I arrived!

My goodness it hass been a long few days but oh has it been worth it. So quick run of things. As you would have expected since I am writing this email now, I did eventually make it to this place. The flights went well. Its funny to see all of the random members on my flights and in LAX that would run me down seeing my name tag and talk to me. I`ll be perfectly honest, I was kinda surprised with the flight over from LAX to Tokyo. It wasn`t that bad. I slept for a few hours but not a whole lot. Studied some (personal and language study). All that good stuff. Lets see. Landing and getting out of the airport was possibly the most terrifying thing of my life (well I thought). However I was not detained by customs or any of that and it actually almost felt like there was no security at all. After wandering Narita for about 30 minutes I finally found my bus and was off to the airport. You truly learn the bare minimum with these people of how to talk. However all went there well. Anyway. It was pretty lonely but super nice and I felt super weird being alone. Woke up the next morning went to the domestic terminal which had no english speakers it seemed. Got on this tiny plane. Finally built up the courage to talk to the person next to me on the plane (happened to be the one american) and he snorted, looked at my nametag, and then went back to his newspaper! Yep, I`m on a mission. Ha. Anyway. Landed and go to get my luggage and I see them! President Rasmussen, his wife, and the assistants to the president. I`ve never been so excited to see people in suits in my life! We took a picture there.

Talked about some of the devastation and then took about a 30 minute ride back to the Homebu (mission home). It was kinda funny. Instead of him telling me to speak japanese he was having his assistant practice his English on me. It was a pretty fun trip ending up with the assistants (1 nihonjin and 1 raised by nihonjin) convincing the president to try nato (fermented soybeans) which means I got to try them. Oh joy. It actually wasn't bad. We had dinner with all these people and my new doryo! I think you may have been sent a picture of him. He is a native. His English is good. Not perfect but very good. He is basically one of the coolest Elders I have ever met. He is always so happy and telling a joke but also is really into the work (well it seems that way at least we haven:t really done anything yet). Anyway. Some fun stuff.

Gotta keep it short because we are biking to our first appointment a mogi (roll play with a member) in a few minutes! Talk about baptism by fire! Tomorrow we do service in the morning and then head to my area. The area is named Aizuwakamatsu. Famous for ramen (noodles (also my doryo is a self proclaimed expert of ramen so that is even cooler!)) Anyway, our p-days are Mondays so probably won:t hear from me until then but yeah. I'm alive. This place is crazy but I'm super excited. Love you all and peace out.

Elder Carter

Leaving on a Jet Plane (for real)

So what a week! Feels like my last email to you was a month ago but alas it was not. It has gone quite different from what I expected it to go. I really was more bummed than anything last week but I figured I have been at the MTC for 12 weeks a few more weeks wouldn't bug me it would just be a waste of time. So Monday comes rolling around and I go to breakfast with my boys from my district and then everything got set in motion by the zone leaders. There was a lot of running around getting things switched, no one knew what was going on, the zone leaders (been zone leaders for all of a week) were basically just making it up as they go which after all this is said and done I missed saying goodbye to the people in my residence hall which kinda bugs me a lot but oh well. Alas (I really like that word today for some reason) everything got switched.

I was to room with one of our Kohai that was suppose to leave with my group but because he is not a U.S. citizen his visa paperwork was more complicated than they expected. However we also have another kohai that pretty much only speaks Korean and (some) Japanese so they didn't want me to be companions with them so I broke up a tri-panionship in one of the kohai districts. So (drum roll) Elder Zambarippa has been my companion for the last few days. He's a pretty big (read well built) elder, from Texas (and he makes sure you know it), and well actually a lot like Elder Clayton to be honest at times except a little more loud and.........he's just one of those kids people kind of ignore because he always has some kind of weird comment. A little sad but how it goes.

So yeah got put into a new district. I was a little bummed because I was kinda hoping I would get Whetto/Smith Shimai as my teacher again but didn't work out that way but I do visit her every once in awhile to say hi. The senseis have been awesome support the last few days. (Random Sidenote: Instead of saying goodbye to me when I end conversations with people a lot of people have been saying, "Well I hope I never see you again" kinda sad but I find it funny and their intentions are good). Anyway, the new district has two shimai (sisters) which is a new experience, and a New Zealander! Ha. He's pretty fun to mess with but yeah good stuff. Definitely a lot different than my previous district but they have been extremely nice to me. Something I didn't expect is how much I have learned in the last 6 weeks apparently. I got into that class and I felt kinda super smart. I really didn't think I had learned that much since the kohai got here. Whenever the senseis ask questions and no one answers they just turn to me and ask me now (granted if I didn't know these things I would be a failure). Also is fun to act like a sensei with them when I don't want the class to hear stuff I'm saying to the sensei (not that its very secretive) we just talk in Japanese with each other. Anyway. Good stuff.

So now about this whole hearing thing. Not sure what to think about it. Currently I'm more annoyed by the medicine than the actual hearing loss to be honest. Everything felt fine and dandy until I started taking the medicine but when I told the doc he just kinda nodded with the, "Well that is expected" look on his face and its not quite as bad now either because of the decreased dosage or possibly because I think a lot of the not feeling good healthwise was stress related and my stress level I think has dropped significantly since Wednesday night. But as you said mom that Uncle Scott said, brains are pretty amazing little things. I really can't notice it at all until my right ear is blocked or something is close and quiet to my left ear. Which brings me to your thought father. I have thought a lot about Christ as he ministered to the people and healed all sorts of crazy stuff and how hearing would be such an easy thing for him and as his representative you would think he would be all over helping me physically so that I can focus on the spiritual aspects of this work.

It is actually freakish how many injured people are in the MTC, spending a bunch of time in the health clinic you see all sorts of crazy stuff. Yes there is a lot of 19 year old boys doing stupid stuff and getting themselves hurt but also a lot like me, randomly get sick or have something go wrong with them. A lot of pondering on the "Why?" (hopefully this isn't bad, don't want to be questioning God's ways but I am always interested in what I'm suppose to get from it.) And to be honest that is about as far as I have got into figuring it all out. I don't know, I don't know why this happened, I don't know how its going to really affect my future, I don't know what the future of my hearing holds, but to steal the jist of a scripture shared by a Sister Carter, "I know God loves his children but I don't understand all things"

All this being said don't worry about me. Kinda took me off guard when I called you Wednesday night and you weren't all giddy excited ha, hadn't really thought that you would already know (although Dr. Robbins did say he would call). My train of thought went something along the lines of, "Why is she not happy? Oh yeah I still can't hear.....that kinda does stink doesn't it?" I guess the happy news just kinda blew the bad news out of mind.

Anyway, I will try to follow your rules and advice with airports really good. President Bird said the Narita airport I won't have to use a lick of Japanese to get through so that is comforting. I got my phone card, and I will send the package today. The coat does worry me too but not much I can do about that at this point so yeah.

Not that this means anything to you but I figure this will be fun, here is part of my testimony in Japanese.

私輪この居会話真実だとしています。いえすきりすとがわたしたちのあがないぬしっと救い主だとしています。ジョセフスミス輪神様の預言者だったとしています。この巨魁によって私たちが幸せにあることができるとしています。いえすきりすとのみんあによっておあかしします。

Ok so that took more time then I thought, I promise my testimony is longer than that. Love you guys, excited to talk with you (again ) on saturday morning. Until then.

Kyle's Medical Update

Here is a little bit of an explanation on Kyle's medical status (before reading Kyle's latest letter). He will not be leaving for Japan as planned on Monday (tomorrow). He has lost 40% of the hearing in his left ear. It happened suddenly about 2 weeks ago. The diagnosis is Sudden Sensioneural Hearing Loss. I talked to the Dr. on Wednesday and he said that there is a 50/50 chance that the loss will be permanent. Right now Kyle is on a 7 day treatment of Prednisone. He will go back to the Dr. on Wednesday next week to be re-evaluated. If there is improvement, he will be cleared to leave for Japan as soon as they can arrange it. I have no clue how long that arrangement would take. If there is no improvement, the doctor will either decide to put him on another 7 days of prednisone, or assume the hearing is lost, and clear him for Japan. If at his 7 day evaluation things look worse, the doctor will schedule him for an MRI to see if there is some tumor or growth causing the problems. This would probably delay him a while. But the doctor assured me that this is only a 1% chance and didn't seem to think that would happen.

So things are up in the air right now. Kyle was very sad and disappointed on Wednesday, because he was on fire and ready to go with his district to Japan and get started! So that was hard for him to swallow. But as you can see from his letter, he has accepted it, and is doing fine. It will be hard to see his buddies leave tomorrow, but hopefully he won't be too far behind them.

We will be fasting for him on Tuesday if any of you would like to join us.

Thanks for you support and love,
Steph

No matter how long and hard the road

Hey Peeps.

Well this letter was suppose to be much more exciting but as you are fully aware not really. So hopefully that won't be what this whole email is about but we shall see.

Something kinda random and cool this week is guess who came to our Tuesday devotional to speak? Richard G. Scott! Apostle #3! These little Kohai are getting spoiled! Ohwell we get the benefit of their luckiness So that was kind of cool. He talked all about the special Book of Mormon issue of the Ensign. It was like just sitting at the feet of an apostle and having a scripture study with him! It was pretty intense and cool.

I think the BBC was last Saturday but if I have talked about this before oh well. It was pretty chillaxed. They came in with cameras for the 10 minutes. Interviewed our current district president (Henderson Choro) and previous district president (Beckstrand Choro). Then we had a sub for it so that was funny because (although this probably will take more explaining then I will give it to make sense) our other teacher wrote the "text book" (More like pamplet) that we learn a lot of language from and is really the only thing we learn in class from. Anyway he is super proud of it calling it "The best language resource ever" and on resumes he says he wrote the "Main textbook for the largest private language institution in the world" Kinda decietful. Anyway while the cameras are on her (our sub) she goes and rips into every problem that was on the page (ok rips into is wrong but she points them all out because of course they are mistakes and she doesn't want us to make them (oh and she did this in Japanese so probably no one will understand that that is what she is doing)) Anyway I thought it was funny, probably isn't.

Well I guess I can get to the "fun" stuff. So as you know my Wednesday was not the funnest thing in the world. Starting out going to the Audiologist at 8:30 and probably not until 2 or 3 finally finishing everything. The audiologist was interesting. It was alaso interesting just to be out in the world trying to avoid watching TV and listening to real music. Even saw one of my senseis working there because she is going to nursing school. Went through this crazy sound both test which I kind of failed but I won't lie apparently I understood 88% percent of what she said into my left ear and 98% in my right so I actually thought that was pretty good even though in real life it isn't that way. And then more machines stuck into my ears which actually one of them vindicated me because without having to ask me anthing it said there was something messed up. I won't lie I was starting to think it was all in my head but the machine doesn't lie (still don't know what that machine was testing though) Then the next machine I was praying would of failed (I didn't actually understand its purpose until after) but basically said behind my ears was dry therefore probably the SSNL (I think that is what it is called). Came back and went to get my next appointment. They scheduled it for Monday at which time I told her I was suppose to leave Monday so she got it for an hour or two later but then got this look in her eyes and pulled out this special pad of paper that said "Missionary Phone Pass" and handed it to me with the reassuring comment, "Your probably going to need this" Which I won't lie it is quite the coveted thing in this place. While I was waiting at the doctors office one of the outside doctors called and you could tell he wanted to talk to the missionary and got the wonderful response of, "He's a missionary, he isn't allowed to use this phone" Anyway, get to this doctor sit FOREVER!!!! Although he did have Ensign magazines so I could read something. Then he comes in, we talk missions for maybe 5 minutes seeing as he went to Sapporo then he looks in my ears (for about the 50th time by someone) and then just turns to me and says, "Well there isn't much we can do about this like draining it because there is no liquid. Normally I would put you on these drugs and have you come back in a week but you are suppose to leave so...........well actually I'm going to suggest you date gets pushed back and you come back in a week" I had entertained this thought because it was so close to the end but still I thought it was more of a nightmare. Anyway the next few hours were between getting drugs, talking to MTC doctors about the official stance of the church and them sending me (I didn't really like that doctor, he was kinda a jerk telling me to have patience because after 45 minutes of waiting in a room he still hadn't come to visit. And when he finally did come in and he ask me what the coctor said and I told him he said, "Well I doubt that" then after talking to the doctor told me to stop being a downer (I thought I was doing fine). Anyway, then to the MTC Distcit Presdent get get all my stuff handled (which is kinda nice because there are lot of people to contact). Then calling you guys which was super weird to hear your voice mom. Also you are probably sick of all these kids on missions. Also, I was doing perfecting fine until you had to go and say it was a bummer. ;-) I guess it was good to hear your voices still even under crappy circumstances. And then going back to my district and sharing the news. Most my zone doesn't even know and probably never will (well except the Kohai). Sidenote: Elder Clayton is the bomb for dealing with me all of that day, we missed so super cool things that both of us wanted to go to and he just had to be there because he was my companion. Anyway, that is the experience of Elder Carter's view.

So where does that put me. Well as you would suspect there has been a lot of thinking over the last few days about why I am here. Also I can testify that Satan really loves to attack God's missionaries. Its been hard but there are a few thoughts that have stuck with me. 1. The name of Dad's favorite talk: No matter how long and hard the road, not sure if the content actually applies but I haven't read it for quite some time but just seems fitting. The road is still leading to the same place that being a mission and really that is what matters. 2. Mom's little saying, "This too shall pass" easy to see how this fits. 3. Elder Clayton upon me finishing my call with you shard D&C 121:7 with me that this was just a "small moment" and the Lord was till there. 4. The thought, "No one owes me a mission" If I needed to be out there God would make me a way to be out there. He is aware of me and this is his work so I will do all I can to prepare my body and spirit even better in the coming week or so to do his work. Anyway, the story took more time then expected so I'm kinda out of time today. Maybe I will write you a letter also but I'm not sure what it would include. Today is a whole day of p-day for packing yesterday we had our second to last pep talk all day about missionary work.

Thanks for the doughnuts
Hope your trip went well
I will try to talk to my Branch President about a blessing.

Love you all. Please don't worry about me, I am fine.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Hello Family!

Sounds like things are doing pretty good at home which is good to here. Glad everything is going well in the elections so far, hope they continue to go that way. So lets see, seems like there is a lot to say so here we go.

So this Tuesday we go to the devotional and we got some pretty sweet seats. However, I needed to leave real quick and it was like 15 minutes before the start so I wasn't too worried about it. However when we try to get back in they are being meany heads and won't let us in. Finally we convince the guy that we should be allowed in and when we walk in everyone is standing and singing. Now this isn't totally uncommon so we sneak back to our seat and then when everyone sits down we look up at the stand and who happens to be sitting there? M. Russell Ballard! What the what?(As Sister Carter would put it). Total pleasent surprise. Two apostles in two weeks. Lucky are we! It was quite fun to contrast his talk to Elder Hollands. They have very different speaking techniques but the same spirit is there and as Sister Carter put it in her most recent letter these general authorities have a power to really give you a kick in the butt. So that was sweet and a half!

Ok next crazy thing. So Wednesday we are chilling in class and then the head of the Japanese Department comes in and tells we need to all come back to class (when we all study together not much gets done so we usually split up). Not unheard of so we come back. Then this guy comes in that we have never seen and his name tag says "Operations" (Sidenote: I kinda love being on a mission because i don't need to ask what anyone does or what their name is because of these nametags). Anyway he starts out real sullen with "I need all of your full attention, Saturday at 2..." At which point we all get worried because we are thinking something went seriously wrong LAST Saturday at 2 then he continues. "...BBC will be coming to the MTC." Starts talking more about it. Kinda cool but a lot of people come here to film and do different stuff so nothing too special and then he says something along the lines of,"So they will be interviewing a few of you and then filming you during your language instruction" Becomes pretty clear that they are coming just for our district! Ha. So apparently your son is going to be famous in England! Also they said they would let us and you know when BBC puts the story online. Pretty snazzy if I must say so myself. So that means I get to get my hair cut today (Which I'm not suppose to do until 5 days before I leave but when we brought this up he just told us to tell the people that "President Brown said I could break that rule" (President Brown is the MTC president)). Anyway, kinda cool. Will actually end up probably being not that cool and kinda boring but yeah.

So now the moment you have all been waiting for! Travel plans!!!! There was much jubilation yesterday when these were received. So here is the deal, pretty simple. On September 26 I will be taking Delta Flight 639 from Salt Last City, UT -> Tokyo Narita, Japan. Leave at Sept. 26 2:00pm, arrive at Sept 27 4:45pm. Pretty super exciting little piece of paper! Also a more stressful part of this. I'm the travel leader for all the Sendai missionaries to make sure they make there flights and don't do anything stupid from the time we leave the MTC until President Rasmussen picks us up at the Tokyo airport. This is all fine and dandy but then I thought to myself, "Wait who will be going to Japan with me?" Flipping a few pages to a list of the people and my fears were confirmed. Its me and 5 Nihonjin! Ha. So the person with probably the least airline experience is going to try and lead these people through the airport when he only kinda speaks their language. This shall be an adventure.

As for the phone call, I know nothing about it. They really never even address that you can do it although I'm sure you can. So I will try to find out more about that before next week.

As for our investigators things are going pretty good. Mayumisan accepted the invitation to be baptized this week but there is no way we get her to the level of actually being prepared before we leave and (drum roll please!) Monday Morimotosan is getting baptized!!!! Ha. Fake investigator but I was still super happen when Henderson Choro came in and all he said was, "Well go congratulate him" "......so he passed?" "Oh yeah, guess I should have started with that". Yay! I guess the benefit of this is that because he is fake he can't not show up to his baptism (well technically he can but that would just be mean). Anyway so that is cool. However, when we leave the Kohai don't actually get our investigators. They just keep the progressing investigators that they currently have.

Well out of time now. Love you all. Hopefully I answered questions. Talk to you hopefully soon!

The Gift of Tongues

Hello peeps!

Another week of me telling you random things about the MTC. Let's begin.

So this Monday we received 24 (I think) Japanese native missionaries (Nihonjin). It has been kinda interesting. We were in the middle of practicing teaching the other district and all of us sudden a ton of them walked into the room. It was like Christmas!!! I don't think I have gotten that exciting since I entered the MTC. So in our broken Japanese we talked to them and I found a buddy who is going to Sendai at the same time as me. We have talked a few more times since then and he is a pretty cool guy. Yoneda choro is his name. Also I think a lot of the sisters are going to Sendai so that should be fun because they are super nice too. It was super cool though because after like 10 or 15 minutes working through understanding each other I finally asked, "Do you speak English?" (in japanese of course) and he just shook his head. It really hit me at that moment, everyone one else I have ever spoken to in Japanese has also at least known English but I was actually communicating with a Japanese only speaker. Crazy sauce!!!! Definitely a long ways to still go but we are getting there. Also is fun when the Kohai try to talk to them and they just kinda look at us with the, "What in the world did they just say?" look and we translate. Puts those Kohai in their place. He he he.

So I was in line for lunch yesterday and I look over at the line next to me and all of a sudden I recognize someone from my previous life, he turns around to face me and who is it but none other than Brother/Elder Hill! Ha. I didn't even know he was going on a mission and I have no idea what he is actually doing because his name tag said "Military relations" and all else I know is he is going to Hawaii. That was a pleasant surprise, sometimes is nice to have reminders of your previous life in here especially when it is a person in the MTC with you.

Now for our investigators. Kinda hard to remember what I have told you about and what I haven't. Morimotosan is still having problems with the Word of Wisdom but he committed to try harder last time so we will see tonight how it has been. I don't know if I told you last time or even when his baptismal interview was but he didn't quite show he was prepared enough there. This Japanese culture is already annoying me, he just keeps saying, "Its good to be different in America, its not that way in Japan." Anyway we keep working on them. Mayumisan is doing pretty good not much to say about her or our Missionary investigators. They just keep slowly pushing forward.

Thank you both for the update on the sister in Utica. That is so sad! In our mission conference on Sunday President Brown (MTC President) talked about her and also two missionaries that were in the MTC one who while in the MTC had his mom and aunt die suddenly and another whose dad died on a Tuesday and the next day the elder entered the MTC. This work definitely isn't without its trials. Both of those elders were staying on their missions though, makes my trials seem a whole lot smaller.

Oh little Cecil got his mission call, how cute. That is kinda funny that it really is to Fukuoka. It is interesting to note that basically everyone he in my zone has some kind of connection to Japan. Whether it be learning japanese or having a family member that went to Japan so I guess that fits the mold here. I'm sure he is super excited. Who knows, maybe he will be able to work with Elder Clayton, Beckstrand, Maxfield, or Henderson.

Thank you for sending the mission president letter. Glad he hasn't forgotten about me. :-)

So I did find out that there will be no DearElders when they move the mailroom here so that is basically a bummer and a half! However the Japanese has a word for this, Shoganai (there is nothing we can do about it). I guess I will get a taste of what like Japan life will be not getting a letter everyday.

Its funny that you would mention figuring out Japan's holidays because we were talking about that in one of our classes the other day. As our sensei put it, "The Japanese people just like to celebrate" so basically it sounds like they have a ton of holidays even though they don't know why its a holiday such as Christmas, apparently not a lot of Japanese people understand what it means or where it came from.

Also a random thing about Hymns. It reminds me of Christmas Story at times because Japanese doesn't have an "l" sound as you may be aware so in hymns when its like "Halleluah" or similar its super funny sounding with our "Harereura" all the "borrowed"/stolen words they use from English sound like a 2 year old which I get a kick out of.

So this week Smith Shimai (Formerly know at Whetto Shimai (AKA the sensei that ditched us)), was a sub for our class so and I actually forgot most of the time to ask her about Sendai because I always forget that is where se went. Anyway so half my district is going to Fukuoka and so they always talk about a big dialect there called Kanzaiben. Its kinda weird and they speak it sometimes. Anyway, Smith Shimai instructed me I have my own dialect and told me one word in it so that was exciting! Ha. Random yes.

Travel plans come next Thursday and that shall be a joyous day!

Anyway family. Love you. Actually talk to you soonish (in a few weeks). Take care of abby and can't wait to hear from you.

The Downhill Slide

Hello family!!!!

So I feel like there is much less to talk about in these letters the longer I am here the less I have to say.

So Monday we moved classrooms so we aren't in the scary 1-way mirror room anymore and have a real window that has right smack dab in the middle the temple. Basically a Celestial window. Also we are closer to the all the rest of the Japanese Elders and Sisters so that is more fun although we really aren't part of their ingroup so we are still the outsiders a little but whatever.

Yeah I would say that is a little bit scary with Mandy especially when I read dad's letter first and it says stuff like "the stress of our daughter", "Mandy's situation" I quickly jumped over to mother's letter to see what it was all about. I'm glad she is starting to feel better now. That had to be terrifying and a half! Not really a surprise though with Mandy, that woman works until her bones hurt and her body rebels. They have actually talked a little bit about crazy things that happen if you stress yourself out too much during your mission here. On of our substitute Sisters got tonselitis (I think thats what it was) from working too hard and she is pretty sure she made it so that doctor would never join the church because it was filled with crazy people that volunteer to work so hard their bodies freak out. Now lets just hope she can learn from this and enjoy these last few months. I know God does take care of his missonaries.

Let's see as for our investigators. So we have Morimotosan who who knows if he is still having problems with the Word of Wisdom, I'm not even sure, he won't give us a straight answer. Yesterday was our last lesson with him before his baptisimal interview which the only other person that has had him have an interview he didn't pass because he didn't understand repentence so hopefully he has an understanding of that. If not we shall keep working with him. Then our other Sensei investigator is Mayumisan who I am not sure if I have talked about before. She is the new teacher's investigator. I don't know what it is about her but we just fail miserably everytime we teach her. Our lesson yesterday we talk the Plan of Salvation and it was kind of a disaster. If she was a real investigator I'm not sure if she would have invited us back. I think Ige Shimai her self was confused with this lesson and she has been a member her whole life. Nevertheless, I guess we learn from these experiences and become better......I hope. Then our two members of our district that we teach are doing ok, there lessons are a tad different. They just seem super lazy about the gospel.

So the strange thing is with addressing like Law of Chastity, and Word of Wisdom issues the sensei are no help at all. When we ask them questions they say stuff like, "Its different for every investigator", or "Look at that in PMG" which I'm sure it is very different for every investigator but also I have a feeling there is certain approaches that work better than others. Then PMG as awesome as it is is not as tuned towards our missions as the sensei knowledge is. Its a little frustrating at times.

On monday we get 20 nihonjin (japanese people) that are here for 3 weeks and that leave with us so that will be cool.

As for this protected picture on my camera card that would be the doing of Elder Clayton and I did not know he had done that so yeah don't worry about why I would have done that.

So the MTC is moving it's mailroom and as a result I have heard that from September 9th-15th there will be no mail delivered. This seems slightly odd and I haven't been able to confirm it but may want to look into that.

So story time. So we get to play "Name that Speaker" for the devotional we had on Tuesday:
Part of the missonary oversight department or something like that
Born or lived in St. George (Not sure which but he does has a connection there)
Is part of a kind of important quorum in this church
Has no problem sternly rebuking those that listen to him.
Last name starts with "H"
Dad loves this man quite dearly
So by now maybe you guessed. Elder Jeffery R. Holland!!!!!!!!!

It was intense. We were waiting to go into the devotional (an experience every week in of itself) and the security people were making a much bigger deal about backpacks and pictures during the devotional which was wierd but we try not to get our hopes up. But then the main usher guy comes up after we are all sitting waiting for it to start and starts talking about how we should stand if a member of the 12 was to walk in the room tonight. That sealed the deal. I was on the opposite side of the door he walked in on so everyone stands and then I finally see who it was. Exciting and a half. Its was the talk of all talks. Going from expressing tons of love and how awesome we all are to sternly rebuking us that if we ever walk away from this church now that we will be answering at the judgement bar for this. It was crazy. Also an interesting note that if you get any information on my district would be very interested. He was talking about missionaries of old and about how they gave all they could including their lives for this work and how that has happend throughout ages. Then he got all choked up and then with tears in his eyes looked out at us and said, "the most recent of which just 4 hours ago" so this was on Tuesday at 7:00 pm. Therefore whatever happend happend at like 3:00 on Tuesday but we can't find any info about it. But anyway. As you would expect it was the bomb! Our little district review after the devotional I don't think there was a dry eye in the place.

Love you all. Thank you for all your love and support and awesomness.

Elder Carter
カーター　長