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Loved Ones,

Hi all! How the heck are ya? First off, thank you for always being so
good about giving me the weekly update. It's so nice to be in the loop
and hear about all your grand adventures. I need to be better about
giving you all updates. I feel like I say very little of what actually
happens. I will do some real time repentance and strive for a more
news-rich email. Speaking of the news you sent, the waterfall hike
adventure looked pretty darn cool. Nature expeditions are the best!
It's cool that we have the beach in California as well as such lovely
things as hidden waterfalls. Plus, we have the Jelly Belly factory,
and what more could you possibly ask for? In honor of my return in the
next couple of weeks, do you think that you could have one of those
Jelly Belly portraits made of me? That would be perfect. :) I'm
kidding. And now that we're on the subject of jelly, that jellyfish
Uncle Mark found was impressive. Nice one, Uncle Mark! I remember when
we found a jellyfish in La Jolla and I got the poison on me when I
touched it. As Jacob knows, those little troublemakers still pack a
punch when they're dead!

It has been a pretty cool week over here. It flew by like a Nimbus
2001. Actually it was about the speed of a Firebolt. I'm sort of in
denial right now about what stage of my mission I'm in. Please do not
misunderstand -- I am so excited to see your beautiful faces and give
you giant bear hugs! It's just hard to comprehend anything but being
on a mission right now. It's good that you all will be able to coach
me for two weeks far from home before making landfall in California so
that I don't shame our family name by doing something socially
unacceptable or something. I'll be able to get some of the awkward out
with only my close family as witness. Maybe I'll just stay awkward,
actually. It's not like I was suave or anything before. I've likely
always been awkward. But anyway, I digress from the update. The first
thing that comes to mind is that yesterday, Elder Hooper and I did a
little musical tracting. We had the violin and guitar with us, so we
knocked on a few doors and offered to play a song. We had a few takers
who were graced with our rendition of "Amazing Grace". Mom, to answer
your question about the most interesting person I met, I'd say the
honor goes to one of the people we met as we played songs. He was a
large bearded fellow who answered the door with a tall glass of beer
in hand. He was very New-York-friendly (which is a very unique kind of
friendly) and let us in to play for him. He was a bit drunk, but still
in control of himself. When we came in, we met his wife also. After we
turned down a beer, we began to play. He said he liked blues, so I did
my best to blues-ify "Amazing Grace". He approved and requested an
encore, to which we answered with a verse of "Come, Thou Fount".
Though we still had his attention, after this, our repertoire well ran
dry. So, we asked if we could practice and then come back another
night. He agreed! That was fun. People were generally pretty open and
receptive to this technique. It was a good time. Another cool thing
that happens is that we found a giant family who has investigated the
Church before. We met with the husband and committed him to be
baptized on July 27th! There are many more souls in that home that we
hope to meet with at the next lesson. Another event that stands out in
my memory is ward choir practice, which seems like an odd thing to
stand out, but ward choir is one of my favorite things about the Bay
Shore ward. Brother and Sister Burgess lead the choir with great
skill. They are also just awesome people whom I love. Sunday, we
practiced Brother Burgess's arrangement of "A Poor Wayfaring Man of
Grief", and holy cow, Brother Burgess knows how to arrange a hymn. It
was incredible! I wish you could all hear it. He's a musical genius.
As I wrote about ward choir, I remembered another fun adventure. I was
on an exchange with Elder Hart last week, and after a meeting, we were
handing out some supplies from our trunk to a few missionaries. After
this, Elder Hart closed the trunk, and everything would have been just
great if the car keys were not nestled safely inside. Thus began a 7
hour adventure in an area not our own (we traveled to the meeting)
without a car. While some missionaries who most thankfully were at the
office that day secured the spare key (which most thankfully exists),
Elder Hart and I set out on foot to travel the land, looking for souls
to save and food to eat. Food was fairly easy to secure, but finding
someone who was interested in listening to us proved a bit more
challenging. We knocked on a good bundle of doors with little apparent
success. Though no one excitedly ushered us into their home this time,
we had a good time. You can have a lot of conversation when you are on
foot in a foreign land for 7 hours. I'd say it's time we lay this
marathon paragraph to rest. I think that was a pretty good dose of
news, right?

Remember how I mentioned real time repentance earlier? Well, what that
means is that rather than making repentance an occasional event in our
lives, we make it a continual pattern in our lives. When we do, say,
or think something that distances us from God, or neglect to do, say,
or think something we should have and thus also distance ourselves
from God, we can immediately repent of that and immediately be
forgiven. Thus, we have repented in real time. I have a testimony of
this principle. I'd like to invite us all to never delay getting
ourselves nearer to God. It may be that we didn't even make a mistake.
Perhaps we have been injured by the mistake of another. This is still
cause to invite the healing, cleansing power of the Atonement into our
lives so that we can be made whole. You need to treat a wound whether
you received it from tripping and falling (or attempting some athletic
feat that perhaps should have been saved for a stuntman) or from
someone punching you in the face (hopefully not). I have learned that
we ought not to delay our turning or returning to the Lord until we
see a huge gap that has developed. We would do well to recognize
immediately mistakes or spiritual wounds and address them in real
time. This takes spiritual discernment and a desire to be near to God.
I would suggest that we can gain both from fervent prayer and diligent
scripture study.

That is all for now. I love you all so much! Don't forget it! Thank
you for your supporting hands and your welcoming hearts. It means the
world and then some.

Love,
Elder McDonald