Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Let's follow them, they know the right path!



Wednesday: Last 2 Transfers, it seemed we only taught girls. Girls are awesome. They are just so in tune with the spirit. They are so much easier to teach than guys. Now we are working with 2 guy investigators. It's rough. They progress sooooo slowly compared to girls. They are just so stubborn, and prideful. I'm glad I get to marry a girl rather than a guy. Haha, I feel bad for you gals. Haha. Tom is dating a Mormon girl, so that is what got him interested in learning more, he is not recognizing the spirit. That is his biggest concern is just "not getting answers". When we ask him how reading or praying went, he always replies, "Eh." But later on the lesson he tells us how he believes something is true, we are like, "How did you come to know that, that is true." He says, "Oh it just makes sense, it feels right." "That's the spirit Tom!!" He isn't to sure about it being the spirit though.

Thursday: We had to drop one of our investigators, Riley, because she is ready to be baptized, but doesn't want to until January. So there is really nothing that we can do for her. We handed her over to the Ward Missionaries. She is such an awesome girl, it was sad to drop her, but we have to spend our time elsewhere. We went on splits to tract out some more of the dorms. We knew that we weren't allowed to knock on dorms, but we thought it would be okay if we had a member with us. Nope. Elder Florschutz had someone complain about him. We got a call from our High Councilor to make sure we never do it again, and also our Assistants also gave us a call. Whoops. Well instead, we just stand outside the dorms and talk to people as they come out. Haha we have them surrounded!!

Friday: A ward mission leader set up an appointment for us in his Ward. I'm not going to lie, whenever someone else sets up appointments, I usually have low expectations. This one though, it was amazing! Dallen & Stef, they are a couple that is living together, they are engaged for July. Dallen has been LA since age 15, Stef is from PA, and she is not a member, when asking Stef her religious background she said that her Dad is a southern baptist that wants to be Mormon, and wants her to be sealed in the temple with Dallen. Haha. If that's not being prepared by The Lord, I don't know what is. Haha. She accepted a baptismal date of Nov. 21st. At the end of the lesson Dallen was so ecstatic, he said, "This was the first time I have felt the spirit since I was 15" It always makes me happy to see people so receptive :)

Saturday: Jorden's Baptism!!! We had the baptism at the Logan Tabernacle. The Baptism room only has normally room for a little less than 50. We had a little more than 90. It was really cozy in there. It was a really good Baptism though! USU is known for a party called the "Howl" tons of people fly in to attend it.  It is also basically made by Satan. The Howl is the day when most arrests happen all year. They apparently had like 40 cops around the howl this time. So with that going on, obviously they don't want missionaries in that environment, they were going to have all of us missionaries up at President's house and just watch a movie, but we had Stake Conference, so we just went to that. Afterwards though, they made us stay the night at the Assistant's House.

Sunday: Stake Conference! @ The Logan Tabernacle. They have this weird seating to where they have seats facing towards the congregation, but in front of the speaker. That is where we sat, with our Recent Convert, Mack. It was the most awkward seating arrangement ever. Didn't know where to look! Poor Mack had to give a talk in Stake Conference when only being a member of the church for a month. She was the highlight of the Conference though! She did amazing! We gave a 5 minute restoration during conference. President Allred and his wife spoke at our Conference too, that was really sweet! Hopefully that will increase the missionary work in the stake. 

Monday: We had a lesson with Mary, she is solid, just waiting for first presidency approval. Jorden, we are just going to have her teach us for the Recent Convert lessons :) The whole Stake was going to a corn maze for FHE activity, so we went as well. As we went through the corn maze, people would say, "Hey it's the missionaries! Let's follow them, they know the right path!" or things like that. At one point we had a huge crowd with us, sadly, we didn't know we were going. So we had people fall away from following us when they noticed when we didn't know where we were going. Eventually we found a guy that was studying his map intently, we just followed him. Haha

We will get locked in for Halloween if that is what you mean? Haha. We went to a corn maze yesterday!
Haven't got my new suit yet :/ I'm excited for it though..
Haven't gone to the temple since August, we'll endowment session anyways. But hopefully this next month we will go!
Oh! Just got my suit! It's awesome! That's actually my 37th Baptism though. Even more souls!
Thanks for the email!
Love,
Elder Wrathall

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Good Things!



Wednesday: Had 5 lessons this day! All of me went through. Such a blessing when people keep their appointments. Erica, a girl that we have been working with because she requested it, we had to tell her that we have to stop meeting with her.... Because she is doing awesome!! She has been going to church, she has a calling, she has been reading the scriptures and everything, so we told her basically that she is doing an awesome job and didn't need our help. She was sad about it, but understood.

Thursday: We actually got to do service!!! Haven't done that in a while, it was nailing weather strips along the side of garage doors for a church building. They have a dis-connected building that has 10 Garage doors on it. And we do 3 weather strips for each. So it takes a while.  We prepared some for Charlotte's baptism this weekend. We went over to talk to her about it, and very scary for us, was that she opened up about some doubts. We tried are best to smooth them out, but we left that appointment not sure if she was going to be baptized this weekend. We told her to keep working towards it in faith!

Friday: We asked Charlotte how she was feeling towards it, and she told us that she felt excited and ready! I am so glad for the power of The Spirit in conversion! There is no other way that this missionary work can proceed except by The Spirit! The Football game against Boise State happened, plus, it is fall break. So barely anyone was home, so it made it really rough to proselyte. When trying to find a fellowship to come with us to a lesson, we were about to give up, then came to our mind to bring Mack (Our Recent Convert) to the lesson. That was definitely inspired! Afterwards, she even texted us saying like she should go back to the investigator and talk with him. So she did, they had a super good conversation, where he opened up to her a lot, which he doesn't to us. Mack is the best! She is a natural missionary!

Saturday: As a zone like we normally do on Saturday morning we played speed-ball! Always a good stress reliever. Right after, we rushed to get ready then rode our bikes over to the tabernacle for filling the font for Charlotte's baptism. Filling the Font takes a little over 2 hours :/ This time we actually got it to be warm! :) I had the opportunity to baptize her! Always a wonderful moment. She was so happy when she came out of the water! For lunch we ate out with my Former companion, now released and returned Colten Bayles, and Rox of course. It was good to see them both again :) 

Sunday: Elder Florschutz was the one who confirmed Charlotte as a member of the church. It was a jam packed sacrament meeting. We had people having to sit up on the podium, and we were all shoulder to shoulder. They combined two wards, it being fall break and a lot of people went home. Those were the only two wards that I would say didn't need to be combined. All the rest of the wards were super small. Mack, who was baptized a month ago, got her Patriarchal Blessing! She was allowed to invite people, so she invited us!  It was really cool to be there for someone else's blessing! She had some really awesome specific blessings!

Monday: Now that we cover the 4th Stake again, we got to meet with Mary again, who is waiting for 1st Presidency approval for baptism! She is so cool, and excited for it. It has been 3 weeks since she was interviewed, so I am guessing another 3 weeks for approval to return. She is keeping the faith though. We had two other lessons of where with our investigators they are keeping every commitment, they just haven't received their answers. With both of them we are almost done with all the lessons, both come from active participation in another religion. It is getting hard to know what to do for them :/ Thank goodness for the Spirit!

Love Elder Wrathall

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Could things get smaller?





Wednesday: Things have drastically changed in our area, since now we only cover 1 stake rather than 3. Our area is like 1/8 of what it used to be. It is now literally 4 blocks. I am pretty sure it is the smallest missionary proselyting area in the world.... Haha. With that, it is hard to keep busy when we don't have lessons. We still contact on Campus.

Inline image 1
That's our area, except half of the bottom right block we don't cover, and the bottom two blocks we don't cover. So... super small.

Thursday: Because other missionaries took over our stakes, we have been having "Passover" lessons, meaning... They are taking our investigators. Man it is really sad sometimes to pass over investigators, because you know they are progressing and they are going to get baptized.

Friday: This day was a great day. We finally had a lesson with Charlotte after 9 days without. We were super worried going in there because seems like she had been avoiding meeting with us. So we thought she might not have been interested anymore. But! We had a super awesome lesson, and in it, our fellowshippers asked what was holding her back from being baptized. She thought... And thought... And thought. But nothing came. So we invited her for next Saturday, and she felt the spirit confirm to her that that is good! Yay!!!

Saturday: We had lessons throughout the afternoon, which was sweet, but come the night there was nothing to do, and nobody was home. We taught Mack a Recent Convert lesson, but had a plan of salvation drawing contest, I will send you my drawing :) Then we had a lesson with a new investigator, Stephanie, who when we knocked the door, her Boyfriend answered, so I was worried that they were living together, but nope! They aren't even when they are engaged too! Yay!! They were pretty interested, but we can only meet with them once a week for these first three weeks they said, because they are so busy :( Later in the week, they texted us asking if they could have their friends come to who are interested! Sick!!!

Sunday: A Day full of meetings... 11 hours of church this time, We had a Sunday Night Devotional with Elder Brent Nielsen, he talked a lot about trials, and how trials is the purpose we came to earth. Good talk for college students. We had dinner with Jorden our investigator, she is such the nicest gal! She knows how to bake too! She made a chocolate peanut butter cake. It was super good. Rich but good. She is excited for her baptism next week! :)

Monday: The afternoon was rough because we had no lessons, well it fell through anyways. Come the night, it was very busy :) We had Charlotte's Baptismal Interview, she did awesome! Had little Caesar's twice for dinner. That was... gross. Then had a super good lesson with Eric. He understands everything besides grace :/ I feel like he has true intent though, and I believe that he will get an answer to his prayers :)

Thanks for the email! Love you!
Love,
Elder Wrathall

To see if he could...


Success I guess.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Friends together again.

Elder Wrathall and Elder Giles together

Transfer News: We are both staying together!! We will be getting Elder Lowell and his son will be living in our apartment as well! We still aren't sure what exactly we cover.... Because they made 2 new areas on USU. 

Wednesday: I'm sure we did something cool, I just don't remember, ;)

Thursday: We started to teach a NM that isn't even in our area, because our bishop wanted us to... We are being forced to poach!! Haha We'll hand them over to the right  missionaries, but we got to talk to bishop about it. He is dating someone in our stakes, and they are wanting to get married. So I guess that is why bishop wanted us to teach them. He is pretty hard to teach though, not very humble, comes from a Catholic background so he has a lot of that doctrine in mind.

Friday: Friday's are a lot harder on Campus, seems like college students don't really want to spend their weekend nights hanging out with the missionaries and being taught. (What is wrong with them?) so we only had 1 lesson. The rest of the day was good old finding efforts. Campus is pretty barren on Friday afternoons, so we resorted to visiting members and giving them just short spiritual thoughts and asking for referrals.

Saturday: Watched General Conference over at our senior couple the Wilsons, they are such a sweet people, I love them so much! Priesthood session was super good, funny story about that. USU had a home football game going at the same time, so sadly, our priesthood session was very small. However, God has his hand over all, when Priesthood Session started, a storm came over the stadium with lightning and all, so they delayed the Football an hour and a half, about the same time that Priesthood was, so those that made the right decision of going to Conference could attend both! :) God is cool!

Sunday:Watched General Conference over at the Wilson's again! President Monson's talk was super powerful! Sad he is having so much health problems :( Of course, the best way to finish of the general conference day? Lessons! We had 5 lessons after. Kelton was one of them, recently just married but wants the gospel in his marriage :) I only got to teach him that one time, because we don't cover married people.

Monday: We had a good amount of lessons today! 6! sadly, one of them, a sister whom we are teaching, we talked to the Relief Society President about. Turns out she is actually a member who has been coming out to church. I guess she has just been messing with us, making us think she is an investigator. That's pretty lame. We met with Jorden! She was awesome! She went down to conference, and she felt like she needs to be baptized this month! So she is working towards the 24th, and she is so solid for that date!

Ponderize was probably my favorite talk, by Elder Durrant. You could just tell he was a mission president :)
 Fine, I'll see if I can get something unique.
Thanks mom!

Love,
Elder Wrathall

PS I get to see Elder Giles right now! I'm hopefully going to go to a teaching appt. with him right now! Elder Giles is Dallin's good friend from home although his family moved to Oregon this year. 


He said he just sat down and that why the picture is blurry and his eyes are closed but a picture is a picture!