9/19/09

hey cutie i dont know who this good looking, intelligent young man that you wrote to is but i read his letter. i had a great week all is going well and i cant really complain about anything. as far as our global family wait till jessica is in college and steven is in afghanistan and i am in tonga. then well see how well you can email and take phone calls. but i have full faith in you. steven and i will just have to stop being such chatter boxes so jessica can have some time. im sorry i think that these emails are cursed im trying to email you and i have had like ten people call and two people come in. president just sent me an email i need to get done so im going to go do it but i love you and hope all is well. love virgil

9/12/09

hey pop im pretty sure that you can > just send it in the mail and i > will let you know when i get it. ill just have some one > here call you > real quick and let you know. im not sure how i will > activate it i > think you can just activate it there and just dont disclose > the pin > until i callyou and it should be fine. > > im glad your finally getting back on your feet again i know > how much > fun it is to lay around being sick al the time. my comp has > been sick > the last day or two but we are to busy and cant get away to > let him > rest at all. luckily today is pday so he got a good nap in > wile i > washed the car and did some house cleaning. > love elder mayberry

9/12/09

hey cutie i got my package this week with the camera and stuff inside
i just wanted to start off and say thanks i really appreciate it i
went like twelve weeks without a camera and lost a lot of pictures
when it got taken. so it will be nice to have something to snap a shot
every now and then. sounds like all is well back at home im glad that
you are all having a good time and staying busy. i just realized that
this week is my year mark thats kinda cool but i must say that this is
going by way to fast but i guess that is eternally better than way to
slow. for a meeting to be immortal doesnt mean it has to be
everlasting. it takes on e heck of a meeting to beat no meeting at
all. even if everything goes absolutely wrong life goes on and if it
doesnt then you have a whole new set of problems. when you work work
hard when you play play hard when your angry pretend like your not.
and now i better go lay down before i hurt myself trying to seem all
intelligent and whatnot.
i have to tell you about transfers. we had 6 boat cancellations 2
airplanes canceled 200 dollars lost 50 dollars stolen 1 zone
conference forgotten and 0 things that ended up going right. but the
good news is that all of it got done even though i had to drive a
bunch of elders home at 300 in the morning a few times last week and
pulled more than one 20 hour day. the good news is president didnt
have to worry about any of it. he has plenty on his plate already so we
try to take care of it ourselves whenever possible.
we had some fun teachings this week we have about 6 investigators
right now that we are teaching. we met this one guy that has been
excommunicated from the church for 36 years because when he went to
turn in his mission papers the bishop told him that he had to shave
before he would let him go. the guy got mad and went home and got
drunk slept with a girl and ended up going down a path that involved
some pretty heavy sins even murder. so watch your tempers and try to
stay away from alcohol.
love elder mayberry

9/4/09

Quote re: Courage is not defined by those who fought and fell but by
those who fought and fell and rose again.


ok that is a great quote i havent heard that in forever. where did you
get that one from;-).
i was glad to hear that jess got to play in the game. I forget school
has been going so long.
Time goes so fast, this is a bit different down here
so i dont get much feel for what time it is in your world. sounds like
she is having fun though.
unfortunately i dont have a lot of fun things
to tell you. im trying to get the transfer planned out this weekend i
have to move 23 missionaries to 7 islands 4 of which dont have any
regular boat or airplane service and its a bit like trying to sweep a
dirt floor you can make it look better but its still dirt. i have been
getting a lot of financial experiences lately i have been helping the
office couple balance out all of the paper work for the mission we
think that a few companies have been a bt dishonest with us so we ran
our own little audit of their transactions to find out how much they
have been charging so we can know when they are jipping us. the
missionary work has slowed to a crawl for some reason all of our
investigators dont like listening to us after the second lesson they
think two is company but three is a crowd applies to gospel principals
but hey i guess everyone has their free agency. love you guys
elder mayberry (aka virgil) in case you forgot who that was)

Pictures from Virgil

8/29/09

hey pretty lady you worry to much. it just so happens that last week i didnt have time to email anyway so i wouldnt have read them if you did email me. ;-) but i do appreciate you writing me all the time i know your always busy but its always good to hear from my mommy. man i have been out here for a long time now. this world seems more at home to me than the one you guys are in and yes they are two different worlds. i had an amazing week last week i had a baptism a 12 year old boy named valoa tonga. he is a good kid from a little island he came down here to go to school and so he is living with a family here in our area. i totally didnt know that shanna was getting married but good for her. i found out that rhino hyatt has had a girl for a couple months now. i was really sorry to hear about your bad day mom. some of those days you just wish you had never woke up in the morning. luckily i have never had one of those though so i can only sympathise with you so much. ;-) life is just peachy here im loving it and everything is going great. there is a general authority here right now with his family visiting our mission and we are in charge of everything he and the president do we plan cars planes boats meals. we move missionaries to meeting s feed them and get them home. plus we go to all the meetings to listen to all the awesome talks. needles to say that we have been busy we have pulled a few 20 hour days this week. this is week five of the transfer and it looks like i will be staying another transfer with my same comp here in the office. sorry i accidently sent that one before i finished it so read teh other one first then this one. but today was our pday and we had a blast my comp and i rode our bikes for an hour out to the very end of the island through all my first areas all the way to the end. (by the way if your looking at a map of tonga i live in liahona right now) so my comp and i spent a few hours out there catching fish and eating them it was a really fun. then we get a phone call( we are required to have our phone on us at all times) telling us that although president and elder hamula are in vavau there families are here in tonga and getting kind of restless so they ask us to entertain them. we took them and all the couple missionaries (4couples) out to some cliffs and caves and (2 15yr old buys 1 17yr girl) we caugh tsome fish for them and showed them how to eat it raw the boys were all up for it but the girl was apparently not very hungry. then we caught some crabs and cooked them up for them. i even climbed a coconut tree for them to try that. then we took them whale watching. by then it was time for my comp an di to get back to work so we did some teachings tonight then i thought i would drop you guys a line saying hi and that i love you all. sorry my spelling is so bad im trying to write this in a hurry because i always forget the stuff im supposed to write you guys about. i think i have already forgotten all the cool stuff but its ok i still write in my journal most of the time so you can ask me about it later. (even all the spiritual stuff that i never seem to write you guys about gets in there so you can all be spiritually edified when you read my journal. or you could read a journal i read about it the other day its by this guy named nephi turns out he was a pretty cool guy he actually saw the savior and so did his little brother so i would recommend reading his first but if you have some spare time after that ill be happy to share my journal with you all im trying to keep it so that you all and even my grand kids can read it. but anyway i love you all elder mayberry

8/14/09

well mother that was a very enjoyable letter and got some good news
out of it. i have some great news i got both your box and grams box
this week and i was very happy to get both of them. they made me a
very happy little elder. please tell gram thank you for me. and tell
you thank your for me as well. i dont know why you didnt get a picture
of me and the pres every one else in my group did maybe they just
forgot. but i will get one sometime in the near future. did i ever
get a plaque made?
tell steven i said hi.
tell thomas good luck on the Chem class and that if all else fails just make
it blow up then when you fail the class at least it will be
entertaining. and if you make it blow up big enough you might realize
that chemistry is kind of fun.

this week was really good we are teaching a lot nowadays we hit 4
lessons last night and we have some families that are really coming
along well. i would go into detail on all of the wonderful experiences
that happen here.......... but that's what the ensign is for. ;-) and
who am i to try to compete with the prophet.
well i think that i m going with my comp down to the beach we are
going to go get some coconuts and a family is cooking us dinner then
we are going down to the beach with a bunch of teenagers and having a
picnic i have no idea how to spell that. i love you all
the church is true. the best way to gain a testimony of it is to live
it and see how wonderful it makes your life.
elder mayberry