Meeting with Elder L. Tom Perry

Dear Family,

If you sent an e-mail to me yesterday or today, well I didn't get it. So I can't answer any of the questions that you may or may not have sent to me.

This week was a really good but tough week. Tuesday was probably one of the toughest days as far as the work is concerned. We had four member present lessons planned- all of them fell through. That was kinda rough.

We set a baptismal date with Natty!!!..... in August. Natty and her fiance Eriberto (who is a return missionary that went inactive) are getting married in August, so we're trying to get them to move that date up. It's kinda a tough subject for us though. We're probably going to let the branch president take care of that.
We also have a baptismal date with Bryan for the 1st of April, and he's pretty much ready. We're just trying to get in the lessons so that he can get baptized because  he is totally ready.

We got tired of knocking empty doors on Saturday so we tried doing something a little bit different: basketball contacting. That was probably the best idea we have ever had. We got so many great contacts out of that, English and Spanish. It's great when two guys show up in white shirt and tie to take on everyone in basketball, and then they go on and beat them. A whole bunch of people were watching and we were able to talk to pretty much all of them. Plus it was fun. Not like knocking.

Elder L. Tom Perry came to speak with us today. That was pretty sweet. I got to play the organ for that. All the missionaries in the mission (except for 10 in the Ridgecrest zone) were there, and each one got to shake his hand and tell him where they were from. I said I was from El Paso, TX and he just said "Well, that's too bad." The funnier part was that the whole mission heard it since I was the last one and everyone was watching me.

He's a very funny man. He was talking about how he's in charge of Public Affairs for the Church. "Worst job in the Church; I can't wait for them to release me from that." He was also talking about how he gets to sleep: "I recite the Articles of Faith. On odd days, I start with #1, on even days, I start with #13 and go backwards. Why do I do that? Because I can never get all the way to #13 because they make me fall asleep." Pretty good.

He did compliment my organ playing. "Your mother must have been very tough on you to be able to play the organ that well." Yes, mom, you were very tough on me. Sis. Perry said that I should consider studying organ in college. That gives me something to think about. If it was any ordinary person, I wouldn't really care. But c'mon, this is an apostle's wife.

As for what was spoken about, well I don't remember.

It was fun being with all the missionaries in the mission. I got to see a lot of people that I knew back in the valley and I was so happy to see them.

I think that's pretty much it for this week.

Transfers come up again this weekend, and there's a 50% chance that I stay and a 50% chance that I go. I think the more likely thing is that I'll be staying. But there is a good possibility that I'll be going. I'm not too sure. Rumors about transfers don't fly around quite as much here in Palmdale primarily because we're not around each other as often.

I'm just kidding about not remember what Elder Perry talked about. He talked about priesthood and the importance of the priesthood to the Church. Mostly he was telling stories and making us laugh. I took notes, don't worry.

Have a great day and a great week. Tell everyone hi.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald