Monday, March 28th, 2011

The baptism went great! Scary though, it was scheduled to start at 10 but at 10:10 they weren't there. I thought they'd pulled a run-away convert and booked it to almost join another church :) (Not really) I baptized her and it was a great great day. The confirmation was yesterday and that was as well awesome. We also had our first investigator at church yesterday, (I don't count Olivia, she came most every week with her way active mom), and in fact, his name was John, and he's sitting right next to me. I didn't notice but we came to the library and he was sitting here, kinda neat. Another cool thing was that the reason why Olivia and her Mom were late was because she was bringing a ton of her less active/non-member family to the baptism and to church the next day! Awesome!!! The ward yesterday was Packed! There were more there than when we had Ward Conference, so that was neat to see. It's cool how just adding more people can bring more of a spirit and contribution to classes and sacrament meeting! Thanks Kimberly for keeping Olivia in your prayers! That means a lot to me.

Bradley of mine, I got your letter and loved the pictures, to bad BYU lost! I truly thought that they would win to fulfill some prophecy or something to prove to the world that people are better off for not doing bad stuff, if that makes sense, but it wasn't meant to be. But anyways, do you remember a Christine Clinnin from Indiana? I met her in the MTC and she recognized my name. She knew or might have been converted by Elder Lyons and she remembered you, and now she's serving a mission.

So something happened this last week that kinda broke my heart a little. Elder Hunt and I were tracting and this guy answered the door after we knocked. We talked and introduced ourselves as missionaries of Christ's church. He listened but then interrupted us and said, "Can I ask you a question? Why did god make my wife kill herself? Thank You! BYE!" He just shut the door and went inside! I couldn't believe it! I was partially heart broken because I KNEW how much he needed what we have and how happy he could be! He just needed to give happiness a chance. That was hard! I almost wanted to go back and force it upon him, for his own good, but we can't do that as missionaries, or as members of the church.

BUT GOOD NEWS!!! GENERAL CONFERENCE IS COMING THIS WEEK!!! I missed it! I can't believe it was 6 MONTHS ago that I went through the Salt Lake Temple and BYU lost to USU in football! Isn't that crazy how fast time goes mom?

In Elder's Quorum yesterday we were talking about families, and how to run them as fathers with our wives now or in the future, and I thought, "Man, I am SO SO blessed to have parents like mine." AND I AM! Mom, all the kids will agree with me! Both you mom and you dad are amazing. I shared with the Quorum that the best thing is prevention and not correction of inappropriate child behavior. The example was how as long as I can remember, we read scriptures early in the morning, and said prayer twice as a family, and you know what? I grew up with that, all the kids in our family have, and you know what that's done? It means that even though Ashlyn and Geneve don't understand anything about the world and are under 5 months old, their parents are reading with them and praying with them. All because that's why you mom and dad have done with us! I'm sure Ashlyn and Geneve and Kaylee will do the same thing with their kids! We don't know when kids start remembering and developing their character, so if you make sure you start early, like Kristen/Jared and Austin/Angie do, and like you did mom and dad, you have nothing to worry about. For you there is and was no need to worry about me doing bad things, because you had taught us well, which translated into me getting good friends. I want that for my children. I was reminded of that during church yesterday!

Hey Justin, Brad and Dad, hopefully Austin as well (unless he's going with his dad and brothers), but probably not Jared, cause he's in Texas, anyways, have fun going to priesthood session this saturday! My comp and I are taking our dinner hour during a pre-priesthood session barbeque and then are gonna watch the session, so it's kinda like what we've been doing for years! Love one another!

I love you mom! I'm reminded of how much you do and how lucky I am to be born into a family with you and dad as the heads. VERY few people have that chance, and I have! I love you!

Your favorite 19 year old son,
Elder Jason McKeen