October 24, 2011

Yes it has been 4 months actually 2 days more then 4 months so time continues to go by. Its kinda crazy how many companions I've had. But in a mass email from president he says that he’s going to start keeping missionaries in areas for longer periods of time like 4-5 transfers a transfer is 6 weeks by the way. And I have to correct myself it wasn’t Elder Bednar it was Elder Ballard so I apologize for the confusion.

Its been a pretty good week here though we got 3 new investigators one was an old potential that they tracted into before I was here and the other was a less active members boyfriend or fiance or something of that nature. And that third was another less active members wife or fiance were not really sure if there married or not. But the last new investigator we got just went thorough a very tragic death in there family her son was accidentally shot by her fiance or boyfriend or whatever he is apparently he was cleaning his gun and the boy said shoot me shoot me daddy and the gun was loaded but they didn’t know it. So their struggling to get through all that they’re going through the man is still being tried for possible man slaughter and the family is struggling to cope so hopefully we can do something to help.

But on a brighter note I feel as though I have relived dad’s childhood. On Saturday we did some service for a member Brother Snyder to be exact he kinda reminds me of dads side of the family he’s fairly big and he’s got about the same attitude and just way of speaking he kinda reminds me the most of uncle Tilghman. But the service we were doing was going up into the mountains and hauling out wood as he cut it down. We ended up leaving with 2 and a half cords of wood that was made up of logs 5 foot long and probably 6-12 inches around weighing roughly 60-200 pounds depending on the log. It took us 3 hours to get all the lumber it was about a 60 yard walk to the trailer from where we were cutting the wood and it was me elder banks a teacher aged boy and brother Snyder’s daughter who is a senior in high school. We had these homemade log carrying tools made up of rope and a small piece of pipe for a handle. Elder banks was paired up with the boy and I got the girl the way we carried was grabbing either the front or the back of a log in each hand with our little tools and walking one in front of the other with the logs. Our team kinda struggled yet we kept up I was kinda glad that my partner in carrying logs was a little on the bigger boned side so she wasn’t too much of a hindrance until she kinda died off after an hour of straight hauling. After she died off I kinda developed my own method of haulin logs I would put my little ropes around each end of the logs and throw um on my back and walk um out needles to say I'm a beast and I was carrying wood out like a fiend There was a few comments made in my direction that were basically callin me a mule ha however after about 2 more hours I was very glad to see the trailer full and us to be driving off. As we were leaving brother Snyder commented on how he had never had such a big load on his trailer. Followed by him calling his wife and saying he had worked us like a couple of borrowed mules so it made me feel right at home.


As you can tell probably by this story I haven’t really had much happen this week so hopefully I’ll have something better this coming week.

But yes dad I have developed a tolerance to the mate but I actually haven’t drank it in like 2 weeks so I'm kinda fallin behind but its good and yeah it does make you pee pretty bad ha. But I'm out of time so I’ll let you go and hopefully I’ll hear from you soon

But mom I haven’t gotten the package as of yet so I dunno if you sent it to me or someone else I dunno but it could just be a lie that they delivered it so I’ll keep an eye out. I did get my hoodie from granny but nothing from you so I’ll keep looking but love you and talk to you later

Elder Kartchner

(The package I sent to Karson was "delivered" on Tuesday. I had tracked it and saw it was posted as delivered so I stopped worrying and threw away the tracking number. When I heard he hadn't got it I called Fedex and tried to explain that the only contact I had with Elder Kartchner was Monday emails, they were going to try and figure out what happened on their end. They called Tuesday morning in hopes I had a phone number or some way of getting in touch with him. Tuesday afternoon I get a call on my cell phone from Sis. Reyes in Chambersburg...she'd just spoken to Elder Kartchner and he found the package by the back door)