January 5, 2016

Hello Parents,

Emily got to visit Masan!  Did she tell you?  I know it wasn't in her big email.  She sent me a bunch of pictures she took on her way to the Masan church building.  Thanks for forwarding those other pictures to me.

I'm sorry for my pitiful email last week.  We needed to meet the zone leaders for an exchange and we are getting ready for another exchange right now.

Our favorite investigators right now are the N family.  They are three Vietnamese siblings.  They are really cool but we have some difficulty teaching them because of the language barrier.  We don't have access to many resources we can use.  Mormon.org isn't available in Vietnamese and lds.org is bare bones.  We were able to get them a Vietnamese Book of Mormon and asked them to read the introduction. Hopefully that will help them understand the importance of the Book of Mormon because I don't think we were able to get it across.  They are very welcoming and last time gave us a Vietnamese sausage thing.  It tastes sort of sour but is actually pretty good.  The youngest brother is working on learning the piano and Elder Poole has offered to teach him a little bit.

We got an email today that there will be a worldwide missionary broadcast on the 20th that we get to see.  It will be from the missionary executive council under the direction of Elder Oaks.  I'm excited.

We have gotten tired of the poor health and are talking to the mission office about moving apartments.  I've cleaned it up a lot but it has been neglected for so long and we can't get rid of the bad smell in it. We are pretty sure that there is a fair amount of mold in the walls.  Hopefully we get the go ahead.

I am excited to study the teachings of Howard W. Hunter this year.  I love to study the life of the prophets.  It seems like what everyone remembers about President Hunter is that he served for a really short time as President but it was cool to see how his ministry blessed the lives of so many people over the course of his life.  We can't ever wait to fulfill our responsibilities but we need to "lift where we stand", wherever it is that we are standing.  It was pretty cool to see good old Delbert in the picture of the Quorum of the Twelve with Elder Hunter.

I love you,

Elder Stapley