Transfer News!!

Transfer News!! I'm being transferred down to North Ogden Stake, Training a new missionary. Yep North Ogden is where Elder Giles is! Elder Florschutz is staying here, and he is being a District Leader! Only 3 months out!

So I am not feeling like typing out a long email this time around, so I am going to keep it short.

This week went really well! We had over 25 lessons, Stef and Dallen are getting married so that Stef can be baptized and that they can live together! So they are getting their Marriage Certificate on Thursday. Then going to be baptized the following week! Megan didn't come out to church this week, and when we told her that we would have to push back her baptismal date to December 5th because of it, she was absolutely devastated. So much so that she basically covenanted that she would go to church every Sunday for the rest of her life! We in response were like, "Good, Good. That's what you should do! :)" She is such a cool young woman! She is so excited to be baptized, and just wants to do it now! She would literally be baptized in an hour if we called her and said she can if she wanted. We've only met with her twice, and that is how excited she is. :)

Mary Beh is being baptized on Friday, she is having a lot her family come. I am going to see if I can hitch a ride with her brother who lives in Ogden. Brodie another investigator is wanting to be baptized December 5th rather than this weekend. Which is understandable, we have only been meeting with him a week. He is really cool. Came to know and love the church because of a pretty face ;) She is going on a mission in January. 

Tom, is opening up and becoming less stubborn. He is reading the scriptures everyday! Which is really cool, he is gaining a lot from it. He is still thinking about baptism in January, hasn't prayed about it yet.

We have two investigators, Sara and Riley, who both know the church is true and come every week, but want to be baptized in January.

Last night we had a pre-birthday party for Florschutz, and it was also where I got to say farewell to a lot of people, like Mack, Kathryn, Nate, River, Ect. Mack is thinking of going up to BYUI, she would start whe I would if she decides to go! I pressured her a little.

Overall, everything is fine and dandy here in the Cache Valley. Getting cold, but I don't mind. I just want it to snow!

Thanks all ya'll!

Love,

Elder Wrathall

I asked him if he was going to be in the same Zone as Elder Giles. He said "Yeah, I will be! I am hoping that we will be in the same district!"

"The Menu" for dating

I am a terrible picture taker.

This was a creepy door that we knocked. It
looked like the door was

taken out of an elementary school. It was in a long

dark hallway too.

Thursday: Thursdays are the days where we meet with our crazy loud high councilor! He is such an awesome guy, so gung-ho about missionary work all the time. He is the best HC that I have had on my mission. We meet with him bi weekly to go over things, and to try to improve our tactics. We have been losing a lot of our missionary work in his stake sadly, seems all of our work is now in the other stake. :/ 




Friday: One interesting thing about some of the wards around here is their directories, they have everyone's pictures and where the live in this small little booklet thing. We joke around saying that it is "The Menu" for dating. One ward in particular has a ton of detail, including, Major, minor, and interest, in addition to all the other information. Complete dating menu. Haha. However, it works really well being a missionary, because they even have some non-members on those directories!




Saturday: We had 3 lessons!!!! The most we have had on a Saturday. So it was really good Saturday. Sadly no baptisms though :/  We are looking to have 3 baptisms on the 21st though. Transfers are 3 days before that though. So it would be nice not to be transferred. Haha. We had a lesson with Erin for the first time, we met her just the day before. The day before she seemed pretty interested in the church and hearing what we had to say. Today however she seemed completely closed off, and wouldn't agree to pray, read the scriptures, or go to church. So we said good-bye to her. It was weird how black and white she was.




Sunday: We had a lesson with Brodie for the first time. He has been dating a girl in the church, he has been reading the Book of Mormon Daily. So I asked him all the baptismal interview questions and he passed. So now we are just setting a date, we invited him for the 21st. I feel like Utah missions are very different... Haha. Most people we "teach" seem to know a ton already. We are just there to get them in the water. Haha. I think it has been like twice when someone didn't know who Joseph Smith was and what happened to him.




Monday: Getting new investigators on Mondays are the best! WE taught Megan for the first time, she has already been coming to church, she told us that Church and reading the scriptures just makes her so happy! She also, when we invited her for the 5th of December to be baptized asked, "Is it possible that I can be baptized before then?" If you don't call that golden, I don't know what to call it. Haha.

It snowed!!! It was one of my weekly goals to have the snow stick. So therefore God listened to my goal!

 We went to an FHE and what we did there was called "Turkey Rockets." I know, I was a bit skeptical too, but you made a turkey out of construction paper and feathers, then attached a straw and a blown up balloon on it, and put a long string in the straw, and you race turkeys! So that is a fun idea you can do at church or something.










I am doing awesome! Anxious to see what happens next week with transfers. I will probably be transferred which would be super sad. When I get home I can be you gym buddy! I will go everyday! No matter what! I have kind of turned into a gym rat on the mission. Haha. Elder Giles is in Elder Clark's Zone where Clark is a Zone Leader. I am like on the opposite side of the mission :( That's what I get for telling President that I know him! Haha. 


I do wear shoes all day. my p-days have been consisting less activity and more of lounging around the apartment, and taking naps. so I get some kind of a break. Haha




 We got to go to the temple today.

We do play sports with the Zone a lot, so that is good. I try to be healthy as far as buying healthy things. But when people give us unhealthy things, I eat them :/ 

Elder Florschutz's Birthday is the 17th, so next week. He is having his family ship him fresh Halibut and Shrimp. Haha, Dang Alaskan Fishermen! I'm excited to try it out though! :)

Thanks for the email.



Love Elder Wrathall

No matter what

French Toast at Kneaders!! 

Wednesday: We got to do service again!!! We helped Elder Owen, the service missionary, cut day lilies around some church buildings. There are a lot of Day Lilies.... Too many. Haha we had hand trimmers so our hands were sore after that. We had the wonderful opportunity to teach Sara, who has been active in the church, more then most active people here, and she isn't even a member. Her worry is her family. She said that she was going to tell them that she is going to get baptized, and she has an ultimatum with them that no matter what happens, she is going to be baptized in January. I love when investigators say that, "No matter what." We hope that she will be baptized before January though, that is far! Haha

Thursday: One of our Newer Investigators, Natasha, we had a really good first lesson, come the second lesson we were talking about baptism again, and she says, "Yeah, I know I need to be baptized, it's really just a matter of when.". I was thinking, "Well we can help with that!" Right then, her roommate asks her,  "Baptized in the LDS church or Alpine Church (Church here in Logan run by ex-mormons)?" She said Alpine Church. My heart sank :( That's a struggle to overcome because the Alpine Church teaches against the LDS church pretty heavily. Natasha said, "I just have a feeling that Joseph Smith isn't true."

Friday: We had like no lessons :( We had a lesson at 8:00, we aren't use to that anymore. It's nice teaching rather than street contacting or door contacting. I have no idea how those other missions do tracting ALL DAY! No way would I be able to do that. My empathy goes out to them! When we tract all we run into is Return Missionaries, who invite us in, ask if we want any snacks or drinks... We have the hard life :P Then of course we tell them the only thing we want is new investigators, so we invite them to do missionary work. At 8 the lesson was with Zen and Mandie, they are both Less-active, they are dating pretty seriously and want to get back to church to be able to be sealed in the temple.

Saturday: Vivianne was baptized! She came from the Ivory Coast, knew no English at all when she got here, but was nevertheless baptized 2 months later. When only meeting with her once a week. That is when you know someone is receptive to the spirit. Now she knows quite a bit of English, she can carry a conversation pretty well now! One of her hold ups is she is afraid of water, and that was evident when she was baptized. One of the stranger ones that I have had, but The Spirit was so strong! Because it was Halloween they didn't want us out and about after 6, so we played Volleyball and then watched "The Cokeville Miracle" Which is a super cool movie, I would suggest it to anyone who wanted to strengthen their testimony :)

Sunday: We had 4 of our investigators come to Sacrament! It is always awesome to see people giving priority to living the gospel!  We attended 4 Sacrament Meetings as well, Fast & Testimony meetings are perfect for investigators! One of the wards starts at 2:30 and ends at 5:30, isn't that terrible? We had a lesson with Eric. We are having a hard time with him. We have taught him everything, and he keeps all our commitments. However, he hasn't received/recognized his answer that this is true. So it is always a struggle to know what to teach him.

Monday: 8 Lessons in one day! I love days when all you do is go appointment to appointment teaching, there is no better thing. Dallen & Stef was a coup,e that we taught. They are so golden, Dallen is a Less-active member and Stef is not a member. Stef is excited to get baptized, but not about moving out from each other... So that conflicts the other. Also had a lesson with 4 born-again Christians. There was one of them that I really liked, he was humble, and had a sincere heart. Everyone else there not so much. They just bible bashed most of the time. I'm glad I had our Ward Mission Leader there who is an awesome guy! And helped out a lot!

Tuesday: We had Elder Ringwood come to the mission, to pretty much tell us that we need to be more obedient. I guess the mission is struggling with getting up on time? Because they stressed that a lot. We have been getting a lot of General Authorities coming to this mission lately, we have another one right before thanksgiving too. We must be a trouble mission dang!

Thanks for the email!

Love,

Elder Wrathall

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

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

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.

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.

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!