Letter - October 9, 2008

Hello Family thanks for all the emails. They were great! Wow what an intense game a week ago. I am so happy we won. Louie for Hiesman!!!! He is so good. I am missing a great season but there is a greater work to be done than watching college football. Don't the jazz start up again soon? Didn't the season just get over like yesterday? Time flies by out here it is crazy. 6 months. Wow i can't believe it.

General Conference was amazing! I loved it. We were able to see all of the sessions except sunday afternoon. I enjoyed every session. I love hearing the Apostles and the Prophet speak. They are so powerful. Everyone who was watching had to have felt the spirit in some way or another. You can't not feel the spirit when they are speaking. I think i can apply all of the talks into my life. For the first time in a long time i really enjoyed Elder Scott and Elder Hales. They were amazing. So so powerful. I can't wait for the next conference! Everyone was asking me if it was my grandpa everyone was talking about. It made me very proud to know that my grandpa is looked up to by the Apostles and the Prophet. O how i love him. Thanks grandpa. You are a great example to me.

Well transfers happened yesterday. Elder Wear got transfered. It was sad to see him go. We had a great friendship and i got really close with him. The work moves on though and we will see each other again. I am now with Elder Wright. I am the Senior Companion and am very excited about this transfer. It will be a great transfer. He is from Boise and has only been out a transfer less than me. He is a funny kid and i think we will get along pretty well. Trisha is getting baptized on Saturday!!!!! I am so excited for her. She hasn't smoked in 2 weeks. It is incredible to see the change that the gospel has brought to her life. She is so much more happy and she is so ready to be baptized. I am so proud of her. Wow what a great work.

Well here is a pretty funny story that happened. So we went last Tuesday night to go teach a lady named Rachel. She is Rosemary's mom. She is in her 80's but has read almost the whole book of mormon. She can't hear very well and so we have to yell at her to get her to listen. It's pretty funny. Well we went and taught her and she would not shut up. She just kept tellin us story after story and i tried to get her to stop so we could teach her. Well she wouldn't so i decided to act like i was really listening and really loving her stories. She told us how she has seen 3 ufo's. I got really excited about it and just asked her a lot of questions about it. It was so funny. She continued to tell us that one day she was getting chased by green diamonds. Wow that was intense. We all started laughing right there and she didn't know that we were laughing at her. I had to get up and leave the room because i couldn't control myself. It was pretty funny. She kept referring to something and she would say well lets keep this between you me and the door knocker. I asked her who the door knocker was and she just laughed and then she proceeded to ask us if we wanted a lemonade about 5 times during the visit. It was a pretty good visit and we finally got down to talking about the Book of Mormon. Everything she was saying about it was right on. It was really wierd but that was my interesting story for the week.

I love this work. It is the Lords work. We need to do the things that we are commanded to do. I know that as we do our part the Lord will do his. '' I the Lord am bound when ye do what i have said, but when ye do not what i say, ye have no promise.'' The Gospel of Jesus Christ is true. It is unbelievable what it does for people. I have seen it work miracles in my life and in other peoples lives. I love it with all of my heart. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of god. The Lord leads his church through him. I love the Book of Mormon and I love Joseph Smith. He did amazing things and i am so greatful for that. I love all of you. I am so thankful for all of your love and support. My time has run out. I need to go back to doing the Lords work. I love it with all of my heart.

Love Elder Sam Rudd