Epistle From Gainesville

McKay, a missionary for Jesus Christ by the will of God, unto the Howell Household which is at Wellsville, with all the others that are out West.  Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit has not yet taken over in writing my weekly letters home, so I guess we can't count them as scripture, but all the same, I am so happy to be a missionary right now.

There are definitely more people in Gainesville now that school is back in.  On the other hand, it seems several of our investigators who showed a lot of interest before now simply don't have enough time to ever meet.  Our ward is on the west side of town and most of the professionals, doctors, lawers, and lots of medical students live where we are at.  Elder Chadwick has brought a lot of optimism and hope though, so we continue to work hard every day and strive to not succumb to heat exhaustion.

We tracted into a man who knew a member years back when he worked at the hospital and she would always listen to him explain his spiritual views that he had essentially figured out on his own (he gave up on organized religion long ago). She told him, "you're closer than you think," and gave him a copy of the triple combination, but he had only skimmed it and then put it on a shelf.  Now, ten years later, we show up at his door and almost everything that he believes is right in line with what we are teaching.  We had him pull out the Book of Mormon and read from Joseph Smith History with him and he was blown away.  Loves it!  Isn't the Spirit great when it does what it does?

Elder Chadwick and I did some service for another older man we tracted into and he is now opened up quite a bit.  I guess it just takes a helping hand and demonstrating love for some people to want to talk with you.  We're going back tonight to teach him again.

We've also got a couple of foreign exchange students living with a member family in our ward.  One is from Ecuador and the other is from Poland.  We had Spanish and Polish copies of the Book of Mormon for them by their second Sunday here!  Baha!  I love it.  They're both Catholic, but they love learning and hopefully we'll be able to introduce them to what this marvelous book contains.

As for the hurricane passing, I don't think we would have even noticed on this one if the mission office hadn't told us to have emergency food/water ready.  It was just really rainy for a couple of days; nothing extraordinary though.  Rumor has it that there are a couple more storms brewing, so we'll see what the future brings.

Jacob's experience with the cannon in Wellsville reminds me of my experience with the 9 o'clock cannon in Vancouver when we were there a couple years ago.  Was totally not expecting it and was out for an evening stroll when a cannon goes off right across the way.  My natural instinct was to levitate off the ground a couple of feet and then the breeze almost blew me off the dock into the bay while I was re-entering the atmosphere.

Good luck to you, Elder Ben!  I've never served with a companion longer than 2 transfers, let alone 3 different times, so I hope you "kill him off" on a high note. I've also been studying the "Fourth Missionary" talk lately and have gotten quite a bit out of it.  I think I change every time I read it.  Then again, that's essentially the purpose of life, change to be more like the Savior; can't ever be stagnant.

Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen

Elder M. Howell