Your Brother Is Really Happy

    Bloomington is bumpin. We have had some interesting experiences this past week. First, I got to use my landscaping skills that I learned from doing that for like 3 weeks before the mish. There is a part member in our ward who have been taught by missionaries for quite awhile but we had a neat opportunity to help them progress this past week. They are redoing their house because they want to move do a different area in the city and so I told her that I used to do landscaping before my mission, (I didn't say that all I did was pretty much dig holes and mow lawns,) and she took that to mean that I am an expert tradesman. So we built a big cement retaining wall for her garden, replaced a window well, and are planning to rebuild the deck this next week. I'm learning a lot but the bad thing is I have to learn by experience which can cause some roadblocks. The cool thing is that the dad came to church this Sunday, (he is the nonmember) and he stayed for all 3 hours which he has never before done, even though his wife has been a member her whole life. Pretty sweet.

     Here are some other highlights of the week:

       I drank chocolate covered maple smoked bacon flavored soda. It blew my mind.

       A less active who is my favorite guy in the world came to church this past sunday and prayed with us in our lesson. 

     We are teaching a man who is a quadripolegic, and he has a date set for an     August 9th baptism. He has been taught by missionaries for 3 years but finally read the book of mormon and feels that it is true. Gotta love that book.

     Elder Crapo and I, along with our current calling, are now duel training a missionary as well. His name is Elder Fabrizio. He is a super stud kid. He is also ginormous. He is 6' 4" and 215lbs. He has a scholarship to Utah to play safety. I love him. 

     This Tuesday my MTC teacher is getting sealed in the temple in Minnesota so I get to go see him.

     Tomorrow the kids in the family of 7 that I taught in Minneapolis are getting baptized:)!!!!!!!!

     There is a lot going on at this time with transfers coming up as well so I appreciate all the prayers I can get. 

     Almost forgot. This last Friday was 9 years since James passed away and I had a really neat miracle that day. When I woke up in the morning in my prayer I said something along the lines of, "Dear God, I know the church is true and all, but it would be pretty sweet if you sent me a message that James is happy and doing well, thanks, Amen."

     So we headed off to a zone training that went well. But after the meeting, one of the missionaries, Elder Morgan, came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, I don't know why but I feel like I just need to tell you that your brother is really happy and is doing a great work for God right now. My jaw literally dropped through the floor. It was so cool. I will love him forever for that. 

   

                                                                               Love,

                                                                                  Koj tus Phooj Ywg 

Bloom Town

     Things this week have been crazy for sure. We had transfer week this Wednesday so we had to rush around. We drove to the airport in separate cars (which freaked me out when I had to drive back alone. Had a nice moment singing David Archuleta by myself though so it's cool,) to drop off the departing missionaries and pick up the new ones. It was really neat to take one of my old companions Elder Hardy to the airport and drop him off. We talked about all the good times we had together and all the things we learned. It made me really appreciate that I am not him though because all the going home missionaries looked way worse off than the ones coming in. It was great to see the new missionaries come in with their faith and to see their excitement to get underway.      

     Things with teaching the Mikas people are super weird. It is cool to get to teach in English again but sometimes I still do some asian stuff that Mikas people just don't quite understand. Like the other night we were at dinner with our elders quorum president and his wife put the scooper thing for the potatoes with the wrong side facing up. In Hmong culture if you put the food scooper the wrong way up then it invites spirits to come and eat with you. Which is bad. So I explained that to them and they looked at me like I was from another planet. I'm sure I'll adjust pretty quick though but until then I guess the rule of thumb is to not bring up bad spirits at the dinner table. 

      We had a pretty cool miracle yesterday as well. We were in the mission office doing work and I saw a not that was under some papers so I pulled it out and it was a note that we were suppose to call back a lady because she needed help moving but the note got lost under some papers. So we call her up and she says that she needs help big time and wants to learn more about our religion as well. Sounds pretty golden and were teaching her tonight at 8 so that should be fun.

      So conference blew my mind...again. Elder Holland's talk was one of my favorite talks of all time. Especially with James' birthday just passing I thought about him a lot during the talk and realized how strong the bond between brothers really is. I feel now that I have been out on my mission I have grown so much closer to James, Tan, & J dub which is really cool. It's almost as if the mission was the last hurdle I had to jump before we could really fully understand each other and it has been cool to remember experiences that they had as I have served the Lord. 

     Love you all and good luck this next week. Happy Easter. Try not to go into a food coma from all the potatoes and chocolate. Talk to you later. 

-Elder Henrie

I Finally Got to See Some Hard Work Pay Off

Hello Everybody!!!

         This week was crazy awesome and it's going really well. I don't know if I've said this in any other emails but we write a talk each sunday and they pick two people from the congregation to come up and talk at random. This week I was lucky enough to get picked. As I was walking up for some reason all I could think about was James. So as I was giving my talk I got this feeling to stop reading my talk and just tell his story. As I started telling his story the Spirit in the room was so strong and the talk went really well. Right after my talk the first counselor's wife got up and talked about her son who was a heroine addict and was just about to finish his 3 year jail sentence and how she has learned so much about enduring through trials. After the meeting she came up to me and thanked me like three hundred times for my talk. I don't know what it was in my talk that I said that helped her but I guess hearing about James helped her so that was pretty cool to see a blessing from listening to the promptings of the Spirit.

         Another really cool experience that I had was on thursday or friday i can't remember which one; but anyways we were teaching one of our investigators and I finally got to see some hard work pay off. We were teaching our investigator about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and it felt like the lesson was going really well but for some reason our investigator just kept saying that he didn't think it was true and that he didn't want to pray about it. I started bearing my testimony to him that Joseph Smith really did see God and Jesus Christ and that if he read the Book of Mormon his family would be blessed (He has a fake sick wife and two fake kids.) And all of a sudden I just started saying all this stuff that I didn't even know what it was and I was speaking way fast it was so cool. Right after I said amen I just looked at my companion and we both were like "What did I/you just say" But my companion then bore his testimony and right after we were done he agreed to pray. I know that it was just a fake investigator but that was one of the strongest spiritual experiences I've had in my life listening to someone pray to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Book of Mormon was true. I'm 1000000% sure that if that was a real lesson in the field we would have baptized that man and his family. J.K. I guess it just depends on if it's there time or not but it was an awesome lesson. Another little tender mercy with that lesson was that I got the letter from you mom about Steve's death about five minutes before I was supposed to go in to my lesson and usually I open letters right when I get them but for some reason I just decided not to open it until after and I definitely wouldn't have been able to focus if had read that before I taught.

        One thing that was really fun on Saturday was we had a birthday party for one of the Elders in our district (I'll try and send a picture) but his mom sent us all a bunch of party hats and kazoo's so we went pretty crazy. Also he was struggling pretty bad but after his birthday he has been doing so much better and has been working really hard and the language is going a lot better for him.

        Yesterday we had a devotional at the Marriot Center and they told us that it was the last devotional that they were doing for missionaries there because they are building another building for devotionals and it is almost finished. So I guess I'll go down in history as one of the last missionaries to be in there which is cool I guess. But the speaker that talked to us that night gave us an amazing talk. He talked all about the blessings that we get from serving a mission and he told a story that really inspired me. He talked about a man named Mitch Davis who was married and had two or three kids. One night he decided to take one of his kids and a couple of the kids friends on a camping trip up the canyon. It started to rain and thunder so they quickly set up there tent. The man was standing in the tent when all of a sudden a lightning bolt hit the man directly in the head and traveled through his body and shot out of the tent. He was laying on the ground unconscious when he started to come to. He heard one of the boys in the corner praying, another was silent, and his son was telling him to wake up. He started to black out again and before he did he thought to himself I'm going to die. And before he could even pray a voice came into his head and said this "You have served a valiant mission, ask me whatever you want and I'll give it to you." So he prayed in his mind and in the next three minutes he was walking back to the car with the three boys feeling just fine. I think it's so amazing that the thing the Lord cared about above him getting married, having kids, and everything else he did in his life was the fact that he served a full time mission. I have already seen the blessings of serving a three week mission and I can't even imaging how blessed I will be for serving for two years.

        Anyways I love you all and I hope things are going well.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Elder Huav Vam

P.S. Mom thanks for the package my whole district plays that dice game every night and it has been fun having some crazy nerf gun wars. Also tell grammy that she's the MTC's favorite grammy because of her carmelitas.

And Libby you gotta tell me all about the third grade and your teachers and stuff.

I don't know if I've sent these pictures or not yet last time the computer i used froze when i sent my email.