Chuch in Astro-Land

Justin sent us a new message on 10/19/05. He now has an official e-mail address:

texas_mc@myldsmail.net (mc-mother chuch...get it?)

Please use this from now on. Also, it appears that anyone can send him e-mail, but he can only send e-mail to his family. However, I believe he is allowed to send regular mail to anyone. If he includes a shout-out to any of you in one of his e-mails, I will forward it to you. I will also post excerpts from his letters on this blog.

Here are some excerpts from this week's letter:

"Anyway, this past week has been great! I have been doing pretty well at adjusting. Thanks again for all of the letters and the e-mails and the love. I will try to get letters out but i don't have too much time."

"So, you want more of the nitty gritty eh? Well, I have heard about the astros. Boy have i heard about the astros. Did you hear about that game that went into eighteen innings? Well we had a dinner appointment that night and the father of the household would go outside and cook the chicken only when the game wasn't on. It was kind of funny. We ended up staying there longer than we were supposed to. Then about three nights ago we went over to another dinner appointment that was during an astros game and the people there didn't even stand up to greet us, they just said, the food's over there, help yourself. Then two nights ago our neighbors had a huge crowd over to watch the last game, the one they lost in the ninth. and they were partying and shouting and clapping and carrying on until they lost or something...we didn't know that they lost until the next day. All we knew is that there partying kept us up for a while. But that's okay."

"We have a lot of inactives in our ward and we have tried to visit a lot of them but many aren't home. That's kind of discouraging, you drive all the way out there just to find that they're not home, you feel like you're wasting your time. But as long as we're working hard. There's one inactive lady that has a sign on her front gate that says, "No Trespassing" then below it she has written in, "especially mormons/lds" it is HILARIOUS. We will have to get a picture with it sometime."

"We are in a car share area, which means that Elder Vaz and myself share a car with the other companionship in the area. We always end up going over our alloted amount of miles so we might have to take a few extra bike days before the transfer is over."

"Yesterday we had a combined district meeting and we talked about sacrifice. We all went around and told about something that we sacrificed. I remembered that before my mission i was so pumped up and didn't consider it a sacrifice at all...and i took strength in that. I know that the Lord can make so much more out of me than i ever could out of myself. My mission is finally here, and as I give it my all, and move forward with faith, the Lord will make more out of me than i ever could of myself. I want to be the BEST i can be."