25 March 2013

Dear mom

i have officially moved in at:

(contact me or mom if you need a mailing address - Spring)

its been an exciting adventure to come to a new area. there are actually 4 missionaries serving here. we have to share the car every other day with the elders in the palatka second ward. my companion is elder buhler. and for some unknown reason he reminds me of the charlie brown show. he is pretty fun to be around. because we share the car with the other two elders, we see them every single day. they are both fun to be around two.

the city of palatka is nice. except the drinking water is really nasty. no longer will i have to go shopping at a dollar general for all of my necessities. that is really nice. we get some choices for what to eat at home now.

i really dont mind if you make another plaque. its your choice. if you do though i like Alma 42:31. either way i will still go back to my now old ward to collect the one that was made before i left.

we dont get a whole lot of time to write today because the library limits us to a half hour. even though we get a whole hour & a half by mission standards. we have a family history center here where we would do our emailing but we dont have a key to it like we did in branford.

im glad to here that things are going alright back at home hope you get feeling better soon.

Sincerely
Elder Ogilvie

11 March, 2013

dear mom,

i'm still enjoying what time i have left here in Branford. i now know of an almost absolute certainty that i will be transferred on the 20th of march. that's the next transfer date. i know this because my current companion just got called as a trainer. i don't know if i told you or not but this transfer (the one i'm in right now) is only five weeks long because of everything that is happening with the reorganization of the missions.

nothing too exciting is currently happening. about as exciting as it got was showing up quite randomly (which probably wasn't that random in the lords eyes) to help a couple of ward members do some moving, and again to help a less active member unload a trailer before it got too dark outside, and there was no way that he could unload that trailer by himself, being that he lost both of his legs. a lot of what we do have going on is getting many people over their personal barriers. which requires the help of the bishop more than just us plain old missionaries. more than anything what i saw while being here is the return of a few less active members. now hopefully they will continue to stay active, that's all i can ask for.

its nice to see that the snow back at home is starting to go away. when ever I've talked with anyone about Utah all that gets brought up in the conversation is how much snow there has been and how cold it is out there. i did find out though that there was a day last week where during the whole day, it was colder here than it was there. but that only happened once to my knowledge.

as far as i can think don't have any real need for you to send me anything. my needs have been pretty well taken care of out here. members are very good at both feeding us consistently and taking care of all of our major necessities. the only thing missing is a direct contribution to the work (referrals). its an eternal problem.

beyond all of that though i'm doing alright. i hope things go well for you all back home say hello to Brightyn for me when she arrives.

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

4 March 2013

Dear Mom,

Nothing to exciting here is happening this week. i did teach gospel principles again this week, but only because our ward mission leader got lost while meeting with the bishop. we thought he had entirely disappeared. if all goes well we should have some good news in about two weeks. stake conference will be this week. the stake president wants all the missionaries to sing 'called to serve' in the Saturday night session. we will see how well that goes.

Elder Albertson is from a little town in Idaho. and he has been out one transfer longer than i have. carters birthday will be on the same day that i mark seven months. so that shouldn't be to hard to remember. yes, i do believe that i know McKenna Murphy. ( if she has red hair that's probably her) if not i at least knew a Murphy that was in my singles ward.

stake conference is the only major thing that i know of before general conference. last month was ward conference. now stake. next month is general. i guess that's the pattern for this part of the year. its strange to think that general conference has come around again. October's didn't feel like that long ago.

I hope you have fun with your new grand baby. and i hope all remains well back at home, love you and miss you all

Sincerely,

Elder Ogilvie

25 February 2013

Dear mom,

i have not seen any snow. the only thing i have seen is lots of rain. it rained so bad Saturday night we almost couldn't see the road driving back home. its been about a week since our house turned into a Popsicle. we haven't had any more frozen pipes. they unfroze when the sun came up.

its pretty cool to see that 58 new missions are opening up. i know that at least one of them is reopening. look for the Georgia Maken mission. It was dissolved about two years ago and the Florida Jacksonville Mission got some of the area from that mission. The top half of the FJM use to be part of that mission. the Georgia mission is suppose to open back up in July. and the FJM will lose what originally belonged to Georgia Maken. Any missionaries serving in those areas when the change occurs will likely change missions. that will also happen at the same time president and sister Barry go home. our new Mission president has been called and he will arrive in July as well.

zone conference was this last Thursday. Elder Albertson and I had to drive down there and back just to have our car inspected. i still don't know the results of that that of course assuming that i will ever find out. i also saw some of the members that i knew in Williston. they has driven the missionaries up to zone conference. so i got to say hello to them and find out whats going on down there.

we don't have a whole lot going on up here in Branford right now. we are preparing one young man for baptism just as soon as he can stop drinking sweet tea (which is apparently all the rage down here in the south). I've found more people struggle with tea than coffee out here. Believe it or not the lord knew what he was saying when he said no tea.

i hope dad has fun flying with all of his students down in saint George, and it sounds like Alex has just about everything she will need for when brightyn comes. give champ a hug for me. love and miss you all.

Sincerely

Elder Ogilvie

February 4, 2013

Dear mom

another week is gone. nothing really exciting has happened although it has been one of our better weeks for actually being able to catch people to teach.which has been totally odd because all of our investigators have gotten sick. which means we couldn't go teach them.

we have been working with a lot of less than fully active members as of late. many of whom have not come to church in years. and we found a former investigator who went missing a couple of years ago. whom my companion and his last companion tried to find and couldn't. turns out she moved down the street.

after the excitement of having 7 investigators show up to church last week. we had all of 2 show up this week. one of whom comes to church every other week like clockwork. the other is an unbaptized youth. everyone else was ill. one of our investigators got really sick and cancelled the appointment just before we were about to drive out her way. not ten minutes latter we get a call from her daughter (who lives in Pennsylvania and who just became a member two months ago) telling us to go give our investigator a priesthood blessing. so we did.

we determined that our District mighty prayer's just aren't working for us. but normal prayer works. every time we get together as a district to pray for our investigators. something always prevents that ting we prayed for from coming to pass. example: we pray that an appointment will hold, ten minutes later we get a call cancelling the appointment for... reason. but when we just pray as a companionship. we don't get the extra opposition. and the appointment goes through. i don't understand it, neither does my companion, or our district leader.

but for the most part things are going all right. i will wait for the box to come before i say more.

Sincerely

Elder Ogilvie

January 28th, 2013

dear mom,

yes i am very happy to see that the earth is not covered in snow.

transfers are on the 13th of February. its a little odd to think that they are only that far away. the most exciting this week has been was having 7 of our investigators show up to church all at once. the best part is that the ward really did their part in making them all feel welcome. than my companion and i proceeded to teach the gospel principals class, so that 3 hour block of church was the most fun we had all week.

i just barely got a letter from spring telling me that my oldest niece is now 7 years old. i already figured carter was going to be a deacon pretty soon. Brighyn can and will come when the lord is ready (his time and our time is not the same). but on that note does Logan and Alex have some kind of definitive due date?

if i haven't told you before both me and my companion are 23. we are the oldest missionaries in our district, but not in the mission. your 10-1 guess is as good as mine. chances are it will happen that way because he has been here for 6 month now. and as i heard it president barry wants us each to serve in 4-5 areas throughout our missions. we are still having to use our car and bikes in the same day often we find that we have to park the car and go walking just so we don't run out of our miles limit. but that's where we are suppose to be any way. :)

i think the Branford ward has lost a little bit of faith in previous missionaries and the missionary work here. this was evident in the results from the work in 2012. and the fact that they set such low goals for the whole year. and as it looks now things are a lot better than they were 6 months ago.

i hope you have lots of fun back playing in the snow. love you all

Sincerely

Elder Ogilvie

P.S.

-"Called to serve" Mysterious third verse

Called to be a chosen generation

Preach my gospel is a sacred call

JAX is white and ready now to harvest

We go forth to gather all

-Chorus (third verse only)

Onward, ever onward

Teach and baptize in his name

Onward, ever onward

Every member we retain; go

Forward, pressing forward,

As a triumph song we sing

God our strength will be;

press forward, ever called to serve our king.

21 January, 2013

Dear mom, & family

our sacrament meeting was also on the topic of missionary work, our speakers were instructed to speak on one of (or part of) a missionary lesson anddid you know that there is a secret 3rd verse to the song "called to serve"? i'll send it to you next week. that was fun to listen to. no i did not speak in church though both of us expected that they would call one of us up at the last minute to replace our ward mission leader whom we had a strong suspicion was going to disappear before sunday and not return for two weeks. we also prepared to teach gospel principles to. suprisingly enough he was there. so we didnt have to do any of that.

we have a few people we are excited about. we have a less active family we are working with, they have a son who is a little older than carter (about 11 years old) who wants to be baptised. they all came to church this last sunday. our only real diffiulty is getting out to mayo FL where they live to actually teach them. we dont have the miles to go out there all the time like we need to. its hard enough when we only have to go to lake city every week. and some times twice in the week. there is also a family of 4 that we got a referal for, that referal came to us from our stake president. and thats only half of the people we have found in the last 3 weeks.

our ward members are amazing. they love to feed us every chance they get. we have had weeks that we have had a dinner appointment almost every night. usually during the last two weeks of the month when they think we are about to starve. we are pretty well fed. addressing anyone by brother or sister (last name here) can get really confusing when about five or six people will turn around and awnser the call. there are alot of people who are related all of whom attend the same ward. most of our ward however has no abillity to take us anywhere. but there are a few who can and will awnser the call for help when we need it.

our apartment is nice. when ever the temperature out side is good at night the house temprature is ok. if it gets cold however. then our house is cold all day. it usually stays pretty clean, though it always needs cleaning when p day comes around. it is totally surounded by grass and trees. there is no real driveway to speak of. mistly its just a worn dirt path where we bring the car in and out from the house. and we are just a little ways down from the Rodeo so we can always hear what is going on over there. its a good place to live when its kept up.

more often than not p-day is so busy with things to do that we dont get out to have a lot of fun. the first one of the month is usually zone p-day so we drive up to lake ciy to be with everyone else in the zone. some members took us to a lbig bar-b-que at another members house today. he had live blue grass music playing. that was an exciting new experience.

yes we are still doing trade offs with other missionaries. i will be going up to live oak with another missionary on wensday. and returning to branford on thursday morning. i've got to do it twice every transfer cycle. once for me and once for my companion. this next wensday is also president interviews. president told me i wouldnt have one for 6 months last time i spoke with him. but because i moved zones the schedule changed so i will be looking forward to that.

im sorry to hear that you are still burried under the cold wet snow. we dont get any of that stuff here. and i sure dont miss it. i know a lot of members who have been out your way recently and they keep telling us how cold it is. though they are probably slightly biased because its normally so warm down here.

love you, keep warm

Sincerely

Elder Ogilvie