Serving in Florida: Elder Whaley, the next Steve Irwin!

10-28-13

Having you write and send letters during the week is working well. I LOVE getting letters. It's like a birthday whenever I receive something in the mail. The lady who sent the animal pictures is going to get baptized next month, but she is pretty much a millionaire and she has been around mormons all her life. She has a house in Utah, so she has tons of mormon friends. I heard from Jenifer and she said that they were going to drop off the ipod sometime today. I'll try to get some pictures of us biking or in the car, but I've taken plenty of pictures of other things. We swap car/bikes every week, so it's half and half. This last week has finally cooled down and we are now in the low 80's. We haven't been eating at members' homes for awhile since our mission president made the rule that we can only go over if there is an investigator or less active there. But, the Dyers in our ward bought us a few groceries this week so we didn't starve. When they came over, Bro. Dyer asked if I would give a 5 minute talk in Sacrament the next day. The talk was on prayer, and I prepared it the morning of on a little 3 x 5 card. It went really well and a lot of people complimented me on it. Sister Brower (Senior couple Sister) came up and was so proud of me. It was funny. She was like, "Oh, I'm just so full of pride. I wish your mother could have seen it!" transfers are this Tuesday, and I got a good companion. His name is Elder Lott, from Idaho Falls, and I will be serving in the Vanderbilt Beach A. Haha. So, in other words, both of us are staying here. We haven't carved pumpkins, but I did, however, carve an avacado, and it looks sweet. I'll put a picture of it on Dropbox. This week we also got to go play sand volleyball right next to the beach, but not on it, which stinks, but it was still fun! As you saw already, we also went to the Skunk Ape Museum and saw some alligators, snakes, and birds. We stopped by the World's smallest post office and got a post card. Hopefully, you got it already. It was a great P-day! I held many of the animals and took plenty of pictures. The guy at the museum even put the head of the snake in his mouth and kissed the mouth of the alligator. It was crazy, but I wasn't nervous to hold any of the animals. It was pretty cool. All is good here. Love you guys!

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

*We got an email last Wednesday from a lady who is apparently getting baptized next month. She took the missionaries to the Skunk ape Museum and said they all had a great time. She then proceded to say what a fine young man Austin is and that we should be very proud of him. Here are the pictures she sent us.