22 January 2017

Hello Mum!

I'm glad your up there with granddaddy. He looks like he's gained some weight. So that's good. It's sad to hear about him falling over when he went to the bathroom. I remember when I left he was doing so well. And poor little Riley! He seems to get sick pretty often. I miss him so much. Will you send more videos of him soon? That's cool to hear about those young men that gave granddaddy the sacrament. 

(From my letter to Calum.....Well, two handsome young priests from Dad’s ward just came over to the care center and brought the sacrament.  My, what a special experience that was.  Both in white shirts and ties.  Kneeling on the floor of his room.  I couldn't stop crying.)

I wish I wasn't so reluctant to do that sometimes. I wish I did more home teaching and stuff at home haha, but it's ok I'll do it when I get home haha! 
So Tuesday evening we got a referral for a young women. It was a self referral so she put her own name in to Salt Lake City and they sent it to us. Her name is Brenda and she is from Brazil, but is living in Lincoln. Well kind of... she is living in Roseville but she lives in Lincoln on the weekends so she would go to church in Lincoln. So she came to the church building yesterday (after church) and we did a chapel tour and it was perfect! We had a member there and the member is from Brazil too! So they really hit it off. We are pumped to start teaching her. We also had a really good lesson with an investigator we have had a hard time getting a hold of! She calls us her angels. She has an incredible story about how she came in contact with missionaries. She woke up one morning and just out of the blue had revelation that she needed Christ in her life. So that day she got back from grocery shopping and was walking inside when 2 young men all dressed up starting walking over to her, she thought it was the Jehovahs Witnesses. So she hurried inside before they could talk to her. A few seconds later they knocked on the door. She started walking away from the door but something told her to go answer it, she denied the prompting once, then it told her again to answer the door. And it was Mormon missionaries! So we are excited to see how she can progress too. 

I asked for more to write home about, and God gave me some more stuff to write home about haha! Transfers are next week.  Elder Cobabe and I are staying together, which I'm cool with. I think it will be a good transfer. I love you mum. Tell the girls and the little one I love them too. Thank you for keeping me updated with granddaddy, it
helps me pray more specifically.  I love you!  I'll talk to you next week.

Love,
Elder Yule

15 January 2017

Hello Mum,

That's nice that you don't have school today. I forgot they had the day off for MLK day. I'm glad your going up to 
Granddaddy's.  I miss Riley. 

I don't have top much to talk about this week. I can't even remember what we have done. We've just been trying to visit as many people as we can right now. We don't have any quality investigators or anything so we are just trying to see everyone and anyone. I've been trying to run in the mornings. And it seems to help me feel better and look a bit better too, but getting the motivation to go for a run is always a struggle. I've been emailing Zach! He seems to be doing really well. He's had some pretty crazy stuff go down! I'm happy for him. We had zone meeting this week,
so Elder Cobabe and I got to teach the zone. It was really good. I've really been trunks for Chico lately. The work was so good, the missionaries around me were so good, my companions were so good, the members were so good, I loved being on a bike. I just miss it. It's weird. It's like getting homesick for one of your areas. I've realized
just recently how Heavenly Father has really blessed me in that aspect. Remember my biggest fear when I left was being homesick? Well I've never really had terrible homesickness. I'm so thankful for that.

Not much to talk about this week, hopefully next week is more exciting, so I have more to write about! I love you guys and I miss you! I hope you have a good week. Tell granddaddy and my papa that I love them!

Love,
Elder Yule

8 January 2017

Hello Mum,

This week was pretty good! Elder Cobabe got sick on Monday..... so really we stayed in the apartment all week. Which doesn't sound that great, but I say it was a pretty good week because the 11 and 13 year old kids I've been talking about recently got baptized on Saturday! It was so cool.  Both of their parents are less active so it's cool to see their parents be involved in it. We got to stand in on the confirmation. It was a wonderful day. We also had interviews with President on Saturday. He's going to try to do them every transfer where he used to have them every other transfer. So they have to be shorter interviews. They can only be 15 minutes now, but President is a very loving and concerned and talkative guy, so they always take longer than that. Anyway, it was a good interview. It's always good to talk to President, it's just comforting. We had MLC on Thursday, that was good too. At least as good as an all day meeting can be. After MLC it is a tradition to go to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner after. Well on our way back to Lincoln. I was getting on the freeway, and Elder Cobabe and I were talking , and Elder Cobabe looks over at the guy next to us, and he is just staring at us, so we start laughing. We thought it was a joke! So Elder Cobabe rolls his windows down and goes to wave to this guy and talk to him when out of nowhere this guy gets out this cup and slings some kind of liquid at us! So the window was down a little bit, so it got on each of us. More on the car but a little bit on us. First we thought, maybe it's alcohol, but it didn't smell like that, it smelled a little bit minty, so we though maybe tea, but we decided it wasn't that, it had a different consistency... so we think it was this guys dip spit. So all that spit you get in your mouth from chewing tobacco. You know how cowboys are constantly spitting in a cup. Yeah... it was pretty gross, but we thought, how cool is that!? Think about the apostles and Christ himself, they all got spat on. So we were pretty upset at the time, but thinking about it now it was a unique experience....that neither of us want to happen again. It has been raining a ton here! Yesterday was this huge storm, or so the locals called it. Apparently the news was saying there was a thing called an "atmospheric river" which to me sounds silly! It was a good rain but I think they were overreacting a tiny bit.

(Here are a couple of stories from my mission to Okayama, Japan in 1985 that I wrote about....Riley and I looked at the weather and saw that you have had rain much of the day.  I guess that's when being in a car is a bit better than riding a bike.  We were out rain or shine every day and night on our bikes.  I did love my bike.  I remember one time when it was raining so hard and the wind was blowing it completely sideways.  We had to ride over a bridge over a river to get home, and the wind was worse over that.  The water in the river was splashing and waving about.  When we got home our wellies were full of water.  We found out the next day that we had been riding through a typhoon.  We got scolded by the members when they found out we'd been out riding our bikes in it.  Another time we had a baptism that was going to be done in the ocean.  It was another terrible rainstorm.  The waves were crashing so high over the rocks.  When I think about it now, I cannot even believe the elder and young woman went out into the ocean in that storm.)

Those sound like insane stories! Sometimes I feel incredibly privileged to be in a state side mission! Haha! Hearing all these crazy stories, and I'm in a 2017 Chevy Malibu! It's pretty crazy. In interviews I told President I liked being on a bike, which is pretty risky, if you say you like biking he knows who to put in a bike area haha! So we will see what happens. Hopefully I'll have cool stories like you. I can't even imagine trying to baptize someone in the ocean. You'll need to tell me more of your cool mission stories. I love you mum. You really do show me how to work hard. It seems like you're always up doing something. I love and miss you guys. I hope you have a better week this week. I love you.

1 January 2017

Happy new year mum! New Year's Eve looked fun! There is an awesome Chinese place here called Lincoln Chinese, a pretty standard name haha. There are a few good places to eat, we don't eat out a ton here though. There is this really good Mexican place called El Portel. We go there once in a while. Yeah the members feed us every night.  There are a few nights where we don't have a dinner but they are really good about feeding us. We are teaching a little brother and sister, she is 11 and he is 14, they are awesome! They are being baptized this Saturday! I'm excited for them. They were already on date when I got here so it's not like I got them to this point or anything but it's been cool to be a part of it. There is this really cool less active family we visit pretty frequently. We do all sorts of stuff with them. We are going to do this cool art project thing. I'm not sure how to describe it so I'll just send pictures when we do it! No real investigators here though. We decided to make a goal for this new year, just Elder Cobabe and I, to find more people to teach, and getting members to help us find them. After dinner we share a spiritual message with the family that fed us dinner and we've been inviting them to invite a non-member friend over for dinner when we come next. I'm excited to see what will happen!

I'm so glad you went up to see granddaddy. It sounds like he wasn't doing very well. It made me sad to read some of that. But I'm am so thankful you are telling me what is happening. I'm glad you aren't sugar coating things. I'm proud of the girls for calling and texting everyone to cancel the Boxing Day party. I remember at home I never wanted to call people haha. I'm also thankful for Diane! She always seems to say things pretty straight forward, (whether good or bad) and on this occasion it really helped. That's cute that the girls made Riley's birthday cake haha!

My dark year ended yesterday. The dark year is the full year in the mission field. I spent all of 2016 in California. I now can say I go home this year. It's pretty crazy. I get to see you guys in 9 months. I bet I'll be home to see granddaddy as well. This year, and these last 9 months I'm going to really try to be better. Not that I've been bad necessarily, but there's always little things I can work on. I think that's when the real change comes. I'm going to try to change. I'm excited. I miss you guys and love you so much. I'm so glad you and Mikey went up to see granddad. I'm sure it gave him a spiritual boost as well as a physical one. I love you guys!

Elder Yule

Elder Yule, Elder Cobabe, President Marston

26 December 2016

I'm so happy I got to see you guys yesterday! I'm always scared it's
going to make me super homesick, but it always makes me a little bit
more motivated. Not too much new has happened since yesterday. All I
can say is this Ward rocks. They have given us so much stuff. It's
been awesome. Make sure you send me pictures from Riley's birthday and
Boxing Day. I miss you and love you guys. I can now sing "I'll Be Home
for Christmas" haha!

25 December 2016

Skype Call with Calum, Christmas 2016

Granddaddy Deal FaceTimed 

Christmas 2016 Photos

Elder Cobabe, The Stewarts, Elder Yule

Christmas in Lincoln, CA 2016

Chirstmas in Lincoln, CA 2016

Christmas Dinner 2016

Elder Yule as a Snowman 2016

18 December 2016

Hello mum,

That's ridiculous that school is going for that long! I think that would be a fun Christmas Eve party! Just watch a movie and open some pajamas.  Make sure you send me the Santa pictures!  And pictures from the lights!  It sounds like a good Relief Society lesson.

This week was good here. It was pretty tough if I'm honest. When I get the idea in my head that someone is better or cooler than me I get nervous and self conscious. So that's how I was with Elder Cobabe for the first few days. I think I'm better now, haha.  This Ward is pretty cool. So anywhere we've gone so far I've been quiet and shy. And I hate that. I will just have to warm up and relax I guess. But church was awesome on Sunday. The Ward is really good. They are all really nice to us! They spoil is a little bit! Our fridge is full of food from members. It's awesome! Last night we had dinner with an older couple, the Stewart's. She is from Belgium and he is from Scotland! So I feel like he and I really hit it off! We talked about tartans and kilts and where dad is from and all sorts of stuff. They asked to see my dad in his kilt so I showed them the picture of he and Riley when they went to the Highland games. They said he looks like a"tough" man. Which I though was really funny that they used the word tough haha  it was awesome! They told us we were welcome at their house any time! I'm excited to get to know them better. On Thursday it was pouring! There were floods in the streets and in people's backyards.  Elder Cobabe was telling me about a crazy service his trainer went to.  It was flooding really bad and they needed help so people called the elders and they sandbagged all day and got soaking wet and worked all day. Literally 10 minutes after that someone called us and asked us to come help sandbag! Haha!  It was just a little job in someone's backyard, keeping it away from their door, but we felt really excited that we could do something like that! It was fun. I'm sooooooo excited to see you guys on Sunday!  I'm not sure where or when we will do it yet, but I'll let you know. I love and miss you guys!

Love,

Elder Yule