Week #6: Frank Sinatra is alive and well!

Hey there friends, colleagues, and distinguished governors. What a day!

"Gee wiz, why such a day, Alex?" Because today I woke up and had a nice tall glass of Tropicana Orange Juice to celebrate P-Day.

Thanks for all of the emails/letters this week. They were fantastic. The stories/homemade comics were delightful and the tetracycline and nadalol were delicious as always.

This week was pretty spectacular. I got to meet Gary, who had me sing about five Sinatra songs for him. His equipment's WAY cool. He gave me a lot of really good tips for singing more "Frank-like" as well which was pretty neat. He definitely knows his stuff. He sounds JUST like Frank Sinatra, and his whole style of singing is just like his too. So anywho, we're going back there this week. We got to talk a little gospel with him too which went really well.

Our lesson with Kara got cancelled which was disappointing, but we're still meeting with her on Wednesday. Last time we talked to her she had some questions about what her pastor had taught about what Mormons believe. One thing I'll never understand: If someone hears something from their pastor/priest/anything that they know is just flat out wrong about our church, wouldn't you think that they'd be a little incredulous when it comes to asking more questions? I know there are a lot of really respectable and knowledgeable religious leaders out there, but honestly, when are you ever going to hear a pastor say "I don't really know of any reason why you shouldn't join that church. Go right ahead"? Anywho, Kara is pretty strong willed, and after talking to her we saw that she was actually pretty annoyed with some of the false things that she'd been taught (i.e. Mormons don't believe in the Bible) so she's even more set on learning more and a lot more open minded.

President Stoddard "heard a rumor that I was quite the piano player" and asked me to play a prepared musical number a week from tomorrow. Bruce C. Hafen from the seventy is coming to speak to the entire mission and everyone's way excited. We read a couple of his talks and they're pretty amazing. One's called The Restored Doctrine of the Atonement and it's excellent. But yeah- I'm working on learning the Jon Schmidt version of A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. Hopefully I can.

I was talking to the coolest guy of all time with most amazing conversion story ever, the other day. His life story's pretty amazing in itself, but I don't have time to go through it all. Basically, he's awesome. He had some problems with his wife and they were divorced. Soon after, she and her current boyfriend (now husband) were set on ruining him. During all this, he found a Book of Mormon, and the first scripture he opened it up to was in Alma...I don't remember where but it is where he talks about how sweet was the joy after his pain or something like that. Well, he loved the Book of Mormon, but also realized how his wife had pretty well ruined his life. He hit rock bottom and found himself sitting in his house with every light off contemplating death. He just said a prayer where he basically told God that he was going to do it and asked to please stop him. As soon as he finished praying, two missionaries knocked on his door (all the lights were out in his house and it was eight at night) and said that they had a message from Jesus Christ. Way long story short, he was baptized.

We did a thing called "grafting the vineyard" with a bunch of missionaries and President Stoddard. The new missionaries did this activity where we were asked a question about our church, and while standing on a chair, we had to 'soap box preach' about it and clear up confusion and everyone else posed as nonmembers asking questions. Well, my topic was about the priesthood, and one of the sister missionaries threw a bunch of questions at me. I don't want to brag, but President Stoddard said that he was really impressed at how "calmly but boldly" I dealt with the situation. :-)

Anywho- gotta go- love, peace and cherries,
Al