A Few Pictures!

Here's a few of the pictures that Elder Mellor has been sending to us!

Random animal statues Elder Mellor found fascinating

View from Elder Mellor's apartment! He said that there are so many hills and trees that it makes him feel like he is in a bubble.

for Mother's day Elder Mellor made a waffle cake! 

He was surprised by all the fog! 

Birthday package from his favorite sister! :) 

His favorite. :) 

His cactus Spike Jr. to remind him of home! 

His peeps were apparently stale, so they got put in the microwave! Haha

Catch Up Time

Sorry I have gotten so far behind on posting Elder Mellor's letters! We will get all caught up in this post! 

May 6, 2013

Sorry last weeks was so short,  they kicked me off the computer at the library because someone else wanted a turn so I had to get off.  Also the library will be closed on next Monday for memorial day or something so I don't know if I will get to email you guys.  I hope we cane work something out.  This past week was pretty normal.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened.  Thank you Kazhia, Mom, and Dad for the birthday packages they were wonderful. 

There is this really cool talk by Brad Wilcox titled "His Grace is Sufficient"  it is really good and helped to to better understand the role of Jesus Christ.  

We get weekly coupons sent to our apartment and I found a coupon for the ham I buy so that was awesome.

I have an investigator named Tonja and she has a daughter named Kazhia (except she spells it differently).  Also she has a lot of the same mental problems I do, so I can relate with her well.

So during Zone Training Meeting my mission president accedentaly let it slip that it is in fact Elder Bednar that will be speaking with us on June 8th (we all laughed at him for it).  It also was pretty obvious that he emailed us to read these 3 Bednar talks to get spiritually prepared for it.  I am super excited about it and cannot wait.  I hope I will be able to shake his hand or better, give him a hug!  

May 13, 2013

I will stop putting a number after my weekly update so I don't have to clog up my mind with remembering that stuff (and no it is not just because I forgot what number I was on!).

 

I have been having this weird thought lately that maybe I should become a psychiatrist instead of working with computers.  That way I wont have to do as much math (I am bad at math) I think.  Also my patriarchal blessing does say a lot about education (among other things pertaining to that job), and that job would require a lot of it.  We were explaining what a patriarchal blessing was to one of our recent converts and she thought we said patriotic blessing, it was pretty funny.

 

I will know who will be speaking to us at the conference in two weeks, so we will have to wait till then to find out.

 

 I got to go now bye

May 20, 2013

Sorry last weeks was so short,  they kicked me off the computer at the library because someone else wanted a turn so I had to get off.  Also the library will be closed on next Monday for memorial day or something so I don't know if I will get to email you guys.  I hope we cane work something out.  This past week was pretty normal.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened.  Thank you Kazhia, Mom, and Dad for the birthday packages they were wonderful. 

There is this really cool talk by Brad Wilcox titled "His Grace is Sufficient"  it is really good and helped to to better understand the role of Jesus Christ. 

We get weekly coupons sent to our apartment and I found a coupon for the ham I buy so that was awesome.

I have an investigator named Tonja and she has a daughter named Kazhia (except she spells it differently).

So during Zone Training Meeting my mission president accedentaly let it slip that it is in fact Elder Bednar that will be speaking with us on June 8th (we all laughed at him for it).  It also was pretty obvious that he emailed us to read these 3 Bednar talks to get spiritually prepared for it.  I am super excited about it and cannot wait.  I hope I will be able to shake his hand or better, give him a hug!  

May 28, 2013

Sorry I wasn't able to send out a weekly email yesterday like normal, it was Memorial Day and all the libraries were closed.  So I tried to make some Sesame seed shrimp with those packets (I found where to get them by the way)  and it was super good and yummy!  I will send out a picture of it later.  Also on an unrelated note my companions have all said that I snore really bad and one had to buy earplugs,  I think I get that from my dad.

THANKS FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY WISHES!!!

When I have the conference on June 8th with Bednar I am going to try to corner him and get him to sign my book Mom and Dad sent me.  Pray for me hahahhahaha.

I didn't do anything to celebrate my birthday and I was going to make a cake but we didn't have any eggs so I made it today and I will have to wait till dinner time to frost it and eat it.  Also my companion forgot even though he said he wrote it down and didn't remember till later on in that day when I mentioned it.  It sounded like he was going to do something fun too.  So it was a little disappointing.

Also I got to drive the car this week, and then after a couple of days my companion stopped letting me drive, because I was so bad at it, but it wasn't my fault because the roads here are really windy and hard to drive on.  I was a little upset for a while, then I got over it.

Elder Bednar said something interesting in that book I got for my birthday (It is really good by the way, thanks Mom and Dad!).  He said that the natural consequence (wow how did I spell that right?) of seeking out the Holy Ghost is a desire to learn more, and I have seen that on my mission a lot.  I hope that all of you can learn as much as I am right now.  My companion calculated that during the 2 years we serve on our mission equals 49 years of active church service.  That is a lot!

My companion taught me how to cut my own hair yesterday (it was actually just shaving most of it off, hahaha).  

Plant Time With Zack! Haha

First of all for mothers day I will be skyping home at 8:00 PM (my time so I think it will be 6:00 PM your time you should look that up), so please be ready I will call you first to get your Skype information.

 

We also have 2 more baptisms on this Saturday and we might be able to get one more person if she will let us on that day.  One of those people is Chris I think I told Dad about him.

 

I had to go on exchanges with other missionaries this last week and I learned that my area is the best in the district.  As in it has more people to feed us and more people we are teaching.  I was thinking about how Vikings used to put their dead on a ship, light it on fire, and set it out to see, and that the creator of Star Trek sent his ashes to space to orbit the earth.  I want to combine them when I die, by putting my body in a space ship and sending it into the sun.  That way I could have a space Viking funeral.

 

Can you ask Kristen if MI paste will help with these white spots on the gum line of my teeth?  If so I would like some.  Also if it isn't too much trouble if I could get a couple more short sleeve shirts (size 16) that would be great,  there isn't a rush since it is still in the 70's, but summer will be here eventually, and I heard that it gets up to 90s with a lot of humidity.  Don't feel obligated to send me stuff when I ask for it because I usually don't need it.

 

Since I have been talking so much about plants I am going to have an actual section titled:

Plant Time With Zack!!!

 

I have been thinking that having a cactus here would be awesome.  Not only does it not need much care, but it would remind me of home.  Plus cacti are pretty cool.  Also my companion found a picture of a plant and it was a mini banana tree and it looked so weird look it up.  So that would be cool to have too.

The End

 

 

Yesterday some members (young couple with 3 kids) fed us steak fresh from his father's farm in Idaho.  Also there was this amazing dessert that was in this order:  Jell-O (with Raspberries inside), some sort of yummy cream that tasted like whipped cream and cheese cake, and pretzels on the bottom.  It was super good.  I am SO glad it wasn't Mexican food since it was May 5th.  I guess it is not a big deal at all here.  For obvious reasons.

 

Also today we will be getting a third elder in our companionship, so there will be three of us. He is waiting on a visa so there was no room at the MTC because of all the missionaries coming out.  Part of me wants to call him our lackey and make him back up the car (because they make us get out of the car and have someone back the driver up and it is always me because I am not driving at the moment), but I doubt I would do that.  It is funny because the ward is always wondering when we will get another set of missionaries (because someone told us we would), so we joked that instead we got an extra elder.  We are picking him up tonight and it is really cool because we get to leave our area and hang out there for our Pday before we pick him up.  We get to leave our area because that is where we are picking him up, I don't think I made that clear.

 

The Mtn Dew cake was a failure it just tasted like regular cake.  I think it cooks it out, so I have decided to give up on that.  I  think that there is a ghost or something inside of my apartment on top of my microwave, because a piece of my cake went missing when I set it on the microwave and I didn't eat it and neither did my companion (he doesn't eat sugar).  And apparently my companion's last companion put some walnuts on the microwave and they went missing!  And he found a piece in his shoe!  Also apparently a Transfer is used as a unit of time on my mission.  It really threw me off when I first got here.

04/29/13

My companion told me that they are making new quads in August,  that is really cool.  I think it is the first time they changed it since the 70's.

 

Also I learned that one of my former bishops is friends with some football guy named Joe Montana, whoever that is.  I think dad knows. 

 

I got my Easter package on Thursday and it was great!  Thank you for it.  My favorite things to get are (in no particular order) food, CD's (music and talks and firesides and such), and books.

 

We just had a golden investigator say she didn't want to see us anymore and it makes me really mad and upset and frustrated and it just broke my heart and made me want to cry.  Also speaking of bad news the person I was going to confirm and my compy (I call my companion that sometimes) baptize, changed his mind about being baptized for the THIRD time (I haven't been there for all the times), so we wont be seeing him anymore either.  He has commitment problems.  Going on my mission has defiantly been the hardest thing in my life, but it is also the most rewarding.

 

I am listening to this song right now about missionary work called "All times, All Things, All place"  you should give it a listen.

 

I never thought that I would have said this before but repentance is my most favorite thing in the world.  I feel like , I think it was Alma, who said he wished he was an angel so he could cry repentance unto every living thing.

 

I realized I never described my apartment to you guys so here it is.   My apartment is like a really small 2 story apartment it has a living room with a fireplace 2 desks a coffee table, a recliner that doesn't work very well (like it doesn't rock back very well it is really hard to explain), and a couch.  By the way we are going to be getting rid of the coffee table and couch to make room for a dining table since we don't have one right now. The kitchen has the washer and dryer in it.  Upstairs is a small bedroom with 2 beds, a bathroom, and an exercise room.  I made a video of it but it is too big to send home through email so I have no way of getting it there.

 

My ward has 100 active members out of 400 so it is pretty small.  I don't think I have talked about my ward yet.

 

I will be 20 soon in about a month isn't that crazy?!!  I am really excited, and kind of sad, as to what a birthday in the mission field is like.

 

So apparently the church has a disaster relief/ service organization called helping hands.  Anyway my entire mission (the area like the different stakes and stuff so it is pretty much the whole state) is participating in some sort of service with the helping hands and we all got to wear these yellow vests and I think my companion took a picture of me in it but I am not sure.  If he did then I will send it.  Anyway what we did was went out to a place called Raccoon State Park about an hour away from my place a little outside my area (don't worry my mission president said it was ok) we had to get a ride from a member and they bought a box of doughnuts and they let me have some and it was awesome!  Anyway getting distracted again, we did a bunch of stuff for them, I shoveled gravel, made a path with woodchips that they called mulch, and cleared a path for said path (like removed all the tree leaves and branches and stuff in the way) I got to use a really cool looking handsaw to cut a branch off a tree.  The saw was kind of curved.   We were there from 8 AM to about 2 PM and I got a little bit burnt since I didn't think about sunscreen since the weather is so nice.  That made me think that an Aloe plant would be cool to have since I burn so easily.  Although I don't know how to make my own gel from it.  I bet Elliot would know.  You should ask him for me.

 

My companion is kind of mean, he makes me clean with him for like an hour every Monday and if I didn't do a good job he makes me do it again.  He is a neat freak :(

 

I am going to be making (or trying to) A Mtn dew cake with a Mtn dew glaze.  I will let you know how it is next week.

Here's Elder Mellor at the Helping Hands Service Project he talked about! 

Elder Mellor in some new dress slacks. He probably wouldn't want me sharing it all over  the place, but her just looks so handsome! :) 

04/22/13

Here is an interesting factoid!  Did you know that Joseph and Mary were first cousins?  That was a fun little fact I learned while reading Jesus the Christ.  So apparently there is this new Mormon site called Mormons and gays and it is about the churches stance on homosexual relationships. 

 

There are a lot of different birds here and they are all so pretty and amazing.  There are also these really gross and ugly giant bee called Mammoth Bees.  They are really gross and kind of scary.

 

One of the people we were supposed to baptize on Saturday got cold feet on us and didn't come (for the third time, might I add also it was the one I was going to confirm) so we aren't going to see him anymore.  But we did baptize this one girl, although the only thing I did was give a little talk in the program.  One of the people we have been working with asked us to baptize him so we got a date for him and for another person.  Also we have two other people we are very close to committing them to baptism.  So that makes, I believe five people we should be baptizing in the near future.

 

The closest temple to me is in Washington D.C.  and it is way out of my area, so I will not be going for the next two years unfortunately.

 

Thank you for the package!  it was really great and I love it!  Me and my companion are listening to that talk from elder Cook and you guys should listen to it as well and use that advice to give all you sacrament talks and such.  I wasn't able to get the easter one unfortunately, but I think my mission president will bring it down when he does interviews with us on Thursday.  So hopefully I will get it then.

 

I couldn't find the sesame package so I will have to wait till next week to find it again maybe I can find it next week.

 

I am going to the dentist today at 2:30 so I will let you know how it goes next week.

 

I just got back from the dentist and they fixed me right up.  I had a really small cavity that wasn't very deep so he just drilled it out and filled it real quick with out numbing it (so it hurt a bit).  then he just filled it real quick and now I don't have a hole in my tooth.  They also gave me 3 sample size toothpaste tubes of enamel/sensitivity protection.

 

The dentist's office was a house converted into an office and we drove past it a few times during the week while we were going places.  So it looked really sketchy.  I thought it was going to be a front for human trafficking or something. But once we went inside it looked really nice and everyone there was nice and they took care of my teeth well

Elder Mellor is loving seeing the variety of none desert plants in Pennsylvania!

He tried to make a giant Mt. Dew pancake. Haha Silly Zack

Elder Mellor and his companion had a baptism! He gave a short talk at the program! He said it went great!

Apparently this is Elder Mellor's average meal...Are we at all surprised? Hahaha