Zzzzzzzack

Howdy folks!

Oh yeah! You probably did tell me that Dad got a GPS for Christmas. I just forgot. I must be getting old. haha!

Thanks for the helpful tips! I'll have to try those out next time we go over there! We've tried to coerce them into staying still by offering a treat at the end, but that didn't work. I think it made them more crazy. Sugar and wild kids don't mix well.

The Departing slide show consists of little mini-slide-shows of 25 pictures and 3 minutes of music for each misionary. Some times it can get pretty long. The Departing Slideshow in December was 30 minutes. Missionaries usually come to the mission every transfer to fill in the holes that are left from the missionaries going home. Sometimes there aren't any missionaries going home and sometimes there aren't any missinaries coming in. The number of missionaries that come in varies. My group was 9 people coming in. This transfer we had 3 come in, 7 go home. Next transfer we'll have 4 or 5 maybe come in and 6 go home. And the transfer after that we'll have 1 come in and maybe 9 go home. It varies from time to time. From now until the mission closes, I would expect that there will be more missionaries leaving that there will be coming to the mission. We have Zone Conference every transfer. It's usually the 2nd week of the transfer. We also usually have exchanges every transfer. Those are decided by the leadership.

Glad you had fun racketballin.
Whoa! You bought some ammunition? How often does that happen? I hope to one day buy some ammunition of my own.

So about transfers:
This transfer I'm staying in Moorestown. My new Companions are Elder Pfost and Elder and Sister Taylor. I also still have Elder Howard as a companion (WOOHOO!) So if you counted on your fingers, you should have 4 up for 4 companions. I'm pretty sure I've broken a few records. Most companions and An (young)Elder serving with a Sister Missionary. I'm still in the office, but now it's switched up a bit. I'm the ONLY office elder. Elder Pfost and Elder Howard are going to be proselyting full time while I'm in the office with the Taylors. I'll still do proselyting with Pfost and Howard, but not quite as much as I'm used to. I'll still have the same responsibilities, but I will be doing them by myself. One thing that makes me nervous just a little teensy bit is that if anything goes wrong, everyone will know who to blame. Next Transfer I'll be moved somewhere else to finish my mission. And Elder Howard will take over in the office while some one comes to replace him as a proselyting elder. Elder Okamoto is departing this week. His mom came to visit even though she doesn't know very much English. She is very nice and polite. After the Transfer meeting today we had a birthday part for Elder Okamoto because his birthday is tomorrow. I'm kind of sad to see him go. We were pretty tight. One day I'll go to Japan to visit him.

Today was pretty warm. It got up to 68 today. Warmer than we're used to. I think it's supposed to stay warm for the rest of the week.

This week I spent most of the time putting the slideshow together. Most of that time I spent trying to get rid of bugs. Making the slideshow is the easy part. It's burning it onto a DVD that's the difficult part. The program always freezes up when you tell it to create the disc, so I have to fiddle with it a little bit until it writes. Last transfer it worked the first try and this time I had to play with it a while before it decided to work. So that's pretty much all I had this week.Happy St. Patricks day! Are you wearing green?

Love,
Zack