John and pictures! 08/17/09

Last week we had zone conference with president maynes and it was amazing as usual. Talked about a lot of interesting things. Like why did joseph smith have to be attacked by satan before the first vision? God had power to protect him. But let it happen so that joseph could see the lowest and worst state of sin and darkness to see the highest glory of God. If was very interesting for me. We are going to start putting together a book about the sayings of president maynes. And Brooke I loved the example you have about the new members it was funny and im sure I will be using it very soon to teach the leaders here. The organization here is horrible and we are going to start training some people. President said the companion I have now was my gift for suffering with the disobedience problems in the zone the past couple months. I am learning a lot from elder rubio. We have 3 families that are planned to get baptized at the end of the month or in the beginning of September. Im teaching a little better with him as well which is nice. We have a lot of goals to get things better here. And as for my birthday I think I just want some candies that you cant buy here. There is snickers and m&Ms here and that’s about it. Maybe a few new ties(never can have enough) I don’t like the ties that are very bright in color. The darker ones I use more. Plus president is getting more strict on the ¨party ties¨ umm but not much else. I think Thursday im going to go on changes with elder evans and we are goin to try play some hoops in the morning. So im pretty excited about that. Nothing really much is happening just still thinking if im going to finish here or no. its possible I can or no but we will see. That’s crazy that the school year is already started and im hoping to see some basketball when I get back.. that means Kristi needs to play. I am really missing basketball. I think im losing weight little by little. I have started doing harder exercises which will help a lot. The Americans are all back. Elder hanks ive heard is opening a new area in SATELITE which is half of my old area. Its been doing so well there that president put more missionaries there. So I was happy to hear that. But im staying happy. I figured out the secret is singing hymns all morning to wake you up. And better Christmas hymns which are my favorite to sing them very loud. (good thing we don’t have very close neighbors. And if you search in google earth it’s by the main park in the city next to Ganadero Bank. It’s a sweet house and we have made the room a lot better. But im going to search some more stuff about school ( im likeing a lot the system design and system development options but we will see. Well thanks for everything I love yall very much and dad I will print out the quotes to read later. Elder Cheesman