B is home.

We love him.
We are happy.
The end.

B writes his last email home.

so i guess ill just see you guys on wednesday? im nervous, its gonna be sad to go, but it feels right. time to move on. i havent been in my area for a week now, ive been with our zone leader, so im going to get everything finished up today and then go to the mission home tomorrow. said my goodbyes, got a couple of pictures, i think the only thing left is packing. ill see you soon.

B is going out with a bang.

1/25/10
yowsers. 9 days till the big one. everyone i see keeps reminding me, missionaries, members, everyone. i lined up an all star dinner schedule for my "last suppers" so i can go out with a bang. and a big gut. we took one of the youth, alvin, out with us for a 24 hour showdown which he enjoyed. hes the coolest kid ever, a mexican from el salvador that was born here in the states and talks more spanglish than anyone ive ever heard. hes awesome tho, before, he didnt want to serve a mission, but now hes excited for it since weve been bringing him with us all the time. his older bro, hyrum, is taking a bit more work cuz hes such a slug, but it will all turn out. we cover the singles branch now, which kinda bites, because there are 3 people were going to be teaching, one just came on sunday for the first time and the other is coming next week. the third was already being taught, so the elder replacing me will be comandeering her with barfuss. now all the teaching is starting to happen since im going, which is fun. i was surprised to get some letters from a couple of my converts last week, it was pretty awesome, and one of them gave me a bag of smarties... yum. still not trunky. getting nervous tho. why did they line me up to speak so many times? i thought i was going to get out of it with just one at the home ward. oh well. ill be a little rusty, but i guess i can make it thru.
los angeles is full of weird people. even the ones you would think were normal. makes me dig the promised land (k-town, and utah in general) so much more.

B has a good week.

howdy folks. its raining really hard. good fun. things are going well, we're working hard, im staying not trunky (miracle: im less trunky now than i was 8 months ago), and its all going well. we found this girl a couple days ago that were going to be teaching, she is way cool and her boyfriend is a member from encino, so she knows a lot about the church already and wants to learn more. we knocked on her door while tracting but she was leaving so we set up a return appt and she was there, which is surprising enough, but she wanted to talk about it all, etc. finally found someone after like 40 hours of tracting these last couple weeks. im on the 15 min computer, the others are full, so this email will be kinda short, sorry. ill send another in a little while when i get back on.

B will give a speech detailing his adventures in Tinseltown.

If you would like to come see how fat B's gotten and hear some Spanglish, come to Francis Ward on February 14 at 10:45 am. Free grub afterwards.

B wonders what happened to humanity.

hi everybody. Thanks for the birthday card, it reminded me it was my b-day. i used up most of my time taking notes on the small scraps of paper the library gives out, so this will be short. and i have nothing to say.

driving through inglewood we pulled up to a stoplight and while we were waiting for it, i was watching this bum sitting at a bus bench while some lady (who i dont think was a bum by tradional standards, but a bum nonetheless) staggered over to him on the bench and started talking to him for a minute. when he looked away she snagged the bottle of vodka next to him and pounded as much as she could, then put it back and staggered away. the bum gave her the dirtiest look ive ever seen but wasnt in much condition to beat her down, so he held on to that booze as strong as he could, in case she came back i guess. i think thats the lowest ive seen society reach, someone stealing from a bum...

we had a dinner this week so we went there and helped get everything ready while it finished cooking. we started with salad, and when our host got up to check on the main course, he went quite, then called out, "honey, i think you forgot to turn the oven on." i felt so bad because i wanted to laugh, but it would have been the worst time to do so ever, and the lady was so embarrassed. it all worked out fine tho, i even got a vanilla frosty out of the deal.

B is a 21 year old wordsmith.

hi everyone. happy birthday gina. youre getting old.
sorry i didnt write last week, i was pretty sick and my guts were getting rid of everything out of both ends all monday and tuesday, so i wasnt much up to sending an email. oh well, nothing exciting has happened yet anyway. another anecdote:
we were visiting this less active kid last week and he was messing with a spherical rubix cube where you make the patterns into hexagons. we got started talking about shapes and his brother said to try to make one into a 5 sided shape, and he couldnt remember what you call that, so elder barfuss pipes up with a "thats what we call an octagon, champ". so after laughing my guts out (remember the "that would be dutch" statement) i informed him it was actually a pentagon.
still not many people to teach here in westerchester. we are having success with hyrum (the less active kid) he comes to church now and we take him tracting, so hes doing super well considering he hasnt been to church in 8 years but this sunday made 5 in a row with him. other than that, its back to the grind in the white areas. im still not trunky, and im actually less trunky now than 5 months ago, which is well, but it makes me nervous...
hope everybody's holiday season went well. i havent come up with new years revolutions yet... and im working on the resolutions, but neither seems likely. if you set goals, youre just setting yourself up to fail, so i stay away from that kind of stuff.
im almost thru all my junk food from christmas, i only have another 10k grams of sugar to go and ill be done. and a bottle of orange shasta.
hasta next week.