July 19, 2007

  • Dear friends, family, and fellow xangans,

    There are just too many thoughts going on at once for me to know what to say. I am still the District Leader over here in Chino- going on 7 1/2 months here. Things are going really well. I'm trying to keep things going in our wards- it is harder now.

    My new companion is Elder Shafer from Connecticut. (I hope I spelled that right). Yay for the East Coast. He's a cool kid. Right away he recognized my name- he knows someone who said to look out for me. He asked me if I knew her - April Mason. I asked if she was April Hargan, and we struck gold. She is my cousin's wife. Apparently Elder Shafer is good friends with April's little sister. Small world. It's funny, but he knows my cousin's kids much better than I do. Kind of fun to get to know them through him- he has pictures and everything.

    I knew that Elder Shafer was going to be my companion right away because of the 10 kids, only 1 had emo glasses. As it turns out, he is not really Emo, but that's ok, I have enough emo to cover the both of us.

    Yesterday in Sacrament Meeting I had some very powerful realizations. One was that hope gives us faith. (Moroni 7:44) We need to develop hope because hope gives us faith. The second was that the reason I yearn for conversions is that seeing others change gives me hope, therefore faith, that I can, have, and will change. Those are some pretty provocative realizations as to why I need to do things and why I have been doing things.

    We live with Elder Allen and Elder Coxson. Elder Allen is way awesome, and Elder Coxson continues to be cool. I hate making good friends knowing that in 5 weeks I leave. Weird. As an apartment, we fit really well together. I am the old, experienced, in-charge dad; Elder Allen is the nurturing, open ears mom; Elder Coxson is the strong minded oldest child; and Elder Shafer is the hyper youngest kid. lol.

    Well, don't think it's too close to the end to send me a letter. I would especially appreciate knowing where everyone is, what up-to-date phone numbers, addresses, e-mails, etc is. I hear that facebook is on steroids (Heather told me). Stay close,

    Elder Embree