People Down Here LOVE to Talk

Hey Y'all!

I am doing great! And this was a very good week! So far I havent had anybody really tell me that I had a wierd accent. The area I am in is not as southern as other areas Ive heard, even though it is one of the furthest area's to the south. I am in a fairly large city and there are a lot of different type of people, but there are still a lot of people with southern accents. Another thing I have found out is that people down here LOVE to talk. They could go on and on and on for days if you let them, I love it! We have two investigators Leon and Dana Caison who are one of these people who love to talk. Every lesson we have with them we have to cut them off in order to get any words in, it is hard to get use to. These people are probbably the nicest people I have ever met. They live in very humble circumstances. They have been homeless before but now live in a tiny run down shack. Even though they dont have much they would offer us drinks and food, even though it was clear they did not have much. They are really progressing in the gospel and read from the Book of Mormon a lot! We have a baptisimal date with them, now we just have to keep preparing them and hope they continue to progress!

We have two more investigatores who are really progressing as well. I will talk about Eddie first. He is engaged to a member and they are getting married on September 15. He is such a good guy and he has three little children who sit in on the lessons with. He has been coming to church for a while and was at church the oher day. We have a baptisimal date with them as well so we are hoping and praying for the best. Another investivator that is progressing is Joe. We met Joe when we had a lesson fall through,and we decided to knock on some doors, he was the first door we knocked on. We have had some good lessons with him and he came to church this past week!! He really seemed to enjoy it!

We have a lot of other great friends who are investigating, we had another one who was progressing but he went to New Jersey this last week. He is 17 years old. It is fun to teach people who are around our same age.

The Family History Fireside went pretty well! There were a lot of members there, and also a few non menbers who we were able to meet. The most notable one was the Jewish daughter of one of the members we are teaching named brother Jones. Whenever we go over to his house his daughter wants nothing really to do with us. It was really good to see her there, and I think she felt something at the church that changed her attitude about having us over at their house every week. Hopefully she will start to listen to the lessons. Its good to hear that you got a picture from the Allens! could you possibly email it to me?

Things have been really busy this week and there is soo much I could tell you, but it would take too long to type it. I think Ive hit on most of the hilights. We continue to teach a lot of lessons. Ive kept track of the number of lessons we teach and right now we are around 93 lessons since ive been here, it will be interesting to see how many lessons I participate in over the course of 2 years.

Soo it sounds like things back home are still busy. It also sounds like the GFR was really fun! I miss seeing everyone and hope they are all doing well. It is so exciting to hear that Amanda got to go through the Temple! It is an amazing experience and I bet she and T.J. are super excited! It is also really neat that the younger kids got to do baptisims for the dead! We are going to the temple in Raleigh on September 14 and I cant wait for that!

I love you so much. I really hope everything goes well. Thanks for your support and for everything you do.

Love,

Elder Mortensen