Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Hey!

Those pictures of Grandma's casita look nice. It looks pretty much like grandma Goodmans. You guys did a pretty good job building that thing up...well I guess dad did a pretty good job. He probably did most of it. About the pants... I'll send them home and you can just get new ones. I guess with Stafford I wear a 34-32. And I already have a blue pair. Tha'ts the one I wear all the time so I can use a black and a dark grey. So i'ts spring break for you guys? That's fun...I don't get spring break. The schools here are all on spring break this week too. And one of the schools had their prom this past weekend too. I thought that was pretty early to have prom. There is a couple schools in my area. One school is pretty much where all the black kids go and the other is pretty much where all the white kids go. Things down here are still pretty segregated. They have black gas stations and white gas stations. It's weird. So next week is transfer week. I'll be emailing on Tuesday again and tell you what's happening. I'm pretty sure my companion will be getting transferred but that's what I thought the past 3 transfers. So you just don't know until you know. My mission president doesn't usually leave companions together for very long. So 4 transfers together is pretty unusual. He does like to leave missionaries in areas longer though. I don't mind staying in this area. This is probably the best area in the mission. Probably because most of the people here are semi-normal. Most of the people that live here in Gonzales are from different states working at all the plants here. There are a ton of plants along the Mississippi River and that's where alot of people work. Anyways my week went by pretty fast. So you liked talking to Sis Guy? They are a sweet family. She was like has your mom sent you an easter package yet? I was like noo....then she was like what? I'm texting your mom right now!! So I was like alright...tell her I like hand written letters too. Then on Sunday she came up to me again and asked me if I got my easter package yet. So I told her no and she was like what? I already sent my son 2 packages. I just told her I guess my mom doesn't love me that much :) We didn't get to have a lesson with the Dubois this week. Their daughter has softball practice on Wednesday nights and Bro Dubois helps coach so they are trying to find another night we can start coming over again. I think things with the Dubois are dying down. I don't want that to happen but that's what I think is going on. I'm not sure if we are even going to have a lesson with them this week. I guess we wait and see. Sunday we got to go down to Morgan City and speak in their branch. The same member that took us down to New Orleans had to go speak down there and wanted us to go and speak with him. They have a tiny branch. It reminded me of the tiny branch I was in in Opelousas. I like being in the bigger wards way better. Tiny branches are not very fun to serve in. Anyways I'm pretty sure that some of the swamp people live in Morgan City. I think that's what I heard. Troy Landry...the guy that says choot em!! It looked like it would be a perfect place for some swamp people to live. I think I probably told you guys this already but the Guist brothers on swamp people live in my area. We tried to knock on their door this one time but someone came out and told us they were atheist. Haha they live in some dumpy trailers. The members in my area don't like them either because they would come to school all smelly and would have like frogs in their overalls.. I don't know. Anyways the tri-companionship is still going pretty good. We are staying really busy because we have alot of people we could see so the days go by pretty fast. We went and saw our 85 year old lady but I don't think she really remembers us. We didn't really get to talk to her because her son was there and he talked our ear off. I guess he was a spy during the cold war and I'm pretty sure he was telling us some stuff about the war that he shouldn't be telling us. So I know some top shelf secrets now. He wants us to come over again but I think that's probably because he wants to tell us some more of his spy stories. Well anyways that was my week. Talk to you later alligator. Love ya.

Elder Willis

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Hey!!

Sounds like everyone is doing great. My week was a good one. It went by pretty fast. So..... I was wondering if you could send me some more ties. I'm getting sick of all the ties I have. I need some new ones to freshen up my tie collection!  Anyways about my week....this past week I was pretty sick for a couple days. I had a bad headache and cold. I didn't want to stay in either. So I just sucked it up and went proselyting anyways. I think I probably took more advil than I should have. But now I'm fine. So the other day I was reading some talks on lds.org and I came across J. Golden Kimball and I remember  someone  would talk about how he would swear in his talks. So I read some of his talks and sure enough he just swears away. Haha it's funny. Could you ask if anyone has any talks from J Golden Kimball because he has really cool talks. So the weather has been really humid the past couple days. I don't know if I'm ready for a Louisiana summer again. Those are rough. Our tri-companionship is going pretty good. It's easier to do work because we have more people to go see now. We usually cover 1 area in the early afternoon and then the other area in the late afternoon. It's fun to go around and visit other people you don't know already. Yesterday we spent 9 hours at church.....we had to be there at 7:30 for meetings for the first ward then we went to their church then at 1 we went to second ward till 4 30. I guess that's what the missionaries back home had to do. So our lesson with the Dubois went really good. We played like a guess who are the characters in the Book of Mormon. So we described a character and they had to guess who it was. Then we had a nerf gun and they got to shoot at a target for points. The girls really liked the game. They don't like when we come with just a lesson because it's boring for them. So we try to play more games now. We have no idea what we are going to teach this week. If you know of any games that you think are fun let me know because we could use them. Other than that we really didn't get to see anybody else. We didn't get to go see our 85 year old lady. I think we will this week though. That's pretty much all that is going on in my area right now. That's sweet the missionaries back home are trying to push you guys to find someone to teach. We can't do that down here. If we did that the members probably wouldn't like us anymore. They don't like being pushed or pressured into anything. So we just wait until the members will come up to us and tell us they have a person for us to teach. That doesn't happen very often though. We do our own finding. Which is not very effective because almost everyone down here is already deeply rooted in another religion. Well I can't think of anything else. My week wasn't too crazy. Just another normal week. Remember you are in my prayers. I love you.

Elder Willis

Monday, March 11, 2013

Hey!!

Sounds like you guys are doing pretty good. That's great. I'm doing good. The weeks are starting to go by really quick now. It seems like it's Monday  every other day almost.  Anyways...my week was pretty good. Today the elder that was waiting on his visa to go to Brazil left. So the other elder is companion-less. So starting now until the end of the transfer which is in like 3 weeks we will be in a tri-companionship. We will be working both of our areas together. We are going to have lots to do. All 3 of us have been together for like 6 months now so we get along pretty easy so it should be fun. We are going to have to start going to all day church too. Yay...so let's see what happened this week. Umm....we got a call from this lady that wanted us to come over and teach her about the church. So we got pretty excited. We go over there and start talking to her a little bit. She was kind of a weird lady. Then she was like I want to learn more because I have been blessed with a special gift. She was like I can speak in tongues...so I'm just trying to keep a straight face while this lady is talking to us. So we just keep going. Then she was like I want to learn more about John Smith...I'm like oh Joseph Smith? She's like yeah...John Smith. Haha. She was crazy. There are alot of people down here that claim they are prophets and have seen Jesus and all that crazy stuff. So our lesson with the Dubois was pretty good. We just taught about the Holy Ghost. Things are still the same with her. Coming to church every Sunday and not really making any more progress than that. So we just keep chugging along until hopefully one day she will make a decision. A couple days ago the Dubois were all riding in their car somewhere and they drove past this little house with this old lady sitting out front. So Bro. Dubois got an impression that he needed to stop and talk to her about the church. But all the other family members wouldn't let him. So Bro Dubois lets us know about this older lady and tells us to go visit her. So we go up to her and I ask her if we can share a message with her blah blah blah....and she invites us right in without any hesitation. She was super glad that we stopped by to see her. She was telling us all about her little 1 bedroom house thats 90 years old. Her name is Mary and she is 85 years old. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and where it came from. She wanted to buy the book from us but we told her it was  free. She told us she was going to read a few chapters before she went to bed and she wanted us to come back and teach her more. She was probably one of the nicest older ladies I've ever met. So we're going to have to go back and see where we can go with her. We probably need to hurry because I don't know how much longer she has to live. So that was pretty much my week. Love you all lots.

Elder Willis

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Hey!!

I hope y'all are doing fine. I'm doing pretty good. This past week wasn't anything too crazy. I don't know how good my email is going to be because nothing really happened this past week. So it's already March. That's crazy. School is going to be winding down here pretty soon for you guys. The weather here has been pretty good. It's starting to get pretty warm. Every once in a while there will be a couple days where it will be pretty chilly but then the next day it will be pretty warm. I'm pretty sure it's going to start getting pretty hot and humid here soon. I just hope I don't get transfered to a bike area in the middle of the summer. Alot of areas are turning into bike areas now because of all the sisters that come in and they have to have a car. Dang sisters..:). So I'm guessing probably by the end of this year most of the Elders will be on bikes. Anyways this past lesson we had with the Dubois went super good. We just played pictionary. The girls loved it. I think the whole family had a ton of fun. We just did simple church things like scriptures or sacrament. Just stuff like that. So it was kinda just for the little girls but Bro and Sis Dubois still participated. Sis Dubois actually knows alot. I just don't know what her deal is. It's not like this is going to be a life style change for her because she comes to church every Sunday and reads scriptures as a family. All she needs to do is just be baptized and then everything is back to normal again with her lfe. I don't know what we are going to do this week with them. Hopefully we can come up with something good. Right now the ball is in her court. She needs to decide what she needs to do. I think eventually she will be baptized. If not right now later on down the road she will. So other than that we didn't really do much this week. We tried to see a few people but couldn't get a hold of them. Saturday was a rough day for us. We struck out like 8 times trying to see people. It was a long day because we couldn't find anybody to go see. I just think the missionaries back home probably have it nice because they can work with so many members and they have so many members they can go see. For us it's a sruggle to find just someone that wants to talk to us for a little while. So after we went to those baseball games last week me and my companion got in the baseball mood. So we went to the store and bought some 4 dollar gloves and a ball. Now during our lunch and dinner breaks we go outside and play catch. It's fun even though I haven't thrown a ball in over a year. I don't think I got it anymore. I don't know how long this is going to last because our gloves are starting to rip because they were so cheap. Ummm....for morning excercise I usually just do like 250 pushups or like 100 sit ups. Sometimes I go outside and jump rope. It depends on what I feel like doing. We sometimes wake up early and go to the church and play basketball as a district. It's not very fun because there are a couple elders in my district that can't even catch a ball. But anyways that's pretty much it. Can't wait to hear from you guys again. Love you.


Elder Willis :) :)