26 Aug 2013

Dear Mom,

i have been here for almost 3 months now. the next transfer is Wednesday of next week. September 4th. it is more than likely elder Mcfarlane will be transferred and i will stay. but i don't really know for sure.

i think you had too much fun with your children and grand children this last week. we had a lot of different events that happened starting with zone conference that was on tuesday and lasted most of the day going quite a bit longer than it was suppose to. so we had to race back home to our appointment and almost didn't make it. i also had to go with a Brunswick missionary for the day. now we are done with having to do that. i am very happy to be done with having to go back an forth between Darien and Brunswick all the time.

we also had a wonderful church meeting on sunday. we had the high councilman and his father give talks on the book of mormon and the people who live on the pacific islands. it was incredible to be able to listen to them and here about the culture and how it relates to the stories in the book of mormon of the people who went into the sea and disappeared.

the tinker-toy stage of construction should be a lot of fun. we visited a member who is putting together his front deck. the first time we went to visit him we had to be careful where we stepped, otherwise we might have fallen through the big holes where the wood was missing. there were just enough deck to get from the ramp and to the door. the deck is mostly built now.

i'm sure there were other things that happened that i just can't remember off the top of my head. i will think of it later. hope all is well at home.

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

19 Aug 2013

Dear mom,

i just got the mail from snowbird and the letter and pictures it contained. thank you to all the children who drew pictures. they brightened my day. i look forward to seeing the box with the shirts in it.

our georgia weather has been either really hot and humid or rainy. it has rained every time that we have gone out to do anything for the last 4 days. the rain has just today decided to quit. so no doubt will it be getting hot around here again. this last thursday the storm was so bad that trees began to lose some large branches and the steam coming off of the road made it nigh impossible to see anything.

stake conference was this last sunday for us. Elder Corbridge of the seventy came to speak to the stake along with the Orlando temple president and president/sister Craig. elder mcfarlane and i ended up at all 3 sessions but no one we invited showed up to any of them. it was still cool to be there.

yes i do have a fishing rod now. we occasionally go out and see what we can catch on p-day. i do have some pictures to send you if i can ever get to a place to print them. the nearest place to do that would be in brunswick which we wont be anywhere near today. i will try to send some in the next few weeks. i wont need a blank journal for a couple of months. each one will last for about five months total. i have four, two of them filled. i am working on wrtting in number 3. i will need one more for the last 2 or 3 months before i see you again. i will most likly need five in total.

i do like Darien the most of the places i have been. really its about equal with how much i liked Branford florida and the people there. but as a place Darien is way nicer. all i do for online missionary work is make sure that what elder mcfarlane posts is correct and is the best thing that he can post. basically all i do is watch and make sure he doesn't post anything stupid.

i hope you have fun setting up the deck, hope all is well back home.

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

12 Aug 2013

Dear Mom

this week has been a wild adventure for you. at least that's what I get by reading your letter. my week has been up and down days where just about everything went right and days where no matter what we did nothing happened. its been crazy.

I did get the box with pants in it and everything else. how did I know that you were going to send me a camel? we had some fun with that one.

I don't think I've ever seen that side of champ that has to be very entertaining to watch. I wouldn't think that champ would be a very protective dog. he won't even get angry at anyone who goes after him.

I've been out on exchanges with other missionaries most of this week. one with missionaries in Brunswick and our zone leaders came and went through Darien with us on Wednesday. they also happened to be our most productive days while the rest were pretty slow.

I think you had way more happen than we did. hope all is well back home. also what was with the deer walking through the neighborhood?

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

29 July 2013

Dear Mom,

things have been going good here. i guess you are going to have a house full again this year to. just like you did last year right before i left to come out here. is everyone coming down to be at snowbird or are they all coming the week before?

there hasn't been anything really new happening. we still face some of the same challenges of finding people to teach that we have faced from day one since i've been in darien. this is really a big part of why it is so important that members do the finding. members are way more sucessful at it than we are in terms of finding people who are truly ready for the gospel. often times we will find people but they don't truly have enough interest in it to really go somewhere with it.

with all the changes in missionary work its not suprising to hear about. thank you for taking good care of the missionaries there. im sure they appreciate it quite a bit. especialy at the end of the month. the members here tend to do a good job of making sure we are well taken care of, if and/or when we need things.

sydney will eventually figure out that she has found a new home and one that she will come to love. has champ gotten use to having her around all the time. has she learned how to beg at the table for scraps yet?

well i hope ya'll are having fun back hope and i hope family vacation goes well.

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

22 July 2013

Dear mom,

So champ has a new friend huh? i did get the picture. its been so long since i've seen a picture of Dutchess that i couldn't tell you the difference between Sydney and Dutchess. so is champ happy to have a new friend to play with or does he simply allow Sydney to be there? oh and it sounds like you were an answer to some ones prayer.

i'm glad to hear that they got the roof on right this time. it doesn't sound like it was way to much trouble to replace. something i've noticed out here is how many people have tin roofs. there are way more houses that have tin roofs out here than have shingles. it sound to me that you home Improvement projects are going well.

thank you for the box that you sent me with the two books in it.also i did activate my card on the first of July because that was the first p-day where i could do it. also i will be looking for the box in the mail in the next week or two.

there hasn't been a whole lot going on here, we've started trying to walk through the town of Darien trying to talk with people on the streets during the day.the hard part is that it tends to start raining quite randomly. i would say it tends to rain at some point just about everyday even if its only a light sprinkle every now and then. we have been able to find a couple of new people to talk with as we've gone around to different parts of town.

we don't have any different holidays per say. the only thing that has come up was a local holiday called the annual "burn down Darien day" where they do a reenactment of when Darien was burned down down during the civil war. the lds population out here still recognizes pioneer day but it isn't celebrated like it is in utah.

our transfer calls were last night and i'm not going anywhere for another 6 weeks. neither is elder Mcfarlane. still staying in Darien woohoo! the next transfer will happen in September some time.

i hope everything is going well at home and have fun on family vacation.

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

8 July 2013

***A note from me - Kyle is still in the Jacksonville, FL Mission. The Georgia Macon mission formed right to the north of them, and Kyle is serving just to the south of the cut-off line.  Kyle's mission lost some missionaries to the new mission, but Kyle was fortunate enough to stay.  I can't help but think that will make his mission map easier when he comes home. 

 

Oh, and BTW, Ky's hump day (1/2 way done) is exactly one month from today!!!***

 

 

dear Mom,

there have been a lot of things that happened this last week, first and most importantly i met president and sister Craig. we has a zone meeting and they came to meet all the missionaries up here in Georgia. they also did a little presentation on who they are and where they come from. then President Craig started talking about how everything will be changing in the next year. more details on what was talked about in the world wide training conference.

the fourth of July aside from being a national holiday, was also our day to go do service for brother Zorn (who lives on on one quarter of a lung and still faithfully makes it to church every week). also we have another investigator who put on a little dinner party that we were invited to. the best part is everyone who attended the dinner were all members of the church except for our investigator. fellowship works!

i do not have a missionary Facebook page . yet. believe me you will know if and or when i get called. though i have had companions who have been called to do Facebook work. that is a funny statement, Facebook work. anyway, that's only a small part of everything that is changing. eventually in the next couple of months we are suppose to be given smartphones and tablets to do pretty much everything with. at least according to president Craig. oh he has also pretty much outlawed backpacks and tracting. its really like he will be outlawing, it will probably happen right about the time all the changes take effect.

this next week is going to be more busy than the weeks before. we have some kind of significant thing happening just about every single day. which is really good.it sounds to me like you and dad have yourselves another home construction project. there is always some kind of home improvement to be done at home. bathrooms, basement, porch. at least you are staying busy. it sounds to me that you had a fun and good week at home i home the next one is just as good.

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

24 June 2013

Dear Mom,

i'm glad that you had fun over the last 3 weeks. it sounded to me like you were traveling all over the place.

i did attend the world wide conference last night. did you? it was open to anyone who wanted to attend. anyway when elder Perry spoke he spoke about how missionaries would be doing online work through Mormon.org and Facebook. the Florida Jacksonville mission and a couple of others are/were the testing areas for that.

i just wrote my last letter to President Barry. since he will be going home this weekend. president Craig will be coming in on on Friday sometime. other than that i don't have anything major that i have to talk about. Darien like always is quiet most of the time. we tried to make some noise and put together a community family night but then it rained most of the day so very few people actually came to it. but it turned out alright. in order to find people to teach we have to get creative with ideas. like to go fishing / crabbing and talk with the other fishermen and crabbers. i mean Peter, James, and John were all fishermen. using all of the original and crazy finding ideas we can come up with we don't find a whole lot of people. we found one in this entire week. we are trying to get the local members to do most of it. in accordance with the direction given through the prophet and the quorum of the twelve.

we don't have a lot of missionaries in the area. it just the two of us. the nearest missionaries are in Brunswick which is 20 miles away. beyond them is Jesup is probably the next closest. but i don't really know anymore since some of the area boundaries have changed a little bit. hopefully they will give out new mission maps. we have missionary couples serving in the mission but not anywhere near here that i know of. there aren't any youth in this branch that are preparing to serve right now. maybe in a couple of years.

thank you in advance for sending the care package. i will be looking for it. also good luck for spring in i hope that the publisher will choose her book to publish. that will be exciting.

hope all is well at home, i'm off to go get everything ready for this next big week.

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie