On January 27, 2011 Eric Merkley was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. An aggressive cancer that we hope and the doctors to this point seem confident that is contained to one spot on his leg. Prognosis is good. Treatments and recovery will be long and painful.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Joy in Simple Things

Eric sent this email a couple of weeks ago, and I am sorry to say, that I have been slacking.  But it is defiantly worth posting... I sure loved it.  I will update the more current emails from him also... Stay tuned.



Hello there :)

So the mission is one that you really have to find joy in the simple sometimes.  Today we were shopping in Walmart and we were in the market for some jelly, to make some tasty sandwiches. The lord really blessed us :) why you may say, because Elder Hosman and I got the last Raspberry all natural jelly in the Store!! People were looking at us weird when we got excited and gave one another high fives over jelly :)

SO…. I have a great Ghetto story by popular demand haha.  Elder Hosman and I were out going to see a Mien member. We walked up to the door and have it a solid 5 knocks as usual. When out of nowhere, we heard pop pop pop pop pop pop!! We turned around to see a dark Blue Grand am Speed past as they put 8 bullets into a Ford Expedition. Nobody was hurt in the shooting but Elder Hosman and I were eyes witness to the whole thing. A man comes out of the house that was the place of the shooting and he was covered with tattoos from head to toe by the looks of it. It was very obvious that we were just in between an act of gang violence. Right away the man with all the tattoos called some of his "homies" and said " I know who it was and we got to get them *&%&*%@. The part that was really sad that after he got off the phone, 2 little girls came out of the house crying and needed some attention. The man called for a woman in the house to grab the kids and to take them somewhere else. They got out of the area and the cops showed up an hour later, the reason being that no one got killed so it was not high on the list of priorities. We had to give our statement to the police and we moved on our way knocking on a couple of doors. Haha :) oh the life in the Ghetto 

WELL I hope that no one is being shot at, it is a scary experience. I love you and appreciate you. Much love Elder Merkley