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02/17/2004
Dear Family,
It has been pretty much a normal week in Bartlesville, nothing too exciting. I think your letters to me had more exciting adventures than we did. Though of course zone conference was last Monday, but I described that to you in last weeks e-mail already.
Tuesday night we went to Independence, Kansas for the interview of the nine year old girl. She passed and was baptized the next night. While we were up there we saw the missionary's car, and it was missing a hub cap. Upon asking Elder Slatter about it he informed us that he had hit a curb on the way back from zone conference and had driven from Tulsa to Independence on the Donut
Anyways, on Wednesday we did a missionary exchange with First Ward since Elder Hightower was sick and we had the car. So, Elder Hightower and I went down to scenic Ochelata, Oklahoma and close to Verna, Oklahoma. We were delivering some media referrals. We did not catch anyone home sadly. We even spent quite a few miles looking for some address that we couldn't find and probably doesn't exist. Though, we knocked a few door around where we thought it would be and no one knew the person either. We even braved a few yards out in the country with "bad dogs" signs (not something I enjoy, though most missionaries feel like they are invincible or something). Elder Hightower is doing better, but not totally better yet. Of course, most everything we had planned for the exchange fell threw. We had a pretty good time though.
Saturday we worked on our new convert's home again. We couldn't fit the showers through the door. So, we took down some wall. It was nice that he has a metal house, so we just unscrewed the sides cut through some insulation and pushed the showers on through. Then we had the problem that the showers had to sit higher than we wanted to clear the pipe in the foundation. We sat them on a 2 x 6 and a 2 x 4 to get some clearance for them. The First Ward Elders Quorum President came over, so they will probably be helping in the coming weeks, which might speed some things up. It looks like they will be moving in during April.
Let's see, I mentioned some new church policies in my last letter but did not inform you as to what they are. Generally missionaries are supposed to sit in the congregation now (in some units we sat on the stand, but not too many). They are discontinuing Know Your Religion (kind of a bummer, don't think I have seen any of those). Also of note was a letter about missionary exchanges. The church has discouraged missionaries from going on companionship exchanges ("splits") when they have teaching appointments unless there is so much going on that they cannot handle the work load otherwise. President Nielsen said that he hadn't heard of that being a problem in our mission, so we should abide by this new guideline. The goal is to have missionaries teach more together so younger missionaries get more experience teaching with their companion and learn the discussions better. It's a funny thing, I was saying this exact same thing when I was new and didn't know what was going on. However, now it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal, but I do enjoy teaching with my companion more that on an exchange. Oh well, a bunch of new things going on, most of which we knew about before we heard it at Zone Conference (thanks to dinner with a member of the Stake Presidency).
Dad's experiences with the truck rack & pipes brought quite the smile to my face. I needed a little laugh. Though, I would imagine that I would have somehow been a part of all this had I been home, you might have waited till I was off from college for a weekend. Anyways, thanks for letting me know what happened and I am glad that the pipes are sounding great.
Also dad mentioned the fonts taking a long time to fill in his mission. It is pretty much the same here. One water heater for the building. So the average fill up time is about 2 - 3 hours here (though 1 & 1/2, happen some times). Interesting was the Salem building had two water heaters. Why a small branch building needed two was interesting. Though, everywhere else has one. As you saw on my first Bartlesville baptism the font can over fill in 30-40 minutes on full power, but to keep it hot it takes about 2 hours.
That is it for my end. I really enjoy hearing from you and your comments on my experiences. Thanks for all the support and I hope that all is going well for you. Best of luck in all that you do. I miss you.
Love, Elder Mike Robinson
