June 29

Sawaddii Khrab! This is my follow up letter to the email I sent not too long ago this morning. First, thanks for the cookies, gushers, patch candy and gum! The gum was the icing on the cake cause you remembered that's my favorite! Cookies are so good! And quite the hit among my zone. Mom sent pumpkin chocolate chip cookies the same day, so I had to share! Not letting them go to waste.

You just got an email from my LDS mail account so you have that now. But on any day but Monday (or very early Tuesday morning) Dear Elder is the way to go. I check email only on Tuesdays at about 8 a.m. my time. So if you have a quick (or not) thought for me to get Tuesday morning, Monday is the best. Dear Elder Letters get delivered within a day, or if sent by noon, the same day (usually).

So everything is going very well. The lang. is sick but I did have a rough first day. I'm STILL adjusting to sleeping and a bunch of other things that got me super down. Some of the district were kinda bothering me, but we're ok now. Last Tuesday I was SUPER down. It was great to hear from you in general but when you said, "I'm sure that all our family will be blessed because of your sacrifice for the Lord. Thank you for doing that," I was reading it during the prelude music for Tuesday's devotional and just started bawling. It really made me feel like all this will be worth the hard times of adjusting and the hard times in general of the mission. Even more than all that it put me in the right mindset for the Fireside.

As you may or may not know, I still have not finished the B of M all the way through. I believe it's true, but with all the lesson exercises we do, it requires us to say, I know. And I would be lying if I said that. Going into the fireside with this outlook, your letter really put my mind at ease to listen to the speaker. As I did, he quoted 1 of THE ONLY scriptures that I can, to this day, quote from memory or cite its reference if it's being recited. At EFY about 4ish years ago, I found the scripture that the speaker quoted. Ever since then it has been one of my favorites: Alma 5:26-28. For the person on my left, he missed the reference, but I was able to give it to him. Two days before this fireside, the scripture was being spoken in a movie (Testaments... good movie) and I was able to, almost instantly, state the reference. To this my buddy, Elder Roach, said "Dude, that was epic." So this scripture came up twice in two days; very powerful to me. The the speaker quoted D&C 84:85. Ten days before, my stake President, Papa Crickmore, quoted D&C 84:80-85 before he set me apart. It states: "Take ye no thought beforehand what ye shall say, but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man." It could not have been more powerful to know first hand the truth of this scripture.

I lost it by this point because this man, Elder Snow, was speaking AT ME. The Lord was helping me (and practically screaming "it's true!" at me) expell the doubts I may have in order to read the Book of Mormon clearly. Even still, I've taken it upon myself to, as I read the Book of Mormon, write every question I have down in a little black notepad in order to find those answers, or be able to testify of the truthfulness of the Gospel, even with all these questions.

Know that you are always in my prayers. I miss you so much. Hope work and whatever else goes as you want. I will be sending pics your way soon (hopefully) but the computers here don't let us upload pics so I have to print and send them. You got a scanner or something so you can put 'em on the blog? K, gotta run! Love you

Love,
Elder Gudmundsen