An Uncle, Again

October 28th, 2014

Dear Elder Bailey,

          You are an uncle again!  Little Iris Kate Cochrane was born right on schedule last Monday, October 20th.  She is a cute package at 7 lbs. 6 oz. and 19 inches long.  I think she has Katelyn's nose and Brendan's eyes.  But she will grow up to have her own look, I am sure.

           She has so many outfits in the newborn size, Katelyn will need to change her clothes every hour on the hour to allow her enough time to wear them all before she grows too big!  She will be a "designer" baby, for sure!

          Dad has been constructing the chimney for the pizza oven.  He did some welding on the weekend of the metal parts that needed to be secured above the covered patio roof.  Now he is planning out how to do all of the rock work.  He wanted to have a focal point in the face of all the rocks.  He thought maybe a fossil would look cool.  So he went to a dinosaur fossil collector guy and bought a small 50,000 year old fish fossil in a limestone chalk block. This was quarried from the Green River area of Wyoming.  It looks interesting and is the right size for the project.  Besides, it only cost Dad $20 instead of one of the larger specimens that would have cost $2500 or more.

          We head out to Pennsylvania this weekend to go to Tanner's baptism, Thomas' baby blessing and Tanner and Adam's birthday celebrations.  We will also get to see Melanie and Madelyn's soccer games on Saturday.  Every time we go out to visit, there is no down time!

          We love getting picture texts from the families you eat dinner with.  Keep 'em coming!  It makes my day!

          Hope you are well and that the work is progressing.           Love you,  Mom

Elder Bailey,

            It was good to hear from you last week.  By the pictures you are looking healthy and happy.  I assume the people in the pictures you sent were ward members that you were saying goodbye to.  Were they investigators?

            Hearing you engaged in a debate with the German exchange student reminds me of my mission.  The German students seem always ready to debate anything including the Church.  I hope you can find opportunities to give away the ties you have collected.

            I attached pictures of my progress on the brick oven.  I followed up on a reference your brother Michael gave me to a fossil hunter.  I wanted an interesting stone to put into the stonework of the oven.  I ended up with a fossil in limestone of a 50 million year old fish (for only $20.!).  I will need to take a picture and send it to you.

            Love, Dad

        Not much really happened this last week.  I got a buzz cut so my hair is nice and short now.  I look a little funny, but that’s ok.  I really don’t have anything to report today but I’m glad to hear about Iris.  I will say something interesting next week.

                            ---EBIII

The Tie Bag

    October 20th, 2014

         We have spent all week trying to say goodbye to people in our old ward and meet members in our new ward.  Some members helped me and another elder buy a "tie bag" which is just a lot of ties.  We only ordered 60 ties but when it came 105 ties came (which is a lot -- seriously a lot -- and it weighed a ton!)  It was super fun when we went home.  I was so tired from the day, and biking with it just killed me.  So I dumped it out and took a nap in it... and dreamed of baptisms... haha just kidding but I was SO TIRED! 

         We are not teaching anybody for real right now.  We lost one of our wards and got another.  So, we are trying to teach a 17yr old German exchange student girl who is interested in learning about the Church but doesn't believe in God and all around doesn't want to believe.  We met her last night for the first time.  We are going to pick up where the other elders left off. 

         Here is a silly picture we took with a family we said good-bye to.

A New Handle "E.B. III" (Elder Bailey, the Third)

Dear Elder Bailey,
           Getting that text with a photo from Sister Shaha yesterday was wonderful!  I was so happy to get to see you and your companions.  I am assuming that one was Elder Ramon and maybe the other was the Zone Leader. Please let us know.  It was so great to hear about the baptism last weekend.  But you'd better be careful about using your finely honed safecracking skills!
          There has been a definite change in the season here.  We actually have fall colors up on the mountains.  This was taken from the BYU campus by a friend of mine.  I don't even remember when we had such color on our mountains before.  It has been an unusually wet Autumn.  I even watched the total eclipse of the moon the other early morning.  It was neat.  Made me feel like a meteorologist again.  Ha  Ha!

          Little Benny Orme was baptized yesterday.  Ben and Becky and Stephanie have been here for the weekend.  It has been fun seeing them.  Next Saturday is Margaret's wedding.  We were going to go up to Tacoma, WA for the wedding and also to see Carolyn's family, but Katelyn's baby is due this weekend, too.  She would be very upset if we were not here for the birth of little Iris.  So, we are hanging around here waiting for the big arrival.

          Dad is making progress on the pizza oven.  He is building the chimney stack and cementing the rocks on it so that it will look like the other rock in the outdoor kitchen.  He is rather proud of himself, I think.

                                            Hope to hear more wonderful things from you! 

                                                                                                  Love you so much,  Mom

          So happy to hear about Benny and Margaret and Iris and KK.  Nothing is really happening right now, we are just doing a bunch of reactivation work right now and it's been really slow.

                                                                                                                               E.B.III

          It was nice to hear that you had a good week last week.  We would love to hear more from you and know of your experiences with investigators, members and the Gilbert environment you are discovering.  If you have challenges and would like to share them and invite us to share with you our insights, just ask.

          It was particularly nice to have received this past week, a picture sent to us by someone you visited.  The picture shows you, and someone who we assume to be your companion and a third Elder who could possibly be a district or zone leader.  I hope you are collecting pictures along with great memories of your mission.  Please consider that what your share in your emails are being assembled by your Mom in a BLOG scrapbook of your Mission.  This can be a tangible Mission memory you will appreciate after your Mission, so consider what you would like to retain and make sure you pass it onto her. 

                                                                                     Looking forward to your next email,

                                                                                                                              Dad

           Elder Ramon is the brown guy and Elder Kay is what we call a traveling AP.  This week was slow and we are doing a bunch of less active work.  Also I have no more emergency money on my personal card.  I have had too many emergency expenses and I tried to buy a new tire today and there was not enough money on my debit card.  Nothing really to report other than that.

                                                                                                                              E.B.III

Baptism Between General Conference Sessions

       

Sent from Sister Shaha in Gilbert who fed these wonderful missionaries!

         This week has been really awesome!  On Friday we did exchanges.  My Zone Leader told me that the moment we got lost we would probably get a new investigator.  The second we got lost, we saw this guy that was sitting on his porch.  He just moved in and he had never heard of the Church.  We showed him a Book of Mormon and explained it to him.  He started reading it as we left.  

         I saw you a bunch in General Conference on Sunday, Mom.  We had to set up everything to get ready for the baptism on Saturday and missed half the morning session.   We found out that most of the keys we needed to get into the font and the cupboards were lost and the stake president could not find them.  So, I got to put my credit carding-door-opening skills to the test.  I got into the cupboards with a bent hanger.  So all the skills of breaking into things that I developed over the years paid off.  Then everyone came late.  We were having the boyfriend’s dad baptize the girl.  When they were already standing in the water, at the last second we noticed that the Bishop wasn't there in the room.  We went out in the hall looking for him.  We saw him and the boyfriend standing in the hall talking. The Bishop said to us that there was going to be a change of plans. Kent was going to be baptizing Rosalie.  So, all the kids started singing Primary songs while Kent got dressed.  It was super powerful and awesome!  We had wanted Kent to baptize Rosalie, but we didn't know if he was worthy to do it.  Everything worked out.  YAY! 

------from Elder B.