October 8, 2012 Letter

Hello Family and Friends!

 

Well, its official, Im being transferred.....I will be leaving Highland Home early Wednesday Morning. :/ I've been blessed by this opportunity to serve here for twelve weeks and be trained here! I won't know where I'll be going until the transfer meeting on Wednesday. President's really good with putting the Transfer powerpoint on the blog so you may find out on that before I'm able to contact you.

 

Elder Kaupert has been an awesome trainer! He will be staying here in Highland Home and training an incoming missionary. We made some pumpkin pies today as a last hurrah :) He still has 15 months left, so odds are we'll be in the same zone or maybe district in the future. He's been here in Highland for 6 months now.

 

I really am grateful for this opportunity I have had to serve in the Highland Home/Greenville areas and the Montgomery Stake. I kinda hope I stay in the zone, cause Elder Walker of the Seventy is coming this weekend to reorganize the Montgomery Stake Presidency, and I love being there when General Authorities come, but I'll be happy to go wherever I'm called!

 

Conference was really good! I was really excited about the message about missionary work! I bet a lot of girls my age are accelerating their plans to leave on missions now. It really excited me, I was giddy the whole day - it's such a historic announcement! We were able to have some good conference watching experiences! We spent both days in the Highland Home/Sardis area and made sure conference was going at the church. We help set up conference in Korean for the Kim family to watch over the internet. We watched the Saturday Morning session at the church. We ate lunch there and saw the press conference about missionary work with Elders Nelson, Holland and Evans which was really good. We watched the afternoon session with Cubert and Becky in their home. We had been praying for that session to be what they needed to hear, and the messages about families were perfect for them! Priesthood meeting was really good. Funny enough only Elder Kaupert, Brother Gillion (the branch clerk) and me were there to see it, which surprised me because this was an off week for Alabama football, so I thought there'd be more people there.

 

Sunday Morning Session we watched with Larry (branch mission leader) and Brenda with our investigator. She came to church a little bit a few years ago, but stopped coming when some friends told her some things that really scared her about the church. Elder Kaupert and I have been teaching her for about 6 weeks now, and she was pretty impressed by what she heard. (go President Eyring and Elder Holland....exactly what she needed to hear!) We had to leave to go watch the afternoon session at someone else's home, but she enjoyed the session so much that she stayed and watched the afternoon session with Larry and Brenda! It was a great conference for the work here in Highland Home.

 

Well, some sad news. Saturday night one of the McGough's cats (Castillo) was attacked by their dogs (Tip, Spike, Emma and Rusty). We thought Castillo was dead, but luckily he survived. He's at the vet right now, keep him in your prayers.

 

Well, I guess that even on an LDS mission I can't get away from the fact that I'm a musician. I am playing piano at the transfer meeting and am doing a violin musical number.

 

It'll be sad to leave our investigators, but I know that there will be new people to meet and to teach in the place i'll end up!

 

Well, with everything that has happened in the last few days, I don't really remember anything else to report, how sad is that! Love you all! Hope to hear from you!

Love

Elder Madsen