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

Zackattack!

Hey Mom!

Yeah I got the new shoes from Missionary Mall. They're nice! Thanks for taking care of that for me.

Sounds like you had a fun trip! How many kids do the Hansen's(Beth) have now? I didn't know you had a GPS! When did you get that? That's a bummer that Lego land only let you in for 20 minutes! They just decided not to do it that week end or what? I love the pics. Mike took some pretty good ones.

Tell Uncle Jack and Uncle Sam I said Happy Birthday!

It's that time again. Transfers are next week. Still not sure which one of us is going. We won't find out until Saturday night probably. I'll let you know what happens, next week.

This week was pretty good. We stopped by the behavioral hospital to see a less-active from Sewell. I don't know if you remember Cheryl. It was my first time touching a full beer can? anyways, she went there to help get herself mentally stable. She seem like a very normal person to me. It was good to see a familiar face again. She's supposed to go home this week. Then on Sunday we ate at the Sikahema's again. Sis. Sikahema always cooks good food! We taught Misty, an investigator, this week. Her kids are super rambunctious. At least the 2 youngest are. The oldest seems to be the most normal person in the family. They are very wild children. Spoiled rotton to the core. We taught Misty and Nick(the oldest) the plan of salvation. It went great. The other two got home and then we taught them the 10 commandments using our fingers and we tried to make it interactive. Do you have any ideas on how to get wild children to focus for 2 minutes? Don't you have some experience in that field?
Other than that, not too much has been going on. I've been working on the Departing slideshow and that's taken quite a bit of time.

The mission does go pretty fast. And it accelerates the longer you're in the field.

It's warmed up this week. It's been in the 50's for a while, though I think we're going to dip down sometime in the next 7 days.

Well, I think that's it for this week. Your turn.

Love,
Zack me!

Zackerdoodle

Hey Momalywomaly,

Oh Never mind. Pres. said I have 3 options.(?) I guess I could go home August 17th, but I don't think I'll wait that long. I'm still uncertain when I'd like to go home. I would like to go to Philly to eat my last Cheese-steak. I'm kind of hoping to go to Camden. It's pretty much the only place I haven't served that is along the Delaware River. I'm not sure when I want to go home yet. I'm kind of torn.

That's great that we've got Cartoon Network! That and the 2 History channels. Those are the only 3 channels that we'll ever need!

I guess it only makes sense that the Carlson's move to the Carlson Heights. Their name is written all over it! They do have a pretty big house! What would you do with a house that big? there would be so much room you wouldn't know what to do with it.(Though I'm sure you could figure something out)

Whoa! John's going into massage therapy? That's totally Whack! Does he give good shoulder massages? I hope he can give me a few massages for free once he gets licensed.

So I guess you're on your way to Nevada right? And then onto San Diego. How's the drive? Are you there yet? Is Mike hungry? Does Spencer need to go to the bathroom? Are you having fun yet? Is Mike driving yet?(YIKES!)

My P-Day won't change unless I extend longer than July. I think if I were to extend my P-day would change to Thursday.? The Office Couple (The Taylors) will continue to be the office couple for the Philadelphia mission in July. They just got to the mission last fall so I think they'll stick around for a few more months. I guess if I extend at all a lot of things could change. I'm not sure what is going to happen with the AP's. They cover the whole stake (YSA branch) because they have unlimited miles. I don't think they'll have unlimited miles when the switcharoo hits. Philadelphia is getting a new mission president right when the switch happens. I think that the APs will be split. One will go to the Philly Mission and the other will go to the Morristown Mission. I'm pretty sure that most of the apartments will stay the same unless the new mission president decides otherwise.
I'm not sure if I'll be transferred this transfer. There's a possibility that either one of us could be transferred, either Elder Howard or I. I guess it depends on if Pres. thinks I can be a super big help next transfer. I've been with Elder Howard for 2 transfers so it's pretty much guaranteed that one of us is being transferred. Since I've been here longer, I'll probably get the boot. I forgot to ask Pres. if I was being transferred during interviews.

This week we were able to teach a family of investigators. The mom is like in her 30's. Her name is Misty and she has 3 kids. Ages 11-boy-nicholas 9-girl-kaylee 7-boy-zachary. The two youngest are extremely wild(they're pretty much spoiled rotten), but Nick seems to be the most normal in the family. The lesson went pretty well. We cleared up some concerns that Misty had about the Book of Mormon. She thought that it was another version of the Bible. She had met with missionaries before she moved to New Jersey 5 months ago. She said that she read the Book of Mormon 2 hours everyday personally and then some more with her children. She said that she couldn't find her copy of the Book of Mormon so we gave her a new one. We have a return appointment next week.

Well gotta go!

Luv,
Zack

San Diego Trip

For those not following the drama I call my life, I won a trip to San Diego from FM 106.5! I entered online, then about 2-3 weeks later I got a call on my cell and was on the radio winning 3 nights stay at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Tickets for 4 to Sea World and a Whale Watching cruise. We could go anytime this year but I really wanted to see the whales, so that limited it to the month of March. Spence and Mike were the likely candidates to take with us and they only had the 5th of March off school. We opted out of the 4th for a school day (never want school to get in the way of a good education) and headed south.

Beth
Maddie
Justin & Michael
Jordan, Dave and Beth's other kid (sorry Beth!)

Our first stop was in Henderson, NV to see my niece, Beth and her cute family. She added another cute boy since I had seen her last. They let us stay with them and were great to get up and fix us breakfast. It was, however, a somewhat painful experience for Spencer and I, as we both slipped and fell in her bathtub (huge bruise on my thigh as a souvenir). Luckily, the bruise and memory will fade, but it was great to see Beth, Justin and the cute mini Hansen’s. Thanks for your hospitality Bethy!

We made arrangements to go to the San Diego Temple and do some baptisms on Thursday. We made it there in time to stop at Dana’s and fix our lunch and change our clothes. It was very cool to take the boys to the temple! The temple president came down and talked to us before we went in. Two young ladies wanted to do baptisms, so they joined us. Dave did the baptizing for all 4 of us. I only had 3 mens names, so they let us do temple names to make up the difference. I was a little surprised there wasn’t more people there, so perhaps there isn’t as concentrated membership around San Diego as I had thought. The experience was awesome, nonetheless! Great way to start the trip!

After we were done there, we found our way to our hotel (Thank goodness for GPS!!!) It didn’t find the address exactly, but got us close enough to find it ourselves. The room was very nice! The desk clerk, Dave, was very accommodating. I asked for a room that was quiet and had a fridge and microwave. We had a nice view over looking a golf course. The inner court of the hotel was filled with trees and waterfalls and the big inner court had the hot tub and pool with nice green grass. It was very clean and well kept. They even comped our parking! (big smile!)

Mike got this pic!
and this!
Petting the sting rays. (Very slimy!)

Friday, was the best weather day, so we used that for Sea World. It was fun to walk around and see the sites and shows. Hardly any crowds or lines! We got great seat for the Shamu show! We left right after that show because we heard you could go to Legoland for free if you got there around 4 pm. Psych! We got there and they told us they weren’t doing that this weekend. They let us in for 20 minutes on a shoppers pass. If we didn’t get back by 4:30, they would charge us $124 for our min. stay. Mostly 12 and under stuff there but Michael loves Legos so I wanted to stop for him.
20 minutes of Lego Land

Spencer returning rocks to the ocean.

Dana was bringing her kids up to meet us. We called her and found a place to play on the beach for a while, whist the traffic eased. It’s amazing how much fun kids can have on the beach!

Saturday, the weather was nice in the morning so we went down to the docks to take our tour to see the whales. We missed the boat by 3 minutes. Actually, they would have let us on, but Dave hadn’t returned from parking the car, so we opted for the afternoon cruise and drove around old town San Diego for a while, went back to the hotel, and enjoyed an hour or two of down time. We ate lunch and headed back to the pier. I thought the bigger boat would be ok for the sea sickness…Not! Lost my lunch in the bathroom after we got out into the ocean part. There was a storm brewing and creating a lot of rocking. Spencer, on the other hand, was having a marvelous time! He stayed on deck most of the way out to sea. He would come check on us every once in a while and tell us what fun the boat trip was! We saw a pod of about 8-10 whales! Very exciting! However, the fun wore off for Spencer on the way back. He lost his lunch several times. One sweet lady felt sorry for him and gave him some wrist bands that are suppose to help motion sickness, offered some mint gum and Kleenex. He felt fine when we got back to the bay.

Dana called us while we were still out on the ocean and invited us over to dinner and movie night (Really! Who would of thought you could call someone on the ocean and talk to them 20 years ago?). Since Spencer was feeling better we voted to go there. We ended up eating dinner with Dana every night we were there. I really enjoyed getting to see and spend time with them and the boys had fun playing with the kids. Thanks Dana!

Got back to the room in time to hit the Jacuzzi for a few minutes with Spencer. Mike and Dave wanted to watch the end of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Can't see them, but there were a ton of deer feeding along the side of the road.

Got up and packed this morning and now we are on the long, long drive home. Thanks Kozy 106.5! Second trip I have won from them! Fabulous!!
　

Addendum: While taking Spencer to school this morning, we picked up one of his friends on the way. Spencer proceeded to tell about his exciting weekend..."I got to sit in the jacuzzi for 3 hours!"