Hey!

Sounds like you guys had a good time at the reunion. Everyone is looking good from those pictures you sent me. Looks like everyone is growing up. Well this email will probably be pretty short because I don't have much to talk about. I can't really remember too well anything that happened this past week. Just another normal week of missionary work. Maybe I should just stop emailing you guys until I get home? How would you like that? 4 weeks without hearing from me. Haha. Anyways...so it seems like the weather here intensified this past week. Its been so hot lately. That's one of the things I wont miss about this place. When we go outside I start sweating before we get in the car. This past week we did some service for an older couple. We shoveled some dirt for them. Within probably 15 minutes my whole shirt was soaking wet. I'm pretty excited to get back to Arizona and not sweat so much. Has it been hot in Heber? Well this past week the Sister missionaries had 2 girls  like 11 and 10 get baptized. So I got to meet with them for a little bit a couple days before their baptism. They are neighbors of some members. They were going to have their neighbor baptize them but he was at girls camp with all the young women and they didn't know if he was going to be back in time. So the 2 girls wanted me to baptize them if he wasn't going to be back in time. I felt good that they were excited to find out I could baptize them. But the member ended up getting home from camp on time so he was able to baptize both of them. I didn't mind though. I would rather have their neighbor baptize them anyways because he is their fellowshipper. They were sweet girls though. I don't know if you remember my patriarchal blessing but it talks alot about stuff on my mission. Like being able to baptize someone. I think about that alot. It doesn't bother me too much but it is something I think about. I have talked to alot of people about it and I have even talked to President Wall about it in our interviews. I have received some pretty good insight about it though. Its no biggy though. When I get home I have so much stuff I want to talk to you guys about. Just like about missions or the church or just like life in general. Coming on a mission just makes you look at life in a whole different way. You just view things different. It's pretty cool. Anyways for the past few weeks we have been running alot. The member that takes us frisbee golfing every morning is training for a half marathon. He pretty much does everything for us. He likes us alot. But he takes us running with him and another member. We run 4 miles Monday and Wednesday. Then on Saturday is our big runs. We started out at 5 miles a few weeks but we go up a mile every Saturday so this past Saturday we ran 7 miles. This morning we ran 4 miles and this Saturday we will run 8 miles. We wake up at about 4 and go run. He usually takes us to a golf course that we run at. The other missionaries don't want to go alot of the times because its too early. But we go anyways. Haha. Hopefully this will get me in pretty good shape when I go home. Tell Jaden he better do some more running because I'll go running with him when I get home and we will see who is in better shape. The thing that's nice here is that its really really low elevation so breathing is really easy. In Heber my first time running I'll probably be running out of breath. Oh so I was wondering if you guys could put some money on my card. I think I'm going to start sending some stuff home in the next couple weeks. And I might want to buy a couple more souvenirs before I leave. So if you guys could do that sometime soon that would be great. And if any of you guys want anything else from here before i leave just let me know. Oh one more thing is mom i saw some papaya at walmart the other day and it made me really want a papaya drink!   Love ya

Elder Willis :)

              Tyler's Zone

May 19th
Hey! 

I hope you all had a good week. I bet you all are excited to be done with school. I know i would be. Its crazy how fast the year goes. It seems like just barely you guys were telling me that you were about to start school. So you guys are starting to get warmer weather? Your probably excited for that. Here its already super hot. Its killing me. I wish they would let us wear cargo shorts and sandals to proselyte in. That would be so nice. My white shirts get so sweaty. I have to wash them constantly. Well this is the last week of the transfer and then i will be in my last transfer. Its pretty exciting. So next Monday we will get transfer calls but im pretty sure im just going to finish my mission out here in St. Amant. I wouldnt mind it. I like this place. I will probably stay with Elder Gosch too. But you never know though. So ill email you guys on Tuesday. Dad i got your email about the Chiropractor. I wasnt able to go to him this past week but im planning on scheduling a couple appointments this week or something. So next week ill let you know how its going. My knee is feeling a little better. I have been using the TENS twice a day and those pills the doc gave me are working pretty good. They make me feel super drowsy though. So im always tired. It works though so i keep taking them. My knee will hurt a little every once in a while but not too often. I have been trying to start working back into it. I have been doing a little jogging every morning. That is helping my knee feel a little better because im getting the strength in my knee again. I guess its just going to take a little time. So Travis is coming home Wednesday? That is crazy. I though he left the first week of June. He must be coming home a couple weeks early. It feels like he just barely left and then not too long after him i left. Haha. It will be interesting to see how much he has changed. So Jaden and Makenzie are trying to start working out for sports next year? When i get home ill go work out with them. Ill be like their personal trainer for football and volleyball. Then they can help be my personal trainer for basketball. Well this week was a pretty good week. I went on exchanges with Elder Mapa up in Baton Rouge. It was cool to hang out with him for a few days. Just like old times. We were able to teach a couple families that he has been working with. One of the families was from Page, Arizona. They were Native American. They were supposed to get baptized this week. Then one day we went to the temple. It was good..  the work here in my area has been going pretty good. We have 1 investigator from the Gladys Knight fireside that is progressing. His name is Mike. Hes about 60. Hes actually the step dad of a couple members in the ward. So his family is all Mormon. He decided he wanted to join them all after the fireside. So he wants to get baptized like the first or second week of June. He has already quite smoking. Hes come to church a couple times already. His wife is a member too but she hasnt been in years and she is starting to come with him too. She also has quite smoking too. Its pretty cool. Thats about the most that has been going on with us here.  

June 2nd
Hey! 

I hope everything is going good for you all. I bet you guys are already having an awesome summer. I bet the weather is feeling nice as well. Anyways not too much is going on with me. I got a new companion. Elder Abbott from Highland, Utah. He has been out like 9 months. He seems pretty cool so far

 This week on Wednesday and Thursday it rained a ton. It rained so much that like the whole town was flooded. People say it flooded worse than a hurricane. So we had to help a couple families this past week with their flooded driveway. Our phone ended up getting wet while we were helping this older lady and its broken now. We have been without a phone for the past few days. Thats about my week. I cant wait to see you guys in 5 weeks. Im excited! Hopefully you guys are just as excited. Its crazy how close its coming. Its hard to stay focused when you know you only have a month or so. Its like in the gospel when you have to endure to the end. Thats what its like for me right now. Its weird to think im going to be at home in no time. I have just been in this type of lifestyle for so long its weird to think i am going to have to change my lifestyle again soon. Anyways.. I love you guys. 

Hey!! Hope you all had a good week and enjoyed watching conference. I thought it was pretty good. We ended up just watching it at the church pretty much by ourselves with the other missionaries. But on Sunday afternoon we were able to watch it with a member so that was nice. I had a few favorite talks. I liked Pres. Uchtdorf in the Priesthood session and then Gary Stevenson's talk about the Olympic athletes. That was interesting. So it was a good weekend. Other than that my week was an alright week. We have a few investigators we are working with right now. But none of them were able to watch conference. I'm not sure if they are really investigators or if they just like us coming over to talk to them. We haven't been able to teach too many lessons this past week. We did quite a bit of service though. That was about it though. My week wasn't too exciting. This morning we were able to go play some frisbee golf. The member still takes us out to go play every other Monday. So its pretty fun. This past week it has rained a lot too. It has been really wet. Then last Monday another missionary and I went fishing at a member's pond. It was pretty fun. I only caught 1 fish. It was a little catfish. So the member fillet it for us and we went back to our apartment and deep fried it. It was some pretty good deep fried catfish. Maybe I'll open a business of southern food when I get back. Well sorry this email is a short one but I can't really think of anything to talk about. I'll have some more stuff to say next week hopefully. Oh and next week is transfers and I don't know what's going on. Me and my companion will probably stay the same. I don't know. Well love you all :) 

Elder Willis :)

Catching dinner!

Hey!!

Sounds like you guys all had a fun spring break. I'm jealous of you guys. Those pictures turned out nice. Everyone is looking good. Everyone looks like they are growing and changing....well mostly Jaden and Makenzie. I did get the package you sent. Thank you. Those lucky charms are tasting pretty good :) Well not too much has happened this past week. I woke up on Monday morning last week with a sore throat and that lasted for a couple days and then I started getting a little headache and then for the past few days I have had a cough. I think it might be because of the spring weather here. Maybe I have picked up allergies since I have been down here.  It's not been that bad though. My comp tried to get me to contact the mission nurse but I kept telling him no because I didn't want her to tell me to stay inside for the day. So I wouldn't call her but he kept bugging me about it and finally I gave in. She just told me to take some medicine and something with lemon juice.  So I have been a little under the weather for the past week.  This week  our work has been pretty good. We got 2 new investigators from the other elders. They were teaching them but they were in our area so they gave them to us. One is 16 year old named Fernando. He is pretty cool. He is the only one taking the lessons from his whole family. So hopefully once we start teaching him for a while we can get the family involved. Then the other is a less active member named Omar and his fiancee Sarah. They live together so they need to get married before she gets baptized but she seems like she wants to get baptized. We had a lesson with them at our ward mission leaders house. The Cutshaws. The Cutshaws are like one of my new favorite families here. They just moved from Florida. I connect with that family really well. But they don't like Louisiana at all so they are moving back in the summer. Haha. Don't blame them. But those are the 2 people we are teaching right now. They both said they would be at church on Sunday and they didn't show up,. So I was pretty upset after church on Sunday. Oh and we also had another guy said he would show up to. He's not really an investigator but we visit him. He didn't show up either. So that was my week. Oh and something cool that is happening here at the end of April is that Gladys Knight is coming to Baton Rouge to do a fireside. I didn't know who she was before this but now  I know who she is. Maybe you guys know her. Everyone down here loves her. So on Saturday we had a meeting to help us get ready for it. Members can only go if they bring nonmember friends. It should be a really cool missionary opportunity for the people here. And the missionaries get to go so it will be cool to go to that. Anyways that's about it for this week. Oh and I don't know what I need for my b-day but I will be thinking and let you know. Love you all!!

Elder Willis :)

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

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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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 :)