Feb. 12, 2007

Dear Family,

Hey how's everthing going?

Well here it is. I am leaving on Monday. Oh yeah! Just look at it all those 5-8 hour layover and 12 hour flights. I know that you are jealous. I am really excited. I keep having these moments where I think that I don't know, but I know that everything is going to be OK. I will learn alot faster when I am out there. There are sometimes when I am a little scared, but they don't last very long.

So other than that everything is good. I just need to make sure that I don't make myself forget Russian. Last Saturday Elder Krogue and I had a TEC (where we were planning on teaching the 2nd lesson) Brother Stratford, who went to Russia or Ukarine on his mission. It was so awesome I don't have time to write you the whole story but we went in to teach and all of a sudden he was telling us that his life was hard and full of trails (he was playing the role of an investigator) and Krogue and I suddenly became sincerely concerned for this "investigator" and all of the sudden the Spirit took control of the lesson and in the end we (The Spirit) committed him to baptism. One big thing that I learned is that you don't have to know the lanuage perfectly to teach by the Spirit, when the Spirit is the one in control. We stumbled though what the Spirit was telling us to say, but we always were able to say it some other way or something, but we always said what the Spiri told us. It was amazing.

So, I finaly got a letter from Tyler. Spain, that's so awesome. Well I guess I'm out of paper to write on so I guess that's it.

Elder O'Dair (written in Russia)

Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2008

Dear Home
Happy New Years.
Today is Jan. 1st and it is exciting and depressing. I've already been here a month. I only have 23 more month left.
For Russian this week we have been starting to do the first lesson in Russian. The older districts will be gone in a week and there will be only our and one other ditrict that came when we did. There were about 40 missionaries in our zone now there will only be 14. But in two weeks about 50 more Russian missionaries will be coming in. Not all will be coming into our zone but we will be the old missionaries now.
Well for New Years last night our room counted down to 10:30 P.M. and went to bed.
Sweet, Elder Gramp just reminded me that we have our General Authority Devotional tonight.
It has been a good week. Keep praying for me because I need it. Love you all.
Elder O'Dair

I can't type all the Russian he writes. He wrote all our names in Russian. Mark will never be able to write capital N's the right way any more, they are always backwards.
Love, MOM

Here's a blog about our favorite missionary. If you have letters or pictures you would like to post go right ahead! This way we can all keep track of Mark as he goes throughout his mission. Enjoy!