Letter 5-10-2010

Hey ya’ll,

Haha so just so you know Elder Hightower pretty much wrote all of this and since he does such a great job of explaining pretty much every little detail I thought I would just copy it and modify it just a little bit. Haha so this should give everyone a pretty good idea on basically everybody that we are working with right now. I hope you enjoy it and if it says anything weird haha you can just blame himJ

It was good to be able to talk to the family yesterday. Haha man I cant believe how different everybody sounds. But I guess that is to
be expected when you only talk to them twice a year. Haha it is so weird how grown up everyone is getting to be. I cant believe that Josh is already graduating and has a girlfriend and stuff. Man it seems like just yesterday that I graduated from high school. So I guess it just goes to show that we neeed to treasure the time that we have and don’t take anything for granted. No Regrets is the best way to live.

Haha from here on is courtesy of Elder Hightower so enjoy.

"Well I really don’t have much to say today since talking to the family yesterday but for everyone else I guess here it goes.  Lol.  Well yesterday was an awesome church day.  We had over 10 less-active member lessons last week and we had about 5 people that normally don’t come to church yesterday that are members.  So that was exciting to have them all there.  They all said they have missed that wonderful feeling that they get when they come to church.  So hopefully they will start coming back to church and get active in the church again.  We had about 2 part-member families come yesterday that brought their children who are not members.  So that was nice.  Some on those families are ones that we are working with. 

The big family that we are working with right now is the Keller family.  Sister Keller is about 65 years old and she is an awesome missionary.  She takes care of a lot of her grandchildren plus a lot of extended family as well.  She actually has 2 houses that are just full of people that she is taking care of.  They all range from 3 years old to 25 years old.  She has people moving in and out all the time.  One of her stipulations is that if you are living with her then you have to come to church, and not any church, her church.  Patricia is actually her friend from New York that she has helped out before and now is back to get some help again.  So we are working with her and getting her to stop smoking so that she can be baptized.  As well we are working with Regina, Sister Keller’s grand-daughter.  Now she doesn’t live with Sister Keller but she is a member but her boyfriend isn’t.  So we are working with Kevin, her boyfriend, and his daughter and getting them baptized and as well he and Regina married.  So we have 3 baptisms that could come this new transfer with that family.  We also found out that the ward can’t find Regina’s records, so she might have to be re-baptized and re-taught.  That would be cool if we got to do that. 

Another family we are working on is the Hickson family.  Now Sister Hickson has 2 grandchildren that live with her.  We haven’t really been able to meet the one buy (I forgot his name) but we have worked with her Grand-daughter, Ta’Asia.  We have taught her everything; it is just a matter of her having the desire to be baptized.  We will keep working with her though, and hopefully can get her baptized here pretty soon.  That would be really cool. 

Then Brother Jackson, this really crazy guy who is a member has a guy living with him that we are teaching.  Now first of all, you have to hear about Brother Jackson.  I am going to get a picture of me and him next Sunday so you can just see what I am talking about.  He has been a member for about 8 years.  So he is a pretty faithful member.  He goes hunting everyday.  He will eat ANYTHING.  He hunts beaver, squirrel, raccoon, bear, deer, rabbit, possum, and turtle.  His house always just has the worst smell. Lol.  He is so cool though.  He is what I always imagined a southerner would be like.  Hopefully he doesn’t have us over for dinner anytime soon because a lot of what he eats is road-kill that he picks up, cooks, and eats.  Anyways, Edward lives with him and is almost through with the Book of Mormon.  He is really knowledgeable.  He is so willing to come to church and everything but he can’t make it to church because he works at another church doing audio and visual recordings every Sunday.  He is looking for another job, so hopefully he can find something quick and we can get him to church. 

Yesterday we met this really cool family that was outside.  We stopped and talked to them and come to find out the grandma of the kids is a member, who was out there with them as well.  She was baptized up in New Jersey and knows a lot for being recently baptized.  The two girls are way cool, Katrina and Nigeria.  They are really interested in reading the Book of Mormon.  They love going to church but they just don’t like going to the church they go to now, so they said that they would love to come to our church and check it out.  We are going to get her to mutual this week, and she was really excited for that.  I know the ward will really like it to because they don’t have a lot of youth in the ward here.  We are teaching them again tonight, so we are very excited for that. 

Makala is getting baptized this weekend.  We found out last Wednesday that she ended up working everything out with her dad and her grandparents, so we didn’t even need to go out there and talk to them about what she was doing.  She is really excited to get baptized this weekend.  She just can’t wait.  It would have happened last weekend but she went to Alabama to visit some family for Mothers Day.  So we are very excited to have that this weekend. 

We have another member that we are working with.  Her name is Maria Lucks and she cuts hair for a living just out of her house.  We are teaching her friend Cory.   He is a way cool guy and he loved going to church yesterday.   He is really interested in learning more about temple marriage and the Plan of Salvation.  We are teaching him on Tuesday, and Maria is making us all dinner.  So that should be really cool.  We are going to have a sweet lesson on our purpose here on earth and tie in temple marriage so that he can learn about that.  Something really interesting that happened at Maria's house the other day is that she was twisting this guys dreads.  He ended up being Tim Jennings who is a defensive back that played for the Indianapolis Colts but now plays for the Chicago Bears.  He is originally from Orangeburg and is really good friends with Maria.  So we got to teach him about the gospel and he was really receptive.  He had to go back to Chicago so we gave him a card to get the missionaries in Chicago and he said he would check it out.  He said it sounded like something that he would be interested in.  Maria talks to him a lot and she said that she would keep us updated.  Lol.  He was a really cool guy and it turned out to be a really interesting experience.

We are going to meet with Emanuel this week and get him to church this week as well so that we could baptize him next weekend.  He is a way cool guy and has an awesome member for a fellow-shipper.  We have taught him pretty much everything except for a few of the commandments like tithing and fasting.  We are going to do that this week.   Hopefully everything goes according to plan and he will be getting baptized next weekend."

Well everything is still just going fantastic.  Elder hightwer and I are not getting transferred this week.  So we will be together for another 6 weeks.  I am really excited for that because there are a possibility of having 12 baptisms this transfer.  This ward is awesome and is so willing to help out with anything.  I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT HERE!!!!!!!!  It will be sad when the time comes to leave Orangeburg. 

Well I sure do love you all and really appreciate all you do for me. Oh ya and I have mentioned this before but I really would love to hear from anybody and everydodyJ

Love,

Elder Fitzgerald