April 21, 2014

Oh my goodness... Easter was frickin SWEET!!! We had two dinners, one
with the Bradley's and one with the Malcolm's. The Malcolm's are this
less active family we reactivated and we're working on making temple
worthy again and they are SO FUN!!! We're so chill with them that we
can just go over unannounced and they let us in, feed us a 3 course
meal and try and keep us 'til 10 o'clock! Haha I love 'em :) sister
Malcolm had a cool looking drink in a Martini glass and I look at her
as she drinks it and say "that's a virgin, right?" She says "of
course! I don't drink alcohol!" And Elder Johnson immediately says
"cool! Can I have some??" It's amazing how quickly people confess!!
Haha

Sister Malcolm is definitely the same personality as Amanda Flinders!
She is SO BLUNT!! And Ryann Malcolm (the weird 18 year old daughter)
is definitely the same personality as Kelsie Whitaker! In most ways...
It's kinda weird... That's probably why I enjoy hanging out with them
so much :P haha

So, at the Bradley's we had a delicious dinner, got Easter baskets,
and painted eggs which I haven't done in probably 10 years!! It was so
cool!!! I didn't know it could be so much fun! Sister Bradley should
have sent pictures already so you'll get to see a couple of my eggs :)

Hmm.... What else.... Oh! I found out why I've been getting these
nasty flats all the time! I got one on Friday probably two hours after
my companion and I went to the bike shop to fix his brakes.... Ugh...
So we went back and I was talking to the guy and the flat I got is
called a "snake bite" because it's like a snake bit the tube. The flat
is two holes on either side of the tube and it's from having too low
tire pressure and popping a curb or something and the pressure pinches
the tube and pops it. :/ yep... So I bought a floor pump that I can
pump up my tire more with. I guess you're not supposed to let your
tire get to the low end of the recommended tire pressure range...
Found THAT out the hard way :P


SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

Alma 26:27 "Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to
turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy
brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and
I will give unto you success."

Many of us are going through all sorts of trials, and some of you may
be on the breaking point. In those times where things only get harder
remember the words of Jeffrey R. Holland, "if for a while, the harder
you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best
people who ever lived."
Don't give up. It WILL get better, but before you can live in the
brightest light, you have to walk through the darkest night. In the
name of Jesus Christ, amen.


Sincerely,
Elder Aaron Russell

Easter Weekend at the Bradleys 2014

In this first picture my daughter got baptized. I gave her the pink "comforter" and someone gave her the Stitch that elder Ales really liked. Then the last ones were from today. (Easter) we dyed eggs and had dinner and ice cream.

More from the Bradleys

These pictures are from a going away party I threw for an elder that was going home.

Then at the end of the night all of the missionaries (there were 8. I loved it) stood up and gave us their favorite scripture and bore their testimony.

More from April

Hangin' out at the Bradleys

 the last two are from a night I just had the four boys over for dinner. He's always drawing. His art is amazing!! I can't wait until he's famous and I can say that was my missionary😄 He's so sweet with my youngest daughter. She just loves him

April 2014

These are pictures from a service project our ward did for a lady who moved into our ward and her house needed a lot of work. Elder Russell and Rodrigues were trying to fix the shower head (they tired very hard but no luck😊) then elder Russell is trying to hang blinds I think.

April 14, 2014

Our teaching pool has PLUNGED. We went through and dropped almost
everyone and anyone that didn't get dropped moved away or got evicted.
GAH! So there's not really any great stories this last week :P it's
been really boring...

Oh! I've been learning to draw anime!! I've gotten pretty good if I do
say so myself ;) I'll send some pictures of my drawings and sketches
:) I'm just going off of some drawings another elder sent me pictures
of.

Hmm....... Stories... Stories... Are there any stories... Hmm...
Man... This week has been BORING! Sorry about this horrible email :P I
guess I'll just send the pictures :P

There was a lizard that snuck into our apartment while we were airing out the Mary Jane and it took us almost a full week to finally catch him :P I cornered him into that cup and then had studies with him :) but then, because I love him, I set him free... 

I CAUGHT A PRAYING MANTIS!!! Freaking TINY praying mantis, too! He was a little black man too! He had hops like Jake Smith! It was so hard to take a picture of him :P ugh...

April 1, 2014

OHMAHGAWRSH!! Last week was amazing! We got SIX people dunked!!
Donaven, Andrew, Jon Jon, Madison, Nick, and Phoenix :) donaven was
technically not a convert baptism because he's 8 and his legal
guardian is a member but I'm counting it :) it seriously felt like the
temple with so many baptisms! Their great grandpa baptised 3 of them
and their dad's cousin baptised the other 3. I was a witness and I
then participated in the confirmation of all 6 the next day in the
craziest sacrament meeting I've ever experienced! Hahaha it was
AWESOME!!!

So! This week has been kinda typical but still AWESOME! OH! I got to
hold a Red Tailed Boa Constrictor! (I think that's what it was
called...) but that snake freaking LOVED me! We almost got Bri (the 17
year old owner) to let us take it home! Haha I held it for about 45
minutes and we became best buds :) it's full grown and about 15 lbs
and 4 feet........... I want one :D ........ After we had to go Bri
tried unwrapping Mitch (the snake) from around my neck and she was
walking around me to unwind him and he would move around me so that
she couldn't unwind him! Hahaha! She walked around me probably 3 times
before she gave up and picked him up over my neck.

Hmm.... What else... Oof.. SO! I had a learning experience! I found
out what Marijuana smells like! It smells like home! PFFFFTT!!!
Seriously... Our apartment smells SO strong it's disgusting! We've had
all the other elders smell it and even our WML and he said "no wonder
you're gaining weight on your mission! You got the munchies!!"
HAHAHA!! That was so funny!!! Man... We've complained to the leasers
twice and they haven't done anything... We told our senior couple and
they're gonna do something tomorrow but we told one of our
investigators and IMMEDIATELY she went straight to the store and
bought all these things to put in our apartment that can eliminate the
odor! She's practically our mom out here and calls us her boys :)

FAVORITE MEMBER EEEEVVEEER!!! Sister Hendrix :) the one that takes us
to Buffalo Wild Wings every Tuesday night :D AND! She's feeding us
four times this week because the ward is being lazy in not feeding us.
Anyway! So her and her family LOVE the movie Frozen......... :) and
her, her kids and I are always breaking out into song singing Frozen
:D ! They had me take a character quiz and it turns out I'd be Svenn
(the reindeer) :) haha

OKAY! What's up with all this crazy world news! Missing PLANE?! And
all these wars breaking out?! North Korea going to war with S. Korea
and Russia invading Ukraine! What the..! This all makes me happy to be
a missionary in the hastening of the work! MAN! CRAZY! I'm so stoked
for the second coming! Haha ^.^

Hey... All of you... Turn to 3 Nephi 1. When Nephi leaves. Verse 2. He
leaves roughly two years before Christ's birth and it takes roughly
two years to travel from America to Asia and then to Israel... One of
the Wise Men?? Haha Elder Erickson (my trainer) thinks so and I'm
slowly becoming convinced of the same.

Hmm... I'm so bad at remembering cool stories... So... This week
probably won't have any hand written letters sent to anybody from me
because we're having a zone P Day and our district leader is going
home so we're going to party with him :)

OHMYGOODNESS!!! Sister David is a Whovian!!! She even has a Sonic
Screwdriver (11th Doctor) that a member gave her! She let me carry it
last week at church :) hehe

I love you all and thank you for the prayers, the letters, the emails,
and the memories :) I'm staying in Orange Park 2nd Ward so my mailing
address remains the same :) also, with the iPads we're now allowed to
read emails everyday so feel free to email me whenever even if it's
just a little email :)

LOVE YOU ALL!!

Elder Russell

We got an investigator to give us his cigarettes - well... half of them... so that is me disposing of cigarettes. They smelled HORRIBLE! 

A freaking awesome mailbox we rode past!!!

The snake!!! :D There were MUCH better poses later on... later, I had him wrapped around my arm 4 times and his head was outstretched 2 feet and I was posing all Prince of Egypt style or something epic like that :)

A lovely picture with a quote Motra Russell shared that I drew while bored :)

The baptism of all 6 of these studs :) the black one is Donaven :) he's gonna be the next Michael Jackson ;) haha and the mother towards the right is the biological parent of 3 of those kids. They're just all living with the two other adults in the picture, Jon and Jessica Meeks.

I had fun taking pictures :) this is the yard of an investigator we have who is 77 and is AWESOME! We haven't had to buy food the last 2 weeks because everytime we go over each week to do service she feeds us lunch and then gives us 3 bags of food!!! We got an entire loaf of bread from her yesterday as well as tons of other things. Her best friend is the one who gave us the odor eliminating stuff :)

She has a beautiful yard :) we laid all that mulch and have so far gone through probably about 200-240 cubic feet of mulch (100-120 bags)

a surprise going away party for elder Pyne, he is the forth one from the left behind sister Willson (the sister on the left) we are going to miss him a lot.

March 24, 2014

This P-Day has been AWESOME!!! :D :D :D :D :D oh my goodness! Thank you so much for the nerf guns and bullets mom!!! We went to Target today and bought two more guns and 60 more bullets and spent probably 3 hours having nerf wars in our apartment! Took lots of pictures so I'll send those to y'all :) We did this thing called defend the fort and we had 2 C4's we could try and grab throughout the room to blow up portions of the barriers and if you were killed 3 times you lost. Head shots are 1 shot kills and torso/legs/arms is 3 shots to kill. The people in the fort need 9 shots to kill or 3 head shots. 2 people in the fort had all the ammo but each person out of the fort got 5 bullets to start. EPIC!!! It was so much fun! We enjoyed it so much! And we were listening to Lindsey Stirling jam it on her violin as we shot each other. We just had 4 people total.

So... I guess they make you EXTRA strict when you come out because they know you'll ease up a little bit so they have you ease up to where they want you to be. The music isn't nearly as strict as I thought it was. Lindsey Stirling is good from what I understand, and Disney music is all good as long as it's not romantic so I may need to send my mp3 back so you can load it with good ol' disney music, mom and dad :)

So I've noticed that every one of my companions has made a comment on how prideful I am... The reasons they use are, interestingly enough, when I think I'm being the kindest to them or the most helpful... So I was super confused and didn't know why I was being perceived that way... So I took to much prayer and fasting and with much effort I waxed great in my humility. Haha! not -_-' hahaha jk jk but seriously... I did pray and fast a lot (much more prayer than fasting :P) and I took to studying the scriptures as well. I studied Beware of Pride by Ezra Taft Benson and Be Meek and Lowly of Heart from Oct 2013 Gen. Conf. (thanks for the recommendation Amanda! It was awesome!) I even talked face-to-face with President Craig (Mish Pres) for about 30 minutes about stripping myself of pride. I found it interesting that in Alma 5:28 he says "Are ye stripped of pride? I say unto you, if ye are not ye are not prepared to meet God." Rather bold... needless to say that has been my goal the last two weeks: to strip myself of my pride. I've come to see ways in which my pride has manifested and it is so much more common than you would ever believe!!! Oh my goodness! Pride is EVERYWHERE!!! Seriously guys!! Don't procrastinate the day you develop humility! Get started on it NOW!

I'm doing much better at being humble and I've found myself being happier overall and I've gotten along better with my companion especially. Sometimes my pride gets through and I get all grumpy which really PISSES ME OFF! Jeez! Stop getting upset!!! Haha ugh...

Funny story of the day:

We were going around and talking to anybody that was outside (much friendlier version of tracting) and we came to these 3 black guys sitting and chatting in their driveway and we pull up, shout hello, and immediately one of them stands up and says "LEAVE!! NO GET OUT OF HERE!! YOU MORMONS ALREADY F****** ME I'M NOT LETTING YOU F*** ME AGAIN!!!" I'm all like hold up big man! Take it easy! We're just out doing service! and he says to wait here and he goes inside. I legitly thought he was going to get a gun and he comes out with a book of mormon. Apparently he was a Former Investigator about 6 months ago and he wouldn't live the WoW so he was dropped. Oh my gosh... He was drinking 3 bottles of stuff... smoking... and every third word was the F word. If it was the F word it was the S word and that was only about 10% of the time... He had a 2 foot tall bottle of alcohol!!! CRAZY!!! I guess he hasn't been sober in 6 months! Oh man... and he even confessed to murdering people... oh gosh... I thought he was gonna kill me... He even had these crazy brass knuckles with skulls on them... so he was telling his friend that he needed to live the WoW and take lessons from us but whenever we tried asking this drunkard a question he said "DON'T TALK TO ME! TALK TO *HIM*! HE'S THE ONE WHO NEEDS TO CHANGE!" *sigh*... so... we're not going to try working with him for at least a long time...

Spiritual Thought:

Oh man... there's so much good stuff in the Book of Mormon. One point I think must be brought to light is the matter of acting on anger. Anger is something very powerful and in Alma 43:44 the Lamanites "did fight like dragons ... and thus [they] did smite in their fierce anger." They were the most ferocious and dangerous when they were the angriest. But when we rely on God we always have greater strength. Isaiah 26:4 "trust ye in the Lord forever; for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." 

We must understand how anger is destructive all around; Teancum, a captain in Moroni's army, was likely one of the greatest warriors in the entire Nephite army. He had slain the King of the Lamanites without making a sound and reclaimed many cities by his cunning and skill. However, it was his pride and his anger that caused his downfall. In Alma 62 the war has been going on for almost 12 years and thousands had been killed. Teancum became very angry at this because he supposed that it was Ammoron, the Lamanite King and the former Lamanite King whom he had killed, who was the cause of all this (Alma 62:35). In verse 36 "Teancum in his anger did go forth into the camp of the Lamanites ... he did find the king; and he did cast a javelin at him, which did pierce him near the heart ... the king did awaken his servants before he did ... they did pursue Teancum, and slew him." Revenge is a two-headed viper; as we watch it harm someone else we do not notice that it is harming us as well. Often times, until much of the damage has already been done.

So, what can we learn from this? Yes, don't go kill someone when they're surrounded by their servants. Yes, try to aim better next time :P yes, don't be stupid. But relating it to our day, don't feel that need to "get even", don't give someone "a taste of their own medicine." Let things end with you. In other words, don't allow the vicious cycle of revenge to feed through your own efforts. We must learn to forgive even when others don't ask for that forgiveness.

Rather interesting thought indeed, but I felt it was an appropriate one to share, one that will hopefully cause many of you to look within yourselves and see if you are harboring any negative feelings.

Thank you all for the letters and the emails. I can now read emails during the week so feel free to email me whenever you want :) I love you all and hope all of you have the happiest week ever this week :D MOM! Good luck with hiking Timpanogos :) YOU CAN DO IT!!! I BELIEVE IN YOU!

Love,

Elder Russell

Those are two of the Hendrix kids :) first family I met out here :D they're wonderful! Every Tuesday night we go to Buffalo Wild Wings and have the best wings I have ever tasted in my life! :D 

A FREAKING-AWESOME-OLD-FASHIONED-TINY-LITTLE-DINKY-CAR!!! :D :D :D

Aaaaaaaaaand me posing by it :) so I got here to Florida and the grass was all AWFUL!!! But we were riding and found this..... the softest grass I have ever felt in my life... I would have a picture of me lying on it but sadly there was a couple walking our way and I didn't want to make things super awkward....... I'll send that one later.. haha

THE AWESOME PACKAGE THAT I AM ETERNALLY GRATEFUL FOR!!!
Tootsie rolls and Hi-Chews make great packing peanuts

my beautiful bike :) I got a GPS odometer :) it's pretty spiffy! And I got cool pretty fenders :) my Ward Mission Leader bought the bike for me so he could get an employee discount on it :) (I did give him cash to buy it, he's not THAT nice :P)

My lovely wall of pictures :) and the AWESOME set of guns and bullets that we have!

Our epic preparations for the war to come....

That's the epic fortress I'm speaking of. When you use a C4 you count down from 5 and then one of the cushions or bean bags gets taken off from wherever you placed the C4. Yep! :)
(Good thing they didn't have a surprise cleaning check)