Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Hey!!
Hope everyone is doing good. Sounds like the week was pretty boring. Is the weather pretty good over there though? The weather here has been pretty warm. All the trees and stuff are starting to blossom. It's looking pretty cool. It's starting to get pretty humid here too. I'm not looking forward to that. So things with me are going pretty good. I did get a little change up this past week. I got a new companion. My old one Elder Thomas went to another area. He didn't really tell me too much about it but he told me that I reminded him a lot of his older brother and he was having a hard time with that. I don't know what happened with his brother but it was hard enough for him to want him to leave. I was only with him for a week too. So my new companion here is Elder Murray. He's from Layton, Utah. He goes home a transfer after me. So yeah this week was a little different. We don't live with the other elders. They moved into an apartment like 100 yards from us but we spend a lot of time over there. Sometimes we will go over there and spend the night with them. We might just end up moving over there for this transfer. We still get our groceries paid for so that's nice. We don't really get that many dinner appointments anymore. It doesn't feel like this area is the same that it used to be when I was here before. When I was here the first time it was thriving pretty good. It kind of has gone down hill a little bit. It's still a really good area though. But the work here now is definitely different. There are a few people that I was visited that moved away or no one knows what happened to them. It seems like the ward has gotten a lot smaller too. But then there has been a couple families that have moved in too. Our ward mission leader is pretty much less active too. Haha he hasn't been to church since I've been here and I've only met him once since I got here. I guess we need to reactivate him first. So my talk went pretty good. There was a youth speaker and me and another adult speaker. At first the adult speaker didn't show up. And I thought I was going to have to talk for like 30 minutes.   The adult speaker showed up just as the youth speaker started so that was a relief. I ended up speaking on member missionary work. I just shared the story of Alma and Amulek.  It's  Alma 8-10. I talked about how Alma had like a dinner appointment with Amulek and then they went on a split to the people of Ammonihah. Then I talked about how those people were Amulek's friends and family members. So I told the members how we want them to be able to trust taking us to their family members and friends. Then how the people of Ammonihah were astonished and started to believe because there was someone their backing up Alma's words. So that's how members and missionaries should teach.... with each other. It's been a struggle working with members my whole mission. I haven't really gotten member support....support with teaching and stuff like that. Of course the members support us and care for us. Just not with missionary work. I don't blame them though. People here aren't that receptive anyways. That's southern pride i guess. So that is pretty much my week. I hope you all have a more exciting week. I love you all!!
Elder Willis :) :)))) :) <3

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Hey!! 
So sounds like a pretty good and busy week you guys had. It's crazy to think that it's already baseball season. Haha it just barely feels like I was playing baseball. Time goes by fast. Yeah I got that video of Makenzie's concert. Looks like she is going to be pretty good at the violin. Does she know who Lindsey Stirling is? The one with the mormon.org video? Maybe Makenzie will be like her. Anyways sounds like you guys already found out about my new area. Well it's not really new to me. Haha yeah I got transferred back to St. Amant. Which is Gonzales. So I got sent back to my old area. I'm pretty excited to be back here. It's been pretty weird though. It feels like I never even left. I think it's been like 9 months since I left this area. So it's still pretty familiar for me how to get around. It's starting to come back to me. Ever since I got back I have just had a ton of memories from when I was here the first time. My companion is Elder Thomas. He's from Delta, Utah. He seems pretty cool. He has been out like 13 months I think. So yeah I have been pretty happy these past few days. I just want to go out and see everybody again so we have been really busy these past few days. The work here now is different from when I was here. We are working with people I didn't know when I was here and then we're still working with some of the same people from when I was here. This is definitely my favorite area. The members in this ward are awesome. They are super friendly and loving. So I have already been able to go see a couple of my favorite families and people. I have been kind of nervous going to see people because I didn't know if they would really remember me or not. Luckily they remembered me. It's kind of cool to see their reactions to when they see me. One of the families I am really close with is the Artise family. We went over there and they were super excited I was back. Sis Artise was like oh my gosh my favorite missionary is back!! She is awesome. Then she told me she called her granddaughter and told her I was back and she said she started freaking out! It's just really cool to know that I meant something to these people. There's quite a few people that I am really close with. We went over to Ben and Wendy's house. They are non members that I am close with. Ben looked through the window and started laughing and was like you will never guess who showed up! So it's been really cool to see how everyone is doing. It's also been pretty sad to find out a couple other families that I really liked have moved or are moving soon. Then I found out my recent convert Candace....I don't know if you remember her..but anyways she doesn't come to church anymore. She has been to church like 1 since she got baptized. So that's pretty sad...my only convert haha...oh well things happen.. maybe I can help her come back to church since I'm back here. Sunday was a pretty good day too. I got to see a majority of the people on Sunday. A couple things are different. There's a new bishop now. Do you remember me telling you guys about the Bonham's from Snowflake? Well Bro. Bonham is the new bishop. There have been a few people that I wouldn't have thought would recognize me but they remembered me and my name. In fact even the librarian here at the library remembers me...haha. Oh and Bishop already wants me to speak in church this Sunday. Fun... :) Well that's about all for this week. I love you all!
Elder Willis :)
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Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Hey!!!
So sounds like a pretty slow week for you guys. It will probably start picking up here soon with baseball and that stuff. Well this week is transfer week and I got a call last night that I am getting transferred. It was a relief. I really struggled with this area. It was a pretty long 6 weeks but I'm glad I'll be moving on. So tomorrow morning we will be going to Baton Rouge for transfer meeting. I have a pretty good idea of where I'll be going. President kind of told me where I was going. So tomorrow I'll see if it's where I think it is. If it's where President told me I'm going to be very happy. It will probably be my last area too President said. So next week I'll let you guys know what all happened. That's way cool that the Gilbert Temple got dedicated. I remember when we had to go to the church for the dedication of the Gila Valley Temple. It was pretty cool. It's cool you guys finally got some snow over there. This past week it was really nice. It was like in the 70's-80's. It felt really good. Then yesterday and today it's like in the 30's. It's super cold and windy. People say this is the worst winter they have had down here in a long time. This should be the last cold storm. Well this past week we got to do some pretty cool stuff.   Just this past weekend we finally got to do stuff. On Friday we had a ward temple baptism trip. So we decided to go down early with the Sisters and do a session before the baptisms started. We got to watch the new new temple video.  You can learn something different from each video. Then our youth from the ward showed up for baptisms. It was neat because there is this black family that just barely got baptized like 2-3 months ago and it was their first time going. The 2 sons are our only young men in our ward. One is like 16 and the other is like 13. One of them has dreads and I always ask him if he can put my hair in dreads too. Those two are probably my favorite people from this area. So it was cool to be with them for their first time. They really enjoyed it. On Sunday I was talking to them about going on a mission and now they want to go on mission overseas and speak another language. Just like I wanted too. :) Then on Saturday we had a zone meeting in Alexandria. We all spent the night Friday night so we could play basketball early in the morning. So it was cool to play ball with the missionaries from this zone. Then that day for our meeting we just did service outside the church. We had to clear out a bunch of trees and stuff with axes. Kinda like the stuff we always had to do during the summer. It was fun being around the other missionaries though like Elder White and there are a few other ones that I'm really close with. So that was pretty much my week. Yeah Matthew told me about them having a girl. That is pretty cool. I know he wanted a boy though. Now he is going to have to be playing dolls and stuff with his little girl :) Well ill talk to you all next week. I love you all!!!
Elder Willis :)