I Don't Know What Happened to Eldon Cummings: April 8, 2013

8 April 2013

Dear Family and Everyone,

Answers to questions, as usual, to start things off:

1. What Gospel principle really reaches the people you meet who are interested in the Gospel? Well, the First Vision is really strong and it is that and the Book of Mormon that touch their lives the most. (A lot of baptisms come from the fact that the people think the missionaries are cool, but sometimes even that works out in the end and they become really firm in the gospel after their baptism.)
2. What was your favorite message from conference? (this question is from Dad) Elders Bednar (chastity) and Cristofferson (missionary work, bringing others to Christ through faith and repentance so that they may experience His Redemption) were great but I loved L. Tom Perry (obedience, agency, and the little book he got in World War II) and Craig A. Cardon (the Savior does not demand immediate perfection and wants to forgive us)!! I also liked the talk (from a member of the Seventy) who talked about how in all his years in the stake presidency he only got one call asking where they were needed as they moved into the stake!
3. We did not listen to any talks on lds.org this week, mainly because I was a little confused. All the “talks” I could find were videos, and I didn’t know how you would be able to listen to them while you were cleaning your apartment. How does that work? Do you download them and have some sort of player in your apt? On a related question, BYU Men’s Chorus has put out a free album of hymns for missionaries. They are all MP3 files, and the music is BEAUTIFUL! How can I send them to you so you can listen? Would a USB stick or SD card work? They are too big to attach to an email, even one at a time. It is fine about the talks, don’t worry about it, as far as the BYU Men´s Chorus, it would be easiest in a USB in the next package.

Oh, I decided to not do chain mail, it is too distracting for me.

Noooooooo!!! BYU lost!!!!! L Yeah, please ask if I can switch to come back for Winter Semester instead of Fall.

On Tuesday night we got a member reference but they didn’t remember the street name or number but remembered how to get there and were going to drive us over there but they didn’t have a man there so she drove and we ran the almost 3 miles (or at least it felt like it, it was probably a mile and a half) to the reference’s house just to find out that their friend is really strong in her own church and doesn’t want anything to do with us!!! At least the members were happy and we didn’t break any rules by riding with the sister by herself!!

Elder R. gave me some root beer concentrate but we don’t have any instructions so can you send me the instructions for McCormick root beer concentrate please!!! J

Dad, this is a question for you. Can you type up a word document talking about what you do for your job? I’ve been thinking about it this week in between conference sessions and was thinking it would be super cool to do what you do, but the problem is that I don’t know what it is that you do! Oh, and I’m going to stick with bioinformatics after all and just take computer programming and chemistry again with my newfound study skills. The mission really teaches you how to study really well!!! J

The mission changes you so much! This week in between conference sessions again I was thinking a lot about how I want my life to play out and my desire to play videogames is so far down. I don’t know what happened to Eldon Cummings but this Elder Cummings is really weird!!!

Fun fact: we were running late to get to conference on Sunday afternoon so a member gave us a ride (all 4 of us) in the truck bed (against mission rules) and when we pull up at the stake center guess who was making a surprise appearance in Cascavel... President T.!!!... But it’s all good!!

 Elder R. and I are the only two Americans in Cascavel, 

so we got to watch Conference all by ourselves!

We love oranges!

Hopefully we will baptize this next Sunday!! All out of time!

Lots of love,

Elder Cummings