Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Hey!! So yeah this week is transfer week. I got a call last night that I'll be getting transferred.  I'm not sure if I'm ready to leave this area but I guess it was time for me to leave. I was here for 8 months. Haha I guess I got pretty comfortable here. I'm ready to try new things out and meet new people and everything though. So tomorrow is our transfer meeting. I'm hoping that I'll be getting transferred to Denham Springs. That's where Trevor is at. haha His comp. is going home. We'll see..    So yeah C's baptism was this past Saturday. It was very good. The spirit there was really strong. She asked me to give a talk on the Holy Ghost. She asked one of the missionaries in the 1st ward to baptize her. It was a little surprising because those weren't even her missionaries but it was her decision. Even the ward mission leader and the Bishop were a little surprised about that. I forgot to bring my camera to the library so I can't send you pictures this week but I will try to send some next week. Then on Sunday she got confirmed. Bishop did the confirmation. Then she had another member bless her baby. It was a good Sacrament Meeting. It was a good last Sunday in that ward because we had almost all the people I have been working with this whole time I've been here at Sacrament meeting. We had like 3 investigators at church and like 5 of the less active members we've been working with there. It was really neat to see. This would be an area I would like to come back and visit. The rest of my week went pretty good. We did a lot of service. We helped a member put in a wood floor. Bringing back memories. :) Done lots of those before. Yesterday the 1st ward elders and us decided to do a day of service. We cut 7 lawns. A lot of widows and less fortunate families. By the end of the day we were all drained. It was so hot. Had a couple lessons this past week. One of them was with J. Our investigator that has a baptismal date. He came to church on Sunday too. We taught him the plan of salvation. It went good. Then we brought up the Word of Wisdom because we kinda already knew he had a problem with that. We went over that and I could tell he got a little discouraged because he knew he had problems with it. He really wants to get baptized and is super excited for it but he has to overcome this and he says it going to to be hard for him. He will be able to overcome it. I won't be teaching him anymore but I really hope he ends up getting baptized. He was a sweet guy. That's pretty much all that happened during my week. Yeah I got an email from Ashlee. She sounded like she is doing really good. But I know what it feels like to be brand spankin new. It is super tough but it gets better.  Mitchell and I still write letters to each other all the time. He is doing really good. So Jaden is doing a paper route for a week? I've always wanted to be a paper boy. That would be sweet. Sounds like Matt and Helen are still doing good. Everyone seems to be doing great. Yeah I thought that broadcast was awesome. I really enjoyed it. These next few years are going to be a great time to be a missionary. I'm glad i get to be apart of this. Yeah my blog is all changed up. Tell Makenzie she did a great job. Well I'll email you guys next week about my new area. I love you all!
Elder Willis <333

Monday, June 17, 2013

Hey happy late Father's Day Dad!!! Too bad I can't call for fathers day but just know that you're awesome and thanks for everything!  Well my week was a pretty good one. Today was a sweet day. We are emailing late because we went down to New Orleans this morning. A member took us down there again and we got to see more things this time because the member lived there for a while and knew the area pretty good. There are a lot of tourists down there this time of the year. It was super hot though. I was sweating pretty bad walking around downtown New Orleans. I'll try and send you some pictures. So grandmas place got flooded pretty bad? That's no fun! Every single time it rains here it floods. All the bayous will overflow and there will be water everywhere. Anyways I'm glad that you got the picture of me. We had a sweet time over at their house for dinner. They are a super cool family. Yeah my eye did get scratched somehow and it was irritated real bad. You know how I was really sick last week? Well right when I was starting to get over it my eye got infected and I ended up getting pink eye. I had to call Sis Wall for it and get eye drops for it. That lasted for a few days. As of right now everything is fine with me. I'm not sick in any way!   We had another lesson with C. this past week which went super good. I asked her why she decided to start coming to church again after going in Utah for a while. Some missionaries a while ago left a pass along card on her door but she didn't think anything of it. After a few months or so she came across it and thought about it and decided that it would be best for her to start going to church again. Now she's getting baptized. So everything is set for our baptism with C. this Saturday. She is super excited for it. We still have to help her get her program together. I'll try to take some pictures and send them to you next week. I'm real excited for her. There was another sweet little miracle that happened this week. We got a call from this guy here that wanted to know if our church is doing baptisms for Father's day? He told us that a few years ago some missionaries gave him a Book of Mormon with their numbers in it. He didn't want anything to do with it. After a couple years he came across the book  while cleaning and decided to read it. He gained a testimony of it and wanted to meet with us. We went and had a lesson with him. He accepted a date to get baptized later on in July. He also came to church this past Sunday. He is real sincere and solid. So those 2 experiences with C. and this other guy J. really strengthened my testimony of pass along cards or leaving a Book of Mormon. You never know when they are going to come across it and decide to check it out. It may be a few years. That's probably something dad can do at his office. Just get some B of M's with the missionaries number in it and just leave it on the desk. You never know who will come across it and maybe in a couple years they will want to find out if it is true. So we got some pretty good things in our area right now. It's harvesting time. Yeah I don't know what's going on with the missionary broadcast. I know it's going to be good. President Monson and Packer will be speaking i think. Haha opening China? That would be pretty intense. Maybe Jaden could be one of the first missionaries in China? So Bishop Franco emailed me and wanted me to write a letter to you guys about some experiences I've had and some counsel to the youth to read in sac. meeting? I'll see what I can do. I'll try and do that. Even though that's not the ward I left from.   Well that's pretty much my week. All y'all have a great week. :) I love you.
Elder Willis



Monday, June 10, 2013



Hey!! So I don't think this email will be a very good one because I got stuck on a computer without a chair so I have been standing up the whole time and I've been like deathly ill the past few days. So I might pass out. haha. Yeah it's been bad. I've had to stay in most of the day but then I'll think I'm feeling good and we will try to go out but it wouldn't last very long until we would have to come back in. I don't know what it is but it's rough. (Now his mom is worried!)  I'll be fine though. I'll try to toughen it up. So Jaden got to go to an Imagine Dragons concert? I didn't know about them until like a month ago. I think a youth in our ward was telling us about them. I think they are mormon too? I don't know I've never heard of them before. So my week was pretty good. We had a couple lessons with C. She is so excited for her baptism. I'm really excited too it's going to be awesome. Another cool thing about that is the same day she gets confirmed in Sacrament mtg. Her little baby is going to get blessed too. It's a sweet story. So I got an email from Ashlee! Sounds like she is doing really good. I'm really excited for her. She is going to be an awesome missionary. I read on her blog and she was like talking about how she saw all these people at the MTC.  I didn't get to see anybody I knew. I was a loner. I really enjoyed the MTC though it was a lot of fun. Matthew sent me some pictures of the house and it looks great. I'm excited to see the finished version. So  Trevor and I are trying to do everything in our power to able to serve around each other. We are writing President in our letters to him that we want to serve around each other so we will see how it turns out. We still have a while before we go home too so I shouldn't be too worried right now.Well I better go sit down or something I'm getting light headed. Taking care of myself is hard instead of having mom taking care of me all the time.  (now I wish I could fly over to Louisiana and take care of him for a few days. )  I have no clue how to take care of myself :) I'll write you guys a way better email next week when I can think straight. You are in my prayers and I love you all!!
Elder Willis


Monday, June 3, 2013

Hey!! Sounds like everything's going pretty good now that school is out! So Ashlee is gone now? Crazy...I'm going to have to write her while she is out on her mission. Yeah you can give me her blog. I'll get on it and read all about her crazy adventures. I get on my blog a lot even though it's just the letters I write to you! So if you ever want to put like a hidden note on that blog for me I'll probably see it...or other cool stuff. Remember how I told you guys that we get an hour a day to go to the library and get on the church websites. Like lds.org or mormon.org, we can also get on blogs. I know lds.org from like the inside out. My mission Pres. is real laid back when it comes to what missionaries can do. He lets us act as agents for ourselves and not as objects. It's pretty nice. So I got the package you sent me. Thanks. The snacks were good too. So lately I've been eating super healthy and trying to watch what I eat. I'm almost down to 170. I've been eating a lot of grapefruit and its been helping a lot. I'm glad I'm skinny again. :) (and all through high school he wanted to put on weight...from mom:)  So my week was a pretty good week. We had a lesson with Candace. That's the girl that's 20 years old and moved from Utah I was telling you about last week. She is super solid. So at our lesson we found out a little bit more about her. I guess in Utah she would always go to church with her friends. She did that for about 5 years I think. She even got her Young Women's medallion thingy...so she knows everything. She has already read the whole Book of Mormon. She just didn't feel it was the right time for her to get baptized. So we had our lesson over at our Bishop's house. It was the best lesson I've ever been in. The spirit was so strong. It was the first time I got emotional during a lesson. It was so sweet. So she accepted to get baptized on the 22nd of this month. We have another lesson with her tomorrow night. She is awesome. Tonight we have a lesson with another one of our investigators. He is progressing slowly so it's kind of a struggle with him. He really wants to get baptized but he has a really bad smoking problem. He enjoys us coming over because he really wants us to help him out. So we will see how it goes with him. That's really the only stuff we have going for us in this area. We finally got sisters in this area. They are working both areas. I'm pretty sure both wards love them both more than they love the Elders. All the members in our ward were flocking to their dinner calendar to sign up for them and they would just walk right past ours. So the sisters are stealing all our dinner appointments. And all the members are telling them to go see the people we are already seeing. haha  So we're going to be left with nothing to do here pretty soon. :)  So I forgot to tell you guys about this last week but I guess I'll tell you now  that it's a week old. So Elder Mapa has the hook ups with football players. He has a lot of cousins and buddies in the NFL and College. He actually has a friend from back home that's playing at LSU right now. He's huge. 6'6" 300+.  .So he got a hold of him and he got him to come down to Gonzo to hang out with us. So we went and played ball with him and went out to eat. His name is Hoko Fanaika so if you ever see LSU playing this year remember that name.   He's probably going to go to the NFL. So it was pretty cool that we got to hang out with him for a while. He said he is going to get some of the other LSU players to come down and play ball with us. It's pretty sweet. Well anyways that's about all for this week. I love you and miss you all.
Elder Willis