July 6th, 2015

It sounds like yall have had quite the week! I hope that Jake has an awesome birthday and that all goes well with Girls camp! Good work in Volleyball Jessa!! Things here are going really well! Things with my companion are going a lot better, thanks for all of your prayers. I am still working on always being patient with him sometimes but it is a good lesson to learn and I am getting a lot better at it! I'm not sure why I always get to be such good friends with all of the older ladies but for some reason a lot of my best friends on my mission so far are older women haha I got hugged by two different ones this week, one while we were visiting here and the other after sacrament meeting after I had borne my testimony, she gave me a big ol hug and told me that she didn't even feel bad about it haha I love these people so much! and I love being a missionary so much. The lady that hugged me after sacrament told me that I had to share my testimony with yall today I don't want to get beat up so I will :) I just really am so grateful that I get to be a missionary! Cause I get to become even better friends with our brother Jesus Christ and with our Heavenly Father. They are my homies :) They loves me no matter what, they humble me when I need to be humbled a little bit, they teach and test me, polish and refine me, and when I feel like they are never going to find a diamond in this lump of coal they laugh with me and talk a little trash with me until I realize that they don't care how much I fall short every day, they just want me to be happy and keep on trying until I make it back home to them. And that we have a perfect atonement that is even for white trash Louisisana rednecks like me so that we can keep on trying until we get to be with them again. I also know that one of the greatest tools to pick us up and dust us off is the Book of Mormon another Testament of Jesus Christ. And that prayer is one of the sweetest things ever cause we really do get to talk directly to our Father in Heaven. I love my family and I love my Shelley 8th ward family to! I can feel everyones prayers and they mean more to me than I can ever say. In the name of Jesus Christ amen. I love yall!! Love mud :)

June 29th, 2015

It sounds like you have had quite the week! Thanks for being such an awesome family!! Things here have been pretty mellow this week! Just went on 2 exchanges and helped with a wedding and a baptism but other than that it was a pretty normal week. When I was driving one of the missionaries back from exchanges I saw the most massive snack I probably have ever seen in the wild in the middle of this back road it was huge! We have a pretty good week planned we are going to Baton Rouge tomorrow for a big meeting, and then we have another big meeting on Friday so I'll have to try and be good as I sit through all of these meetings and learn as much as I can. I sure love you guys and I'm grateful that I get to be a Dye. I know that I wouldn't want to belong to anybody else! Thanks for the birthday gifts you are too good to me! And thanks for all of the prayers and for not judging more sorry emails to harshly haha I love yall and hope that you have an awesome week!! Love Mud :)

June 22nd, 2015

My amazing family!! Wow it sounds like you have had quite the week!! I'm glad to hear that everything went well with the Natural Helper Retreat and that Jessa had a good Birthday and that dad had a happy fathers day! And I'm sorry to hear about the deaths, but I bet that Sister Scott was super happy to move on. I sure miss and love the awesome shelley 8th ward!! Things this week have been a little bit crazy but good! I was on exchanges in Baton Rouge with Elder Murhula for part of the week and it was a ton of fun! He is from the Kongo in Africa and he is just an awesome guy! We worked hard and had some good talks and he mellowed me out a lot and helped me to see how I can still be myself and do what I should. Yesterday for fathers day the Relief Society made a bunch of pies and it was awesome! Pie during priesthood is a good combination. And one of our investigators who is getting super close to baptism went out and bought a kindle so he could better fit in with the high priests and have his scriptures on it haha it made me laugh really hard! I started a big water fight today when we were cleaning our apartment and it was so much fun!! I realized that I probably go on so many exchanges cause me and Elder Johnson (the same one that slapped me with watermelon) party a little to hard sometimes haha But Thanks so much for being my awesome family! I have been thinking a lot about how lucky I am to have such an awesome family and I just want to say thank you. I know that I am not the best emailer or letter writer and truthfully I am a better dew drinker and rock thrower but I hope you know that I love you with all of my heart! Thanks for supporting me on a mission! And thanks for all of your prayers and love, they mean sooo much to me!! With all of this Louisiana rednecks love, Mud :)

June 15th, 2015

Hey my awesome family! I'm sad to hear that there has been some pain and sickness there this week. I hope that everyone starts feeling better this week. That sounds like quite the adventure to the kids pond! And I'm glad that you are still taking care of Koltin and Wade I love those two haha Things here are going really well! Thanks for all of your prayers me and my companion had a really good talk and worked things out. And I didn't throw any rocks and I only thought maybe a few bad words in my head haha Thanks so much for the package it was awesome!! This week has been a pretty mellow one for the most part. We tried to teach one of our investigators with this member that talks a lot to see if they would balance each others talking a lot out and it did not go very well haha 2 hours in we had maybe got 5 words in between the 2 but it all worked out. I'm glad that this is the lords work cause if it wasn't I'm afraid I would have messed it up along time ago. We got a lot of young missionaries in our zone now so it is fun to have just a different kind of energy and excitement about being missionaries! I am excited for all of our exchanges. I am going to be in Baton Rouge for part of this week so that will be a lot of fun! Also one of my really good mission friends Elder Bennett just got transferred to our district for his last transfer so I am really excited! I hope that retreat is awesome!! And that my awesome Jessa has a Happy Birthday!!!!! Tell Nathan Wells that I think he is awesome! And tell the Christensens hi back and that I love and miss them! Hope you have an awesome week!! Love Mud :)

June 9th, 2015

Oh my family... It is always so good to hear from you thanks for always sending me such great emails. That is super sad that Joe fell and that Sister Scott isn't doing good. And it sounds like you better tell Edgar to lock his heart haha This week has been a pretty good one! We have been able to accomplish a lot! On Tuesday we had a meeting with the Stake President, he is awesome! After our meeting with him we had to help the Sisters take this giant map home and it kept blowing out of the back of the truck. So I sat in the backseat and held it best I could but it was just like a massive kite. So after I pulled it out of 2 ditches it still made it alright, the lord answers prayers haha On Wednesday we had MLC (Mission Leadership Council) in Baton Rouge and it was awesome! It is always a lot of fun to be able to go and see the mission president and his wife and figure out how we can best help all of our awesome missionaries. On Friday we had ZTM and it went really well! We were able to teach really well together and the Sisters did really well and it just turned out pretty good for a good ol Idahoan helping to plan it. We have to trade our truck in tomorrow and get a car, but that's alright a car is better than biking. Things here are good! I am getting excited for another transfer filled with a lot more exchanges to help and strengthen our awesome Zone! I love yall and hope that you have an awesome week!!!! With all of this Louisiana rednecks love, Mud

June 1st, 2015

My amazing family, Thanks so much for always being willing to email me even though sometimes my emails really aren't worth bragging about. I'm glad that the Father's and Sons went well and that Kaden stopped by he is an awesome guy! Sister Scott is a funny lady. Thanks so much for the package it was awesome! All of the missionaries in my apartment want my money tie but I wouldn't share with them. haha It was super fun to be able to see Devin Nii they is a little group of us awesome Shelleyites here in Pineville. Curtis Christensen (Allyson Christensen's older brother) just moved in to the ward too. This week has been crazy as ever but also a lot of fun! We had 2 exchanges this week one in Oakdale and the other in Eunice. It really is a lot of fun to get to go and work with so many other missionaries and help get them excited and happy again about being here. You get to love them so quick it is crazy and they are able to get some things off their chest that they need help with you share some laughs and then we leave until next time. It is awesome. :) We live in Alexandria and our area is 8 miles away in Pinneville, so we ran out of miles this month and had a "car appreciation day" it was good for me. We bike probably 30 or so miles in the ran but it made me tough again, this having a truck things has been making me soft haha Yesterday in Church we had a combined Priesthood and Relief Society lesson on not judging others it was really good. They mostly talked about President Uctdorf's talk about not judging others. The end of the transfer is coming up on the 10th of June. So I won't email until next Tuesday.I love yall and hope that you have a great week!! I'll talk to you on Tuesday next week!! Love Elder Mud

May 25th, 2015

Oh my awesome family!! I'm glad to hear that things are going well with yall and that everyone is doing good and is hanging in there! I can't believe that school is already out that really is crazy! That's crazy that it is raining so much there and thought that was just a South problem right now. This week has been a really good and a really crazy one! It started out pretty mellow and then bam on Tuesday night things got kind of crazy and we had to stay up really late for some missionaries to come and spend the night with us. I felt like a parent waiting up for my kid to come home after doing some things he probably shouldn't have been doing, it was definitely a different perspective.They are both awesome missionaries things just happen sometimes but that made Tuesday night and Wednesday pretty interesting. Then on Thursday we had a pretty normal day but on Friday we went on exchanges again and it was pretty interesting. It was my first time taking over our area on an exchange and I haven't been here for very long so I really wanted to do my best to be able to do a good job helping the area and helping the elder that I was on an exchange with. So I kept trying to get things set up and Heavenly Father wasn't having any of it. Plans kept falling through and I couldn't figure out why. And then as I prayed and pondered the quote kept coming in my mind, "Never let a problem to be solved be more important than a person to be loved." And I realized that I was letting the little things get in the way of truly loving this missionary, who is going through some tough things right now, the way that the Savior would have me. And so I stopped everything and just tried my very best to listen to him how I should and it was awesome, I know that the Holy Ghost was helping me listen to him and just truly love him as the Savior would. Also me and Elder Johnson and Elder Davis (the 2 other elders that live with us) had a watermelon fight the other day at lunch. It was so much fun!! We were eating and then Elder Johnson slapped me with a piece of watermelon and then I slapped him back and then he threw a piece and it went down hill from there haha you don't have to ask me or dad twice to throw things :) So needless to say we had a lot of fun but then had to clean up a lot of watermelon haha I also gave a talk on Sunday and started out by quoting the Aaron Tippon song, "you've got to stand for something" and then talked about prayer :) I hope that's not sack religious I love and miss you guys so much it is crazy!! But I know that I am hear for a reason. And I know that I am learning the things that I need to learn to be able to not be quite so white trash so I can return home and live with yall and with our Heavenly Father again someday :) Thanks for all of your love support and prayers they mean so much to me!! I was thinking of a few ideas for my birthday if that is alright maybe a new black belt, some new black shoes, a few new ties (twin ties are really good) , and maybe some cool uncle tyson sunglasses if that's okay :) Talk to you next week!!!