This week was a wonderful week!!

This week was a wonderful week!!

Wednesday: Since getting into this area, we have been trying to meet all the Ward Mission Leaders and Bishops. Which is not too hard to do when you cover a stake. Now take into the account that we cover 3 stakes.... 24 Wards. That gets pretty difficult to do. When waiting to meet with a Bishop, a man comes up, and I thought it might be the Bishop we are meeting with, so I say, "Are you Bishop Day?" he responded, "I'm Bishop Mortensen, you just met me Sunday..." The struggle.... There is no way I can remember all these names.

Thursday: We had a lesson with our investigator Zac, he is working towards the 8th of Aug to be baptized. However, he is struggling a little, he has concerns dealing with same-gender attraction. He
has been meeting with the missionaries for about 3 months now, and he is super smart. He is super shy though, however, he has been opening up. We talked about the Family Proclamation to the World, and also, "God Loveth his Children" Which came out the same year, and talks about how
to overcome same-gender attraction. The lesson went really well!

Friday: Pioneer day here in Utah, therefore of course, a parade in Utah wouldn't be complete without missionaries!! Haha, so we joined on in for the parade, we handed out pass-a-long cards and gave a lot of high-fives to the children. It was fun to cheer up those children. I know I don't like parades, however those kids do! During the Parade, Noelle, his cousin, when she saw the missionaries, she came running yelling for where I was. Honestly I was thinking, what a mad lady... Haha. It was
super funny. Afterwards we went to pizza-pie-café. A mom came up to us and asked us if we were in the parade, we ensured her that we were. She told us, "After the parade I asked my kids what was their favorite thing, they all said, 'The Missionaries!!'" I was thinking, "Dang, what a lame parade..." Haha

Saturday: Susie was baptized!! This was the girl that I was working with in my last area, it was good to be able to go :) We had a lesson with our investigator Luke, who is a born-again. This was the 3rd
lesson. He is super caught up in "Grace" He believes we don't need to do anything to use the atonement. He won't pray because he doesn't believe in praying to get answers. He was so aggressive, so we dropped him. Sadly, because there goes half our teaching pool.

Sunday: Sunday Miracle Day, at a correlation that we had with the Ward Mission Leaders in the 5th stake, one of the Ward Mission Leaders expressed how crazy it is how many missionaries have
switched out, then straightly asked us if we are going to be here a while, after telling him yes, he responded, "I have someone coming to church today, he is ready to be baptized, but just needs to stop smoking." Right he was. He wants to be baptized, his name is Erick! :) And of course we ate dinner with Noelle and Cory :)

His cousin Noelle and her family. They live in Logan.

Monday: We had a meeting with Erick, he is so cool, he has quite the past, but he desperately wants to fix it. We brought up the idea of soaking his cigs in milk, and he did get kind of sick just thinking
about it, but then agreed and on top of it to soak it in more than just milk. So might just soak it in hot sauce too.

 I decided that I want to extend, can you check to see if I need to re-apply if I defer more?

Not much is on Campus right now because it's summer, however, we do a ton of tracting still.

AS far as studies go, I've been mostly studying for lessons, because we have been having a lot of strange lessons, so I need to study that a ton. Like homosexualty, or The Church of Elias, how to study for someone who believes in all of our standard lessons. And quitting addiction.

Thanks for the email!! 

Love,

Elder Wrathall

Exciting News!

My Companion: Elder Nielsen is from St. Johns, Arizona. He has been out 13 months. He actually reminds me a lot of John, Kayla's Husband! :) He has the same kind of laugh, and humor. He is such a nice guy. He worked doing excavation before the mission. He is 19 years old.

Wednesday: First day in the new area. Elder Hawkins and Weston were kind enough to give us a tour, tell us where things are, and we are working with. The boundaries that we cover are super confusing to, so they helped us with that. We cover 3 YSA Stakes, 24 wards. A lot of the Student Apartments are actually where seniors live because it is summer, and they do a program where it is really cheap housing for seniors from Arizona. So the work is hard right now, because it is summer.

Thursday: We had Zone Conference, and had some really big announcements there. For one, we can go to the temple every 3 months now! Another big one, is because of the way transfers are, we either
have to go home 3 weeks early, or extend 3 weeks more. So, if we don't say anything about extending, we will just be sent 3 weeks early. For me that would be December 28th, or if I extend, that would mean February 8th. So I have some praying to do. After Zone Conference, we just tracted a lot of the apartments that we cover. Got one return appointment :) Yay... haha

Friday:Tracting all day. Ran into a lot of RMs... Haha

Saturday: So much tracting..... I think I have done more tracting this week than my whole mission. We did have an interesting lesson. They are from the Church of Elias. We got a return appt by asking them if we can learn more. Turns out they are a branch off of the LDS church. They believe everything we do but have a few weird things mixed in. (Like when they pray they raise their hands above their heads and say, "Oh Abba" ) And their Dad is their Prophet. We have a tough case on
our hands.

Sunday: We met with 6 bishops, 2 Stake Presidents, and 2 High Council members over missionary work. On top of 2 Sacrament Meetings. What is wonderful about YSA is linger longers!! However, we went to the wrong one I guess, all it was, was cold cereal. Still better than no food. President Job invited us for dinner, it was nice to have a dinner made for us again! :)

Monday: I remembered how it is working with Young Adults, we had three lessons cancel this day. On the bright side, we still had two lessons!! That's as much as we had last week all combined! And it is only Monday! I really want to get this area to be having 20 lessons week. 3rd Stake really wants us to get there too. I love 3rd Stake. We did a lot of tracting today, when tracting we run into a lot of RM's. It is fun to tell if people are RMs or not, and it is so easy. Let me tell you, a mission changes people completely!

I asked him if when the new missionary comes out in a month if they will be in a trio. Yeah, we will be in a trio, it sounds like for 2 weeks anyways.  The address of the Logan mission is 179 E, 800 N. Logan, UT. 84321.

 

Well I realized, if I choose not to extend, I only have 5 months left... Crazy!!!

   

Love you!

Elder Wrathall

 

Tour of the new apartment.

 

Transfer News!!!!

What we left on a packet of cigarettes we found on a door contact who didn't answer.

Transfer News!!!! Yep, it's transfer time, even though it has been just 3 weeks. Now the transfers will be from this 6 week period. So I have been called to train, and I will be training at USU!!! I will
cover 2 of the 8 stakes that are on campus. However, my son doesn't come until another month, and I think he doesn't speak English...

Tuesday: We had interviews with President Allred, and I learned that he is such a nice  man!! That was the best interview that I have had, it totally seems like he cares, and he wanted to get to know
us individually. It was weird not to be having P-day on this day though.

Wednesday: So I went on splits with this High Priest who has brain damage, that was pretty interesting. He is such a nice guy, but you can tell he isn't all there. At a door contact he was speaking with this guy telling him that if he came to church and was baptized he would receive money from the church. Thankfully it turned out to be a return missionary, so he understood what was happening. Later, I taught a man from South Korea, he was a super nice guy. He told us that he is "Thinking about transferring his Christian beliefs to the LDS church." Haha, He doesn't speak English to well,
but enough to understand. He just doesn't understand the necessity to be baptized again, and doesn't understand priesthood, but that will be the topic for the next visit!

Thursday: A day full of finding!! We didn't have any teaching appointments, however we got in the homes of a few contacts and shared brief messages and got return appointments, overall, t'was a good
day.

Friday: We had weekly planning, which for once I was super excited to plan because we have so much happening in the area. I also love my companions a ton, Elder Rangel and Chaing. This has probably been my favorite companionship, I love being in a trio. We have 3 Investigators on a baptismal date, we had 13 lessons with Investigators in a week, haven't had that many lessons in a while.

Saturday: We met with a potential named Sean. Throughout the whole lesson, he seemed so golden! Throughout he was saying, "Oh, that makes sense... Like I could easily believe that." And comments like that. So we invite him to be baptized, he agreed, and said yes. However, when we set the date he said, "Hmm.. I've never set a date for something like that... Ok, yeah." But continued, "But it sounds like you want to meet again, I can't really meet again, but this was really good, it recharged me, and made me learn of Christ. But we can't meet again." After 10 minutes of trying to convince him to meet with us, I finally just said, "Well, we will just come by early next week and talk with you again." He replied, "Okay, sure." Not sure if he is really all there... We went by on Monday, met with his parents, his parents are golden too!

Sunday: We were in the middle of an correlation with one of our Ward Mission Leaders, then Elder Rangel got a call, he went out of the room, shortly after, he came back and said, "Hey, President wants to talk to you." I said, "President who?" "Allred". He let me know that he took it up with The Lord and asked me to be a trainer, I readily accepted. At this point, I didn't know transfers were going to be this next week.

Monday: We had a tiny secret Mission Leadership Training, those are the pictures. We just had it at President Allred's home. It was really cool to just have that small of group, compared to the normal chapel completely filled with missionaries. There is a total of 6 trainers. Elder Aranda is going to be my new Zone Leader, who is a super good friend of mine! Excited about that! So the area that I'll cover is just about the same as I cover already, I just now cover the YSA, rather than the Family. So happy to stay in Logan.

Thanks! Love you! 
Elder Wrathall

 

Meeting the new Mission President

Sorry tricking people by having P-day today rather than tomorrow. Tomorrow we have interviews with President Allred, so we changed it today, just for this week.

Wednesday: This was a super good day, we had District Meeting about daily contact, which was what I suggested to Elder Norris that he should train on, because I am terrible at it. Then after DM, we had lunch at Arctic Circle with our Senior Couple's then went to go meet President Allred, He is a
super loving guy, he has a big family, he is from Washington, but he was born here in Logan, he told us the story of getting his call, it was really cool to hear.

Thursday: Met with Susie (Protestant Minister Investigator)!! She has stopped drinking coffee! She is struggling with her family not supporting her getting married, they said they wouldn't come because
their marriage was going to be done by a "Mormon Bishop". So they decided they are just going to
get married in two weeks and just go to the court house and do nothing special. (Sounds like my kind of wedding!! Well except going to the temple instead of course ;) )

Friday: We met with Ericka, she is not in such a good situation, she needs to stop drinking coffee and alcohol and stop smoking. She seems sincere, but at the same time, she is confused because another church is teaching her doctrine against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She wants welfare as well. So not going too good.... We tried to use the bus system today, because we learned that it is free. Turns out it was closed for independence day :(

Saturday: Happy 4th of July!!!  We worked hard as always, we met this super nice guy, sadly he is super busy, so we could only schedule for next Saturday, but he has high potential, he said missionaries have come before, and he told the missionaries he wanted to learn more, and they never
came back. Yep.... Our dinner fell through once again (3rd time this week) and we have been asking our senior couples to feed us, but we didn't want to ask again, so I asked Sister Christensen!!! She
happily obliged, it was good to see them again. During that dinner Elder Rangel and I switched tags to see if Bro. Christensen would notice, because Bayles and him did it when they were together in
Nibley and he didn't notice. We played as each other too. Sure enough he didn't notice, even though I was cracking up. After dinner we played volleyball and watched the best 2 years as a Zone.

Sunday: Fasting!! We went to this one ward and it was 100% about missionary work the whole 3 hour block. Everyone bore testimonies about missionary work, they extended sacrament meeting 15
minutes and had specific people bear their testimonies about missionary work. Then they had all the adults in the chapel, we told them our schedule and how we prepare for lessons. (To get more trust from them) then we did the same to primary, each for 15 minutes. It went beautifully because
afterwards, they had other people talk about how to get people to meet with us.

It has cooled down this week thank goodness :)

Sounds like you had an awesome week! 

Yeah, we have had dinners fall through like crazy here.

Thanks for the email!

Love you!

Elder Wrathall