I wrote a long letter to President today and I also wrote both of my siblings so I can't write. I'm amazed now my sister is 29 and my parents have been married thirty years! On Saturday I hit seven months.
Love,
Elder Melville
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Sunday, June 17, 2018
According to the Church's system you emailed at 3:25 p.m. today... (6/16/08)
Where'd you get the time machine?1
This week I have had several weird dreams. Four nights in a row I've had dreams about disobedience. One night I was watching Green Acres2 (the Church's system does not allow for manual, keyboard, or HTML formatting for italics, and quotation marks are also technically grammatically incorrect, so I am not formatting the titles--I recognize this and waive myself of responsibility for violating standard English practices), and trying to justify it; another night the white handbook said not to sing simple common songs like "Jingle Bells" but instead to sing songs like "I Am the Walrus" around our companions, although we still were not permitted to listen to those songs (I think that detail comes from the fact that the Ensign this month mentioned the Beatles in the Random Sampler section, which I thought was kind of worldly3); another night I tried to buy pet fish; and last night I was listening to Coldplay and trying to justify it. In addition to disobeying rules, I have seen people hanging off of airplanes hovering over cherry orchards (cherry orchards are very prevalent here), I have slept on a pile of corpses (I wasn't sure they were under the blankets at first), and I have tried to come up with whatever clothing I could when I had to walk home in my garments.
And I think I forgot a shirt in my list to you, the orange one that says, "You drive me batty." Odd, since that's my favorite one.4
I am excited for a week when we baptize Jess K. His grandma is his only close active relative, although he wants his RM cousin to baptize him, but we're not sure if he's active because he's not in our ward. In addition to his date and Nan's birthday, it is also Elder H.'s birthday, a missionary who was in the MTC with me and with whom we share the car, so we see him on a daily basis.
My bike has been somewhat problematic. During the transfer the back brake became disconnected but that was an easy fix; last week the handlebars decided to loose themselves and continually had to be tightened; and on Friday the tire went flat.5 We thought we had repaired it with slime and patches, but indeed it was flat again yesterday. I may have to get a new tire or something.
For some reason I can't think of what more to write this week. I thought of Allie yesterday, thinking of last Father's Day when she went up and sang, and gave me a Father's Day card.6 That was before I started work, and was a wonderful time.
Love,
Elder Melville
This week I have had several weird dreams. Four nights in a row I've had dreams about disobedience. One night I was watching Green Acres2 (the Church's system does not allow for manual, keyboard, or HTML formatting for italics, and quotation marks are also technically grammatically incorrect, so I am not formatting the titles--I recognize this and waive myself of responsibility for violating standard English practices), and trying to justify it; another night the white handbook said not to sing simple common songs like "Jingle Bells" but instead to sing songs like "I Am the Walrus" around our companions, although we still were not permitted to listen to those songs (I think that detail comes from the fact that the Ensign this month mentioned the Beatles in the Random Sampler section, which I thought was kind of worldly3); another night I tried to buy pet fish; and last night I was listening to Coldplay and trying to justify it. In addition to disobeying rules, I have seen people hanging off of airplanes hovering over cherry orchards (cherry orchards are very prevalent here), I have slept on a pile of corpses (I wasn't sure they were under the blankets at first), and I have tried to come up with whatever clothing I could when I had to walk home in my garments.
And I think I forgot a shirt in my list to you, the orange one that says, "You drive me batty." Odd, since that's my favorite one.4
I am excited for a week when we baptize Jess K. His grandma is his only close active relative, although he wants his RM cousin to baptize him, but we're not sure if he's active because he's not in our ward. In addition to his date and Nan's birthday, it is also Elder H.'s birthday, a missionary who was in the MTC with me and with whom we share the car, so we see him on a daily basis.
My bike has been somewhat problematic. During the transfer the back brake became disconnected but that was an easy fix; last week the handlebars decided to loose themselves and continually had to be tightened; and on Friday the tire went flat.5 We thought we had repaired it with slime and patches, but indeed it was flat again yesterday. I may have to get a new tire or something.
For some reason I can't think of what more to write this week. I thought of Allie yesterday, thinking of last Father's Day when she went up and sang, and gave me a Father's Day card.6 That was before I started work, and was a wonderful time.
Love,
Elder Melville
1I
sent my email in the morning, but my missionary email account said
my mom had sent a letter in the afternoon.
2According
to Chicago Manual of Style
and others, names of long works, including TV shows, should be
italicized. But my anguish over this issue might have been
alleviated if I had known that AP style uses quotation marks. Or I
could just not have worried about it.
4My
family had told me they had gone through my clothes and found I had 26 or 27 Snoopy shirts. Very awkwardly, I sent home a
handwritten letter documenting all the Snoopy shirts I owned, which
was more than they told me. Most of them were holiday shirts. I have
since gotten rid of most of them, because they quit fitting me, and
I’m less comfortable wearing cartoon characters, and most of them
were just stock pictures with some kind of decoration outside the
official Peanuts canon.
5East
Wenatchee was where I was first introduced to goatheads, a plant
that has plagued me ever since.
6On
Father’s Day in 2007, my niece was not quite four years old. She
sang Father’s Day songs with the primary. Her class made Father’s
Day cards. She didn’t have a father, so she made cards for me and
my dad. The one for me said “I like to play Mario with my Uncle
Mark.” The one for my dad said “I like to watch Monster House
with my Pops.” That night we went to my grandparents’ house, and
she sang a line from one of the songs she had learned: “Back to
our home above.” Then she said she had sung “the tale of it.”
See this
post.
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Funny scripture of the week: Jeremiah 24:2 (6/2/08)
1Well, this is my last week emailing from the North Spokane Library. Tomorrow I am leaving for East Wenatchee, which is fairly far from here. Today we have to work out how I'm going to get to the transfer van. I have to be at the site at 7:00 a.m. and it could be hard to get members to take us that early,2 especially since they would have to wait for Elder C.'s new companion to come at 11:00.
Wenatchee is at the western edge of our mission. (I think East Wenatchee's name is like ours is North Salt Lake.) Apparently it is like Utah County--desert on one side and mountains on the other. Everyone tells me it gets hot there, and I hate heat. Therefore, I have a request. I do not have seven short-sleeve shirts. I'm not sure how many I have, especially since one just got a mysterious stain. So I need a few short-sleeve shirts.
I just sent a package full of clothes I don't need anymore--socks that don't match my slacks, plain T-shirts I don't need because I've acquired some other shirts (and I mostly use them just for sleeping and P-day), pajamas I don't need since I got some at Christmas, unopened garments that aren't the kind I like and I have plenty, and the aforementioned stained shirt. I am almost packed, I think, and hopefully I can make it. I have to put my books in a box, and it's pretty heavy, especially with History of the Church.
My new companion will be Elder B. I think that's how his name is spelled. It's pronounced [redacted]. According to last month's mission newsletter, if B. is indeed [redacted pronunciation], he is a district leader, which means I'll have to go on a lot of exchanges. I hate exchanges. I lose track of what's going on in my area. I've never liked them since I had to do one for a week. District leaders are supposed to go on two a week, which doesn't bode well for me.
I have Mead and all the names of the ward list practically memorized. I have half of the addresses of the people we're working with memorized. All the knowledge in my head will soon be invalid and irrelevant. Time to relearn everything.
If East Wenatchee follows the pattern I've had here (i.e., four transfers), I'll be there through Halloween.3 I know I'll be there for the Fourth of July, which is coming up pretty quickly.
Um...again I can't think of anything else. I realize this letter sounds like I'm not excited, but I am actually very excited. (I wasn't too excited, though, when they made me say the opening prayer in sacrament meeting since I'm leaving.) I loved the Allie story. I wonder what she was thinking...4
Love,
Elder Melville
[This email was followed by another one, entitled “One other thing”:]
I forgot to tell you...my companion is from Hurricane. Not that that matters, I just forgot to tell you.
That's all!
1Jeremiah 24:2: “One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.” “Very naughty figs” became one of my favorite passages throughout my mission.
2We had a member who worked at the temple take me, since the van met right by the temple.
3Nope, I was only there three transfers.
4Allie was my four-year-old niece. My mom wrote, “I do have a quick Allie story. We were sitting in church and Allie looks up at the ceiling and says, softly but audibly, ‘Preston you get down from there. I told you not to go up there.’ I wonder what the people in front and behind us thought.” Preston was her imaginary brother (named for her real-life cousin).
Wenatchee is at the western edge of our mission. (I think East Wenatchee's name is like ours is North Salt Lake.) Apparently it is like Utah County--desert on one side and mountains on the other. Everyone tells me it gets hot there, and I hate heat. Therefore, I have a request. I do not have seven short-sleeve shirts. I'm not sure how many I have, especially since one just got a mysterious stain. So I need a few short-sleeve shirts.
I just sent a package full of clothes I don't need anymore--socks that don't match my slacks, plain T-shirts I don't need because I've acquired some other shirts (and I mostly use them just for sleeping and P-day), pajamas I don't need since I got some at Christmas, unopened garments that aren't the kind I like and I have plenty, and the aforementioned stained shirt. I am almost packed, I think, and hopefully I can make it. I have to put my books in a box, and it's pretty heavy, especially with History of the Church.
My new companion will be Elder B. I think that's how his name is spelled. It's pronounced [redacted]. According to last month's mission newsletter, if B. is indeed [redacted pronunciation], he is a district leader, which means I'll have to go on a lot of exchanges. I hate exchanges. I lose track of what's going on in my area. I've never liked them since I had to do one for a week. District leaders are supposed to go on two a week, which doesn't bode well for me.
I have Mead and all the names of the ward list practically memorized. I have half of the addresses of the people we're working with memorized. All the knowledge in my head will soon be invalid and irrelevant. Time to relearn everything.
If East Wenatchee follows the pattern I've had here (i.e., four transfers), I'll be there through Halloween.3 I know I'll be there for the Fourth of July, which is coming up pretty quickly.
Um...again I can't think of anything else. I realize this letter sounds like I'm not excited, but I am actually very excited. (I wasn't too excited, though, when they made me say the opening prayer in sacrament meeting since I'm leaving.) I loved the Allie story. I wonder what she was thinking...4
Love,
Elder Melville
[This email was followed by another one, entitled “One other thing”:]
I forgot to tell you...my companion is from Hurricane. Not that that matters, I just forgot to tell you.
That's all!
1Jeremiah 24:2: “One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.” “Very naughty figs” became one of my favorite passages throughout my mission.
2We had a member who worked at the temple take me, since the van met right by the temple.
3Nope, I was only there three transfers.
4Allie was my four-year-old niece. My mom wrote, “I do have a quick Allie story. We were sitting in church and Allie looks up at the ceiling and says, softly but audibly, ‘Preston you get down from there. I told you not to go up there.’ I wonder what the people in front and behind us thought.” Preston was her imaginary brother (named for her real-life cousin).
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