Goodbye Ozzy, burned a shirt, and some flash flooding

Hey guys.

I guess I'll start out with Ozzy. For those of you who have been over to our home, you've met Ozzy; he was our happy, hairy, lovable dog. Apparently he wasn't in the best of health, and after a long and good life, he was put down this past week. It's really odd for me to think about how long he's been around. It's been the majority of my life. There are tons of memories I've had with that dog, and he'll always be a member of the Dowdle family.
 

This has been a different week for us. For one, we're starting to get into monsoon season here in Vegas, and there have been a couple of flash flood storms that have caught us out of nowhere. On Saturday, we held a burning at the Bryans house (it's customary for missionaries to burn a tie at 6 months, a shirt at 12 months, a pair of pants at 18 months, and a full suit after two years). Since we had three guys in our zone hitting a year and two hitting six months, we had a lot of clothing to burn. About thirty minutes before we started the fire, the wind picked up and a storm hit out of nowhere; it reminded me of being back in Texas! The three of us lit up our shirts, and as soon as we did, a gust of wind blew a flaming shirt out of one of the missionaries hands and onto a nearby bush. Luckily, we caught it before we left the Bryans homeless...but it was close!
 

On Friday we had our Leadership Meeting, which happens quarterly and every trainer, district leader and zone leader shows up. Roughly 100 missionaries. On Wednesday the assistants called and asked Elder Herlin and I to present a training on asking inspired questions. We agreed, and man, I was really nervous, haha. It went alright, though, and we filled up our time and now it's over! As soon as we were finished, I felt a huge weight off of my shoulders; I had been stressing about that for some time.
 

At one point during the week, we had three investigators set for baptism! Buuut just like the flash flood storms, some unexpected things happened and now all three are up in the air. Pray that we know what to do and that we'll be led in the right direction!

It's been a pretty long week, but week four looks pretty promising. Things are going well here and we're having a good time!
 

Love you,

Jesse

p.s. (happy late birthday, dad!)



Elders Herlin and Dowdle
(nice background son!)