A Mixture of Colors!

My family! So good to hear from you guys this week! 

Haha mom, I love your stories you have each week....  I laugh all the way through them.  Great to hear Tyson's heading out! I wish him the best of luck. And atta boy Pat! If all works out I guess it'll be fine if he goes to U of A.... I know there are some sins that aren't forgivable, and that one does come close, but I think he'll be able to be forgiven.  Haha sike, just messin. 

Well boy howdy. It's been a week. Before I get into it though check you out Tyler! Let me tell you what, that story you told about going back to that house and talking to that guy was awesome! Got me pumped! There's no way now that I can ever not leave something unsaid.  You're right man, no regrets. Gotta serve with no regrets. Good stuff. 

Ok so this last week. Remember that guy I was telling you about...?  Well we've met with him twice since then, both with members... So long long story short, it's beautiful to see the promises fulfilled that if we treasure up the words of life, and open our mouths, we will speak by the power of the holy ghost, and will not be confounded before men. We're going to be meeting with him once more, Elder Lott and I, and set some serious expectations and let him know that we're here to invite others to come unto Christ through baptism.   If he doesn't want to progress towards that then we need to part ways. 

Elder Lott is going to be my new companion, by the way.  I'm staying in Duncan and Elder Zerkle will be leaving. This last week we've also been doing lots of clean up for the tornado.  Most of Friday and all of Saturday.  We helped in New Castle where the tornado started.  I'm going to try to not get on a tangent, but while there it was awesome to see the outreach by the local community.  We were there helping and the fire department and local organizations were passing out food and water for all of the volunteers and also to the people affected by the tornado.  And there was alot too.  These people weren't messing around.  And then when Red Cross would come, in their big fancy trucks, they were passing out jello cups.  It was quite comical actually. 

This group from Texas came up, set up a stand, and cooked these awesome burgers and cooked for the 100 or so volunteers that were there. The neat part about it though was to see everyone working together. Of course you have the Mormons in the yellow shirts, and the Methodists in the red, and the Church of the Nazarene in the white, and so on and so forth.  As we were working though it was a mixture of colors of t-shirts, and it was a refresher to tell you the truth to be accepted and to be able to talk with them and build relationships, even though I know I won't see any of them again. There are some great people I met those two days.  And the work will continue on.  Our mission will be a part of this clean-up effort for a long time, months and months. 

Oh, funny story. So Thursday our bishop called and asked if we could give talks and we said yeah we could, because he needed someone last minute.  Well Friday we got a call from Pres. Taylor calling us up to do service, so we had no time to write our talks then, and the same thing happened Saturday.  So Saturday night at 9:00 when we're planning, we sit down and plan real quick and get a good 45 min to write a talk.  And I was so tired I said 'forget it I'm going to bed'.  Sooooo I wrote my talk on the stand Sunday morning.  And I pulled it off! Definitely a blessing from Heavenly Father.  The talk was on the blessings and power of the sacrament. 

I love you guys, thanks for all you do! Let me know if I can ever do anything for you!! Till next time!

Elder Traasdahl