Conference Was SO Awesome!!

Well, hello again. Man, conference was so amazing! I think my favorite talk was Elder Ballard's at the end. He was so direct and to the point with counsel that applies directly to us today. He gave such great counsel about what to do if you are caught in an addiction too. I loved when he said "We must be aware of the artificial flies that are being presented to us by the counterfeit fisher of men" That quote was so great. I also loved that he said that texting and video games are an addiction too. Some of the other Elder's teased me about that one, but I told them that I am not addicted and never played anywhere near 18 hours a day. That was such a great talk. And then President Uchtdorf was hilarious too. "Some of you may be wondering what this has to do with flying an airplane.." haha. He is so funny. I also really liked the talk that was directed toward parents of teenagers. I can't remember his name, but I really liked that one too. He talked so much about exactly how I felt when I would ask something. haha. Overall, I enjoyed conference thoroughly. It was great. I have to say that I was pretty jealous of the MTC choir. I stopped going to the choir once I heard that we weren't singing at conference when I was there. haha. I saw Mike Morris (from Super Band) in the choir too! He was the only one I recognized, but I thought that was pretty sweet. I haven't heard where he is going though.

Mom, the cookbook is great. It ended up that I didn't cook anything for Bro Buckley like we had planned. E. Rith and I made a ton of cambodian egg rolls though, and those were delicious. Hopefully I'll be able to remember everything we put in them so I can make some when I am home. It was pretty fun to do that. I think we made about 150 of them, and we ate them with the other missionaries that were at conference, and shared them with the Buckley's too. We went to his house in between Sunday sessions and had meatloaf, squash, potatoes, and our egg rolls. But yeah, the cookbook looks like it will be really good. I'm excited to use it sometime.

So besides conference, this week was pretty good. We are still teaching Bryan and preparing him for his baptism on the 24th. He is so cool. He has read every chapter we've given him, and is now reading everyday by himself. I'm so excited for him. We also taught Angeline, who is the daughter of one of our less actives, who we haven't met with for a long time. We were finally able to meet her again, and re extended a baptismal date for November 7th. She accepted that date, so that's cool. She's really cool too. She answers all of our questions and has such a sincere desire to learn about our church. We also met a woman named Aesha. She is a construction worker who is married and has 3 kids. Our ZL's tracted into her, but they only do spanish work, so we got to go meet her. She told us that she gambles, drinks, swears, and doesn't want to join a church that will change that. However, she is extremely interested in our religion. We talked to her for about an hour and talked all about the plan of salvation, the Book of Mormon, and all sorts of all other things. We haven't told her yet that she will have to change all those things if she wants to join, but we will the next time we meet with her. She was a pretty funny lady.

So I think that is about it for the week. The weather this week has been awesome! It's been in the low 60's all week, and it has rained about 5 out of the last 8 days. I'm loving it. I'm so excited for the weather to change and turn into winter. The trees still have a pretty long way to go before they're all changed, but they are getting there. It looks pretty cool. We have been listening to a lot of Christmas music lately too, to get us in the mood for the season change. haha. One of our ZL's in our apartment has a bunch of the Motab Christmas CD's, so that's what we've been going through. He doesn't have the one that I bought for Mom last year, so I was wondering if you could burn that one and send it to me sometime. No hurries, just as long as I have it by the time Christmas does come around. haha.

Alrighty, that's it. Hope you all have a wonderfully great week! Love you all!!!

Love,

Elder Hammer

PS. Kurtis, thanks for the letter FINALLY! I had an idea come to my head this last week. I haven't yet given you permission to play guitar hero, so you better not have gotten it out yet. I am issuing a challenge that if you can write to me for 3 more weeks in a row, you can get it out. I know that's probably going to be the hardest thing you've ever done, but I don't care. I want you to write to me, and so far, this is the only way I've found that's worked. That goes for all of my younger siblings. If you can write to me for 3 weeks in a row, you can all play it. There ya go. Now let's see who does it. It starts this week. OH, I just had another thought pop into my head. You have to write to both me and Justin for 3 weeks in a row. yeah, that sounds better. And they have to be separate, hand written letters. No typing and sending the same one to both of us, that's cheating. Yeah, now I'm excited. We'll see if you really want to play it that bad. haha. Cool Beans!