July 1, 2013

Hey!! So I probably should have answered your questions before I sent this email because I'll probably answer a lot of the questions over again. Oh well..so I got transferred to Covington. It's a real nice and pretty area. It reminds me of Santa Barbara.  Pretty wealthy area too. It's on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain so it's kind of like a beach town. This is one of the areas all the missionaries want to serve in. A lot of missionaries were pretty jealous of me because I went from one really good area to another really good area. There are 2 areas in this ward. Covington and Mandeville. My companion is Elder Wittig. He's been out 3 months. He was actually Elder White's MTC companion. Elder White is still in Denham Springs and his companion is my  MTC companion. So I think that's pretty funny that we're both serving with each others MTC companion. I got to talk to Elder White for a little bit at transfer meeting. He is doing good. I'm pretty excited were in the same zone because we will see each other more often. The only bad thing about this area is that it's a bike area. I finally get to use my bike more often. It's like the worst time to be in a bike area too. Right in the middle of the summer. It's been pretty rough the past few days. It's been getting up close to 100 degrees. Once we get to an appointment or something we are just soaking with sweat. I guess I'll be getting back in shape though. We have to buy our own groceries too. So looks like I'll be living off of cereal again. So far this area is pretty sweet. The members here really like the missionaries. We get fed dinners pretty good here. It was pretty easy to adjust to this area. I still miss Gonzales though. I think that's probably going to be my favorite area of my mission. I hope I really like this area too. I got to this area and we have a baptism for this Saturday. I just walked into a baptism :) It's for a guy named Jimmy. He's like 40. I've got to teach him a couple times already and he seems pretty cool. He asked me to give a talk on the Holy Ghost for his baptism. The work in this area is pretty slow. This area has a lot of potential. This past week has been rough for me and Elder Wittig because he is brand new and hardly knows what he's doing and I just got here so I have no clue about the area either. I've been trying to help him out the best I can but I only know so much about the area. Hopefully we can get the work to pick up. Most of the time we just ride our bikes around trying to find people to talk to. Being on a bike is really good when you want to contact someone because you just ride right up to them and start talking to them. Yeah the 4th of July is this week. I think a couple of the members invited us over to have a bbq or something. Then they said they were going to shoot off some fireworks. I guess you guys are probably doing the normal for 4th of July? I remember last year. It was like my last week in Heber for 2 years. I cant believe its already been that long. Well I hope i answered some of your questions. I forgot my camera again so I'll try to remember it for next week hopefully. That's about it for this week. I can't really think of anything that I need. I think I'm good for right now. Oh we are in hurricane season right now. If there is a hurricane it usually will come like August or September. I wouldn't mind going through another hurricane as long as we don't have to do another huge clean-up haha. Well I love you guys!
Elder Willis
Here's my address..
518 S. Jefferson Ave. #103
Covington, LA 70433

Hey!! So yeah this week is transfer week. I got a call last night that I'll be getting transferred.  I'm not sure if I'm ready to leave this area but I guess it was time for me to leave. I was here for 8 months. Haha I guess I got pretty comfortable here. I'm ready to try new things out and meet new people and everything though. So tomorrow is our transfer meeting. I'm hoping that I'll be getting transferred to Denham Springs. That's where Trevor is at. haha His comp. is going home. We'll see..    So yeah C's baptism was this past Saturday. It was very good. The spirit there was really strong. She asked me to give a talk on the Holy Ghost. She asked one of the missionaries in the 1st ward to baptize her. It was a little surprising because those weren't even her missionaries but it was her decision. Even the ward mission leader and the Bishop were a little surprised about that. I forgot to bring my camera to the library so I can't send you pictures this week but I will try to send some next week. Then on Sunday she got confirmed. Bishop did the confirmation. Then she had another member bless her baby. It was a good Sacrament Meeting. It was a good last Sunday in that ward because we had almost all the people I have been working with this whole time I've been here at Sacrament meeting. We had like 3 investigators at church and like 5 of the less active members we've been working with there. It was really neat to see. This would be an area I would like to come back and visit. The rest of my week went pretty good. We did a lot of service. We helped a member put in a wood floor. Bringing back memories. :) Done lots of those before. Yesterday the 1st ward elders and us decided to do a day of service. We cut 7 lawns. A lot of widows and less fortunate families. By the end of the day we were all drained. It was so hot. Had a couple lessons this past week. One of them was with J. Our investigator that has a baptismal date. He came to church on Sunday too. We taught him the plan of salvation. It went good. Then we brought up the Word of Wisdom because we kinda already knew he had a problem with that. We went over that and I could tell he got a little discouraged because he knew he had problems with it. He really wants to get baptized and is super excited for it but he has to overcome this and he says it going to to be hard for him. He will be able to overcome it. I won't be teaching him anymore but I really hope he ends up getting baptized. He was a sweet guy. That's pretty much all that happened during my week. Yeah I got an email from Ashlee. She sounded like she is doing really good. But I know what it feels like to be brand spankin new. It is super tough but it gets better.  Mitchell and I still write letters to each other all the time. He is doing really good. So Jaden is doing a paper route for a week? I've always wanted to be a paper boy. That would be sweet. Sounds like Matt and Helen are still doing good. Everyone seems to be doing great. Yeah I thought that broadcast was awesome. I really enjoyed it. These next few years are going to be a great time to be a missionary. I'm glad i get to be apart of this. Yeah my blog is all changed up. Tell Makenzie she did a great job. Well I'll email you guys next week about my new area. I love you all!

Elder Willis <333

Hey happy late Father's Day Dad!!! Too bad I can't call for fathers day but just know that you're awesome and thanks for everything!  Well my week was a pretty good one. Today was a sweet day. We are emailing late because we went down to New Orleans this morning. A member took us down there again and we got to see more things this time because the member lived there for a while and knew the area pretty good. There are a lot of tourists down there this time of the year. It was super hot though. I was sweating pretty bad walking around downtown New Orleans. I'll try and send you some pictures. So grandmas place got flooded pretty bad? That's no fun! Every single time it rains here it floods. All the bayous will overflow and there will be water everywhere. Anyways I'm glad that you got the picture of me. We had a sweet time over at their house for dinner. They are a super cool family. Yeah my eye did get scratched somehow and it was irritated real bad. You know how I was really sick last week? Well right when I was starting to get over it my eye got infected and I ended up getting pink eye. I had to call Sis Wall for it and get eye drops for it. That lasted for a few days. As of right now everything is fine with me. I'm not sick in any way!   We had another lesson with C. this past week which went super good. I asked her why she decided to start coming to church again after going in Utah for a while. Some missionaries a while ago left a pass along card on her door but she didn't think anything of it. After a few months or so she came across it and thought about it and decided that it would be best for her to start going to church again. Now she's getting baptized. So everything is set for our baptism with C. this Saturday. She is super excited for it. We still have to help her get her program together. I'll try to take some pictures and send them to you next week. I'm real excited for her. There was another sweet little miracle that happened this week. We got a call from this guy here that wanted to know if our church is doing baptisms for Father's day? He told us that a few years ago some missionaries gave him a Book of Mormon with their numbers in it. He didn't want anything to do with it. After a couple years he came across the book  while cleaning and decided to read it. He gained a testimony of it and wanted to meet with us. We went and had a lesson with him. He accepted a date to get baptized later on in July. He also came to church this past Sunday. He is real sincere and solid. So those 2 experiences with C. and this other guy J. really strengthened my testimony of pass along cards or leaving a Book of Mormon. You never know when they are going to come across it and decide to check it out. It may be a few years. That's probably something dad can do at his office. Just get some B of M's with the missionaries number in it and just leave it on the desk. You never know who will come across it and maybe in a couple years they will want to find out if it is true. So we got some pretty good things in our area right now. It's harvesting time. Yeah I don't know what's going on with the missionary broadcast. I know it's going to be good. President Monson and Packer will be speaking i think. Haha opening China? That would be pretty intense. Maybe Jaden could be one of the first missionaries in China? So Bishop Franco emailed me and wanted me to write a letter to you guys about some experiences I've had and some counsel to the youth to read in sac. meeting? I'll see what I can do. I'll try and do that. Even though that's not the ward I left from.   Well that's pretty much my week. All y'all have a great week. :) I love you.

Elder Willis

Hey!! So I don't think this email will be a very good one because I got stuck on a computer without a chair so I have been standing up the whole time and I've been like deathly ill the past few days. So I might pass out. haha. Yeah it's been bad. I've had to stay in most of the day but then I'll think I'm feeling good and we will try to go out but it wouldn't last very long until we would have to come back in. I don't know what it is but it's rough. (Now his mom is worried!)  I'll be fine though. I'll try to toughen it up. So Jaden got to go to an Imagine Dragons concert? I didn't know about them until like a month ago. I think a youth in our ward was telling us about them. I think they are mormon too? I don't know I've never heard of them before. So my week was pretty good. We had a couple lessons with C. She is so excited for her baptism. I'm really excited too it's going to be awesome. Another cool thing about that is the same day she gets confirmed in Sacrament mtg. Her little baby is going to get blessed too. It's a sweet story. So I got an email from Ashlee! Sounds like she is doing really good. I'm really excited for her. She is going to be an awesome missionary. I read on her blog and she was like talking about how she saw all these people at the MTC.  I didn't get to see anybody I knew. I was a loner. I really enjoyed the MTC though it was a lot of fun. Matthew sent me some pictures of the house and it looks great. I'm excited to see the finished version. So  Trevor and I are trying to do everything in our power to able to serve around each other. We are writing President in our letters to him that we want to serve around each other so we will see how it turns out. We still have a while before we go home too so I shouldn't be too worried right now.Well I better go sit down or something I'm getting light headed. Taking care of myself is hard instead of having mom taking care of me all the time.  (now I wish I could fly over to Louisiana and take care of him for a few days. )  I have no clue how to take care of myself :) I'll write you guys a way better email next week when I can think straight. You are in my prayers and I love you all!!

Elder Willis

Hey!! Sounds like everything's going pretty good now that school is out! So Ashlee is gone now? Crazy...I'm going to have to write her while she is out on her mission. Yeah you can give me her blog. I'll get on it and read all about her crazy adventures. I get on my blog a lot even though it's just the letters I write to you! So if you ever want to put like a hidden note on that blog for me I'll probably see it...or other cool stuff. Remember how I told you guys that we get an hour a day to go to the library and get on the church websites. Like lds.org or mormon.org, we can also get on blogs. I know lds.org from like the inside out. My mission Pres. is real laid back when it comes to what missionaries can do. He lets us act as agents for ourselves and not as objects. It's pretty nice. So I got the package you sent me. Thanks. The snacks were good too. So lately I've been eating super healthy and trying to watch what I eat. I'm almost down to 170. I've been eating a lot of grapefruit and its been helping a lot. I'm glad I'm skinny again. :) (and all through high school he wanted to put on weight...from mom:)  So my week was a pretty good week. We had a lesson with Candace. That's the girl that's 20 years old and moved from Utah I was telling you about last week. She is super solid. So at our lesson we found out a little bit more about her. I guess in Utah she would always go to church with her friends. She did that for about 5 years I think. She even got her Young Women's medallion thingy...so she knows everything. She has already read the whole Book of Mormon. She just didn't feel it was the right time for her to get baptized. So we had our lesson over at our Bishop's house. It was the best lesson I've ever been in. The spirit was so strong. It was the first time I got emotional during a lesson. It was so sweet. So she accepted to get baptized on the 22nd of this month. We have another lesson with her tomorrow night. She is awesome. Tonight we have a lesson with another one of our investigators. He is progressing slowly so it's kind of a struggle with him. He really wants to get baptized but he has a really bad smoking problem. He enjoys us coming over because he really wants us to help him out. So we will see how it goes with him. That's really the only stuff we have going for us in this area. We finally got sisters in this area. They are working both areas. I'm pretty sure both wards love them both more than they love the Elders. All the members in our ward were flocking to their dinner calendar to sign up for them and they would just walk right past ours. So the sisters are stealing all our dinner appointments. And all the members are telling them to go see the people we are already seeing. haha  So we're going to be left with nothing to do here pretty soon. :)  So I forgot to tell you guys about this last week but I guess I'll tell you now  that it's a week old. So Elder Mapa has the hook ups with football players. He has a lot of cousins and buddies in the NFL and College. He actually has a friend from back home that's playing at LSU right now. He's huge. 6'6" 300+.  .So he got a hold of him and he got him to come down to Gonzo to hang out with us. So we went and played ball with him and went out to eat. His name is Hoko Fanaika so if you ever see LSU playing this year remember that name.   He's probably going to go to the NFL. So it was pretty cool that we got to hang out with him for a while. He said he is going to get some of the other LSU players to come down and play ball with us. It's pretty sweet. Well anyways that's about all for this week. I love you and miss you all.

Elder Willis

Hey!!! Everything with me is going pretty good. My week was a pretty good week. That's crazy that you guys are out of school already. Time is just flying by. So what are you guys going to be doing for the summer? Hopefully it will be pretty fun. I still haven't received the contacts in the mail. Maybe it will come in the next couple days. This past week for me went by pretty fast. We did a lot of service. I think things in this area are starting to get going. We have a couple sweet things that have happened lately. So there was this part member family that moved in from Ohio. They are only like 21 or 22 I think. He grew up here then moved to Ohio and got married and then they moved back down here. So his wife is not a member. They are a really nice couple. We got to help them move into their house. So hopefully we will be able to teach her a little bit and see how interested she will be. They came to church last Sunday and she participated in class and everything. Then this past Sunday our Bishop started talking to us and said he had received a text from a bishop in another ward and said there was this girl from Utah that came to church and she lives in our area and she wants to get baptized. So she came to our ward on Sunday. We don't really know the whole story yet but she lived in Utah and graduated high school there and then she moved out here for a job I think. She's only like 20 or 21. She is pretty sweet. She wants to take the lessons from us and some of the members said they were talking with her and she told them that she wants to get baptized. This is pretty sweet that an investigator like this just falls into our arms. So we will be having a lesson with her this weekend. I think a family in our ward invited her to take the lessons at their house so we will probably be having the lesson at a member's house. That's all that's new with our investigators. The other 2 investigators we have are still moving along real slow. 1 of them said he was going to come to church but he didn't....life of a missionary. :)  The other 1 we helped him and his wife move into another house. So I think he really appreciated that. Hopefully that softened up his heart a little bit more to us. The work here has been slow for like the whole time I've been here but every once in a while we will have a little time of success. Right now we're starting that little time of success. Hopefully we can catch on to this while it lasts. So here's a cool story for you guys....we were riding our bikes down the sidewalk. Then there was this gap in the sidewalk so I had to jump over it. It wasn't anything too difficult because I jump over stuff with my bike all the time. I got to have fun somehow when I ride my bike. Anyways I jumped over this gap and when I land my front tube explodes out of the tire. I don't have any grip on my front tire so it just slides out to the side. Because I was going pretty fast the back end of the bike flips over. So I end up doing a couple sommersaults and rolls with the bike. I tried to hurry and get up and start riding again like nothing happened but I saw that the tube had exploded so we had to wait there for a while so we could fix my tire. There was an ambulance that came but nothing was wrong with me. I barely even got a scratch. I don't know if someone saw me and called an ambulance or what but I thought it was pretty funny that an ambulance had to come. I promise I'm fine. I've had many falls and breaks throughout my life so this is nothing. Just a cool story. Anyways that was pretty much my week. Really hot, humid, and sweaty!! Well talk to you guys later. Love y'all!

Elder Willis

Hey!!

Hope you all are doing good. Everything with me is going pretty good. Sounds like Ashlees farewell went pretty good. She is going to be a great missionary. I'm excited for her. So I bet you all are ready for school to be out? I can't believe school is already out. It seems like it just started for you guys. So any sweet plans for the summer? Probably just being lazy huh? Well my week was a pretty good week. The new missionary that got transferred in was actually here in Gonzales when I first got transferred here. So we lived together for like a transfer and he left but now he got transferred back so that's pretty cool. It's sweet to have a missionary you already know and like get transferred in an area with you. I'm just hoping for one transfer that me and Trevor get to be companions. :) That would be sweet. So yeah Aunt Laurie did send me Byron's announcement. It was nice. I was wondering if you ever sent those contacts off? Because I thought you said you were going to send them off but I never got them. So I don't know if your still waiting to send them off or what? Anyways about my week. We had a couple lessons with one of our investigators. They went pretty good. He really wants to get baptized but he just has a smoking problem holding him back. He was really the only person we were able to teach this week. Everyone else was to busy or we couldn't get ahold of them. The weather here has been warming up real fast. It's probably getting close to the 90's now and its super humid. I think this is going to be a long summer...We decided to ride our bikes a few days this week. We probably rode about 15-20 miles this week. I think I'm going to have to throw away a couple of my white shirts now because they are all gross from the sweat. Haha they aren't really white anymore. But this week we did some more yard work for some families. There was one day we just showed up at like 11 o'clock and knocked on the door and told them we were cutting their lawn for them. They felt so grateful for us. It's always nice to give selfless service to people. That's one of the things I enjoy most is just serving people. So I got to do some fun things this week. I really got to experience the Louisiana culture because I actually got to go to my first real crawfish boil. Down here when someone graduates from high school they will have a little party where it's all crawfish and jambalaya and all kinds of food. So we got invited to 2 crawfish boils this week. It was super crazy. So here's how a crawfish boil goes down just so you know. They have about 3-4 tables just lined up against each other. Then when the crawfish is done they pour it all on the table and you just start grabbing crawfish and eating it. There's no plates or anything. Just like 2 feet of stacked crawfish on the tables. I'm not very good at peeling crawfish. I felt kinda wimpy because there were girls that had like 5 crawfish peeled and eaten by the time I got done with 1. But after a while I started getting the hang of it. The best part is once you peel off the tail and get the meat out you take the head and suck out all the stuff in the head. At first I was a little hesitant to suck out the head but then I did it and it was like the best part. And they will throw some potatoes and corn in with the crawfish. It's super hot too so the whole time your trying to eat crawfish you are just sweating all over the place. There was a couple of times when I tried peeling the tail and it popped all over my white shirt. It was nasty. So crawfish boils are pretty crazy. You guys just need to experience it for yourselves.... Well that was pretty much my week. I can't wait to hear from you guys again. I love you all!

Elder Willis :))