Music to our ears (mostly)

A nice update from Matt this week!  I think our whole family shares in his love for music.  Music can touch our souls in a way that words cannot.  I truly believe this!

I miss having a piano to play.  Whenever we go over to member's houses, and they have a piano (most likely out of tune) I sit down and play the only memorized thing i know.  It's getting kind of annoying.  There was one house that had a simplified hymnbook and even a simplified Phantom of the Opera!  It was easy enough for me to play but it made me sad because it didn't sound the same and there weren't a bunch of goofs trying to sing the part of Christine.  Haha.  I'm glad Tami is practicing the piano again.  I always liked it when Tami would play.  I would always hum along and I got good enough that I could choose whether to hum the melody or some other part of the music.  Good choir training.

Another thing I miss is singing and being around people that can sing well.  My companion likes to sing but he is terrible at it.  One time at the end of a lesson, he decided that he wanted to sing a hymn with me.  So I started out on a note that I knew wouldn't be too high or too low and he joined in.  While I was singing with him, he was on the right notes about 70% of the time.  If I hadn't been singing with him, he would have been totally off.  The spirit was there anyway though so it was okay.  Also, my voice quality has gone down.  I try to sing the hymns in Sac. mtg. and I don't sound half as good as I used to.  I try to project my voice but then I cringe and I quiet down.  What's happening to me?  Is there something like adult puberty that nobody told me about that screws up your voice yet again?  Or maybe my voice is being underused.  I'm excited for the Christmas season to start so I can go caroling.  I want to go with a few people in our ward.  It would be a great missionary tool and probably a little more effective than regular tracting.

We helped this lady do a garage sale this week.  We met her as we were biking and saw her and a friend struggling to get this huge desk into her packed garage.  She is in a pretty bad situation.  Her ex-husband molested her daughter so he is in prison.  So now she is a single mom with 2 teenage kids.  She had to do a major downsize in the size of her house, and she is a pack-rat anyway so she has way too much stuff for her own good.  The funny thing is, she has a ton of Bibles and bible story books but "isn't religious".  Haha.  My heart goes out to her.

There is a family in the ward named the Spalka's here that take in troubled teenage girls.  One of their girls decided to come to church on sunday.  It was a girl that we met at the beginning of the transfer when we went over to their house to dinner.  It also happened to be her first day with the Spalka's.  She came to church and we had to teach the gospel principles lesson.  We decided to teach the first lesson.  The spirit there was super strong.  She was crying and there were some eternigators in the class too and they started crying and I was tearing up as I was telling about the first vision.  It was awesome.  Hopefully that will go somewhere.  I'm addicted to the spirit.  it's great!

Well, that's about it for me.  I love you all and thank you for all your emails and support.  Tell the ward Hi for me and that I love them.
-Elder Matt Blakemore