Hello

This is a letter I got from Blake, this will be my last email for a while I'm sure, I'm really bummed about the new rule.  We are no longer able to email Blake, and he can no longer email us.  He doesn't think it will last.  I hope not.  

Lol i miss drew wah... I can just see that melon pushing the keyboard all mad ha ha. Aren't you excited for school to start? man it seems like vacation time for parents and kids is reversed lol. I'm staying in plainview again for 6 weeks which is good cause our investigators are starting to progress, we had 9 attend sacrament this week which was great. Yes paul was there which was good we got the first part of the book of mormon on cd for him which is good cause he can't read very well cause he's getting old. My mono felt worse this week for sure so i'm going to the doctor today cause i never went back after this diagnosed me, just to check up and i'm also making him check me for cancer cause i know i have it. But ya everything is going well elder tripp just got called to be a district leader which is pretty cool we'll see how our new district meetings go lol our old DL was way cool and i love him but the meetings were insanely pointless, i'm guessing they just about all are tho. Monica went to lubbock for a little while her boyfriend was just like threatening her a lot, it's ridiculous i hate people lol. She said she wanted us to come see her though so when she's back we'll go more she'd progress for sure I think. Well nothing really new like it seems like i just waste away in fatigue and pain all day so ya not much going on this week lol

love elder blake theo porter

hey hey

So I'm going to the Doctor again today, I think i have cancer. Probably not probably just mono but i was super tired the past few days and I'm making them check me for more stuff cause i haven't been working hard... like at all, and if i'm that tired from virtually no work then i don't understand why resting doesn't do anything.
But on a happier note we had 9 investigators come to church this sunday! It was really awesome and they are all reading the book of mormon too so it's really awesome. Ugh everything i eat hurts my stomach my body is retarded i've decided. Man i just don't have much to say lol. Hmmm we had really awesome shrimp soup, Hector's wife Marybell is the best cook ever. We talked to him a lot about needing to stop drinking too. He knows he needs to stop he just doesn't think he can basically. It was impressive though because the next day he didn't go to work and he came to church instead. If he keeps dedicating himself like that I know he can overcome the drinking like for sure.
 
So we got the call this morning and we are staying in Plainview for another 6 weeks. it's really weird i guess for a greenie to stay with his trainer that long but it's nice cause the area is finally picking up I really hope we'll get some stuff done this transfer cause it's been hard to get work going. Lol i love how mom spells Roj. It always takes me a second to figure out who rog is lol. I guess both work but Roj is just how he's always spelled it ha ha.
Did ryan send you guys that email about the dollar coin not having 'In God we trust' pretty lame that they took it out. Lol i guarantee the email was started by a texan who's a chain smoking alcoholic who beats his kids, but was utterly disgusted that the new coin didn't have In God we trust ha ha. That's how it goes here :D
Well the only other new thing is that Elder Tripp is our District leader now. So that will be fun I can't wait to be a noob in his district meetings while he's trying to teach us something ha ha. Hope you all are doing good though. I really want to not get fat I hate being sick. Is grandma cousins doing ok she seems like she is in a lot of pain whenever she writes me, hope she's ok. Love you all see ya later. O ya do you guys have a copy of my line of authority? like for the priesthood? if ya do can you send me a copy of it please? it'd be cool to have, and i will for sure send my memory card home i printed the pictures i wanted off of it so you don't have to worry about sending me any :D ok cya!

 love elder blake theo porter

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thanks for the stuff :D

I got you package today, the one with the beef jerky and the memory cards, thanks a bunch. Jack Link's is the best for sure. It's probably just a good idea to keep the cards huh? I'll mail the other one sometime this week, it's not as cool I fear. So yes Paul and his grandsons came to church yesterday, it was great because we didn't even invite them they just came on their own, and he once again donated $100 lol, we'll have to baptize him no doubt. Hope's granddaughter, who she has custody over, was sick so they didn't come, she was sick for sure when we saw her last, so hopefully it was legit. Lol i laughed thinking of Michael and Davey doing that baseball game, they really are yin and yang, they are both awesome though. Ryan's a noob and never emails me, i'll have to write him today. We went up to Childress, it's 2 hours from here but we cover it... and like there's a small branch there, i've told you this already so i don't know why i told you again. But there's a lady there named natalie who was ex-communicated locally like a long time ago when she was only like 18 or something. We are trying to get her to get re-baptized but she still has some hard feelings, she knows it's true though and finished the book of mormon this year. It's hard i don't know all the info and we were talking about the gift of the holy ghost and she's like how can man take that away, and i was like "are you talking about your ex-communication?" and she was like yes. It was awkward to try and tell her why she was ex-ed when she feels like she didn't deserve it, but it went well enough. I mostly just tried to focus on what she wanted now and not worry about all the members of the church being good. Anyways the mono seems to be going ok i don't feel very energetic but I feel decent, we haven't gone tracting yet still but we have had some good appointments. I miss ya'll especially the little gerbers. No offense lol they are just cuter. I never realized how awesome my family was. Random story, we were at the Amigos getting water and like this guy comes up and asks if we work for a church. We said we were volunteer missionaries and asked if we could visit him. He talked to his gf for a second and then said yes, and that they had been waiting for us. He was serious too. Anyways we call them a couple days later and apparently he beat his girlfriend in between when we saw them. It's really sad we went over with a cool member to teach her and she has really cute kids, 4 of them, and it's sad they have all been physically abused and her boyfriend like threatens them and stuff. They all listened very well including Monica's mom (that's the girlfriend's name) so it was great. It's just really sad I'm glad President Hinckley like was really outspoken against abuse, it's just the worst. This girl is a good mom and a way nice lady, if she just lived in utah and was mormon she'd have like an awesome husband i swear lol. Well the gospel can help them more than anything I think they will progress. Well tell everyone hi, Ali said she's mad ya'll haven't been updating the blog cause i kinda tell you guys investigator stuff more just so i can write other stuff in the letters i send to her cause i figure she'll see them on the blog. Don't make me start emailing her ;) lol jk... sorta
love elder blake theo porter

Happy Birthday Dad (August 12, 2008)

Are you 57 years old now? How is that? lol This is my first birthday of yours i've missed since i've been alive, that's kinda weird. So yes I did get your 24th package thank you so much beef jerky is my favorite, send more! :D Hmm ya either send the old memory card or a new one would be nice, either way I can send mine I have right now home it's almost full. Whatever's clever. So my spleen is normal and the ultrasound was good, the nurse in our ward said i'm not contagious anymore and that I can start doing more. Just not tracting much and no riding the bike she said, but hopefully we can just visit a lot of people we didn't use any miles hardly at all this month so we have a lot to burn. :D So yesterday was great we had 6 investigators come to church. Paul and his grandsons came again and he donated $100 again lol We need to teach him how to pay tithing we've decided lol. Hope and Richard and her son and little baby granddaughter came too. It was great to see them there the gospel is definitely the solution to their marriage and her kids lives really. After church the Sharps took us out to their house, they live like half an hour out of town and in the middle of no where lol. There was this way pretty canyon by their house Bro. Sharp took us to. Some guy privately owns the whole thing it's unreal, he got it forever ago way cheap cause no one wanted it, exact opposite now lol there's good hunting there I guess and it's really pretty, only pretty thing i've seen in texas. Then he took us to see the wild hogs lol I guess Russians brought over russian boars a long time ago as a game animal and they bred with the local domestic pigs and there's just a ton of them. They eat the peanut crops lol it used to be a huge problem I guess. But they have tusks and everything it's great, and this guy catches them and sells them to cruises and different people who want to have exotic pig roasts, i guess they taste good. They are way ugly though and I thought of Animal Farm a lot. They are big though It'd be scary if they charged you. Well gotta go love you guys, have a nice birthday without me.

love elder blake theo porter

I feel like crap...(August 4, 2008)

My spleen is enlarged and i'm really tired and sore all the time. Being sick is retarded. President and Sister Robison are awesome tho, they are going to come see us tonight and take us out to dinner on their way up to Amarillo. Sister Robison is really nice though huh i'm glad you got to talk to her mom. Well I basically just sit all day and take naps. Last night wasn't good cause I couldn't sleep at all because my stomach hurt, I'm guessing fromt he spleen. I guess i'm an answer to Elder Tripp's prayers cause he kept telling God he was tired and needed a break. So basically Elder Tripp cursed me lol. I'm still convinced of course that the mono is just a symptom of my cancer. Ya it's really frustrating cause we can't go see investigators really, maybe by the end of this week I can go to appointments. We still had Paul Ziegler and his 2 grandsons Edward and Matthew at sacrament so that was cool. They liked fast and testimony meeting I think. Paul is super generous he gave $100 for fast offerings, and he isn't even a member, amazing guy. His wife was a member, she's passed away now, but Paul used to play the organ for them right when they started the branch out here I guess and it was like in a house somewhere. Pretty cool that he's coming hopefully he can understand this is Christ's only church and be baptized, his grandsons are promising they are really humble good kids. Well Hector's family isn't progressing but it's just because we can't get a hold of them to teach them. We mowed his lawn for him again so that was good, I told you about how we almost killed his wife right? We replaced her tire on her Expedition and it almost came off lol like all the bolts had been vibrated/stripped off. But Hector was pretty decent about it and forgave us lol it was bad timing too cause she was going to Mexico the next day. Yes Elder Tripp and a guy in the branch gave me blessing. Hmmm I always have questions for you guys and then forget them until after I email. So ya send my other card back will ya so i can print off some on this one k? That's super way cute that nathan and lucy hung out ha ha i love thinking about it, tell all the kids hi for me. Elder Tripp got lucky and beat me at chess once, otherwise i've won 3 times so i'm feeling good about that still. I'm also really good at crosswords and sudoku now, anyways love you guys it sounds like I may get a letter from mom today since both her and Sis. Robison mentioned one and i haven't got it yet :D love elder blake theo porter

Trinity (July 28, 2008)

So ya we were tracting in floydada which is a smaller town to our east and we saw three mexican guys out drinking on the lawn. We go up and when they find out we're mormons they make some comment about how we're child molesters and polygamists or something and i was like "woah woah wait a second, we aren't catholics" lol well it turns out they were catholic ha ha they listened to us and one guy was kinda smart and we kinda got caught up in a trinity argument. i swear there is nothing more confusing than trying to understand how god, christ, and the holy ghost are the same person. It's like ridic mysticism or something. anyways i was asking if he's read acts, OF COURSE he had he said he's read it cover to cover many times. So i asked him to explain stephen's vision of seeing the son of god standing on the right hand of god. I then proceeded to walk on my own right hand and walk around his lawn saying "hi stephen" waving my other hand. I probably looked really stupid but he just had some really lame excuse how that's just how our minds see god or something but it isn't actually that way. anyways it didn't go well, and arguing really doesn't help, we tried to just be calm and have the spirit but we just had to give them a book of mormon pass a long card and hopefully that one sorta smart guy will read it. anyways gotta go there's like a bunch of people looking at my computer wanting it

The English major in him...

So I got my own private email on July 28th, only to be critiqued by my english major brother... Here's what it said:

Sorry to do this to you, but it was just bugging me. Than is used when comparing two things, for instance dad is bigger than mom. Then is used for sequence, for instance I woke up, showered, and then emailed noobs. I hope this can improve on the next email ;) he he jk...sorta.

Tripp was impressed by your garden it said it looked pretty good. They have a pretty big garden in Enoch where he lives, it's right by Cedar City I guess.

I can just imagine poor Michael's disappointed almost crying pouty face finding out he couldn't get on the plane. Lol poor kid glad though that it sounds like it'll work out. I wish i could play xbox, unfortunately it's pretty specific that we can't play video games, but if an investigator asked me to I would be forced to help fellowship ;) (Just so you know Michael had asked if Missionaries have any free time, and if they can play xbox. or video games. It was cute.)

Well nothing too crazy going on here. the craziest was we got a flat tire in this diaper town called Paducah, which is like 90 minutes away from Plainview. It was really late at this guy tried to charge us $80 to just fix a flat lol. Our Branch President from Childress was there though and he manages the church's huge ranch out there, Triangle ranch, and he told them to bill it to triangle ranch. When the tire noob found out he was the manager there he totally changed his attitude, apologized that he didn't recognize him, and only charged $13. It was funny. We stayed at the ranch and the stars were really pretty, first time i could really see them. The ranch is pretty big like 150,000 acres and the house there is nice with a big guest house. Anyways we had to wake up super early to make Zone Conference and we barely made it, anyways good times right?