He's going to MEXICO!!

Wow, so we just figured out that we got our visas to go! My
companionship is one out of the six missionaries to get visas to go
this week. I can't even start to talk.... lol it's crazy.... :D I
leave thursday night to go to boise to get the visa, then saturday
morning i'll be going to mexico! I'll be taking a pday tomorrow to
write a lot more hopefully i can explain things and answer questions
better, lol email me tonight with questions and whatever you want.
I'll call tomorrow, i think i only get a five minute call, but email
me tomorrow to tell me when is the best time for everybody, it'll
probably be in the afternoon evening though about five five thirty ish
is the best. I don't know what all to say, my mind is running a
million miles an hour, i have to pack and say goodbies and send a
package home and all sorts of stuff..... So pumped!!!! I finally get
out of here, and get to use my spanish and talking to everybody.....
wow, saw brother glazier and he says he's pretty excited for me, good
memories of the ward shared and all, and, can't wait for me to get
back.

Snap, i'm leaving..... es loco.... :) love you all so so much, and I
can't wait to see what happens.

I'll be able to probably call friday and saturday while in the
airport, i'll get a calling card and use every minute. :) my flight to
boise is ten thursday night, then saturday morning is the probable
time for flying to mexico. not sure what we're doing friday for the
rest of the day, but we meet at the consulate to get our visas friday
morning.

Man, I'm going crazy here, can't even think straight.... I love you so
much, I'm so excited to get out to the field, and I know that praying
will get you answers when you pray with real intent, desiring to do
the will of God. I know that this is the work of the Lord, and I know
with all my heart and soul that He wants me to be in Mexico serving
the people, inviting them to come unto Christ. This is the work, this
is the joy of the Lord, bringing people unto the knowledge of their
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am so so so excited. I love this whole
mission thing. :D

Call you tomorrow, plan on 5:30 I love you so much!

He's going to MEXICO!!

Wow, so we just figured out that we got our visas to go! My
companionship is one out of the six missionaries to get visas to go
this week. I can't even start to talk.... lol it's crazy.... :D I
leave thursday night to go to boise to get the visa, then saturday
morning i'll be going to mexico! I'll be taking a pday tomorrow to
write a lot more hopefully i can explain things and answer questions
better, lol email me tonight with questions and whatever you want.
I'll call tomorrow, i think i only get a five minute call, but email
me tomorrow to tell me when is the best time for everybody, it'll
probably be in the afternoon evening though about five five thirty ish
is the best. I don't know what all to say, my mind is running a
million miles an hour, i have to pack and say goodbies and send a
package home and all sorts of stuff..... So pumped!!!! I finally get
out of here, and get to use my spanish and talking to everybody.....
wow, saw brother glazier and he says he's pretty excited for me, good
memories of the ward shared and all, and, can't wait for me to get
back.

Snap, i'm leaving..... es loco.... :) love you all so so much, and I
can't wait to see what happens.

I'll be able to probably call friday and saturday while in the
airport, i'll get a calling card and use every minute. :) my flight to
boise is ten thursday night, then saturday morning is the probable
time for flying to mexico. not sure what we're doing friday for the
rest of the day, but we meet at the consulate to get our visas friday
morning.

Man, I'm going crazy here, can't even think straight.... I love you so
much, I'm so excited to get out to the field, and I know that praying
will get you answers when you pray with real intent, desiring to do
the will of God. I know that this is the work of the Lord, and I know
with all my heart and soul that He wants me to be in Mexico serving
the people, inviting them to come unto Christ. This is the work, this
is the joy of the Lord, bringing people unto the knowledge of their
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am so so so excited. I love this whole
mission thing. :D

Call you tomorrow, plan on 5:30 I love you so much!

More MTC pics

 

Andrew and his comps

 

Now this is what I like to see!

 

A pretty sweet pillow fight.

 

There's my handsome missionary!

Some pics of Andrew and his Comps

 

Spanish names on sticky notes on everything!

Pics from the MTC

We went to the temple grounds after eating breakfast at the Village Inn. 

 We stopped to say goodbye to Grandma Austin before going. 

 All ready to go! And it's time to say goodbye.

These are some LONG overdue pics of Andrew's farewell

Here's everyone who came to the farewell!  

All the Austin cousins (except sweet Cayla who had to work)

Andrew with Royn Tischner.  She made this awesome quilt for him in the U of U colors!  The back of it was signed by everyone who came.  What a wonderful memento to take with him on his mission, filled with loving and inspiring messages from friends and family.

 Signing of the blanket!

Mom and best friend Liz Kirkby! So glad their family was able to be here for the farewell.  Lucky it was over Thanksgiving weekend!

Andrew gave a great talk and we had a fabulous time celebrating his opportunity to serve the Lord in Mexico.

January letter #5

January 30, 2012

Hey there family,

I hope everyone isn't stressing anything. I wasn't able to get your email before I had to get off last week. I'll get it answered this week. Which brings me to the main point of this letter, my p-day will be Saturday this week. Probably same schedule, get on and reply to Dad 6ish and last weeks then probably get on 1:30-2:00 If anybody just wants to chat that would be the time to do it :)

Last week..... kinda nervous, don't have my Visa or flight plans yet, so we are praying and fasting here and there, we'll see:). Most likely is stateside till I get my Visa.

Today I got to host the older couples coming in, it was pretty cool. Got to meet a bunch of cool people, got me wanting to serve when I get older :D I'll see when the time comes.

Anyways, everything is still going pretty good. Almost done teaching our teachers, get to have in-field orientation on Friday. All day so it sounds pretty cool to me. :) I'm excited, what more can I say? Well, I suppose I could give you a challenge... you should, read Our Heritage and learn more about the history of the church. It's pretty basic, but always good to know who you support. :) who sacrificed for you. I love you all, talk to you on saturday, maybe when I fly to wherever too:D Hugs and Kisses

Elder Austin

PS Probably hold off on my letters till I get you a new address, maybe new country too. Lol

January letter #4

January 28, 2012

Dear Parents and family, :)

First, I love you all sooooo much! Second, about the dear elder letter, I'll send those shoes home soon, probably with some other stuff too. And thanks for the glasses. I'll enjoy having a second pair. Shoes again, I should be fine. I can probably get some down there cheap if I end up needing them. As for science projects, I thought looking at chlorophyll in Chemistry was pretty cool. :)

As for finances, I don't know yet... It's still a boggle as to what is going to happen. We did get some information though, apparently the people in Mexico who give Visas don't have permission to give anyone Visa's. So this next it's likely we will have to go to SLC and make an appearance at the Mexican Consulate. Hopefully this will help us get our Visa's and we can be off. We will probably, very unsure, have to go to the states somewhere for a bit. All this is speculation because nobody really knows anything.

As for things that I need, I really don't know. I've been living pretty good, and I think most things I'll need I can get pretty easily there. Sounds like a good plan though, and I will keep you well informed, well as informed as letters allow.

You probably won't get this till Tuesday or something so I hope it's still exciting.

Love you

hugs and kisses to everybody

I wish I could talk with you all the time, but I guess that would defeat the purpose. Keep me in the loop :)

Elder A Austin

January letter #3

January 13, 2012

Hey Mom!! :D

So, to reply, first about the letter you added to the package, (thanks for the goodies!) and then I'll reply to the email you sent me while I was emailing you lol. Sorry I couldn't stay on for a bit longer. Next week I'll say I'm on and then reply, and look for new emails while I write. And I think I'll email mostly what I'm up to, print your email and write a letter back. So that way I'll have more time to respond and you should get to hear a bit more of what I'm up to. Anyways, I did send one letter off to you today, so I'll probably send this with Aubrey's to save some postage lol. Hope you enjoy seeing her soon.

Now for replying to written letter first. I loved getting little notes from everybody, lol I think they all had some ideas given to them (this is about the letters the activity days girls sent) cause they were strangely similar:) I sent a letter back to them too :) I hope they like it.

I saw all the pictures! Lol, I loved looking through them and getting to see everybody. It was practically like I was there and that's one down and one to go. (Christmas)

So, Josh got his permit....lol, goodness he must be bouncing out of his mind whenever you drive anywhere.

Hope Jet Blue comes through! But, honestly I can't see why not ;) You are a pretty rocking employee/mom.

Tell Caleb to get his butt moving on that scout stuff! Lol, I'd like to be there for his eagle, but it better not take 6 more years! Josh too, well Josh should be done before I get back, I'm not going to be the only eagle, and I better not be the one who worked the hardest and fastest! Lol Those two can rock the scouting world.

Being a Deacon, lol of what fun :D I'm super proud to hear it and I'm glad I did get to be a part of it before I left. Having fun doing service was the best part, I remember all the smiles and happiness I saw while serving people. I really loved it.

Glad to know that life didn't get too crazy without me, still just chugging along. But, yeah if I can think of anything I need I'll tell you in a letter.

That one pair of shoes actually, the less dressy pair I got from Mr. Mac, they kill my right foot, I've only worn them twice, once was in the beginning and once was a couple days ago, I'd like to just keep going till they stretch out, but they actually hurt to wear :/. If it was just discomfort, I'd be okay, but I won't wear them again. Lol, I was done with them by lunch but we never went back so I could switch.

Anyways, I'll work on the pictures as busy as we are, I only take pics occasionally and generally of other people. But I'll work on that. (We asked him to send more pics of himself) :) I loved the new era clipping too (it was a story about how missionaries affect people far beyond the ones they teach)

On to today's email, lol, well first things first. Tell the Webbs hi for me and how much they rock! Lol, definitely love them.

Well the job, good luck

Rachel and dating... lol, definitely weird. But I do believe not seeing it makes it less weird. And I'll get used to it pretty quick. Winter Ball??? What kind of dork would wait till the day before to ask MY sister to a ball? Lol, just kidding, lol. Sophomores are allowed to be dorks I suppose.

How have Caleb and Josh been getting along lately? This party sounds like a lot of fun, and it seems like if they got along, they'll be the packaged set that everybody wants at parties, lol. They are my favorite pair of goof balls in the world. :)

I do hope the science project goes well, that sounds really cool. :) I wish I could remember all the cool stuff I did in jr high/elementary school. All the more reason to have a journal. I wish I had kept mine more frequently updated. I'm not too good at keeping it here either. Too tired every night. :P

Pretty jealous of all this youth conference stuff. I always loved going to youth conference. The families were awesome and every day was just so spiritually uplifting. Those journal entries were always the best. :) And no, there was nobody who could be a better King Noah (Ifo Pili, a former NFL player portrayed King Noah in one of the vignettes, He is HUGE) Definitely one memory I will treasure is BOM Youth Conference.

Well this has to be the end of this one. I have to get it sent off and on it's way. Hope to hear from you soon. :)

I love you Mom,

Elder M. Andrew Austin

January letter #2

January 12, 2012

Well, I've been meaning to write a bunch more, Just have a tough time really finding a lot of time, to write or read what I want or anything really. I have been ridiculously busy, and most days and nights we sit an dtalk, swapping manly stories and all that fun stuff. All in all, I really don't do a lot besides study, attend classes and teach.

So, one of our elders just got switched to the Salt Lake City Spanish mission. I wish I could put a sad face here. Elder Zufelt, easily the life and soul of our district and one our zone leasers, is packing up tonight and switching to another zone, district and a new building. Not even sure of all the consequences here. Our trio will probably be split up, one of us will go to be with Elder Jonda, Zufelt's companion, and probably become a zone leader with him. It will be an interesting week and I'm not sure how I'll flow with the change. We'll see. I'll email more tomorrow and probably send this off as well. Love you!

Turns out he was joking!!!!!

Anyway it's p-day already sent you an email bright and early this morning. So, lol hope to hear from you really soon. I'll probably write some more after the temple, or might send this off. I'm gonna send it in a big package just cause it's cheaper than sending it in a bunch of different envelopes. Callies, Rachels, and the primary one will come with yours in one. :)

January letters

Andrew sent handwritten letters most of this month.  It took me a while, but I got them all typed up.... So here's the first one!

Jan 4 2012

Dearest Mom,

I got your letter, Dear Elder, and I really enjoyed hearing from you outside of email, lol. I get more time to respond. :) As for my investigators, the ones I teach a lot are just my teachers. Lol anybody else would kick us out as terrible as our lessons go. Lol But the once a week people are member volunteers from the area. Generally anyway.

No joke, we have so much time to study, but so much we have to focus on. Language and how to teach and assessing ourselves and studying in English and spanish for our lessons. Lately I have had less time for myself to go through and study what I want, but I figure that will come eventually.

I really do enjoy getting to learn though, when i'm not ridiculously frustrated...lol. You do know how much I like to have things click, so I'm sure you know how much I dislike when they don't. For probably 3-4 days nothing language wise was clicking. And I was going nuts. So I had some personal prayer time, and really asked for some help. After that things have still been clicking slower than that first week, but I'm not in distress. I trust that when the Lord needs me to be fluent, I can be fluent through Him. For now my focus is teaching and learning how to teach, because if I don't know anything or how to teach it, how can I do it even if I was fluent? That really is exactly what they want us to work on, teaching by the Spirit.

But as far as life here, it kinda just keeps going, one day at a time. Days seem to last forever though, waking up, study, preparing and then teaching and then more studying has it's own little way of dragging on and on and on. Lol it's always a blessing when any one of wants to go to the store, just because it provides a break from the schedule. Probably a couple times a week I run in to the store to pick up something for either the room or cool little study helpers. Plus we get a pretty good discount here for supplies, so that is nice too :)

It's so true when people say the days are like weeks and the weeks are like days. It feels both like yesterday and forever ago that I was here on my first day. Except now I'm a lot better at planning and preparing for the next day. I also generally feel a lot better about teaching too. Lol, I feel like I'm trying to swim across the ocean, but I'm doing my best to keep paddling. It can be frustrating and difficult, and I do feel like I'm falling behind, but i'm learning a little here and there and doing my best, overall I'm trying to. I'm so tired all the time.

I did you workout for me today and yesterday as well, and I am so sore! Lol It definitely reminds me of why I never liked working out. But I absolutely appreciate it, lol, keeps me in touch and feels like I'm home :)