the extremely nice old people.  Now those are pretty tough to get away from.  You know the classic stereotype that they will sit down and talk to you about the war forever?... that is exactly what we go through out here.  You have to be careful because some of the ministers out here will tell the older members of their congregation that if they see Mormon missionaries to let them in and keep them talking to you for as long as you can so that they can't keep going around the neighborhood.  When I heard that I was like WHAT?!?  It's craziness out here.  We were tracting this neighborhood at like 7:00 pm and we had the cops called on us by some old couple that was paranoid about two guys in white shirts and ties knocking on their door.  They had told the police that they had seen two men in black hoods going around and stalking houses.  When the cop got their and saw us he was like, "Ma'am,  You do know that 1. It is 7:00 pm and no one in their right mind would rob a house at this time and 2. That these are the missionaries from my church."  HA HA HA Turns out that the cop is in the third ward and had served his mission here.  He said that we should stay away from "OLD" neighborhoods because they will call on just about anything.  So yeah...we stay away from old people after 7:00 ha ha ha.

     Yes I got the packages.  Thank you very much.  Thank you so much for the cube.  It helps when we are sitting there waiting for our laundry to be done.  Okay so:

1.  Ryan, you should not have a girlfriend.  Dumb idea man.  They just cost a lot of money.  It's like a pet that you thought you wanted and looked good in the window, next thing you know she is pooping on your carpet.  No go.

2.  Shannon got pooped on?  That's pretty nasty.  You should really teach Ryan to go in the toilet.

(Shannon got "pooped" on by a dumb boy on Valentine's Day after she gave him a cool gift.)

3.  Patrick you can do back flips?!?  Do y'all have a tramp now?  Why did you wait until I was gone...not cool.  Oh and I can't wait to play the ATV game with you when I get back man.

THE CHURCH IS TRUE.

LOVE,

Elder Michael McNinch