week 8!

Well how is everyone doing?? It's good to hear from shauna and see all the cool pictures! thanks shauna and you're not horrible! haha and I haven't read you letter yet mom, but I saw the pics of qp's new house! that was neat I'm happy everything seems to be working out! and it's good to hear that it rained back home! I love rain! We didn't get any rain until week 6, and this past weekend was completely rained out. It was awesome! We went on our temple walk yesterday, and it was sprinkling the whole time! woohoo! oh and thanks for all the birthday wishes! I got the Facebook posts that mom sent, and I just got the Dr. Suess card before I wrote this email! Thanks McKenzi and friends! yall rock! haha oh and I've seen my Thatcher buddies quite a bit lately. They are all doing fine! Elder Nolan says he's waiting for QP to send him a package haha. They other day in gym I was upstairs on the track and I saw an elder on the court downstairs wearing a Peru soccer jersery. It looked just like mine! turns out it was just Elder Nolan again haha he was wearing the one I gave him. then we played four sqaure. Well shoot, apparently we have some amazing spanish books that debuted in 2011 that the church has invested millions of dollars in. QP and KP never had them, and they are miles ahead of any other language learning method in the world. In two years or so, we can use them to finally teach mom how to speak spanish! haha I've been really enjoying my conversations with elder Killian (who's in our district). We talk about Banjo Kazooie a lot haha and we reminisce on all the levels and we even sang the theme song for Freeze eezy peak! it was a blast! Last night we had an amazing devotional. If you can, look up Jenny Oaks Baker. She's a professional violinist who gave up a spot on a world famous symphony to raise her children full time. her husband is Dallin H. Oaks grandson. She is amazing! and her kids are ridiculously good too...they are only 5, 7, 9, and 10 and they played a powerful rendition of I am a Child of God. They played the acoustic guitar, cello, piano, and violin, respectively. It was insane! It actually inspired me to go learn the piano or something haha. This past week, poor Elder Von Kampen fell asleep twice. In personal study our district noticed he was asleeep. we banged on the door and shouted his name and even poked him, and he didn't even budge! what a maniac! I thought he was dead haha then I rubbed his shoulders for a solid 10 seconds, and he finally darted awake! we all thought he was pulling our leg, but he was honestly asleep! in sacrament meeting yesterday it happened again, and when I finally woke him up he darted awake and had the most confused and terrified expression I have ever seen. he apparently thought he had to give a talk or something. It's not every day you get a companion who has coma's instead of sleeping. haha well on a more serious note, we had a bit of a shake up earlier this week. one of our roommates showed us some flight plans the other day. he said he needed to go and work some things out. the hardest part was his companions reaction. He was crushed, and Elder Von Kampen and I and some others from the zone just talked with him for a while. He was tearing up pretty good. He's doing a whole lot better now though! I just hope that the other elder returns! he actually has an exactly identical twin here at the MTC. Whenever I see him it really throws me off haha. and so now we have two new roommates, Elder Reed and Elder Eliason. They are pretty cool! Alright well, I'm doing good! I love being here at the MTC, and I love this gospel! I love you all! thank you for everything!

Con amor,
Elder Payne :)

p.s. If you want to look up Elder Von Kampen on Facebook, he said it's okay. Just in case you're wondering what he's like haha oh and I sent mom a hand written letter today. You can share it with the family if you want, and you can even put it on the blog too. I'm out of time, so you'll find out more once you get it! Peace out everyone!