August 16th E-mail

Dear Mom, and everyone else.

Thank you for the pitch pipe it has made singing hymns in class a lot easier :) Most people didn't even know what it was and I had to explain it to them. It was fun. So yes the box did get here just fine with everything. Thank you.

And as long as you are sending cookies...I have been craving some gatorade. only have lemonade, powerade, and soda. And let's face it...some dark purple (Grape) Gatorade is better than all those:)

Just letting you know, while I'm here at the MTC I Check my emails around 12:00.

The letter with ink or pencil is a fun choice to make. I tried writing one in ink, but I keep getting frustrated with my own handwriting and instead of eraesing I had a letter filled with words crossed out and it's worse now with half the words coming out in Spanish. It's the downside to having bad handwriting. I can send you some in ink, but they might be really messy so just let me know what you want to do.

So, funny story of the week. I found out why me and my companion get along so well. (We haven't had any fights in the whole time we have been here). He was telling me about a girl he dated a while ago and that her last name was Blackburn. I told him that I was rellated to Blackeburns. That's when he told me he was actually related to Blackburns. So after a few minutes told him that I was from Dorothy Blackburn and he is from Elda Blackburn. I don't remember that name from grandma's stories, but when I told him about Lorenzo Blackburn that sealed the deal. He told me that he has a picture of Lorenzo Blackburn. So we know we are related pretty close (especially for being in the MTC) but we don't know just how close, if it is possible, could I get a few more generation of geneology on the blackburn line? yes Grandma Neiswender can send it to me by herself:) Elder Ellett is going to ask if we could get a copy of the picture of Lorenzo Blackburn. It's crazy :)

I've also been asked by the Branch President to make an arrangement of Where can I Turn for Peace to sing in our zone sacrament meeting! Should be fun. And a couple of the other elders in my district want me to arrange Amazing Grace to sing in a fireside or devotional. They are both oked by the branch president to work on so it's not bad for me to work on them on my own time:)

It was fun yesterday. I was in the cafeteria and looked across that the next table in front of me and saw Elder Horne. We made a few gentures of hello and then he started making weird gestures and pointing at what I thought was me. I finally caught on to trun around and when I did, there was Elder Ruben. It was a good time to get us all together, but no Elder Abeyta yet. I have only seen him once.

As of right now I am scheduled to leave on September 6th. But that is not in concrete. I will get my travel papers in a weed or a week and a half. They send a copy of them to you so we can work things out then.

Much Love,

Elder Neiswender