Another Weekly Update 9/30

So last week I went on an exchange with the Zone Leaders to their area in Washington, PA.  It was a lot of fun and they have a really sweet area.  I had Rita's Ice Cream for the first time and it was amazing.  I got a Swedish fish shaved ice/custard thing and it was really good.  Although I kinda wish I got a sundae like I originally wanted, but I got talked out of it.  We also almost went to this really cool looking Hibachi Grill and Steakhouse, but it was too expensive and made us sad.   :(     I saw this really cool Sheldon shirt from the Big Bang Theory that was 50% off and I almost got it it was cool and looked like a glow in the dark blue, but Sheldon was making a strange face so I didn't want it anymore. 

I have been having a little bit of annoyances with my Hypoglycemia recently and the doctor told me to stop eating sugar and eat more complex carbs and snack throughout the day and eat 6 small meals instead of 3 big ones.  Does anyone know any really good and really cheap and easy snacks/meals that I could make/buy that would be high in protein/complex carbs?  Also please don't send me sugary stuff since I am trying to stay away from it more.

I finished the Bednar books my parents sent me Act in Doctrine it was really good.  I am now working on the first volume of History of the Church.

I learned on Sunday when I was fasting that fasting is a good way to help receive revelation, I had a good experience with that.  Pretty much I was fasting and was praying to figure something out and I figured it out it was pretty cool.

I bought a little notebook for all my Mellor-isms (Mellorisms?)  I decided to record them myself.   I am not sure how I should spell it.   I want to get like gold sharpie or something and write that on the front of it and the spine, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.  This week's Mellor-ism (I think I like that way better, what do you guys think?)  is:  "You are only allowed to jump on a trampoline with someone of the opposite sex if they are dead, that way it doesn't count."

I have been thinking about if I want a camera with wi-fi for Christmas or not.  That way you could get the pictures sent straight to you guys instead of having to wait till Monday.  I am still on the fence about it,  What do you guys think?

We just went to a thrift store while we were waiting for the library to open and I found and bought 2 Star Wars Books for just 10 cents each, so I will be sending those home along with a bunch of other books that I have already read that have been sent to me some time.   By the way I LOVE BOOKS!!!!   It has been my passion since I got out here.   I am starting to check places like thrift stores and libraries for them.  I wrote down a giant list of books that I would like to read (if not on my mission then afterwards I don't really have a time limit), but I forgot to bring it with me so you will have to wait till next week if you want to see it.

Sorry this email is a little short, Love you!

Here's Elder Mellor in a fellow missionary apartment.

Zack thought this poster was so funny! Hahaha

Elder Mellor tried "Rita's Ice Cream." He said it was really yummy! 

Of course Zack loved this mug! 

Another Elder with the mug. 

The Elders in Zack's apartment added some furniture to their study room to make it more homey. 

Here's Elder Mellor's desk! 

Weekly Update! 9/23/13

This week went by really slow and I don't think much has happened.  My companion has decided that he wants to get a little notebook and write down all the funny one liners I say.  He called them "Mellor-isms"  so I decided I am going to do that too, but first I need a small notebook I will get that whenever I make it over to Walmart.  When I get it I will start including them in my emails.  Here is an example of one:  We were at dinner at a members house and the wife was pregnant and the husband said "I don't want to drink after you" and then I said "Yah you don't want to get pregnant too!"  everyone started busting up laughing for literally 5 minutes straight, I don't even think it was that funny so I felt a little awkward, but I guess that is another one of my talents.

By the way I don't remember, is there a scripture on my plaque at the church?  There is a movie that just came out I think called City of Ashes and it was one of my favorite books.  Has anyone seen it?  How is it?

Tim's baptism date got moved up to the 12th of October.  He is a hilarious guy and he is super smart.  You wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at him.  He says the he is "...a cornucopia of useless information."  I feel that way too.  We decided we will probably still use the baptismal font he will just be kneeling down or something.  I am a little disappointed that we are not doing it in the River though.

The weather has been dropping lately It feels amazing outside now!  I am very happy about that.  The high is usually in the 60s.

I don't really remember anything else that really happened this week, so this email is going to be a little short.

Zack's super cool touch screen radio in his car! 

He thought these were super cool. 

Another Elder in Zack's area that was goofin around! :) 

More missionaries goofin around! :) 

Awww! I complained to Elder Mellor that he didn't send enough pictures of him, so this is what I got! Haha

Ahahahahahaha Goofball! Gotta love him! :) 

Weekly Update on 9/16/13

Before I post the letter, I forgot to post a picture sent to our family by a ward member in Elder Mellor's ward! Here is the message she sent with them: "Hi! Here are some pictures of your Elder! He is very well and happy here in PA! He gave such a great spiritual thought tonight and we really appreciate him!" 
We are so gratefully the Zack has people over in PA taking care of him and looking out for him! He is doing a great work and being so blessed for it! 

Elder Mellor and His companion Elder Workman

Look how happy he is!!! That is a real actually genuine smile on his face!!! :) 

I was thinking about doing pictures first this week, but decided against it since if I run out of time you would probably prefer this.  Since the start of my mission I have struggled managing my money, but now I think I finally figured it out.  That makes me happy and hopefully I will have a little bit extra to spend.  I recently learned that they released all of the Joseph Smith papers everything he has ever written has been put online, even pictures of the papyri from the Pearl of Great Price.  I was looking at this website for a while and it is pretty cool.  I have had an obsession with a person named Orrin Porter Rockwell, he was Joseph Smith's bodyguard.  He received a special blessing from The prophet that as long as he doesn't cut his hair, he won't be able to be killed pretty much.  I listened to a radio thing about him from the Mormon channel it was really neat.  There are some books out there about him that seem pretty cool too.

I got a new Camera recently and it is better than my old one, an elder who was going home soon let me have it, he just got a new one or something.  I have a lot of pictures taken with it I will upload later.  It got up to 100 degrees one day a week or two ago, but now it has been below 70 consistently and I think hopefully it will just go down from there  WOOO!!!!!

We were at a dinner at an active member's home, the Mackowiaks, and they said that if we didn't have anyone feeding us that day we could go over there and they got a little bit mad at us that we haven't been doing that.  Also Brother Mackowiak is a Math major and he works at the hospital writing up how much radiation people need for different cancers or something like that.  Anyway he was showing us some math proofs (one being that girls were evil it was pretty funny) and he showed us one that said that .9 repeating = 1 and my companion was arguing for like 30 minutes about it and it was hilarious.  They also have a really cute baby named Blake, she is great and always shows off for us when we eat there.

I also got a package from my companion's mom, that was really sweet of her so I sent her a thank-you letter.  I have pictures pending later.  I was just starting to get a little bit envious of my companion, who gets either a letter or a package pretty much every day.  So it kind of made my day. 

We went to see this really old member (he is 97 and still kicking) named Stacy Allen and he seemed a little down and kind of sad he was just laying down and he sounded like he thinks that he is going to die soon (if he does I hope I am here for the funeral) I really do love that man, we have been visiting him (since he is pretty much home bound) since the very start of my mission and we have become good friends.  He doesn't really talk much and he doesn't have a favorite anything if you ask him.  He says "They are all good"  it reminds me a little about myself.  So anyway he is too old to read and blind in one eye so he doesn't ever read anymore and he loves to read.  So we read him some of the Book of Mormon and we are reading it to him and will keep doing so till he passes.  He also has a bunch of books and he said we could have them or give them to the church library.  I got the complete box set of the History of the Church, which I have been wanting. There was another box set of like Jesus the Christ, The Articles of Faith, Discourses of Brigham Young, and a bunch of other good church books that we both wanted but I let my companion have it.  There were also a few other books that we both wanted so I trying to be the better man just let him have them.  One of those books was Faith Proceeds the Miracle by Spencer W. Kimball and I read a little bit of it and it is really good and another book that I want.  Right now I am working on the History of the Church it is 7 volumes each with about 500 pages and so far it is really good!

I almost forgot about Tim!  He said that he is excited and recognized that he needs to be baptized!  It was awesome, because it is hard for a lot of people to realize that and it is exciting when they do.  We checked to see if he will fit in the Baptismal font and he will not.  The water would go just under his knee he is so tall and our font so small that we will have to do it somewhere else.  I hope we can do it in the River!

I also forgot to say that I am planning on cutting Sweets out of my diet, unless someone sends me something or someone gives me something or it is at a dinner appointment.  Hopefully I will lose a little bit of weight.  It is starting to be hard to fit in my suit pants comfortably.

This is the boxed set of History of the Church that Elder Mellor got from a ward member. He has really learned to love reading while on his mission!

Instead of using a desk to study, Elder Mellor has two tables for more room.

Elder Mellor's companion got a hold of his camera!

So dramatic!

Elder Mellor got a package from his companion's family! How sweet of them! 

Apparently 101 degrees is now too hot for Elder Mellor...Typical. 

They used this to kill some bugs in their apartment? I am not totally sure why he sent this picture. Haha

This is an old Catholic School that they use for a church building now. 

And the inside of the church building. 

"This angel is something we found in one of those books and my companion decided to stick his face there when I was taking a picture of it after I taped it to my wall." They may be missionaries, but they are still goofy boys sometimes. :) 

Catch Up Time!

Well, with the new semester starting, I have been a terrible sister and haven't updated the blog in weeks! So here are all his emails for the last few weeks!

8/12/13

This week I did remember to bring my camera and hopefully I wont get kicked off from sending a ton of pictures which it sometimes does.  I was on exchanges or something and an older missionary mentioned meeting with an investigator named DAN. He is always available, is always progressing, and his favorite topic of discussion is Lehi's dream.  Guess what?  DAN is actually an acronym and not a name like I originally thought.  Guess what it stands for?  Daily Afternoon Nap!  HAHAHA  I thought it was really cleaver!

During this week a member took us out to dinner this time (usually they just have us eat at their house, but he was 88 years old and his wife died like a month or two ago so he doesn't do any cooking).  I don't remember the name of it but it was really good!  It was like a cafe place, I can't think of anything to compare it to except for Chile's but it was not quite like that.  He ordered us Fried Suzuki (I think that is how you spell it, it is the vegetable that is like a cucumber but different) as an appetizer and it was pretty good.  I ordered a BBQ Beacon burger, that was great.  He also forced us to have dessert and so I had a chocolate silk pie.  It was amazing but sadly I was not able to finish it because I literally felt like puking from eating so much, but I got most of it.  He was feeding all four of us and ended up spending $100 (tip included) for all 5 of us.  It was crazy I don't think anyone has fed us like that before.  He is also a really cool guy and I like being with him.  His name is Brother Alton by the way.

Here is a book list paragraph thing that people might be interested in knowing if they want to get me something so I will put this here.

 I think it was like there are a couple of reference books by Joseph Fielding Smith. Mormon Doctrine I think that is Bruce R. Mconkie.  A Marvelous Work and a Wonder that is by Le grand Richards.  The Articles of Faith by James E. Talmage.  Book of Mormon and New Testament reference books (it is like a study guide thing that explains the chapters and verses a little better.  They have to be written by like a general authority though, I think Bruce R. Mckonkie might have written some.  And any other book that looks like it would go deep into the doctrine.  There really isn't a book I would not like if it is approved.  There are a couple others I would like, but I think they are mostly books that are several volumes, a couple examples are: History of the Church and The Encyclopedia on Mormonism.  So they wouldn't be very good for a mission, but I would like to get them when I get back.  If I think of any others I will let you guys know.  (I just copied and pasted this and I think I mixed up Joseph F Smith and Joseph Fielding Smith a lot so please don't be too mad at me).

Since our new car is freaking awesome and has a USB port along with everything else I could possibly want, including a touch screen for the radio and Bluetooth calls I will send a picture next week.  Anyway I listened to this awesome talk I downloaded by a guy name Hugh Nibley.  He is hilarious and very smart and gives really good talks!  My favorite one so far is How to Write an Anti-Mormon Book, and it pretty much just makes fun of people who do so and is worth a listen for sure.  I got it among many others at Byu.edu/speeches.  Also if any of you guys do anything that I suggest please let me know how you thought of it.  I would really like to hear your thoughts.

I never knew this before I got out here, but apparently there are a lot of politics that goes on behind the scenes like Ward Council for one example.  It is really frustrating at times.

This is Elder Mellor's "Soda Shaq Shrine." He thinks they are hilarious so he bought a bunch. Haha 

Elder Mellor had to buy some of this Dr. Pepper gum for Dad's sake. :) 

This is the house that Elder Mellor and his companion are living in! 

Super exciting. The laundry room. 

Obviously, there is some renovation going on in his house. He thought this was so funny! His words: "We call this the Emergency Toilet in the Dungeon.  It works and that blue box in the middle-ish are light switches for a ceiling light and a fan like a normal bathroom.  The toilet works too, it just feels weird using it since there isn't a door or anything and it is weird."

Elder Mellor and his companion moved their beds into the living room to be closer to the AC unit. Typical Zack!

8/19/13

So this week was pretty good a missionary that is going home soon in our district gave me an extra suit he had that he didn't want to take home with him.  It I a gray jacket with two gray pants.  The pants were pretty tight on me and I ripped the pocket a little bit.  Hopefully I will fit into them better if I lose a little weight, which I am "trying" to do.  By "trying" I mean I am actually starting to work out really hard.  Although it is hard to tell with out a scale, But I am still working on it.  It is very sweaty work.  I also bought this weird stress/workout ball that you squeeze a lot and it works your forearms.  It hurts really bad when I really try to go at it since my arms are so weak.  Me and my companion are going to start running more, we did it once and it is pretty good.  Apparently I am starting to form a tiny beer belly, so I am trying to lose that. 

 

I heard about this thing that some bad missionaries do in order to save miles called "cruising".  It only works here because there is so many hills in PA.  What it is, is that you put your car in neutral an then shut off your car so that you are just coasting and it doesn't cost you any miles.  From what I have been told it is extremely dangerous since you lose both power steering and power braking.  I guess missionaries have almost died from doing that.  I thought it was an interesting idea though.

 

Our neighbors that are active members just got back from their vacation so we visited them.  They are really into hunting and eating what they hunt, so they have a whole fridge full of deer meat and they gave us some deer burgers and deer back steak, we meant to take them out to thaw last night but forgot, so we will eat them in the next couple of days.  They said we could use their grill whenever we wanted, but then they remembered that it was broken so that was a bummer.

 

This computer is driving me crazy you have to press really hard on the keys and sometimes they don't type right so I can't type very fast and it is really frustrating AUGHHHHHHJWOIFHWEFOWREHAUOGP9WRIHEABGNEIh9vdpojs!!!!

 

My companion just keeps getting better and better.  He is does all these different hilarious voices.  One is Kevin from the office it is so funny.  He also does other missionaries that is pretty funny too.

 

I just finished reading the biography of President Monson literally 30 minutes before I left for the library.  It was really good and I am looking forward to reading that new Bednar book I got!

 

Anyway I wish I could email more, but I am out of time and being kicked off.  I might be able to come back to finish, but maybe not.

Elder Mellor's words: "This is a dead chicken we found down the hill our house is on.  Our member neighbors have chickens, so we think it might be theirs.  It looks really funny though and I had to take a picture of it.  It sort of looks  like someone shoved it down into the ground."

Another picture of his Shaq Shrine. He thinks it is the funniest thing. 

"This is a map of our area.  The red part is our area and the rest is the other elders from the split.  Those dots are different members blue is active, green is less active, yellow is less active part member family, and red is active part member family.  That way we can kind of see who lives where.  Also you can tell how sparce our ward is spread out."

8/26/13

This week I learned that Crayola Twistables work much better than colored pencils! I use them a lot and love them.

 

Also I am sending a package home so please check the mail every day till you get it.  I am not sure how hot it is over there and I don't want one of the things I am sending you to melt.  So please be aware of that.

 

So I have decided that I like to experiment with drugs!!!  HAHA while that sounds bad it is not, you will understand in a bit.  I have been taking me longer than I would like to, to fall asleep so I am experimenting with Melatonin.  It comes in 3Mgs, 5Mgs, and 10 Mg.  So naturally I get the 10.  I want to make like a notepad filled with notes of how well they work, but I haven't gotten around to it and I may never will because it seems like a lot of work.  By the way it works pretty well.  Next I want to try experimenting with some stress relievers.  I heard St. Johns Wart might work well and I want to try that too.  This reminded me about how I wanted to be a psychiatrist, and I am still not sure I guess time will tell.

 

I was listening to a talk given by Elder Holland.  Our car has a USB drive in it for the speakers and so I got a USB drive (not just for the car, but for other things too) and put a ton of talks on it.  One of these talks was titled "Remember Lot's Wife"  and it is about Lot's Wife.  The story is pretty much that Lot was commanded to take his family out of Sodom and not to look back.  So he gets a ton of people and leave and doesn't look back.  The only person that does look back is his wife and then she is turned to salt!  Elder Holland said that the sin wasn't in the physical action of turning around, but for wanting to go back to what/where she was before and doing the same things and the same sins.  He warns us not to look back longingly at what we once were or sins that we have overcome.  It also made me realize that Lot had a pretty hard life.  First his daughters get him drunk (if you are familiar with that story), then his wife turns to salt, although I think salt was pretty valuable back then, but I think he would rather have his wife.  It is a really good talk and worth a listen to.  Also it only uses like 6 words on Lot's wife's death.  I thought it was funny on how little it talks about her.

 

We had dinner this week with a half Brazilian family, the Mossers, who invited the bishops family who then invited us.  I love going over there they feed us a couple times a month and we wish we could more but they live on the very edge of our area and that uses a lot of miles.  Anyway this time we talked about evil spirits and how prevalent they are in Brazil and Trinidad and Equador (the Bishop is from Trinidad and his wife from Equador).  We heard a lot of cool stories about voodoo and witchcraft and other satanic arts it was all quite fascinating.   They told of this one story of how these witch people have made this powdered stuff that pretty much fries their brains and turns them into mindless zombies that they have work out in the fields.  A lot of scary stuff down there. 

 

Is there anything that is good at removing blood/ink out of white shirts?  I have a few of those stains in some obscure places, but want to get rid of them nevertheless.  I saw some at a grocery store here but they were pretty expensive.

 

At the end of the week we were invited to a priesthood campfire activity where there are games food and stories.  It was a lot of fun and I got to get to know and be better friends with people in the ward.  Apparently I am good at Corn hole (it is pretty much a beanbag toss game that is really popular out here that is hard to explain, you will have to look it up) and Ladder Golf (you throw a string tied to two golf balls at a ladder thing).  It was fun watching the bishop and other people get really frustrated with my beginners luck. 

 

That's all for this week I have a few pictures I think.  See ya!

My companion wanted to go back to the library to email his sister about her birthday I think, so I am back on for a little bit and decided that I will share an experience with you guys. 

 

I was at Wal-Mart today doing our shopping (I didn't have much to buy but of course I ended up buying a lot more than I needed and spending too much money).  Anyway I was thinking about getting another pair of insoles for my running/workout/normal person shoes, but I couldn't find the brand that I liked and used for my other shoes (Spenco in case you were wondering)  So I thought about getting some custom insoles that you make a mold of your foot and mail it in and they ship you some insoles.  But I couldn't find that anywhere and asked someone and they said the closest thing they had was the Dr. Shoals machine where they measure "2,200 points of your foot" and then recommend you one of like ten different "custom" insoles.  I was pretty skeptical at first, then I tried the machine a couple of times it was fairly consistent.  I thought about it for about 15-20 minutes while using the machine a lot.  I eventually decided to get them relying on the "100% satisfaction guarantee" to get my money back if I didn't like them.  They also had a $10 mail in rebate if I ended up liking them, so I decided it was worth the risk.  I put them in my dress shoes and put my other ones in my workout shoes and about 3 hours later I put them on because we were leaving to go here.  They feel amazing!  I am very much surprised by how well they feel under my feet.  So anyway I will see how they feel in the next week and I will let you know.

9/3/13

So this past week we ran out of miles and went over so we pretty much had to walk everywhere.  We had appointments in a city a while away called Charleroi two days in a row last week.  The first day we decided to drive 1/3 of the way there (to the church) and walk the rest.  It was misrable (sorry for my bad spelling there isn't an automatic spell checker on this computer).  It took 2 hours and 45 minutes one way to get there.  we were about 10 minutes away from his house when he texts us and says that he isn't able to meet with us that day and will talk to us at church (which he never came to by the way).  Luckily the other set of Elders where getting ready to move and were cleaning/packing so we helped them with that and ate lunch over there and cooled down a little bit before walking back.  It took so long because there is a lot of hills and stuff.  Also it was probably like 85 degrees with 90% humidity, which is a lot worse than it sounds I really can't explain it proprerly.  I was dripping wet. I did find a quarter on the way back and we saw a dead snake that was so freash it still looked alive, also we found an empty wallet (sadley there was no money in it), so I guess it wasn't all bad.

 

Since our experience that day was so misrable we decided to try to take the bus to Charleroi.  We printed up a bus schedule and decided that the bus would get us there in probably like 15 minutes.  My companion had the inspiration to leave about an hour and 30 minutes early so we did.  It turns out my companion read the bus schedule wrong and it actually took us about 2 hours and a little longer to get us to our destination.  We were going to have the other elders in that city pick us up and help them clean for a few hours before the appointment.  We didn't have time since we were almost late and it was way past the time we were planning on so we just quckly walked there (it wasn't that far away).  When we got there it seemed like we had divine assistance getting there quickly (for example we didn't have to get buzzed in because someone else was walking in).   When we knocked on the door it took him forever to answer it (which is understandable because he lost one of his lower legs in a car accident).  When he opens the door he is in his wheelchair in his underwear.  He was sleeping and wasn't feeling well so we didn't meet with him that day.  So that was the other day that was kind of for naught.   Although it was really cool riding on a public bus for the first time it was pretty fun.  after a while smelly people started getting on and then I fell asleep for a bit off and on.  I woke up every three minutes because the horn or something was broken on the bus so there was an almost constant extremely loud honking noise filling the bus.

 

Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep so I got some melatonin and that seems to work pretty well.  I have been noticing I have been getting a lot of bug bites on my feet so I had to start wearing socks to bed and that seemed to help a lot.  I think I might be cursed,  every time I take a shower it ends up being 13 minutes long, it is kind of strange. 

 

I found a .5 mm pen at walmart it works really great because all our paper work and planners require us to write really small.  Also I found out that there are .38 mm pens, but none at walmart I was a little sad because that is what I originally wanted, but I think I like the .5 mm pens better.

 

I love the Bednar book that my parents sent my, Thank You for it!  It is really neat, it is about how we can act more like the savior and it is really great.  What I love about his books is that they are all workbooks pretty much and that you really have to pay attention and work and think and write things down and watch his DVD segments if you want to get it all.  It helps a lot in the sense that it helps people get something out of the book and change who they are, myself included.  The only problem is that I have to devot some time to it so I cant read it as much as I would like to since I don't have much time for it.  I have to read it for at least an hour or a half, and I can't be tired.  So I can't read it at times like before bed or, what seems to be, a lot of other times like that.  I was going to say that I dont have anything else to read, but I just remembered I have one of the books from the missionary library I havn't read yet (I think it is called Our Heratige or something) so I guess I do.  I also should have some pictures to send after I respond to a few other emails.

"These are really cool robots they have at the hospital.  They carry medical supplies and carry them to people I think on different floors too, without the aid of a human.  If you get it its way it stops and looks like it is a little frusturated and tries to go around you.  I call them R2's as in R2-D2 from Star Wars."

Elder Mellor on his first ever bus ride! 

He loves shopping at the Amish store in his area

9/9/13-The subject line for this email was, "This is not the email you are waiting for" Haha This kid cracks me up! 

It is the end of this transfer period  and I am still staying here for at least six more weeks (after that I will probably move to a different area).  On the 1th I will have been on my mission for a whole six months.  That is 1/4th of my whole mission which is crazy!  I have bee out for a long time and it feels like I have been doing this my whole life now.

 

So we had dinner at a members house and we were eating and a couple weeks ago our ward mission leader (he served in this same area on his mission it is pretty sweet) told us that this particular family had 2 guns hidden in their dinner table in these drawers.  So my companion asks about them and he looks in the drawers and finds them and starts playing with them.  It was pretty funny.  The wife was mortified.  I think that was like last Monday or something.

 

I am down to my last spare toothbrush head, they are surprisingly expensive, good thing they last for three months!  I finished taking my driving test/video thing so I should get a call soon telling me that I can drive.  It was really funny because in the video I had to watch Stanley from The Office was in it.  He was really lame and not funny and disappointing though.  We also went to subway recently (we had a gift card) and they had a new bread.  It is Garlic Bread and it was pretty good.

 

One of my investigator, Tim, says the he recognizes the need for him to be baptized, which is pretty sweet since it is normally so hard to get people to realize that.  We also started teaching his kids.  It is pretty cool about him is that he is so tall that he won't fit in the baptismal font so we are either going to have to baptize him in a member's pool or in the Monongahela River.  I hope we get to do it in the river. 

 

There is a member in the ward that is a professional psychologist or something.  He described it to me as an alternative to medicine for people with mental problems.  He is sort of like a professional counselor.  Anyway we were doing this thing trying to find some people on our ward list that we have never heard of before and it ended up just being me and him alone in the room with no one to go out with (he had to stay there because he was in charge of it).  He ended up talking about his job and then I talked to him about my mental problems and it was just really nice to talk to someone who understands the things that I have to deal with and we had a really great conversation.  It was great!

 

My companion checked out Mormon Doctrine out from the church library (I don't check things out normally because I have other books I have to go through and I thought I was leaving soon) and I almost completely read through it and I am a little sick of it.  I will still want it for a reference book though, it is good at explaining stuff.  My companion also got a member to let him borrow a really good book called Spiritual Roots of Human Relations by Stephen R. Covey and it is super good!  I only read a couple pages and the table of contents, but it seems to have a lot of stuff that would help me.  Like for example there is a whole chapter for missionaries and another one on how to better talk to and council people, which is what missionaries do.  So that would also go on my book list.

 

I got some jury duty stuff in the mail a couple of days ago. At first I thought it was a letter, but it was just jury duty stuff.  I think it would be funny if I had to go, but I highly doubt it.

Apparently this chicken escaped out of his neighbor's coop! He sent like 4 pictures of it, so I had to include one!

"I thought I might be leaving this transfer so I got a picture with this awesome family called the Mossers.  Brother Mosser is hilarious and super red neck but at the same time he works at the hospital in charge of their computers'.  Sister Mosser is from Brazil and always cooks up Brazilian food it is really interesting, but she always cooks amazing dessert."

Well, That is all for now! Hopefully I will do better with keeping this updated! It seems like Elder Mellor is doing great! Thanks for all your love and support for him! If you would like to email him, you can do so at zachary.mellor@myldsmail.net or you can write him a letter at 457 Fair Alley

New Eagle, PA 15067. 

Weekly Update for 8/5/13

Well I took a ton of pictures of my new apartment and stuff, but I forgot my camera to the library, so you guys will probably have to wait till next week.  I also forgot my pad of paper that I write everything down on, so this email will probably be pretty short.

 

I got a bunch of new stuff with my new area and new apartment.  We got a brand new Toyota Corolla and an LG  Rumor Reflex phone, It is a sliding touch screen phone.  Our apartment is pretty cool except for the fact that it does not have A/C just a window unit that doesn't help very much, but it at least helps a little bit.  It makes the room it is in really cold and all the other rooms not as cold the further away it is from the unit.

 

This is my mailing address by the way, so send all mail to this address and please let everyone know that.

457 Fair Alley

New Eagle, PA 15067

 

My new companion's name is Elder Workman.  He is a bigger guy and he is really cool.  Before I even met him everyone was like: "Oh you got Elder Workman, he is really cool!"  and stuff like that.  Now I kinda know why they said that, he is pretty cool.  We get along great and we make each other laugh a lot and it is a lot of fun.  We talk and laugh about The Office a lot.  He is a District Leader, it looks like I am the companion of another one.  He has to go on 8 exchanges this transfer, since there are so many missionaries in our district.  That means I will have to be with a different companion 8 different times in this 6 week period, that is a lot!  

Recently we have been starting to teach a recent convert's husband that we baptized a little bit ago (the recent convert not the husband is who we are teaching, I hope that made sense). He is this really cool tall black guy and he is pretty smart and has great questions about a lot of things. We are also hoping to start teaching two of his kids, hopefully we can get them to sit down with us and talk.

 

I am sorry, my emails tend to jump around a lot, because my thought process is really random and doesn't make a whole lot of sense a lot of the times, but hey life is more fun that way anyways.

I had a really cool spiritual experience lately.   We were at a Part Member Less Active family's house and we were talking and  this sister just broke down crying and was going on about how a lot of people here are really mean and she was just overwhelmed and stuff.  So a thought popped into my head to talk about how church is a good place to go to be accepted by people and everything worked out really good for her and we commited them to come to  church (even though they didn't come) it was really good for her and I felt like I blessed her life!

 

 

Love you,

Elder Mellor

Update!

Sorry I have been so terrible at keeping this updated! Here are Elder Mellor's letters from the last three weeks! 

7/8/13

I don't really have much to say this week, because not much has happened.  I did have a thought that you guys should do a spiritual thought after dinner as a family.  That would be really cool I think.

 

Pretty much all that is new is that I got some answers to some questions I was having about stuff. 

 

Oh ya the 4th of July, I forgot about that.  All we did was go over to a members house for 4 hours and ate and talked since we had to stop proselyting early due to the holiday and drunk crazy people.  I was a little disappointed since we didn't do any fireworks or dessert, but that family is pretty hilarious so it was all good.  Although the night before the city we live in (Charleroi) had a firework show from the river and we had really good seats to it from our apartment.

 

My root canal went good, mostly because they only did a little bit of it.  All they did was drill out the nerves so I wasn't in so much pain and gave me a script for some vicodin just in case.   My next appointment is on the 25th and I am super excited about it!  It is so amazingly wonderful and makes me so happy I can drink things without hurting myself now!

 

Sometime today I am planning on cutting my hair again, because the sides are getting a little long and I keep getting little hairs sticking up.  I am hoping that this will help, but If it does not then I will have to get it cut and thinned out professionally.  I hope I don't have to because I don't want to spend the $11 it costs to get my hair cut.

These are some brownies that Elder Mellor attempted with marshmallows!

7/15/13

We went on exchanges this week and we had an Elder Cody Harper come to our area and work with us.  He is really awesome!  He is a lot like me, he has ADHD and Hypoglycemia. He also likes video games!  It was so nice to meet someone who has similar  likes as me.  He also introduced me to something to do at Wendy's it is called The Baconator Challenge.  You get a medium combo (fries and drink) and a triple Baconator and the point is to see if you can eat it all without throwing up.  He couldn't do it.  I was going to but I didn't know you had to get the fries and drink part, so that would be fun to do when I get back.

 

It rained really hard this last week too, it even started flooding in some areas!  I loved it, especially driving in it (technically riding since I wasn't driving)!  Also there are slugs here, they are really small and slim and look like worms.  I wanted to see if salting a slug really melted it, because I didn't believe that it would.  Well it definitely worked that is for sure!  I also felt really bad for it because it was really gross and sad.

 

I finally finished Jesus the Christ and it didn't take quite as long as I thought it would.  I am on to my last book now The Biography of Thomas S. Monson.  It is really good and I get this special spirit whenever I read about him and I know that he is a great guy.

 

I had most of my root canal done, I just need to go in and see him one more time and I will be done!  I can't wait to get it over with.  Although it isn't that painful or anything.

Here's Elder Mellor's explanation of this picture: I learned that I can fit in between the small hole for the armrests, so I got a picture of it!

7/22/13

I sent my cacti home because I think that they are considered a pet and we are not allowed to have pets.  I also have a container of cactus food that I am unsure of what to do with over here.  I think that I accidentally put my name on both addresses because I wasn't paying attention, so open it even though my name is on it please.   And please take good care of them for me so they can be big and strong when I get back.  Be careful when replanting the one not in a pot he bites (and by bites I mean he will stab you if you touch him so use gloves).  If you can, somewhere in the front yard would be nice, send me pictures of them when you get them all situated.  Thanks!

 

So it has been raining off and on all week over here and we were talking to some less actives outside their fence and it started pouring pretty hard.  Not like flooding hard, but pretty hard.  So we got soaked and had to change before we went to dinner that day.  For dinner a member had 50$ in gift cards to a place called Hoss's and it is pretty much a steak and seafood house.  So he took us there and it was amazing!  I had a steak they called the Flat Iron.  It was a steak with this yummy garlic and butter sauce on top of it.  I tasted garlic and Italian seasonings too in it too by the way.  Also it came with a side of fries which were all right.  Plus it came with access to the salad/dessert bar.  The dessert was really good and I ate too much and felt a little bit sick afterwards, you know like your supposed to.

 

Is there anything cool I can do with these prescription bottles that are empty or should I just toss them?  I already tossed what I had I was just wondering for the future. 

 

Next week will be transfers and splitting the area, I am so excited for it.  A lot of that excitement comes from me not having to be with my current companions.  So we are going to be getting a new apartment in the other area.  Also the person in the current apartment we have will be moving into a new one too at the end of August, so there are a lot of new changes coming to this area.

I forgot to mention in my last email about the Thunder and lightning here.  It is a noise that is just not made in Arizona.  I will do my very best to describe it.  It is rumbly and crackly and rolling, and it sounds really cool I really enjoy them!  A lot of the time you hear it when it isn't even raining and you just hear this cool noise out of nowhere and look up and see the clouds, sometimes you cant even see the clouds.

When I read President Monson's Biography I feel this special spirit of this great man, and I know for sure that he was called to be a prophet of God.

 

Also on Thursday I will finally be finished with my Root Canal, I am really excited for that, and I haven't had to use my Vicodon once yet, so hopefully it will stay good.

 

Also Mom and Dad did you ever get the letter I sent to you with the picture of my whole mission and Elder Bednar?

This on cracked me up! Here's Elder Mellor's caption: There is a California, PA and this is the sign for the city.  It is funny because there is a state called California. 

Again, Elder mellor's caption is better than anything I could come up with: I accidentally stuck my finger in a fan and that is the result, but you cant really see it because my camera doesn't work too well without natural light.  I will try to get a better picture of it.  it even bruised my fingernail.

I guess this was a cool paint job that he thought was cool? haha

Pretty Scenery!

More beautiful scenery! Elder Mellor says his camera doesn't do justice to how beautiful it is. 

Ok, this just cracked me up. Here's Elder Mellor's comment: I circled the cuts and stuff so maybe you could see them The tip of my fingernail is a bruise  the other two circles are cuts that look like scratches.  It cut through the first layer of my skin completely.  Good thing I have two more.