Voice Recording - August 14

Well good morning! And it actually is morning. It is in fact, 8:34 am. It is a beautiful and bright sunny day here in Stevensville.  We have no smoke here, we have a blue sky, that we can actually see for the first time in weeks, and personally I’d say it’s the start of a wonderful day.  Today is Monday, we have some great plans for today.  We’re going to Missoula to start off to pack up our car, my car. (Companion – the one you broke) What? (Laughter.)  The one I broke.  I only broke the front, I just broke the front frame casing around a light.  It’s plastic.  But, get that figured out.   

Also, I have come to the conclusion that it’s not Stevensville that is the version of Pine Hollow (He means Stars Hollow from the show Gilmore Girls), it’s Hamilton.   Hamilton is Pine Hollow.   I think when I heard it earlier, it is the Stevensville Zone in particular, but Hamilton especially.  After serving there for the last couple of weeks I can testify.  It’s perfect.  From the super rich people with golf courses, to everything else, it’s a great place. 

Let me think, had stuff I was going to say, Oh yeah!  And then we are meeting up in Hamilton after we get all that stuff done in Missoula, say good bye to Elder Burch and Elder Tucker, we’re going to head back down to Hamilton, meet up as a zone and have a big nerf war.   There’s a member here who is a former marine, and deals with all his problems with nerf guns and nerf wars with his family.   Him and his wife were both in the military, and apparently it gets pretty intense.   We’re pretty excited.  Set up all the tables and chairs, and have a fun last preparation day.    We were just planning on spending the day in Missoula, but Sister Jacobi chastised us for leaving them last night at mission prep.  (Companion – it’s not like they even like us.)  It’s not like they even like us, they were just like “You’re freaking leaving us on the last preparation day Elder Berrett?!?”  I’m like “aaaahhh…”  So, that was that.  We’re gonna have fun there, and then we have family home evening at the church tonight, with that same member and hopefully some less actives and investigators.   I forget what we have at like 8 o’clock tonight? (Companion – ward correlation with Coach.)  I get to see Coach tonight?!? I thought that was on Tuesdays?  (Companion- Our Tuesdays are packed, remember?)  No.  (discussion about what they have scheduled)  Covering three wards with these elders has been a blast. 

So yeah, we have our correlation meeting with Coach, he’s a stud.  Him and Mama J have been amazing.  Amazing people to work with.  They have a son out on a mission, who was from what I understand, inactive for awhile,  and then just kinda pulled an Elder Basham did with me, and was like, “You know, I’m going on a mission.”  Got everything ready, and he, when did his family find out?  Was it after he got his call? (Companion – Uhhh, he had turned his papers in) So, can you imagine me going inactive for a couple of years, and then just deciding to go on a mission, get everything ready, don’t tell anybody, oh yeah, it was everything but their final signature.  (Companion – And of course he was going to a different church, a born again Christian church)  He has Born Again for awhile there so… I mean, just this complete turn around.  Knocked the socks off his parents.  He was supposed to come home in a week, but is extending his mission by three weeks at his mission presidents request.  So, that’s that adventure.   I love Coach, I love Mama J.  Just amazing, amazing people that have really impacted my life the last couple of weeks here.

My last Sunday at church was really impactful here.   I got to sing in the choir one last time.  Love those people.  The choir conductor made sure I friend her on facebook, and promise that I would call her and keep in touch.   I got to teach Gospel Principles, cause Brother Wilton our ward mission leader is gone, but I got pictures with him. 

Oh yeah, so the missionaries, right now we still live in our old apartment here, which is in Stevensville Second ward, the ward that we had to give away to the sisters, so we live outside of our area by like 15 minutes, it’s a ways out, and that’s just to the border of our area, and so we’ve been looking, it’s a lot of miles, cause it’s not like 15 minutes in Gilbert, it’s 15 minutes on dirt roads and highways, so we go a bit a ways.  And we’re looking for another place, and one of the places we might move into is with the freaking Wiltons, our awesome Ward mission leader in First ward.  The missionaries here are going to be really set up.  We’re finding all these great new investigators and everything.

So yeah, church was great, I taught gospel principles, got to say goodbye to a lot of fun people there, didn’t have the freaking Smith’s come to church again!  I know that they have a bunch of family in town though and they’re super busy, but that’s three weeks in a row.  Satan’s been hitting at them hard.  They’ve been sick the last two weeks.  Like Saturday night one of them will start puking.  Either one of the kids, or I think it was the dad one of the weeks.  This week they have a bunch of family and friends in town.  They’re doing so good, we have a lesson set up with them Wednesday night, and so it’s going to be good and powerful.  We got this.  That’s that.

And then as far as work here goes, Wednesday again, we have a lot planned.  Wednesday at 8:00 we have a lesson with the Bowmans, with the Sisters. So that’s going to go really good.  I’m excited for that.  They’re the recent convert family we have here in Stevensville.  Love them to death.  And have district meeting… There’s a horse outside my window.  Elder Crockett, there’s a horse out the window.  (Elder Crockett – I hate horses)  You hate horses? I love living out in the country.   Granted it’s on our neighbor’s side of the fence, but it’s just like there’s this horse that’s super close.  It’s just right there.  I should probably put on a shirt, so I don’t just go walking outside in my garments.  I mean, I have pants on…  Oh yeah, that’s going to be a thing I thought about last night. “Gosh darnit, I have to actually start wearing a shirt when I go back home at the end of the day.”  You get home, you’re hot, you’re tired, you take off your shirt… go to bed like that.  I wear my garments obviously, but yeah.

(Sounds of Nick walking outside, grass crunching, birds chirping…) We’re out here with the horse, Elder Crockett is holding some grass, the horse is coming.  Did you just pick that up from right here, just any old grass?  Oh hey there!  There’s a couple different horses.  I’m going to try this…. I just got to feed a horse and pet a horse.   That was super legit.   So yeah, Montana and Wyoming are amazing places.   Like, yeah, I can go see horses in Gilbert, unless it’s really changed as much as you say it has, but it will be interesting.  Like I hope that there are still horses that you can find around town.  Still places that you can get out and think to yourself.  I keep trying to convince Elder Crockett here that I’m from a town.  He still consistently laughs at that because he’s from a place as small as Stevensville, if not smaller.  (Elder Crockett – Stevensville is bigger than Spring City.)  Spring City, Utah.  If you haven’t heard of that, it’s by Manti?  (Elder Crockett- 20 minutes north.  It’s like the difference between here and Darby.)  So yeah, we just got to go pet a horse, you heard that.  How long has this recording been going? Just to double check, 13 minutes, I’m still good.

We did all our laundry last night.  Maybe stretched the rules a little bit with that.  So what we did was we needed to get going early this morning to head to Missoula, you know our preparation day starts at 8:00 now, so we can technically leave after 8:00. But we have laundry and all these things to do so starting at like 10:00 last night we started the first load, and made Elder Crockett go to bed since he’s the driver.   (Elder Crockett- I was going to make them go to bed) He was going to be really nice, and he offered to do it all himself while we slept, but we’re like, “No.  We love you, we thank you, but you’re the driver tomorrow. Go to bed.”  So we did laundry, I took the first shift, finished Elder Crockett’s, did mine, wasn’t sure where Elder Davis’ was, so I woke him up and then went to bed and he finished the laundry.  During my shift last night, I backed up my tablet to a flash drive I got here. Cause I have a cool little cable that lets me plug flash drives into my tablet.  Cause Samsung does that.  So yeah, backed up that, and that alone took like two hours to get all the information, all the pictures, all the videos, all the files, I backed up everything. 

So yeah, it’s been 18 ½ minutes, I should probably send this off so it will actually send.  I love you a ton mom.  Oh man, I was going to respond to your email and such in this, I think you got the email from bishop, I just got the talk and everything, it was like Tuesday or Wednesday.  So yeah, hope you have a wonderful day,  God bless, talk to you soon, bye!