Monday, February 25, 2013

Hey!!

Hope everyone is doing good. I'm doing pretty good. My week went by pretty fast probably because we were super busy with meetings and stuff. So I watched the video of Ashlee and that's so cool. Make sure to tell her that I told her congrats and she will tear it up out there. I'm really excited for her. I was hoping she would read Louisiana Baton Rouge mission but that didn't happen. Oh well...she got called there for a reason. It's crazy that there will be 3 of us out on missions at the same time. We just need Justin out here now. So I did get those pants and they are  a little too big. I was pretty upset. I just have had the hardest time finding pants that fit me. I guess I might try to go to Penny's and  exchange them for different ones or if not I might just have to end up sending them back home. So this past week our lesson with Sis Dubois was pretty sweet. We had a lesson where we read in the scriptures of the prophets testifying of Christ..and when they were personally visited by Christ. Then we watched  the Lamb of God. I thought it went super good. Probably one of the better lessons we had. I think she is starting to open up more and participate in the lessons. Before she would not participate. She would just sit back and listen. So I think we are making a little progress. Yeah all Bro. Dubois wants is to get sealed as a family. He grew up in the church but fell away. Then a few years ago the bishop extended a calling to him even though he was never coming to church. He accepted the calling and started coming back to church. He ended up baptizing his daughter and he went through the temple. He's super solid now. Now they are just waiting for Sis Dubois to join so they can get sealed. I do believe in late bloomers. Even as members of the church.... we just have to be patient and see what happens. This past weekend I got to do some fun stuff. So I didn't end up going to the fireside BYU was having. I got to do something even better. I got to go to the game. Actually I went to 2 games. I went to the BYU-LSU games on Thurs night and Sat night. The first game a member took us and BYU was winning most of the game then in the bottom of the 9th LSU came back and won it. It was intense. Then on Sat night we went as like a zone activity. BYU crushed LSU like 9-4 or something like that. BYU has some studs on their team. I think LSU was even ranked like 3rd in the nation or something like that. But it was way sweet. It made me miss baseball a little bit. We had to wear our suits to the game though so we were getting all kinds of people looking at us funny. On our way out of the Sat night game we had all kinds of people yelling at us and swearing at us because BYU beat them. LSU sports are so crazy. People here are way into their sports. It was so hard not to yell back at them. They did yell at us and tell us we had nice suits. I'm pretty sure they were being sarcastic but I'll take it as a compliment. Anyways that was pretty much my week. We are still trying to work with a couple people that have potential but it's a slow process. I love y'all. :)

Elder Willis <3

Tuesday, February 19, 2013




 

Hello!!

So tomorrow is transfers and everything is still staying the same. Haha that will make me and my companion together for 4 transfers...a quarter of our mission together. The first 2 transfers with him were pretty rough. But now I'm just like it's whatever. I have been with him for so long I can deal with him. This will make about a year for him in St. Amant. I think he is ready to get out of this area. I don't mind this area at all. This is probably one of the best areas in the mission. Plus I was in Opelousas for a while which is probably one of the least desirable areas so I'm happy to be here. This kind of worked out good for me too because this means that I'll probably be at the transfer meeting that Trevor will be at when he gets here. So I'll probably be able to see him. I did get the valentine package you sent me. I don't want to hurt your feelings mom but I just gave all the cookies you made to the other elders. They say thank you Sister Willis :) I just don't like eating junk food anymore. (This is a comment from mom.....YEA!!) I'm trying to get back in shape. I guess you could say I kind of hibernated from working out during the winter. I'm trying to get back in my excersice routine. That's so cool that Ashlee should be getting her call this week. I'm excited to see where she goes. Yeah... if you want to try to send me a little video that will be fine. I'm not sure if it will work but you can try. She will probably go somewhere in the states. They are trying to send more missionaries in the states so they won't have to spend time teaching them the language. I guess they just want the missionaries in and out of the MTC and get them going. All the bishops from around here had a meeting with L. Tom Perry and our bishop was telling us during the meeting Elder Perry said the church projects about 70-80,000 missionaries in the field by the end of the year and by the end of like 2015 they should have about 100,000 missionaries out. That's just nuts to think about. In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord says that he will hasten the work in its time. That prophecy is being fulfilled for sure. It's getting down to crunch time. I'ts awesome to be a part of this. Anyways my week was a pretty good one. Nothing really happened. We had a pretty good lesson with the Dubois. We just played a review game with all the things we have taught so far. The kids really enjoyed it. Sis Dubois still is not getting anywhere it seems like. We are really struggling on what to teach her. I think this week we are just going to have a lesson on Jesus Christ and read scriptures that talk about him. Then show a little video on Jesus Christ. We are running out of things to teach her. This is the transfer that she will either get baptized or we are going to have to stop coming over and teaching her. I don't want to stop teaching her but we are getting to that point where we have taught her everything that we can teach her. She is really the only person we are working with right now. Everyone else that kind of showed some interest we havent been able to talk to. We will just have to wait and see what all happens. Nothing else has really been going on. This week should be pretty cool though because I think on Friday we are going to have a fireside with the BYU baseball team. I guess this week they have some series against LSU and South Eastern so they want to hold a fireside for all the missionaries. I think that should be pretty cool. I'll have to tell you about it next week. Anyways that's really all I got this week. Talk to you guys next week. Love you.

Elder Willis



 
 
This is a picture taken down in New Orleans.  A member took them down to visit.  Tyler says he doesn't like this picture because it makes him look fat......He says....".I'm not as big as it looks." :)We are just excited to get a picture and thinks he looks pretty good!

 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Feb. 11. 2013

Hey!

Hope everyone is doing good. It's crazy to hear about everyone going on missions now. I guess we just grow up so fast :)  It sounds like it's been pretty cold over there. It's been pretty nice here but the past few days it's been raining pretty bad. It's pretty crazy when it rains here because all the bayous will over flow and everything will start flooding. So this past week was a pretty good one. Just a normal missionary week I guess. Our lesson with Sis Dubois was so-so. We had a lesson on faith and I think we probably over did it a little too much. Just a whole lesson on faith can make someone really bored. So I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know what she needs. We are running out of lessons to teach her too. I think this week were going to try and get the kids involved and have like a review jeopardy game of all the things we have taught so far. We thought our lesson on faith would be a really good one for her. But during the lesson I was just thinking to myself...this is not what she needs. After the lesson I was just super frustrated because I know there is something we need to teach her that she needs but we can't figure it out yet. So I guess I need to do some more praying and studying and try to find out what she needs. We will just have to wait and see what happens with them.  I still think she is slowly progressing forward even though it might not seem like it. So the hispanic family that moved into our area from Texas is super sweet. We had dinner with them on Saturday night. They made some good soft chicken tacos. I haven't had some good authentic mexican food since I've been here. I'll admit that I miss mom's mexican food even though I didnt really care for it back home. Haha. We don't eat mexican food here besides Taco Bell. Anyways we are probably going to start teaching the father soon. The family loves us. They want us over like every other night for dinner now. So do you guys remember those Mangos on a stick with the red sauce and the chili powder that we would get on the beach down in Rocky Point that were super good?? I asked this family about them and they know how to make them so next time we go over there they are going to make those for us. So there is this Sister missionary that came home from her mission. She's from here in Gonzales. She came up to us at church and started talking to us and said she got back from the Arizona Tucson mission. I was like where all did you serve and she was like Tucson, Benson, Morenci, and her last area was Pima/Central. I was like no way I have family in Central. I was like do you know Renee and Joey Layton? She was like yeah. In fact she just had dinner over at there house. So that was pretty crazy. She knew Justin and Jacob and alot of other people that I knew from Central. Small world huh? Her name is Sis. Goldsmith. During her talk she was talking about the areas she served in and she was like  "my last area was the Gila Valley which is pretty much the Celestial Kingdom." So that was pretty cool. The other day I was washing some clothes and when I came down to change them there was like an inch of water all over the floor. I guess our washing machine got clogged up. So we had to scoop a ton of water out of our apartment. That wasn't very fun. Anyways I don't have anything else to talk about. Can't wait to hear from you again. Remember your always in my prayers.

Elder Willis <3

Monday, February 4, 2013

Hey!!

Hope everyone is doing good. I'm doing fine. Sounds like you guys have been pretty busy. I got your package the other day and I probably already ate half of it. I needed some semi-healthy cereal. All we have in our apartment is sugary cereal. All those years of complaining of healthy cereal and now I'm glad I have some. So we have a little change in our aparmtent. One of the other Elders is going home a couple weeks early so he's leaving this week. It will be a little different with him gone. All 4 of us have been together for 4 months now. We had a pretty good bond between us all. All 4 of us were kind of like a little gang in our zone. So the other Elder is getting a new companion. He's already with us. He's going to Brazil and waiting for his visa to come so he will be living with us until he gets his visa. So now we have 5 people living in our apartment. Crazy..so just send whatever kind of slacks you want. As long as they are not light colored. The super bowl hype wasn't too crazy where I'm at. Everyone is just getting ready for Mardi Gras next week. Anyways this past week was a pretty good week. The work in our area is starting to pick up now. Things with Sis Dubois are going good. We had a really good lesson with her this past Wednesday. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and the spirit was really strong there. At the end of the lesson we watched a little video clip and I think that touched her pretty good. She still is moving forward slowly. Bro Dubois told us that they all read the scriptures as a family but he can't get her to read on her own. I think that is one of the reasons that is  holding her back is that she won't read the Book of Mormon. That's the ticket...if a person will just read the Book of Mormon they will progress so much faster. That's why when I teach people I try to put so much focus on reading the B of M and gaining a testimony of it. As I look back on all the people I have taught that didn't really progress or have dropped us is because they didn't read the B of M. So I think this next lesson we are going to take a different route and just have a lesson on Faith and gaining faith by reading the Book of Mormon. A couple days ago we got a media referral for this guy that wanted the Book of Mormon so we go over there and he already knew everything about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. He seems like a super sweet guy and he wants to learn more from us. We will just have to see how things will go with this guy. There also is this Hispanic family that moved into the area from Texas and the wife is a member and the husband isn't.  They all came to church and he told us he wants to get baptized and he wants us to come over and teach him and stuff. So right now we got a few good things going for us. So the other day we were talking to this guy from the other ward that works for Dome Technology. And he's asking where we're from and he's like Heber Arizona?  I built the dome school there. I'm like no way that's where my mom works. He lived in Heber for like 8 months while they were building the school. He also built the dome in Payson and the dome in Whiteriver. I was like yeah I've played basketball in both of those domes. So I can say I know the guy that built all the domes around there. That was pretty much my week. Nothing too crazy has happened. Well can't wait to hear from you guys again. I love you and your in my prayers.

Elder Willis