The Lord is recruiting!!

Monday, October 08, 2012

Dear Family,

I probably don't even have to tell you what the highlight of my week was. It was soooooooooooooo awesome to be able to be here in the MTC for that announcement that Elders can serve at 18 after high school and sisters can serve at 19. We were all gathered in the auditorium, all together, and once President Monson started talking about how in other countries 18 year olds could serve, I knew something big was coming. After he made the announcement, We were literally cheering and clapping!!!!!!!! But then he mentioned the Sisters TOO!! Then we started cheering louder!!! The MTC won't be able to hold all of these missionaries!!! Within a couple months this place is going to be going crazy! The Lord is Recruiting more people to His army! He is carrying His message and His work to the ends of the earth and no earthly power can stop the work from progressing. It was so cool to be able to hear that announcement in the MTC! I have always wanted to hear an announcement/declaration like that and I will never forget that.

Something that I have learned to do well this week is to teach people, and not lessons. We go into the lesson with a lesson plan, but if they have concerns, problems, or anything, we address those needs. Sometimes we go in with a plan, but the Spirit takes us elsewhere. Along those lines, I heard an awesome quote from Elder Bednar. He said When you are wondering if it is the Spirit or me, Don't worry about it!!! If you are keeping your covenants, keeping the commandments, and being a good boy, then it really doesn't matter. So many impressions go unnoticed or we don't realize that they are impressions from the Spirit. Sometimes we don't find out until way later, and sometimes we never find out. We also challenged our fake native investigator, Ivelisse, to baptism. She is from Venezuela and speaks pretty fast, but I can understand her for the most part, until she goes off into some weird story. Then I pick up like 30 or 40%. Oh well That will come with time. We have had some awesome lessons with her and it has been a great experience

Alright, a couple of my favorite talks. I loved Elder Quentin L. Cook's talk. He said that some people give first class devotion to lesser causes. That was the biggest thing. What do I need to change so that my devotion goes to something actually worthwhile? Good one. Another. Russell M. Nelson. Ask the missionaries. They can help you! I loved this talk. The story he gave about the Preacher who was praying for guidance and received the impression, "Stop the boys on the bikes!" He looked  up and saw two missionaries riding down the street! He eventually stopped them and they were able to help one of his friends who was contemplating suicide. Both his friend, and he himself were baptized. I wrote down that we as missionaries can help ANYONE better their lives. Regardless of circumstance, race, gender, class, or anything. We bring something to the table that everyone else simply doesn't have. The true church of Jesus Christ on the Earth and the power of His Atonement. From Dieter F. Uchtdorf, We learned that sometimes being busy is not the best thing. Give people the precious gift of your time. Spend MEANINGFUL time with loved ones. Declaring the Gospel is good. Living it and declaring it by example is better. Sorry these are a bunch of random bullet points I have written down. One of his last sentences was that we shouldn't die without finding out how to truly live. That's gonna be a Mormon Message. Telling you right now.

Talk by Robert C. Gay. He talked about replacing our will with the Father's. I wrote down "What is worth more than the Father hath?" "What do I put over the will of the Father?" Interesting points. Food for thought. During Priesthood, Henry B. Eyering said that the Lord is able to see things in us that we cannot see ourselves. If we rely on the Lord and allow him to mold us, we will become so much more than we could on our own. He also said that the Lord will give His servants to speak as bold as Lions. I am going to need that every day of my mission! In the next session, Elder Eyering talked about Pavilions that may not be covering God's Hiding Place, but Pavilions that we put between ourselves and God. God never Hides from His faithful children. Don't insist on my timetable when the Lord has His own. That is putting my will over His. Our will will profit us nothing if it is not aligned with the Lord's. He said we remove the Pavilion when we pray "Thy will be done in thy time." I am making a goal to submit my time and effort to the Lord's Will.

Alright I didn't go through a lot of talks but you watched them and I don't have much time left. Anyways we had a cool fireside yesterday. Chad Lewis (BYU Tight End, Played for the Rams and Eagles, multiple Pro Bowls and Superbowl) came and spoke to us. He gave a pretty good talk. It was kind of all over the place, but I got some awesome points down in my study journal. Some like, Don't revert back to your old self once you get home, We will bring such a light and joy into people's lives, When you're tired, Dig Deep, When you can't speak, open your mouth and speak anyways, When you can't go another minute, go two more. He hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro with wounded soldiers and related the experience to his and our missions. It was really cool and he provided some great insights.

Mom, I don't think I need anything else. Thank you for all you have sent me and done for me. We get our travel plans this Thursday, and I was wondering how will I get the $200 I am supposed to take with me? Debit card or something? Just let me know. This place is fantastic, but I am so excited to get into the field in only 15 days. My Spanish comes along little by little, and I know it will make huge strides in the field. Hopefully I can semi kind of a little bit understand people. But even if I can't I will still do what Chad Lewis Said. If you can't speak, open your mouth anyways. There are going to be 4 and 5 year olds that speak better Spanish than me. Thats Great!!! I can learn from them! I am so excited! If this letter reaches anyone who is contemplating going on a mission, my advice is to GO!!!! If you're on the fence, take a leap of faith. It will be the best decision of your life and will pay eternal dividends!!!! I know this with all of my heart. I Love you all so much. Thank you for your support, prayers, and love!




Elder Mike Dial



P.S. They decided to be super dumb and take away card readers. This computer doesn't accept my cord, so I will try to find another soon enough. Blame the MTC people. Love you

Three Weeks Left October 1, 2012

Finally ran into Elder Buchanan.

Elders Dial, Johnson, Anderson

 

A few Oly additions.

Monday October 1, 2012
Well familia,

It seems that my last email didn't send for one reason or another. It may have had too many attachments or something but thats ok. That letter from last week is copied and pasted below. Looks like you get a double dose of letters this week. Be Grateful!

I officially have 21 days left in the MTC!!! In 3 weeks I will be off into the field! I could not be more excited. I absolutely love it here, the Spirit that is here, the devotionals, study time, and everything!!! Something about being a set-apart missionary makes me want to study so much! Before my mission I could hardly read my scriptures, Preach My Gospel, or anything for more than like ten minutes. But now, I am sad when my hour long Personal Study is over! It flies by so quickly! When I am not studying doctrine for and preparing lessons for my investigators, I am either reading the Book of Mormon, or the New Testament. I absolutely love both books. In the NT I am in Romans. I love the way Paul writes and preaches. I want to be a missionary like Paul! If I can be a tenth of what Paul was I will be crazy successful. In the Book of Mormon, I just passed the story of Abinadi, which is one of the coolest stories in scripture! Abinadi is such a BOSS!!! Both were fantastic missionaries and hopefully I can develop similar qualities to both of them!

Well we have had some sweet lessons over this past week! One of our "fake real" investigators is getting baptized this week! He was a really hard investigator at first, but then after one awesome lesson about why commitments are so important, he as accepted pretty much everything. He turned into a golden investigator with time. That was Manuel. We also teach Luis, who is also one of my teachers, but then we teach a woman named Ivelisse (tough name, took me a whole week to memorize it. EE-VAY-LEE-SAY). She is a volunteer that lives in the area and we teach her twice a week. I didn't know if she was a member at first, but then she wore a BYU shirt to one of the lessons and was quoting verbatim from Isaiah so she gave herself away there. But she is a great actress! We have taught her the Restoration, and Faith and Repentance. We got her to pray about what we were teaching, but then she wouldn't pray again so that was kind of annoying. Oh well. We are teaching her about Baptism on thursday and will extend the invitation. The spirit will be there and she won't be able to say no.

Oh P.S. I have been called to be the Zone Music Coordinator. My ego has gone through the roof and I am officially better than everyone.   Just Kidding. But I get to go to Leadership Meeting with our Branch Presidency and It is a way nice time. But one of the counselors in the Branch Presidency, Brother Jones, who served in South America somewhere, emphasized that we aren't speaking Spanish enough. He says that he knows what it is like to go out and not understand a soul and he doesn't want that to happen to us. I have a goal to speak Spanish whenever I can but it isn't easy. Spanish needs to be my first language and English my second. It is SO hard not to resort to English sometimes and a lot of the time I give in. I pray for strength cada dia and am feeling a difference little by little. I am not there yet, but eventually I will be able to have that mind-set forever. Ugh. That day needs to come like today. But it won't. Thats ok. I need to work towards it.

Oh cool story we got to watch a talk be Elder Holland about how Missions are Forever. He shared a cool short poem in it and see if you can hear Elder Holland saying these words. They get louder as it goes on.

"Come to the edge," he said. "No, we'll fall."
"Come To The Edge," he said. "No, we'll fall."
"COME TO THE EDGE," he said. So we came to the edge
And he Pushed us. And we flew

He delivered this so powerfully! Sometimes we put limitations on ourselves that are really unreasonable. Sometimes we think we can't do things that we really are more than capable of doing. Sometimes we need a little push off the edge so that we can fly. I feel like we all go through this at one time or another.

Well that’s all for today. Love you so much! Thanks for the thoughts and prayers! I feel them! One speaker gave an interesting point. She said that throughout the church, literally millions of prayers are being offered up daily for the missionaries. I thought that was awesome!!! How can we fail? How can we not press on in so great a cause? Anyways Love you all so much!!!


Elder Mike Dial





P.S. Yes mother I am scrubbing my shirts. My district thinks I'm crazy. Be proud.

9/24/2012 letter...not sure what happened to it...

LAST WEEKS LETTER  9/24/2012

Dear Family,

Not sure why last weeks letter didn’t come…maybe too many attachments…so I resent it today…

Hola!!! I am officially halfway done with my MTC Experience!!! Just think, I only have to do that 23 more times and then I am going to be coming home! JK that would be awful if I had to be in the MTC for 23 more months. Don't get me wrong, I definitely love it here. The Spirit is so strong and I have so many awesome experiences here, but being in here for that long would be completely horrendous. But that's OK!!! Because I leave in 29 days. Isn't that weird? I feel Like I just got here! The days go by kind of slow, but when I look back time has flown by like none other. Before I know it I will be in the field speaking Spanish 24/7! I should probably learn Spanish before then. Oh well. I can do that later.

Thank you for the packages!!!!! I am an ungrateful stupid person and I am so grateful for them!!!! Love you!!!

The temple dedication was way good! We got to see the 9 o Clock session! President Packer doesn't have much left in him, but I am so excited that he lived long enough to see that temple dedicated. It is his temple basically and there was such a sweet spirit in the room when we were watching it!

W. Tracy Watson (dude) brought up an interesting point. It was at a fireside about a week ago. He said that in old times, the Lord would take his people out of evil places and put them somewhere else. Brother Watson said that in our days, we don't run from Babylon, we attack it. He talked about the Book of Mormon Musical and about how the church is countering it with all of the "I'm a Mormon" ads in NYC. He said that the Musical is going even farther, like to Los Angeles, Chicago, San Fransisco, all of the big cities. But, what the church is doing, is putting ads about the Book of Mormon (the real book, It's TRUE!!) in the physical playbill for the musical. Captions like "The Book is Always Better," and "You've seen the play, now read the book." We are attacking Babylon head on and the church is continuing to grow and will continue to grow. There is no stopping it. The truth that we have can bless the lives of anyone, member, or nonmember, regardless of race, gender, status or anything. I have a sincere testimony of that.

Anyway, moving on. On Wednesday, our District had a goal to solamente HSI (Habla su Idioma) between our class times, which was from 11:50 to 6:30. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I loved it!!! I am trying to always speak Spanish. That is my personal goal for this week. I want Spanish to be my first language of choice and English to be my second language. I got Elder Sam Neff's letter this week, and in it he said that even though it is his second week, he can speak and understand pretty much anything! People are asking him if he is Cuban or from Lima! It may be a longshot, but I am going to do all that I can to reach that point ASAP. In saying that, don't let it phase all of you faithful readers if I throw in a little Spanish in my letters or accidentally use Spanish grammar when I am writing in English. I catch myself doing that... Which is a GOOD THING!!! I wrote in my journal that to get to that point, I need not only to be 100% obedient, but also 100% committed. If I am not committed, then I am not going to get anywhere anytime soon. I have to dedicate myself completely to have effective study habits, and do things that will help me progress and also help my "investigators." I only have a taste of this work and I love it! I absolutely can't wait until I get out en el campo!!!

Another cool thing!!! We had a way cool workshop about the Doctrine of Christ. We can spit people doctrine, principles, and ordinances all day long, in other words, the "what" of the Gospel. People won't give a you know what about what I have to say until I explain to them the "why" of the Gospel. They won't care until they see for themselves how it can change their lives for the better. I came away from that knowing that to do that, I need to always focus and fall back on the Doctrine of Christ in my lessons. The best place to study that and teach from it is 3 Nephi 27. It lays it out so perfectly.

At the devotional yesterday, Stephen B. Allen, the guy basically in charge of the missionary department, talked about the Power that a missionary has. First of all, I am a set apart, ordained with priesthood power, representative of Jesus Christ. Secondly, I carry the word of the true and living God in my message. Thirdly, I have a testimony of this work and its divinity that nobody can deny. Fourth, I have character. He said these things will help me teach with power, authority, and all those things that God has blessed me with.

Anyways, Thank you so much for your support! Mom I did receive the package. Love you so much. Not just for the package that would make me an ungrateful son of a gun. Love you forever. Grandma Dial thank you so much for the letter! I always appreciate the mail and the updates. Keep them coming! If you see people I know tell them to write me or I will cry.

Les amo siempre. Estoy muy agradecido por esta oportunidad a ser un misionero de Jesucristo. Le amo con todo mi corazon. Nos Vamos!!!   (I love you always. I am grateful for this opportunity to be a missionary of Jesus Christ. I love him with all my heart! )

Elder Mike

Still in the "EMPTY SEA"

Monday September 17, 2012

Hola todos!

 I'm still here in the Empty Sea!( get it…MTC) Lovin life! First of all I want to give a birthday shoutout to the best little brother there is out there! Happy Birthday Marcus! He turns 12 today and now that means he will eat cereal. I am certain of it.

 Oh P.S. Mom the Dear Elder deadline is like 5:00 PM on Fridays. I saw you mention that in your last one. They don't come on Saturday which is a major bummer. Oh well. Thats ok.

The best day of the week is P-Day. You get to do laundry, take a nap if you want to, go to the temple, do whatever you want basically with some study time in between, which I think is my favorite part of every day. Study time is such a blessing to me. I love the scripture in Doctina y Convenios where the Lord gives revelation to Hyrum Smith and says that "Before you seek to proclaim My word, first seek to obtain My word." That is what I view study time as. Obtaining the Lord's word so that I can deliver his message with accuracy, conviction, and most importantly, with the Holy Ghost. But yeah. P-Day is awesome, but Sunday is a way nice time too. I love the Firesides on Sundays. I feel so edified, and I love using the word edified too. We also get to go on a temple walk, but I don't dare disclose the precise hour of that great time because I know my mother would be there every week. I do it because I love you mom. It's in the late afternoon though. If you can find me I will run away. Love ya too much.

My Spanish is coming along little by little. I get better at it each day, and by learning more grammatical tenses and vocabulary, soon enough I will become THE Spanish Master. Soon enough will probably come in like 9ish months though haha. ( In Due time of the Lord.  But I really do feel the help of the Lord and all prayers coming my way. Thank you so much for them and don't you dare stop!!!! I need all the help I can get.  I am at the point where I can't always say exactly what I want to say, but through much brain power and maybe a 5 to 10ish second thought process figure out a way to say what I want to say.  It probably isn't grammatically correct, but most Spanish speakers can figure out most of what I am saying haha.

Anyways, a fun thing happened! I committed my fake real investigator to baptism! His real name is Hermano King and he is my teacher, but he role plays a progressing investigator named Manuel. I will give you the rundown of our most recent lesson with him. He has been pretty receptive, probably due to the fact that he is our first investigator, but that is ok. We started out teaching horribly, mostly because one, it was all in Spanish, and I didn't speak much Spanish the second day in the MTC, second, because they throw you in before you have any remote idea how to teach!!!! That was the worst part. We went in there completely blind, attempted to blabber out a couple of Spanish and Spanglish words, and then tried to decipher what he was saying to us, which was probably like 25%. They recently taught us a very important phrase that we will be using forever. “Repetalo por favor?”  “Repeat that please?” haha  I have used that countless times in our recent lessons. Sorry for that tangent. Anyways, we have taught him most everything, except for a couple commandments. We know that he can feel the Spirit in our lessons, before  we just haven't been very good at identifying it. So I came up with a masterful plan to “help” him out.  We started out our lesson by having him sing with us Soy un Hijo de Dios, I am a Child of God. It is an awesome song because a 6 year old can understand it and it is impossible not to feel the Spirit during it.  I then asked him immediately, Manuel, what do you feel right now? He said "tranquilo," which I think means tranquil or something like that,  haven't looked up the translation yet. I then identified that as the Spirit. I read him Jacob 4:13 out of the Book of Mormon, which testifies that the Spirit testifies of truth and cannot lie.  I asked him if he had been praying about whether baptism is the right thing for him. We challenged him before, and he said that if he was ready, he would be baptized.  I then asked him if he would pray aloud right now, and ask if baptism was the right thing for him right now. He did, and gave an awesome, simple prayer. I asked him what he felt afterwards. He said that he was feeling the Spirit. We again pointed out that the Spirit cannot lie, so I asked him what he needed to do. He then said the magic words, "I need to follow my answer." He said all this in Spanish of course. I was so happy at that point. I then extended the baptismal invitation, which, "Manuel, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the Priesthood authority of God?" He accepted, and has a date, but we are pushing it back a little bit because we still have a little bit to teach him. The beautiful thing about it is that whatever we teach him now, hopefully he will go off his testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and realize that it is all true. I love it! When I was testifying of Baptism to Manuel, even though I was doing it in Spanish, I could feel the Spirit so strongly, just another confirmation to me that this work is true and that I am being an instrument in the Lord's hands to bring about His mighty purposes.

 I love this work and know that it is the work of the Living God, and His Son, Jesus Christ. It is true. I have no shadow of a doubt that I will be bringing people to the RESTORED CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST!!!! It isn't the church of Joseph Smith. It isn't the church of Thomas S. Monson. It is the Church of Jesus Christ, and He is at the head of it. I love you all. See you in about 23ish months.

Love,

Elder Mike

Recent MTC Pictures September 10, 2012

 Look who I found?

 This is Elder Ruiz. He leaves to Las Vegas Wednesday. He lived next door to us, and he was on the total opposite side of the spectrum. While we spoke English and were learning Spanish, He, being from Baja, Mexico, knew Spanish and was learning English. We helped each other out, and our district became really good friends. He is going to a Spanish speaking mission, but if you go to the states you have to have speak English well too anyways. He is a really swell guy.

 The crew

 The Olympus Tie. A ton of people from Olympus have passed on this tie from person to person and a good number of us have signed it. I wore it for a day. Felt awesome.

Some neat new scripture covers for my Spanish scriptures and hymn book. I look legit now.

The Powers of the Priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of Heaven!

Hola familia! Como esta arriba???

This week has been a good one. We got two new investigators to teach, Noemi and Luis. Well We don't have Noemi anymore because her alter-ego, Hermana Price, is not my teacher anymore which is sad. Shout out to her if she reads my blog like she promised. Anyway so my teachers now are Hermano Bruce, and Hermano King. Hermano King served in Chile and got back about four months ago. Hermano Bruce is fresh out of Argentina and speaks with a weird Argentine accent that he is trying to get rid of for our sake haha. They are both really good and I am loving their teaching. The Spanish is coming along poco a poco. Every day I pray for and thank my Father in Heaven for the gift of tongues. It is real and I am feeling the reality of it now. We had a workshop on Friday about recognizing the Spirit and the sister gave a couple really good points that I think are helping me day by day to get better.

 You are probably wondering about the subject of this email. Well here we go. Elder Fawcett was sick for a couple days. I think he caught my cold but it didn't like him as much. He felt really dizzy and had a sinus infection pretty bad. Most of the drugs you sent me have mostly gone to him, but none to much avail. Well on Sunday, he asked for a blessing. I was wayyyyyy nervous and didn't really know how to do it, but luckily that is what the mission handbook was for. So I did my best, and I gave a blessing as the spirit  directed me. It was such a cool experience! Words came to my mind that I felt were from the Spirit, and even though it was a short and simple blessing, he woke up from a nap an hour later feeling great. Any sickness is no match against rest, drugs, and the priesthood. So that was the highlight of my week. I am grateful that I was able to receive those words from the Holy Ghost and deliver a blessing that was able to help another person.

Neat thing. Our district was kind of discouraged because our lessons were really crappy with our investigator because they completely outlawed English in our lessons. Our teachers came in and really emphasized that Learning Spanish is not our first priority in the MTC. It is to learn how to fulfill our missionary purpose. Our purpose is to Invite others to come unto Christ be helping them receive the Restored Gospel through Faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, Repentance, Baptism, and enduring to the end. Spanish comes second to that. It came as a testimony builder to me that if I don't know how to teach in English, I sure as heck won't be able to in Spanish. They really emphasize effective study habits to learn how to do just that.

Mom, here are the answer to your questions. Don't freak out but no I did not join the choir. They have practice on Tuesdays right in the middle of my class time and I can't afford to miss that. I need all the Spanish help that I can get. I am however auditioning for a musical number this week. I went last week, but I got in line literally seconds too late. I will let you know how that goes. My district leader is Elder Smith from California. He is brand new as of yesterday. Our old DL, Elder Keller, leaves for the Guatemala MTC tomorrow. Now our district is purely Costa Ricans and Philadelphians. It is a way nice time.  The "Republican" cookies, ann romneys recipe, got nothing on yours mom. They were kind of gross actually I think they are still under my bed. Thank you though. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PACKAGES!!!! Sorry I have been an ungrateful piece of crap and not thanked you before. I love being spoiled it feels nice to feel like the most loved child once and a while. Make sure Meredith and Marcus read that sentence.

COOL STORY! I gave a hug to an Elder yesterday who is the first missionary to come from Nepal!!!! The one branch there is like less than 100 people and I admire his faith and sacrifice to come out and do this! It is the best work in the world and I can't wait until the day that I am fluent in this blasted language.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers. They are felt! This is the true work of the Lord!! Anyone who says differently let me talk to them about it. The church is true and the Atonement is real!!! Love You!!! Over and Out



Elder Dial

ESPANOL!!!!!

Elder Mike with Elder Steven Doxey and Zach Seastrand...friends from Oly!

Elder Dial w/good buddy from Olympus Elder Alec Anderson

Elder Dial's MTC district...his companion is on his left...I think just bad shot w/eyes closed...??!!

He even ran into Elder Warren Crowley, a Virginia buddy!

Olympus buddies at "the map" at the MTC...

Elders Dial, Anderson and Morgan Evans..I believe at the temple

Again, w/Elder Doxey who leaves for Chicago because he has yet to get his Visa to Peru. Note the terrible wildlife tshirt on Elder Dial...however, he does have his name tag on!   His companion cannot believe that he knows someone at every turn!




September 3, 2012 MTC


Hola todos. I can officially say that all of my high school Spanish has returned to me and even more. The gift of tongues is completely real because there is no way that I could ever learn this blasted language this fast at this rate. So many things have happened. Elder Fawcett and I are getting better at teaching our investigator, Manuel. They throw you into teaching on the second day in the MTC IN SPANISH which was awful. We didn't know how to teach or speak the language! But I think they do that to you so you learn to rely on the Lord and to give you a sense of urgency to learn how and what to teach. That urgency has made me change my study habits drastically. I used to just READ the scriptures. It is good, but it is not the best thing that you can do. Every single thing I do must be focused on my purpose as a missionary, which is "Invite others to come unto Christ by receiving the Restored Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end." We had that memorized within the first couple days, and in Spanish not soon afterwards. Every single thing we do must be directed towards that. That means that my study habits must be focused on my investigators first. The Spanish that I study is the Spanish that I need to use in my lessons. It was hard at first, but now I feel comfortable doing it. Two three hour sessions of classtime used to be torture for me, but now I look forward to it. Isn't that weird? I HATED Spanish class earlier on, but now I can't get enough of it! This church must be true or something.

For our Sunday fireside, we got to watch the Prophet's 85th birthday celebration. It was way good! Then after that we watched some terribly made missionary movie made in the 80's. It was hilarious.

I love gym time here. I play more basketball than anything. That's all Elder Fawcett plays. My district is terrible overall at basketball so I pretty much dominate, which is the first time I could ever say that haha. I do some running too. The other day I ran 3 miles but I need to run more often. I gained like 4 or 5 pounds but I caught myself and hopefully I can watch what I eat. I stay away from most bad things, have a wrap like every day with a salad sometimes, and then I only have ice cream on Sundays and Wednesdays. If I keep gaining then I am going to stop eating completely. Maybe that will work.

I am going to audition for a musical number this week. I need to ask someone in my zone to play piano for me but I have someone in mind.

Well they have a TERRIBLE setup on the computers here in the laundry room so I can't attach pictures here. I will try to send some later. Congrats on callbacks Jojo! You are gonnna do great!!!!! Thanks family for the care packages. My district loved the cake and the treats. In the next one, I humbly ask for my decongestant spray in my bathroom and some nyquil. I have had a gnarly cold the past couple days and my sinuses have been going crazy. Love you tons!