Crazy Weather!

Hi Jared,

Mikayla got her card that you sent, and she LOVES it! Thanks for sending it. Hallie's Birthday is this week...hint hint!

This week we have had the CRAZIEST weather ever! Thursday we had an ice storm. I don't remember ever seeing anything like it. The rain instantly froze as it hit any surface. The whole county was a literal ice skating rink. There were hundreds of car accidents and lots of people fell and got hurt. We had scheduled New Beginnings on a stake level but it was so slippery, the Stake President cancelled it for fear of someone getting hurt. We rescheduled it for Sunday night. Well, Sunday afternoon came and brought with it at least a foot of new snow. We cancelled it again. There were cars stuck all over. It was a mess. Dad and Taylor were at the church shoveling and couldn't make it home. They abandoned the car and walked home.

The new snow is so pretty. I love how it looks, and it is actually about 20 degrees warmer than it has been, so that's nice. Taylor took Alice and Manuela for a snowmobile ride around the circle. I think they liked it.

We had a snow day last week...no school. Thursday morning we got another call from the district, they moved back school start times two hours to allow the plows to get the roads cleared. The kids have really enjoyed these unexpected treats.

We hope you are braving the weather well. Spring is just two months away.

I'm off to work at the State Capitol...

Have a wonderful week. I love you so much! Mom

Hey,

 

The weather hasn't been nearly as crazy as it has at home. We were supposed to get a big ice storm yesterday, but it ended up just raining. We're supposed to have more rain for the next few days and the temperature will be in the 60s.

 

We didn't have a ton happen during the week, but yesterday was great. We had another amazing lesson with Beth and Everett. They're doing so well. We taught the Plan of Salvation and he loved every bit of it. They also came to church and the branch did a great job welcoming them.

 

Love you,

 

Jared

What's with Your Sweater?

Dear Jared,

A few days ago Hallie, Dad, and Taylor went to weigh Taylor's mini and it weighs 1340 pounds. Pretty crazy! Everyone thought that it would weigh more than that. 

Hallie's birthday is in 11 days. She is super excited and hopefully she will buy an iPad mini. 

Mikayla has been hanging out a lot with a really cute group of friends. Saturday they went tubing. She and McKenzie Lundy were on the same tube going down. Everything was going well until they hit a jump! Luckily one of the guys caught it on video so we could laugh about it over and over. They both thought for a minute that they were goners. After they realized they made it through, it was okay to laugh about. It is a pretty good clip. When they were done, all 10 of them came here to spend the rest of the day. I like her friends a lot.

I don't think I told you that I spoke in church last week. My subject was "The Blessings of Serving a Mission". A subject near and dear to my heart. My talk was pretty much amazing since I had such great subject matter.

This week has been super cold, icy, smoggy and uneventful. Wish I had some amazing entertaining story to share, but this is real life here. This is the life we lead. 

I'm off to work at Spankys. This will be by last time there for a couple of months. I'm taking a leave of absence so I can go work on Capitol Hill. More about that later...

I love you more than you'll ever know! Keep up the good work!

Love, Mom

Hey,

  

This week has been pretty great. We had exchanges with the Zone Leaders on Wedensday and i got to go to Ball State University for the day. It's a whole different type of missionary work. We spent a ton of time walking around campus talking to people. We met some great people, including a girl with red hair named Ginger. It was great. We also taught a mission prep class that night, which was pretty cool. On Friday we had an awesome first lesson with a guy named Derrick. He's super cool. He looks just like a young George Costanza. He's a really open guy who's been through a lot. In the past two weeks three of his grandparents have passed away and he just went through a divorce. He likes our church a lot and he responded really well to the Restoration.

 

Adam is doing pretty well. We have a lesson set up with him today, but I'm in Marion on exchanges right now with Elder Channell, so I won't be there for it. We also have a lesson tonight with a cool part member family. We just started teaching them and they're awesome. The husband's name is Phil, and he's a great guy. They've got an old Victorian home they've restored and it's probably the nicest house in Elwood. He works for Rolls Royce, so that's pretty cool. They should be commiting him to baptism tonight.

 

Sunday was a neat day. We had a fireside at the church and we were stopping by a few people before going over there. After one of the doors we got back in the car to try by the next person. As we were sitting in the car another car pulled up and stopped right next to us motioning for me to roll the window down. He asked if we were Jehovah's Witnesses. When I told hime no he asked who we were. Turns out he's really been searching for the past few days. He said it was a "funny coincidence" that he ran into us. We set an appointment with him and left for the church. Pretty cool stuff.

 

After the fireside we had another spectacular lesson with a part member family in Alexandria. Their names are Beth and Everett. We had a great first lesson with them a few weeks ago and he's a truck driver, so it's hard to get ahold of them. We finally got ahold of them and taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The spirit was really strong and we commited him to be baptized on March 30th. He gladly accepted.

 

We've had tons of spiritual experiences this week and our area is really starting to blossom.

 

P.S. Funny side note for you, on Monday we were at Kohl's buying some clothes for the cold weather we are having this week. At the register the woman working asked if my wife picked out the sweater I was buying. I just smiled and said yes.

 

Love you!

  

Jared

Garfield and Elder Wise

Jared,

So sorry about not getting you a letter sent. I have been so sick the last few days. This morning I got the kids off to school and got someone to work for me, and i went back to bed. The phone rang and woke me up, I couldn't believe when I saw the time, it was almost noon. I checked my email and you had already written. I'll send this anyway and hope you get it.

Thanks for the pictures. That's crazy about your warm weather. It has been extra cold here. It snowed before Christmas and hasn't gotten above freezing since. Thursday it started snowing and didn't stop until Saturday afternoon. We got so much over night, the school district closed all the schools. Friday was a "snow day". The kids loved that!

Yesterday we picked up two girls from Brazil who will be staying with us for a month. They are darling. Alice and Manuela. I think they will be a lot of fun.

Hope you get this today. If not, you'll get two next week. Sorry about that.

Love you tons, Mom!

Hello,

 

Things are going well for Elder Melchior and I. The Weather has been crazy here. For two days it was near sixty degrees and a few days later there was a lot of flooding in the area.

 

On Tuesday We went on exchanges and I went to Marion for the day. While I was gone Elder Melchior and Elder Channell taught Adam. The lesson went really well and they set a baptism date with him for March 2nd. He's doing really well now. He's still got a lot to overcome, but he's making big steps. He came to church yesterday for the first time.

 

Elder Davis and I had a good day in their area. We went to a little town called Fairmount, childhood home of James Dean and Jim Davis. We did a lot of work tracting there. We even got a picture with one of the Garfield statues there.

 

Other than Adam, it's been a little slow with teaching right now. We're finding a lot more people though. It's just hard to consistently meet with them.

 

Love you!

 

 

Jared

 

P.S. I'm sending a second email with some pictures, let me know if you get it.

Mikayla's Sweet Sixteen

Hi Jared,

We had an adventurous New Years Eve. We went up to the cabin and it was COLD!  We had fun snowmobiling inspite of it. But it was so cold the water inside the cabin froze up and we had to melt snow to survive our two days there, We invited Ivan and Jenn and the Thorley's. They are a lot of fun. When we left there Tuesday afternoon, it was 5 degrees.

Wednesday was back to school for the kids. It was a short vacation, and everyone was bummed about it, but they got to start school later this year.

Saturday we attempted to throw a surprise party for Mikayla's sixteenth birthday. Hallie had it all planned out right down to the smallest Pinterest detail.  We made adorable cupcakes and a cake on a three tier cake stand. All was going well until it was time for the party to start and none of her friends were here. She came home with Sammi and her mom, who were detaining her while shopping. I told Taylor to not let her in the house, to quickly take he to get a pizza for lunch. As they were pulling out, several of her friends were coming in. She knew then that something was up. They turned around and came back to the house. By then, everyone was here. It ended up to be a really fun party. She has cute friends. The last guest left at 11:00 p.m., ten and a half hours later. One boy even professed his "like" for her. What a way to start her sixteenth year of life.

Unfortunately, Mikayla woke up sick on her Birthday. She was so sad. Hallie wasn't feeling well either, so they both stayed home from church. Not a fun day for her. We put candles on her cake, but didn't want her to blow out the candles and contaminate the cake, so she fanned them out with a paper plate. Poor thing.

It's cold and icy here, 12 degrees this morning. It's been like this all week. How's the weather in Indiana? Hope your week is awesome!

We love you! Mom

Hey,

 

It was a pretty slow week for us. The highlight of the week was a new family we started teaching. Their names are John and Kathy. Kathy met with missionaries about 40 years ago and still remembers almost everything they taught. It was pretty neat, as we were teaching she was helping teach her husband. She even asked us when we taught about the Book of Mormon about "a scripture of Jesus talking about other sheep that he has". It was a great lesson. Kathy's a little stubborn though and has a few doctrinal issues she doesn't understand yet, but we'll get them sorted out. We've got a lesson scheduled with them tonight so we'll see how things go!

 

The weather's not too bad here. It's been in the 30s the whole week.

 

Love you,

 

Jared 

P.S. The cat comment was a joke.

Hi Jared,

What a wonderful Christmas gift, to be able to talk to you! That was so much fun. I love that you seem happy and you are learning and growing.  I know it was a bit crazy, with the Wheeler's coming over, and Grandpa's silly comments, but  I enjoyed it anyway. We sure do love you and are so proud of you.

This week was pretty relaxed but fun. We finally got a decent amount of snow for the first time in a couple of years, so Taylor was able to try out his snowmobile and the snowblower. What a fun day!

We are going to go to the cabin with Ivan and Jenn to ring in the New Year!  We are taking our Christmas tree so Taylor can torch it!  What could be more fun than a huge fire outside in sub zero temperatures?

Do you do anything for New Years Eve, or do you have to be home in bed?

Holden is back on a trial mission. he is serving in Wellsville.  Since we will be driving right through the pint sized town, we thought we'd take a non member with us, so we could take the Elders up to the cabin with us, but we couldn't find anyone. So we'll just have to wave to him as we drive through. If things work out for him, he'll be home the first week in March, he will go through the temple and then to the MTC and be sent someplace to serve 21 more months.  Pray for him that it will all work out.

Have a Happy New Year!

Love, Mom

Hey,

 

This week has been Crazy, yesterday in particular. It was just one thing after another. We spoke in Sacrament meeting and it went well. Elder Melchior spoke on Repentance and I spoke on Sacrifice. I brought a stray cat from off the street to demonstrate. Anyways, after church we had lunch at home and then left for a town in our area called Alexandria. It's about the same size as Elwood. We haven't worked nearly as much there so we decided to spend the whole day there and come home for dinner at 8. We spent a couple hours knocking on doors without any success when we decided to try by one of our investigators named Jim. He let us in and we chatted with him for a while. They were just getting ready for dinner so they invited us to stay. We had a great pot roast. For dessert Maudie, Jim's fiance, told us she had a few pies. Two that she made herself, and two that her aunt had given her.  We all had a slice of each. After we had all finished, Elder Melchoir was staring at the remains of one of the pies from Maudie's aunt. When Jim asked him if anything was wrong he said, "You might want to throw the rest of that pie away..." Startled, Jim asked why. "Because there's mold all over it." was the answer. We had all eaten a slice and nobody had noticed.

 

After we left Jim's, we were driving to go try a few more people. Earlier in the day I commented on how I thought it was odd that one one of the main streets they had plowed all the snow right into the middle of the street. There was a four foot tall median of snow. When we passed by it this time, there was a cop car on top of it. We pulled over to help free the car. He was furiously rocking the car from drive to reverse trying to get free. We, with the help of one other guy that came to help, pushed the car from off the mountain.

 

Our next, and final stop before heading home was to a lady named Beth. She's a member that's lived in Alexandria for about fifteen years. She was just found this spring when some other elders were tracting and found her. Elder Zeyer and I tried by her every time we were in Alexandria and never caught her. Well, last night we did. She invited us right in. Her husband, Everett joined us as well. There were lots of tears as they opened up to us about how they needed God more than ever in their lives. We taught them the message of the Restoration and they are ready to accept. We had a powerful lesson with them. At the end of the lesson we asked Everett if when he came to know that this was the true church if he would be baptized. His answer was like it was straight out of a movie. It was a "Yes,...yes I will." as he was getting a little teary eyed.

 

The night didn't stop there though. As we were driving home, close to 9:00 we got a message from a member telling us that half of Elwood was out of power, and it was the half we live in. So, we got home, packed some things, and traveled to Marion, to stay with the other elders. And that's where we are right now. On a normal Preparation day we have our prep time from 10-6, but today we have it from 1-9, so this morning we split up and I went with Elder Channel, a new missionary.

 

It's been a crazy few days.

 

Love you,  Jared

 

P.S. The cat comment was a joke.