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 :)

Hey!!

Its crazy that you guys didn't really have a winter this year. That's so weird. Haha this week for me the weather was super nice. It's been pretty humid so it feels really hot. It's starting to feel like summer is just right around the corner. I can't wait for the summer weather. It's super hot but it feels so good at night time. Nothing can beat a southern summer night. The only bad thing about this warmer weather is all the mosquitoes are starting to come out.  People always joke that the state bird in the south is the mosquito. It's weird to think that baseball already has started. Baseball season was always way fun. I always thought baseball season was the funnest even though I liked playing basketball the most. Well my week was alright.  I went on exchanges for a day this week. One of the missionaries in Alexandria came to Natchez with me. It was Elder Rennie. We were in the mtc together. I haven't really seen him since we came out because he has been in this same zone his whole mission. So it was super cool to be able to hang out with him for a little bit. It was fun. We went and taught the  lady that we go see sometimes. We had a pretty good lesson with her. She asked us what she can do to become a better person. So I was flipping through my scriptures just thinking of something I could tell her then it landed on a talk I have glued in my scriptures.  It's "what manner of men ought ye to be" by President Hunter. So I just ripped it out of my scriptures and told her to read it. Hopefully that talked helped her out a little bit. But yeah next week is transfers so I'll email on Tuesday and let you know everything that's going on. I am really hoping that something will change :) The rest of my week was pretty good. So next Yuesday is Mardi Gras!!! :) People celebrate it all week long. They have parades and stuff all week long. It started this past weekend. We went to a parade with Bishop's family. It was a lot of fun. I'll send some pictures. People are just throwing beads and stuffed animals and all kinds of stuff. It was pretty crazy. I got hit in the face a couple of times with some beads. I ended up getting like 20 beads. So that was a lot of fun. Then on Saturday we helped out Bishop all day fixing up his house. We helped him out bu moving like 300 pieces of lumber to his back yard. We didn't get done until like 8 30. It was a long day. So that was pretty much my week. Well hope you all have a good week. I love you all!!

Elder Willis :) :)

Pictures from the Mardi Gras Parade

One of the Antebellum homes in town

Hey!! Hope you all are doing well. Sounds like its been a pretty dry winter for you guys over there. That's crazy. I've had more of a winter over here in the south. Haha... well since today was President's day the library was closed so we're over at our Bishop's office. He is an attorney.  He is like super smart.  In the room I'm in right now is where he has his sword collection. He has like 50 different swords. It's pretty weird.  My companion and I have nothing in common. He likes singing and show choirs and dance. Stuff like that. It's been a struggle but it's getting better. That's just a mission. Learning to deal with things that your not comfortable with. There is only like 2 weeks until transfers though and President kinda already hinted to me what was going to happen. So I'll let you know in a couple weeks what happens. I'll make it though. Yeah I got the package that Aunt Laura sent me. Haha those fart bombs were pretty cool. During our personal study the other day I let one off and it stunk up the whole house. My companion got pretty mad at me but I thought it was funny. I had to get a good laugh somehow. Anyways my week was pretty good. It has been pretty warm here lately. Yeah I think this week its supposed to be in the 70's. I'm so ready for the warmer weather. This past week we just did a lot of service. We had this older lady we go over and see. She's not a member.   We taught her about the Plan of Salvation this past week. It went really good. I asked her to read 3 Nephi 11. I asked her if she could read it tonight and she was like no but I will read it within the next few days. Then she wanted us to come over the next morning and rake her leaves. So we go over there and we were talking with her and she told me she already read 3 Nephi 11. It was pretty cool. She is progressing along slowly. Then for a couple nights this week we did service for Bishop's family. He bought an old antebellum house and they are trying to remodel it. So we're helping them out a couple nights a week. Then we also had to help another older couple move a huge refrigerator into their bakery. It's pretty cool because they let the missionaries get cupcakes whenever they want. That was about all that happened this week. After church yesterday we had a linger longer. It's just where everyone stays after and we all eat a big lunch. It can really only work for small congregations. I remember we used to do that when I was in Opelousas. Well I hope you all have another good week. I love y'all and pray for you.

Elder Willis :) :)