Translation Please

Hey,

Thanks a ton Grandpa for the letter and cash.  I got a much needed new belt with it, thanks so much.  Good luck with your second fishing trip.

Mom's questions:

How's the new companion working out?  He's been great.  He was here in Omaha about five months ago so it's nice to work with his connections with the members and less actives.

Favorite thing about your new comp?  He's really laid back but still dedicated, and he's helping me make improvements to be a better missionary.

Is the new budgeting idea brutal or good?  It's been great.  I've been able to live a healthier lifestyle and thus have more confidence and peace of mind as I work.  It's tight sometimes but completely worth it.

Do you continue to teach your new baptisms?  Yep, that's part of our job.

What's the latest nice thing someone did for you just because you're a missionary?  Nothing for a while really.  We have some perks though.  The owner of Papa Murphy's in CB is LDS so we get free pizza every week and we also get free car washes from a car dealership where the owner is also Mormon.

What's Omaha like in the fall?  I don't know yet, it hasn't really turned to fall yet.

We had a really hectic week this week, so we didn't get too much teaching done.  We had to make countless trips to different parts of Omaha for various errands.  The worst one was that we had to get Tiwi installed in our car.  To make matters worse, the Tiwi didn't stick to our windshield so now it just dangles down and keeps squawking "aggressive driving" at us.  We also had to do several exchanges so our miles got quite a beating this past week.

I got to play some inner city soccer one evening.  The north elders had a handful of young potentials that like to play so they invited us over and we spent the night playing on a mud field in the middle of the ghetto.  It was so stinking fun. 

The mission conference with the seventy (Elder Nash) was sweet.  He analyzed Alma's teaching technique with King Lamoni and committed us to teach through questions.  His main message was that we needed to be bold.  He felt that our mission is too timid.  He went Spanish speaking on his mission so afterwards he came up to us, put his arms on our shoulders, and started talking about the Hispanic people in Spanish with us.  Then we got to hear from another seventy at stake conference.  He read the results of research done by a nonmember at Princeton about different denominations of youth in the nation.  In the research there were consistent outliers within the data.  Those happened to be LDS youth.  The researcher called LDS youth the "spiritual athletes" of their generation and stated that they have more "spiritual vitality" than their peers.

I had the opportunity to do some translating on Saturday.  We got a call early in the morning that we were needed at the trail center that afternoon.  The Spanish Branch in Sioux City had rented a charter bus and was bringing almost their entire congregation and about ten investigators down to see the center, graveyard, and temple.  When they arrived we had them split up into groups and then the sisters took them on various tours.  Elder Terris and I went with one group and translated as the sister spoke.  It was really fun and by the end my head was buzzing trying to keep up with going back and forth.  I did pretty well.  The only time I got stuck was when the sister missionary talked about a six mile long mud puddle that the saints had to cross in Iowa.  I had no idea how to say mud puddle.

That’s it for this week.  Thanks for the picts and letters.

Love,

E' Harker