Spring time - feeling good

Hey Everyone,

I'm feeling great and grateful to be in Florida. Its warm.

We have had a great and interesting week. We have met a few interesting people and a few amazing people. One time when we were tracting we knocked on a door and a guy yelled from inside, "come in." We went in. He was sitting on his couch drinking a beer and watching TV. As we walked in he didn't say anything, then he noticed what we were wearing and recognized who we were. There was nothing left for him to say, but he said it anyway. "Oh Sh**. You got the wrong house." hahaha. It was so funny!

I've got a scary story for you. This morning i was doing my early exercises when Elder North came running up the stairs saying that he saw a giant spider. I went down with him to investigate. There it was on our couch. It looked so weird you could mistake it for a scorpion if you get it at the right angle. It was brown and hairy. Not your usual house spiders. Elder North got his big basketball shoe and smashed him. Now there is a dead spider on the kitchen floor. Neither of was want to pick it up in case it comes back to life. We both were a little creeped out. Mostly because this is the first spider to infiltrate the apartment while I've been in Florida and we have the nicest apartment. There are no real holes for them to come in. I went back up stairs to finish my workout. When I was done I went downstairs to eat breakfast. Still scared I poked my head around the corner. And guess what I saw... ANOTHER SPIDER! But this one was 3x bigger and in the middle of the Kitchen!! Where do they come from? Not just one spider, but two. This time I decided not to kill it. Instead I captured it. We have this make shift cage that we made for when we catch lizards. We didn't have a lizard in it, so I put the spider in it. Mostly because I wanted to show it to the Ft Walton Missionaries. No one believes a fish story, so I had to catch it. And catch it I did!! After showing them I released him into the wild again. Now that we are e-mailing I looked it up. The spider is a brown Recluse. They are poisonous and the venom causes damage to the skin and tissue. Or in other words, the skin and tissue die. AND IT WAS IN OUR HOUSE!!! I have had the heebie jeebies all morning. ew...

Back to missionary things. Sister Peart has been working with her friend for a long time. Well this week is our wards fast Sunday. Among other things, like a member in the Hospital and another whose husband is not a member, we had a fast for Sister Peart's friend, CK. What was really cool was he showed up for church, said he's ready to start taking the lessons, we had a lesson with him and the Peart's that night, and he is planning on watching a little bit of General Conference. He is amazing. He also has so many friends in the church. He is a nurse and works with about 5 or 6 doctors from our ward. O'Brian, Rulwics, Bronson, Honeycutt, and Riley. All are doctors for the Air Force and all are members of the church. Really active members of the church. He will have a great support system, until they all leave. We are losing about half of our ward in the summer. All of the mentioned doctors are leaving and others like Brother O'Malley are leaving too. Brother O'Malley is super cool. He flies F-35's, knows John Bytheway personally and is moving to Las Vegas (or whatever base is there). I will get to see him again too. However, the ward is going to change dramatically. The Primary just got reorganized this week.

I love serving in this ward. I feel so attached to them. Its like my home. The youth are so great. The youth leaders are better and everyone wants to be involved. Teaching the Chabots has been difficult. Seth and Matt are really stubborn. But that's what you get when you have such an awesome ward. You get the difficult cases. The ones that take extra time, extra love and extra work. All of it goes towards a common goal and all of it is worth it. What adds to the coolness is most of the members own really nice homes and have mentioned that I could come back and stay with them. When I say nice homes I mean waterfront properties with their own dock! Its not on the coast, but its in the big bay. Dolphins constantly are swimming past them. This week we were with the Johnson's who live on a little Bayou. They have a modest home. Its only the two of them though, so it looks like a huge house. He gave us the tour. They have an indoor pool. Well kind of. Its a screened off pool. No bugs, just a nice breeze. He took us up to the attic, or Dog House as he calls it. The place where he goes when he is in trouble. Its a little room that's fully finished, has a big tv and has a closet that is filled with model airplanes. I mean filled. He has about 300 model airplanes. He hasn't built any of them yet. They are all still in their boxes. He has WWI planes, WWII planes, planes from the Gulf War and planes that are still in action. He also has a model of the Battleship Missouri. The one where Japan surrendered on. It was the coolest Dog House I've ever seen!!

Anyway, Florida is beautiful. I sent Shannon her present today. She'll get it sometime this week.
Hope everyone is doing well and having fun.

Love Elder Call