Letter from Elder Henry, pics of the girls

Dear Mom,

YAY!!!  That's awesome that Trevor was baptized!!  There is no better news to a missionary then that of a baptism in a former area with someone you worked with.  I'm so glad that everything worked out for him.

I'm still here in Huntington Beach 1st and Pierside wards.  My address is the same as before, and anyone who was worried that I might not have gotten their letters, I sent out the news that I would be transfered a week early.  Transfers aren't until tomorrow, sorry if that confused anyone.

Speak of Transfers my trainer, Elder Stringham is being transfered to Long Beach, and Elder Mathews and I are staying.  We'll be recieving a new companion Elder Chadwick tomorrow.  He's supposed to be one of the best missionaries in the mission, so I'm super excited.

My Portuguese is officially ruined.  I was talking to a member in the ward in Portuguese yesterday and he said, how is the work going, which is a super easy phrase and I still couldn't understand him.  I'm not too worried though, once I get to Brazil I'll pick things back up pretty quick.  So far as Visa's go, the two other visa waiters who came out with me to Long Beach both got their Visas, so they are in Brazil right now.  I'm half jealous, half excited because at least visas seem to be picking up in speed.  My guess though is I'll be in Long Beach through 2011.  Which isn't a bad thing, by the way ;).  I'm super excited to spend the holidays with the ward here :D.

That's awesome that Tori won the contest!  You'll definitely have to send me Photo's :).  I also love the picture she sent me.  Sorry my handwriting is poor Tori, I'll work on that for you, or you can always send me e-mails, and that way you can read them.

I'm stuck down here in Trojan country so its hard to get updates about the Ducks.  From what I hear though this week we play Stanford and that (pretty much) decides who's going to be the Top Dog of the PAC-12.  So thank you for all the updates :).

I forgot my SD-Card to USB stick so no pictures this week, I'm sorry :(.  I've been taking pictures though so you will get some next week, and you'll get to see my new companion.

This past week was a bit of a mixed bag.  We've been recieving tons of referrals, but have a hard time contacting them, so we didn't teach as many lessons as I would have liked.  I also had my first disaster of a lesson last week, which I guess happens to all missionaries at one point or another.  I was teaching by myself because we were on splits with a new investigator.  Her name is J, and her boyfriend S is a member.  She felt really uncomfortable, and stopped me at the end of the lesson.  The member S got pretty upset with Elder Stringham because he sent a newbie to teach the lesson.

I've tried my hardest to learn from this trial, and its pretty rough when you are getting a verbal rebuke from a member but part of humility is being able to accept criticism, even when its not very constructive.  The important part about the lesson is that I did my very best, and the spirit was really strong in the lesson.  I certainly can improve my teaching skills, and I will throughout my mission, but for now all I can give is what I have.

Not to be a downer on anyone's day, I want you all to know that I'm really happy out here.  Some really awesome things happened this last week as well.  For instance, B one of our former investigators that we have been doing service for, really is starting to warm back up to us.  Yesterday he came with us to a departing missionary farewell, and he really enjoyed that.  Hopefully he will want to resume having us teach as well as serve him, but I think that we will just continue to do as Ammon and serve until he comes to us.

We also picked up a new investigator last week.  His name is G, and I don't know all that much about him.  I wasn't in the lesson with him, but what I do know is that he promised to read the whole Book of Mormon by last Friday.  Hopefully he did, but we will see.  It's always fun to have new people to teach.  One thing I'm really grateful for is the amount of time we get to sit down with just us and the investigators.  It's awesome to meet new people and try and share the gospel with them.

We also had a less active come to the family history center with us last week.  I think I might of mentioned Bro. H before in my E-mails (if I haven't he's an older man 80's who's an inactive member of the church).  He absolutely loved coming and doing family history work!  He had a great experience and he's opened up a lot more to us after that.  He's also told us why he doesn't come to church, and hopefully we'll be able to work through that with him.

I think that's the highlights of the week, no baptisms yet, but I feel them coming soon.  I think that the next two months will be some of the best months of my mission.  The work here is doing great.  I hope everyone at home is taking the time to be a good missionary ;)

I'm so grateful for all your letters and support, it means the world to me to recieve letters from you guys :).

Love,

Elder Henry

P.S.  Mission President is making us stay in for Halloween this year.  How crazy is that?  Apparently Mormon Missionaries are supposed to be a big costume this year, so President doesn't want us getting mixed up for fakes.  I hope we get trick-or-treaters tonight :).

Here is Tori in her Halloween costume, she actually won a prize at our Ward Party, it was the first time she's ever won anything and she was so excited!

Here are a couple more photos of Sherry at BYU with the best roommates a mom could ever hope for her daughter!  

Sherry is the tall one of the group...she can thank her Dad for those genes!  Happy Halloween!

Sherry and her roommates Emily (L) and Hannah (R) after running the Parents Weekend 5K.  It was Sherry's first ever race and she placed 6th out of the 150 or so women!