Happy Birthday!!

dear family,

so this week has been pretty intense, but i think things will start to get back to normal this week, now that the transfer is almost over. i'm sitting here with my new companion... and my old companion. elder tuckfield will be leaving for singapore this afternoon, and then it will just be me and... elder Ogden! I got news that elder ogden was coming here last thursday, and he got here on monday. just in case you don't remember me ever talking about elder Ogden, he is Beau's cousin who i roomed with in the MTC. we were good friends in the MTC and i'm way excited to be companions with him. the two pictures i attached are him and me in the internet cafe. I hadn't seen him for almost 16 months before he got here on monday. it's interesting to see how people change. he's still the same, but he's a lot more mature now. i hope i've gotten more mature... but i doubt it :)

anywho, there was a big hubbub this week with the chinese elders in our zone (who we happened to live with). the church owns 3 apartments in the condo where we live; one was an old couple's apartment, one is really big and nice and had four elders in it, and the one in which i live is really small and nasty and also had four elders in it (us and the chinese elders). anywho, a couple weeks ago, they took one of the companionship's out of the zone and closed their area, which meant that there were only two companionship's living in that really big luxurious apartment, and there was four in ours. now, obviously the smartest thing to do is to move one of the companionship's from ours to the other one. anywho, i wanted to move to the other apartment, but the assistants insisted that the chinese elders move. we told them they had to move to the other one, but they were not happy and wanted to talk to president themselves about it. anywho, they stalled and stalled for almost two weeks without doing anything, until elder tuckfield and i just had to tell that they had to move the next day because elder ogden was coming and there was going to be 5 people in this tiny apartment with only two in the huge one. anywho, to make and even longer story short, they threw a huge fit and they still aren't very happy with us. apa boleh buat? (what can you do?) sometimes missionaries can be extremely ridiculous.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WHITNEY! whoa, you are 18 years old! how does it feel? you can buy dry ice now! yippee! i'm happy to hear that your recital went well. i wish i could've been there. so what did you do for your birthday? was the alfredo delicious? what did you get?

we also went on exchanges twice this last week. i got to go with my grandson! his name is elder johnson. he is my grandson because he was trained by my trainee (elder Kartchner). i took him to the house of these investigators who were supposed to be getting baptized this week and they fed us a ton of curry and rice. i guess it didn't really agree with his stomach, because the whole next day he stayed in sick. we started the exchange at 4:30 on thursday and finished at about 4:30 on friday, but i had to stay in with him until we switched back on friday. oh man, i was going crazy. that was the longest i've ever had to stay in my house on my mission. i was SO antsy! i hope i never get sick, because i wouldn't be able to stand it. i did manage to sew some things though.

anywho, i love you all. i hope everything is still going well. stay safe and don't get swine flu.

love,elder troxel