Hey!! Well sounds like everyone is doing pretty good. Yeah it's crazy that August is about over. Time is just flying by.

I hope school is going good for you guys. So the weather here is still really hot. I remember last year it didn't start cooling down until like November. So it will probably be a while before it starts cooling down. That's cool to hear about Jaden's scrimmage. Hopefully they have a good year this year. So I don't know what people do for Labor Day here. Haha yeah there are no mountains here at all. I think the highest point in Louisiana is like a couple hundred feet. It's just really flat. For Labor Day I think we are going to have a bbq at the Ory's or something. The family that always sends you pictures. They are sweet. But anyways....things with me and Elder White are still going good. We are not sick of each other yet! We have been trying to work really hard to get something going in this area. This past week we decided to do a lot of tracting and see if we can see any success from doing that. Not much happened though. We decided we would try to work our butts off for a few days and see what would happen. We decided we wouldn't take any breaks until we handed out like 2-3 Book of Mormons. Something like that. I guess we weren't too committed to that because we would be tracting for like 3-4 hrs and be soaking with sweat and haven't given out any Book of Mormons and we gave up and had to take a break. We keep telling each other that things will start to happen because Grandpa Daniel Webster Jones is watching over us. That gives us some encouragement. We both got pretty discouraged this week because we are trying our hardest to get things going but nothing is happening. We still get no help from the members. I'm pretty sure the members don't even like missionaries. We have a pretty big ward and we only get 2 dinner appointments a month. And those are like from the same family. It's pretty sad. I guess we just got to keep doing what we have been doing. We're just planting seeds right now. It's alright though. So this past Wednesday our zone had a service day. So we went to Hammond and helped clean out someones yard. Me and Elder White got stuck on cutting down trees. That was fun. Then we traveled over to Amite and did some trash cleanup throughout the city. So we ended up doing a ton of service. It was good to take a little break from proselyting and just do service all day. This past week the family that just barely got sealed took us out in the swamp lands to see some wild alligators. That was crazy. They would come up pretty close to us. We had to be pretty careful because they were wild. One of these days I'm going to wrestle a gator. The family told us they were going to take us again and we were going to feed the next time. It will be a little more dangerous next time. So don't get all freaked out one of these emails when I tell you my arm got bitten off or something. Haha just kidding. So we didn't get a chance to play ghetto ball this week. We have a few kids numbers in our phone that we have played with before so we texted them to see if they wanted to play and they said Yeah. So we showed up and they never showed up. We probably won't call those kids up again. Anyways that's about it for this week. Not anything too exciting because its pretty slow in this area. I'm just hoping these next couple weeks a hurricane will build up in the gulf. That would be sweet...Well here's an experience where the hand of lord was with us. We have been tracting for like 3 hrs maybe and haven't really got to talk to anybody. Then it starts raining real hard and we are just soaked. We continue to tract and nobody cares that we're soaking wet. So right when we were about to give up and go in there was a lady working outside and she sees us and lets us come in and get out of the rain. So we talk to her for a while. We didn't get to teach a lesson to her or anything but she let us get out of the rain. Experiences like that really show you the little tender mercies the lord gives you. The lord is watching over everybody and he's in everyone's lives. I really believe that. Well that's it. I love you all.

Elder Willis :)

Hey!!

Sounds like everyone's week was really good. Those were some good pictures of mom and Makenzie.  Makenzie looks like she has grown up a lot. That's cool. So things with Elder White and I are going really good. We have been having some fun. Haha we still get a lot of missionary work done don't worry. So my last companion got transferred to Luling. I think that's down by New Orleans somewhere. I'm not sure. So yeah this past week we did get to go to the temple.  A family that got baptized like a year ago were getting their endowments and then they were getting sealed. So we got to go with them and some other members in the ward.  It was fun. No... Elder Mapa isn't in my zone. I wish haha. The Short family...the ones that got sealed went and picked up all the missionaries that taught them or they were close too and had them be there with them through the temple experience. So there was only like 4 other Elders that came. Umm...that was at Chili's. It was pretty good. The new temple video was way sweet. I liked it a lot. I think the next time i go through the temple will be right before i go home. That's only the 2nd time I have been on my mission. So chances are that I won't go to the temple again for a while. So anyways my week went pretty good. It was really wet. I think it almost rained every day this past week. I think these next couple weeks are the high chances for a hurricane to start up because the gulf is really hot and active right now. I wouldn't mind another hurricane. Those are pretty sweet.  This past week we had our zone leader come on exchanges with us. We got a lot of work done. It was pretty sweet....this one day we ended up handing out 6 Book of Mormons and got like 3 return appointments I think. Also we were walking out in the rain and this guy stops and asks if we needed a ride so we took up the offer. By the time he dropped us off he wanted to take us out for dinner one of these nights. So this week we will probably go out to dinner with him and see what happens from there. We had a lot of cool stuff happen this past week. I think things are starting to pick up now. Haha well the only way we can really go from here is up. This past week we went to our ghetto court to play ball again and see if we could redeem ourselves. There were a bunch of black kids from high school there. So we asked if we would play. At first they didn't really want us to play because I could tell they thought we would be terrible. So we started playing and they were acting like they were playing against some kids or something. They weren't really trying. Then we get the ball and I lob one up to Elder White and he lays it in. They were pretty shocked. Then they were like oh man these guys are cold. So then a couple plays later I get the ball and they double team me with my back against the hoop and then I go through the legs right between both of them and lay it in and they started going crazy. It was pretty funny. They started yelling and running around the court. There was a couple kids we were playing with that were pretty good. We won a couple games there that day. It was fun. We got a few of their numbers and they want to play with us again. So next time we might play them for a lesson or something. Elder White and I want to take a group picture with all of them and send it home to you guys. We will try to get a picture with them this next week and send it to you guys. They even gave us nicknames. They call us Frosty and Flake. Haha ..they are funny.  My week went pretty good. I think altogether we ended up handing out 9 Book of Mormons. Elder White and I might set a goal to hand out like 30 Book of Mormons in a week. Well ya'll have a great week at school. I love you.

Elder Willis <33

Hey!!! Well I hope you all are having a good time at school.  I'm glad I don't have to go to school. Well......I bet your wondering who my companion is.... Let's see you were asking me what my companion is like....I did know him, we know each other pretty good... he likes sports like me..... he's from Thatcher, Arizona..... Well it's pretty exciting....my companion is Elder White!!! Yeah it's pretty awesome. We were at transfer meeting and people kept getting called to be companions and me and Elder White were still left and we both looked at each other and we're like we could be companions. Then next thing we know President was like Elder Willis will be with Elder White!!!  It was crazy. I thought we would never be companions but I told Elder White a while back that I have the hook ups with the Assistants so I put the word in with the Assistants and now we're companions. We have already had a ton of fun together. It's hard to call him Elder...there was a couple times I slipped and called him Trevor. It's still kind of weird that we're companions. Back home when we would hang out I would have never thought we would be missionary companions. We were just barely talking about what everyone back home is going to say when they find out were companions. It's sweet. So yeah hopefully we get some work done. It's pretty cool that the past few days that we have been together people have been talking to us like crazy. We have probably seen more success these past 3 days or so than the whole last transfer. Well my week went pretty good. There still isn't a whole lot to do in this area but being with Elder White will make it a lot easier in this area. So the other day Elder White told me he's never played ghetto ball on his mission yet. So I took him to the rough part of town here where they play pick up basketball . We ended playing a few games with some of the black kids there. They were really good. One of the kids was 14 and was making us look like we have never played basketball before. I was getting mad...he was making pretty much every shot. So I tried to play really tight defense on him and he still was making everything. I think Elder White and I won only one game while we were there.  In the next week or so we are going to go back and see if we can  beat that 14 year old. It was pretty embarrassing. There were other kids on the side of the court watching us play and they were talking smack about us. The only thing nice they said was that I have a nice shot.....  On Sat. night the youth in the ward invited  us to go play bball with some of their nonmember friends. That was pretty fun. So lately we have spent a lot of time just contacting in the ghetto. That is like the only place people will talk to us. . One lady told us to pray with her and Elder White starts saying a prayer and this lady just starts taking over and praising Jesus and rambles out all this stuff. 

                           Elder Willis and Elder White (Their grandmas are first cousins!)

My old district

So that's pretty much all that happened this week. So Jaden is going to play a Corner like I did? That's pretty sweet. He will probably be better than I was. So my area is pretty big into football. Pretty much the whole state of Louisiana is big into football. So me and Ashlee email each other almost every week or so. We keep in pretty good contact. Well you guys have fun at school doing homework haha! About the package...the shoes fit fine. Thanks. The belt is a little too small. I might have to send it back for Jaden or something. Its like a size 30 or something. I'm not that skinny. Haha.. Well talk to you later! Love you.

Elder Willis :)

Hey Fam!! So sounds like everyone is doing good. This week is transfer week and my comp. is getting transferred. That is kind of a relief. I was stressing out yesterday waiting for transfer calls but when I found out he was getting transferred it was like a big burden lifted. Now I can get back to doing real missionary work again. Well...if my next comp is a good missionary! So I wont know until the transfer meeting tomorrow who it is. Hopefully it's one of the missionaries I know. Transfer week is always really stressful. I'll let you know next week what all happened with that. I did get that little package. I really liked the talk in it. I've never read that talk before and it was really good. Thanks. So I don't think I need anything else in that package that your sending. Anyways my week went alright. It was sooo sooo hot this week. The first of August is supposed to be the worst. It was getting up to like 95 with a heat index of like 105-110 or something like that. I think my shoes are melted. Haha.. So this past week we went on an exchange with the zone leader. We had his car so we were able to do so much more and see more people. You can do so much more work when you have a car. With a bike you can only bike so far to see someone. It was good to get  a lot of work done. Lately we have been trying to just track down people on the ward roster that no one knows who they are or anything. Most of the time the people don't want anything to do with the church anymore. We did run into a girl probably in her 20's that's living with her fiance whose not a member. We got to talking with her and she has a brother on his mission in Wyoming and her parents live in New York and are really active. She was super nice and told us we can come back and visit again. So now we will probably focus on getting her back to church and seeing if we can make any progress with her fiance. We also got to visit with a couple less actives this past week. This one couple hasn't been to church in years but when we got to their house the wife was reading the Book of Mormon and we ended up having a nice discussion about what she was reading. So it's been cool to see the little progress they have been making since we have been working with them. We did a lot of biking and walking this week. It was rough. I think I know why people don't let us in their house...it's probably because we are so sweaty they don't want us to get all their furniture wet and stinky. Haha. Yesterday we tracked for a couple hours and we were soaking with sweat. It wasn't just my shirt that was wet. My pants were soaking with sweat too. I know some missionaries will change clothes in the afternoon but I don't. I'm just like "I'm going to get wet with sweat again so what's the point of changing?" When we are biking or walking and I run out of water it is so tempting to just drink from the swamps on the side of the road even though they are way nasty. So we don't get to go to the temple very often at all. I have only been on my mission once so far. I got a picture of the house. It looks really good. Hey so I think Jaden's glasses are sweet. You should get me a pair like that!! That would be sweet. So the ward here is getting a little better. We still don't get invited to ward council or PEC. We hardly ever have coordination with the ward mission leader. They are clueless here about missionary work. They think all missionaries do is service. But it's getting a little better. Well that's about all for this week. I'll let you know next week about all the changes. Love you!

Elder Willis <33