Monday, September 30, 2013

Hey!!
Sounds like a pretty crazy week for everyone. That stinks to hear about Jaden..  I hope he gets better. I bet it's not fun being hurt. I'm surprised I didn't ever really get hurt. There probably were a lot of times where I should have been hurt really bad but I never was. I think the worst for me was getting hit in the chin and spitting up a lot of blood. That was pretty much all. So who did Jaden end up taking to homecoming? I saw the picture but I can't tell who it is. Or I don't even know who she is. I also saw the picture of Makenzie and her friends. That was pretty funny. That's really exciting about Justin. Trevor and I found out a couple days ago when Justin emailed Trevor and told him. He didn't email me though. Oh well...I hope he does well. So this past week was alright. It was super slow because we can't find anybody to teach. That's how it's been my whole mission pretty much. Super slow...but this week was a little better because we had a couple more dinner appointments. That was nice...I love home cooked meals. I'm getting tired of eating cereal for breakfast lunch and dinner. So other than that nothing really too exciting happened this week. I'm pretty excited to watch General Conference this weekend. It's always nice to take a break and watch meetings like that. I think the members here are getting more missionary minded. Yesterday for the 5th Sunday lesson it was on member missionary work so hopefully that gets the members a little more excited to do missionary work. A lot of members yesterday at church come up to me and were trying to give me shoes. They were like I saw those shoes you were wearing and I think you need new shoes. I do have some pretty beat up shoes that I wear sometimes. I just tell them it's how hard I'm working. I have those nice pairs you sent me but I only wear those for meetings. Anyways....so something cool about the church here in the south is that sometimes after church the members will have a big pot luck luncheon. We had one yesterday. Right after church we go into the cultural hall and have a big lunch. It's pretty cool. It's a good way to invite friends to church...just tell them there will be food right after church. Well that's pretty much for my week. I did get your package. Thanks for that. I'm excited to eat some of those treats in there. Well I love you all and pray for you every day.   Love, Elder Willis 


Monday, September 23, 2013

Hey!! The weeks are starting to go by fast huh? It is for me at least. So that's funny about the crawfish you got. Did it say where the crawfish were from on the package? Ha ha I'm a little sad you guys didn't like it. I know it wasn't the real deal though. I honestly think crawfish down here is so good. I've only been to a couple crawfish boils and I honestly probably ate like over a hundred crawfish. They are so good. I'll just have to buy you guys some crawfish seasoning and send you some. Or maybe you will just have to come down here and try the real stuff! I'll have to figure out how to boil the crawfish. Anyways sounds like sports are going good. That's good that we finally beat Joe City. It's about time. I bet Makenzie is super excited to start volleyball. So the 2 new elders we got here in Mandeville are pretty cool. One is brand new and the other one has been out as long as me. They will be fun to hang out with on pdays and stuff. So this past week for me was alright. Not too much happened. Things are back to ground zero for us pretty much. We found out that the 2 black kids we beat in basketball and started teaching lost their phones. So we cant get a hold of them at all. Then we also found out the girl we brought to church who was our neighbor ended up moving. So she's gone now too. The only 2 good things we had going in this area both went down the drain. It's a little discouraging but that's what a mission is.  A 2 year roller coaster with ups and downs. The good thing this week is we have a few dinner appointments with the members here. That was a miracle. I guess one of the members we are close with is getting on all the relief society to sign up for us. Now we have a few extras. I'm excited for that. I can't really think of anything else. This week was a pretty boring week. So if you send me that package it would be cool. I need some more contacts. That's all i can really think of. I don't really need anything. I'm fine. Well you guys take care. I love you all.
Elder Willis :)

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Hey Family!!
Well I bet everyone is doing pretty good. I hope so..well about transfers umm..Elder White and I are staying together. So that's pretty cool! The two Mandeville Elders are getting transferred. And then one of the sisters here is getting transferred. So pretty much everyone in our district is getting transferred except Elder White and I. It will be interesting to see what's happening. So that's the news on transfers...nothing really exciting happened this past week. It was another slow week and we didn't really get to teach anybody. This past week we were riding our bikes and we come across this old black guy who stopped us and started talking to us and then he started telling us how white people haven't worked for anything in their life and how everything is given to them. He was pretty racist. He doesn't like white people at all. So we pretty much stood there while he was telling us how much he hated white people. It was interesting. There are a lot of parts here in the south that are still pretty segregated. Some parts the whites and blacks still hate each other and don't engage with each other in any way. It was funny talking to him though. He was telling us how the Mormons have always hated blacks and how we think blacks are of the devil. Then I told him how in the beginnings of our church in the 1830's we had some leaders and missionaries that were black. He wouldn't believe it though. Haha. Oh well...This past week we also had interviews with President. Those are always pretty cool.  I don't know if mission presidents can get trunky but I really think President Wall is getting trunky. Every time I see President he talks to me about basketball. So during the interview the majority of it was talking about basketball. He challenged me to a game of horse one of these days. But he said he gets to shoot it from half the distance from where I shoot it. I'll take him up on the challenge one of these days. That was pretty much my week. Oh...yesterday we were tracting and we came across a house with a limo so I told Elder White we need to knock on that door. So we start talking to the guy and he seems pretty cool. We told him we liked his limo and he's like come on I'll show you inside of it. So he gives us a little tour of his limo. It was sweet. We ended up giving him a Book of Mormon and he said he will read it. He told us to come back in a couple weeks so we can teach him a little more. We will see what happens with him. So that was pretty much my week. Tell Jaden and Makenzie to keep up the good work in sports. Yeah I got those sports articles. How did we lose to Valley Lutheran? And get shut out? That's ridiculous.. Jaden better start working harder....and get the team working harder. High School sports are only really fun if you win games. It's not very fun if you lose every game. Well all you guys are in my prayers. I love you all.
Elder Tyler Willis <33 :)

Monday, September 9, 2013

Hey!!
This week went by pretty fast. So it's still super hot here. Yesterday was way hot. I am sick of this heat and humidity. It's ridiculous. Anyways so you guys liked that picture of us in the "hood"? Haha yeah we like to go over there and play with them. It's fun to play out in the streets because it's so much different than a regular basketball game.  People tell us to be really careful when we go over there because it's a bad area. But since were church people they respect us. We still try to be pretty careful though. So my week went pretty good I guess. A few weeks ago we ran into a Catholic priest and talked to him a little bit and he told us he wanted to take us out to dinner. So this past Tuesday we went out to dinner with him. He said he didn't want to talk any religion he just wanted to have friendly conversation and get to know us a little bit. So we go to the restaurant and we end up staying there for like 2 hours just talking to him. It started out as friendly conversation than it turned into religion. We got to talk a lot about religion and we told him all the differences between the Catholics and Mormons. It was a nice long discussion we had. We invited him out to church and he told us before one of us leaves he wants to come to church with us. We will see if he ever ends up coming to church with us. Then another cool thing happened on Saturday night.  We have this neighbor that we would talk to whenever we would see her and she would ask us questions and we would answer them for her and show her Mormon messages. This has been going on for the whole transfer. We never got an opportunity to invite her to church. So on Saturday night before we went in we went to the store and we saw her there as she was leaving. So Elder White and I were like if she is sitting outside when we get home we have to invite her to church. So we walk back to the apartment and she is sitting outside. We start talking to her and we invited her to church. She seemed like she was happy we invited her to church. She came to church with us on Sunday. She said she liked it and wants to come back. We will see what happens with her and if she wants to learn some more. Hopefully.  That's pretty much all that is happening right now. The work is still slow right now. It's been a little better since Elder White and I have been companions. It's only up from here! So last night we had a stake priesthood meeting. We are in the New Orleans stake so I got to go to New Orleans again. I love that place. It's a whole different country. But we got to go across the long bridge that goes across the lake. I think it's the longest bridge in the world or one of the longest. So that was pretty cool too. Next week is transfers. So we will see what happens. I think Elder White and I might be together for another transfer but you just never know. I'll let you guys know next week. I love you all and pray for you.
Elder Willis <3

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Hey!
Hope everyone is doing good. Sounds like you guys had a pretty good week. Those pictures turned out really good. Everyone looks a little different. Mostly just Jaden and Makenzie.  Jaden looks like he's getting pretty big. We will have to see who gets bigger by the time I get home. . Makenzie looks likes shes growing a lot. That's sweet. Sounds like the football team did pretty good. I miss football a little bit. Now that football season is starting over here everyone is all crazy for football now so it makes me miss it a little bit. Anyways my week went pretty good. Yesterday for Labor day was pretty fun. We went over to the Ory's for a bbq. We had a water balloon fight too. That was pretty fun. Then another family invited us to play volleyball with them at the church. So my labor day was pretty good. Not too much else really happened this week. I did have a problem with my bike. I had a hole in my tube and we couldn't find anywhere that would sell a patch kit or a new tube. So we went to the bike shop and the guy there tries to patch it up with a piece from another bike tube. He said it should work for a little while. That night we had a dinner appointment. We were riding to the appointment and my bike tube popped again. So I just carried my bike like a mile to the dinner appointment. The next day we spent all day trying to find a bike tube because we had to ride to a lady's house to cut her lawn. So we just ended up walking like 6 miles to Wal Mart. Now my tire is all fixed up though. I'm kinda getting sick of being in a bike area. I'm ready to be with a car again. So Laura did send me the talk with Grandpa Jones in it.  Elder White and I read it together. She also sent like this paper with the quote that he said so we put it on our door. I'll send a picture of it. You will have to tell her about it and tell her thanks. So this past Saturday was a pretty crazy day for us. It was the day of the opening game for LSU so people were having bbq's all over town. We decided to go check out North Covington which is the ghetto and where we go to play basketball. We were riding around that part of town and there is black people everywhere. They are crowding the streets and it's hard to get through. A lot of people had big speakers outside playing music before the game. It was crazy. There was this little black kid that was like "Hey white boy" so we stopped and talked to him for a while. Then other kids saw us and came over to us. We had like 8 kids around us. We talked to them for a while. We saw a lot of kids that were asking us if we were going to go to the courts to play so we said yeah. Later on that afternoon we went to the courts. We played a couple 2 on 2 games and won. Then these 2 other kids came over and they are probably like 17 or 18 years old and ask if we want to play them. We're just like "yeah". Then we're like let's put something on this game. We said "if we win we get to teach you a message." They are like "ok." They said what happens if we win. We're like "you don't get the embarrassment of losing to 2 white boys in white shirts and ties". So they are like ok. We ended up beating them pretty bad. They were actually pretty good too. But we had God on our side. Then they wanted a re-match so we played them again and beat them. So we got to teach them the restoration. They seemed like they were really interested. They want to learn more now. So on Thursday we are going to meet up with them and teach them again. So that was a pretty cool experience. Other than that not too much. Just still moving along and doing good. All you guys are in my prayers. Love you.
Elder Willis <33