Only Three Hours of Church

Wednesday: Went on exchanges with our District Leader, I went with Elder Skablund into their area, while the District Leader Elder Saagmeister went with Elder Clukey in our area. It is against the rules to write negatively home. So I'll leave it at that. :P

Thursday: Got back to our area, man was it good to be back! We had 2 lessons set up, which is pretty good considering it is Christmas Eve, however only one went through. We knocked on quite a few doors, we set up some return appointments, it went better that I thought it would, nobody got angry at us for Tracting on Christmas eve :) Our dinner we had egg rolls because that is the tradition of the family we had dinner with. I like that tradition! It was yummy.

Friday: Merry Christmas!! Opened presents in the morning, did our normal studies, then Skype home! :) After wards we went to a Bishop's home. During our time there, they skyped with their daughter who is on a mission. She has 6 months left, but their entire conversation was about, "When you get home...." I'm glad my skype call was not like that at all :) Good job family! We had dinner with the Bachmans, they smoked some prime rib, that was super good, then went to Bishop Petersens home. Their Son got a hover board for Christmas, so we tried that out! It doesn't really hover.

Saturday:Alissa & Shayla's baptism!! That was such a cool experience to have us both baptize them. Our Ward Mission Leader conducted the baptism, it was his first time, he did good, but sure did talk a lot.... Right after the baptism, Elder Clukey threw up :/

Sunday: Elder Clukey was sick all today, we made it out to 3 hours of church.... Man, 3 hours of church is not long at all!!! :) Shayla & Alissa were confirmed! We got to participate in that. For the rest of the day, we had our Zone Leaders come and help us out with split, one of them stayed in the apartment with Clukey, and the other went teaching with me.

Monday: It snowed all day! But it was a very lite snow shower all day, so by the end of the day, we had maybe a half an inch. We only had lessons with members today :/ WE have some of them getting to invite some of their friends over to meet with us though! The effects of the Holidays are still upon us, many people don't want to meet with us until the Holiday season is done.

The cold is cool! Haven't been in this cold for so long, it is just a different world!!

We are staying the same for this next transfer.

Thanks for the email!!!

Love,

Elder Wrathall

Missionaries to the rescue!

Tuesday: I normally don't include Tuesday's... Because I am lazy. However, this time I have to include it because of what happened. In the morning we went to go shopping, and the grocery store is not to far so we just walk. On the way back, we were walking, and when passing by this house we hear someone yelling "Help!" Over and over again, we found out it was coming from the garage. Turns out, this lady had fallen in her garage and couldn't get up, We checked the doors and the doors were locked, so we asked her if she had any family we could call. We called up her granddaughter, she headed on over. When talking to the lady, she asked us who we were, we told her we were the missionaries. She began crying and telling us how 10 years ago she was praying for help in her life and missionaries came to her door and she was baptized, now once again she was praying for help, and we, missionaries come again to answer her prayers. That was quite the tear jerker.

Wednesday: The average day, half of our lessons fall through, and seems like it is the same people every time that fall through as well. I don't understand how so many people can just cancel their appointments, and I wonder if they feel bad doing it or not. But 50/50 is not too bad. 

Thursday: So we got a new investigator. This one didn't take us much effort, that is for sure. His name is Brandon, he was already working towards having his father baptize him, and confirm him, but because his Dad took to long, he is turning 9 this Saturday and will now be counted as a convert baptism. Still got a little while to go till Dad get's to where he can confirm, but should be able to the 16th of January. 

Friday: Ryan, the guy that we brought Root Beer to, we had another lesson with him. He is cool, the best way to describe him is that he is from Cali. Haha. Though he doesn't have to much real intent, like he is open to having us over and what-not, but when it actually comes down to business and doing things without us there is a whole other story. :/

We had another lesson with Alissa and Shayla, they are pretty solid for being baptized the 26th of Dec. They are so prepared, and they are excited too!

Saturday: This is the day when we try hardest to make daily contact with each of our investigators. It is make or break to get them to church, because that is the most important thing. Therefore, Satan is going to get them! We sent out texts, called, and stopped by some. Of course, though, even with them saying yes, all will not show. :/

Sunday: It was a rough day. We had 4 of our investigators that we were hoping would come to church, not come :(  Church is often the hardest thing to get people to actually do. We really wish the came to church to, each Ward did a Christmas Program that would have been perfect for them to each come!

Later in the day, we got a text from a number we didn't know, saying, "Elders are you busy right now? Could use a hand for just 5 min? I can come to you?" 

We responded, "Yes! Who is this? We just have to be somewhere at 1."

The text came back, "Where are you at?" 

Just completely ignored our, "Who are you?" Question. When we meet. We learn that it is Uncle Kerry!!! And Aunt Melissa!

Monday: It just rained all day.... What is wrong with this place. It is supposed to snow the week of Christmas. I'm done.

We knocked lots of doors, not many opened. We taught Rachel who is Alissa and Shayla's sister. The spirit was so strong, that at one point, Rachel just broke out in tears and left the room. She did not come back. Hopefully it was the spirit she felt anyways. It was right before we were going to invite her to be baptized. So we finished up the lesson without her :/

Haha, we are getting a ton of snow now. I want to go sledding today!

Thanks for the email! Love you tons!

Love,

Elder Wrathall

Another visitor from home. I guess you get that a lot when you serve in Utah!

Winter has come!

The Snow has come!!

Wednesday: We had a zone meeting. This Zone meeting made a lot of changes to the mission, such as no sports Saturday morning like we have been doing, or some extra meetings that we have been having. However with these rules, we are now allowed to use wifi in our apartments! That is a really nice change!

After the meeting we had a lesson with a family who they have a crazy amount of people living with them (probably around 15) in a small house, plus 6 dogs, a cat, and a bird. Needless to say it is hard teaching them in there, but some of them seem pretty open to coming to know if these things are true! :)

Thursday: We had a lesson with Alissa and Alaine! They are such awesome gals, they have such a desire to live the gospel. They are going through a lot of tough things in life, and on top of it they just got the flu. Even with the flu though, they let us come over. Hardly anyone lets us still teach them when they are sick!  They also came to church when they were sick! These girls are great. It is hard setting up appointments with them because they are busy though.

We also did some Christmas Carolling trying to get into some homes. It works!

Friday: No lessons this day :'(. We did go to a Ward Christmas Party, it was catered by Maddox. It was good, but nothing like exceptionally good, Maddox was way to hyped up for me. We did set up a few appointments by knocking doors. The hard thing about Ogden though, is that it is easy to set up appointments, but to actually have those appointments go through is another challenge in itself. It's hard to tell if they are sincere, or just wanting us to go away so they set up an appointment. :?

Saturday: When confirming with a potential investigator that we had set up an appointment with, he responded saying, "Yeah we are good for tonight, hey, can you fellas bring a couple six packs, i'll pay you back next week, also, can you fellas dress down, i felt uncomfortable last time." We had no idea if he was joking or not, so we didn't reply. We didn't dress down, and we brought a 2 liter of Root Beer! Haha. Turns out he was messing with us, he had a good laugh that we brough root beer. We had a really good conversation with them and a good lesson, they said they would read the BOM and pray about it. Hopefully they are sincere! 

Sunday: We gave two talks. I gave a 10 min talk and a 20 minute talk. Okay, I will admit, it is starting to wear on me giving so many talks. I just feel bad for the listeners! I'm not that great of a speaker! Haha. Later in the day after church, we were roaming the streets of North Ogden and we see this guy pacing around in front of these 

apartments. We talk to him and he said he locked himself out. So of course, we helped him break into his own apartment. We were pretty sure that he was telling the truth that he locked himself out of his apartment.... Ya never know in Ogden. I won't be held accountable for that will I?

Monday: Woke up to a winter wonderland, at the beginning of the day we had about 4 inches, at the end of the day is was about a foot. Woohooo! And we had Zone Conference, so we were inside a lot of the day, but we helped a lot of people shovel snow, and I actually enjoy that. I love the cool weather :) The snow is beautiful too!

The sad part of the day is we had 2 lessons fall through, we did however get some caroling in with one of the Bishops. That was fun to give some smiles on some faces.

Love

Elder Wrathall

Back to Teaching Children

He got his Christmas Package. Don't you love the Advent Calendar?

Wednesday: In the morn, we drove up to Logan for a mission Christmas Party thing. They had a brunch for us, and the actual program was just a whole bunch Christmas songs. They put a lot more effort in to it this year rather than last year just watching the Grinch. Haha.

When we got back into our area we had a lesson with Trace who is 12, it's been rough transitioning back to teaching kids. I'm use to college students! Haha. But Trace is pretty dang cool, he likes church, and wants to be baptized. However, it's not his priority, or I should say, not his Mother's priority. It is hard to get them to come to church. Trace knows almost all the answers to the questions we ask him, he is a smart kid.

Thursday: We have been trying to get a hold of Alissa & Shayla, who are sisters that we are trying to teach, they said that they wanted to work towards being baptized on the 12th of Dec, but it has been hard getting a hold of them, to just have another lesson. We have called, knocked, but no answer. They are going through a lot in life, so they are busy.

We've been knocking lots of doors! This one contact we had, he let us inside, though his facial expressions and body language were kinda hostile. He asked questions like, "What do you missionaries teach if people are already strong in their faith in a different church?" Questions that were clearly letting us know he is not interested. He was overall nice though, when we left he said, "By the way, I have a grandson going on a Mormon mission next week." Then closed the door. Well fair enough I suppose.

Friday: Friday and Saturday night we participated in a Christmas Pageant that the stake put on. It was a super cool performance, you would go on a walk around the building and it was the story of Jesus Christ's Birth. They had a whole bunch of actors for it, a whole bunch of decorations, then near the end, you watch a video about Jesus Christ, then the group gets led to a room with us in it. Then we bore our testimony of it, and asked for referrals haha. We got them trapped!

Saturday: Dylan was baptized!! That was a super good baptism, his mom sang at the baptism. Elder Cruz came to baptize him. During the evening we did the Pageant again. We didn't have time for a dinner, but no need to fear, because at the pageant they had unlimited cookies!! That's a healthy dinner right?

Sunday: We had Dylan's Confirmation during church, and also fast & testimony meeting as well. Now that was pretty dang sweet! Dylan's Mom who was in-active, and still kinda less-active because she works on half of the Sundays, she got up and bore a beautiful testimony! It is always cool to see someone you worked with bear their testimony. 

That night we finally got in contact with Alissa and Alaine, turns out they have been still reading the Book of Mormon and Praying about it! We re-committed Alissa to work towards the day after Christmas to be baptized, she is excited for it, she exclaimed joyfully, "Okay! I will come to church for sure!" 

Lessons like those are always awesome!

Monday: We got a call in the afternoon from Alaine, telling us that Shayla, Alissa's Sister would also like to be baptized the same day as her. Then Alaine continued to tell us that they have another friend coming to live with them that is also interested in joining the church! Miracles! Alaine herself was pretty excited about it herself.

Yep! Got my package! Thanks! There is only one of the gifts that I felt and I know what it is, the other ones are mysteries! Haha.

Yeah, they were slacking this year with that.

We've been to two so far, we have another 2 that we are also going to, one is being catered by "Maddox" which apparently is a super good eatery, I've always wanted to try since the beginning of my mission, but it's in Brigham.

We didn't get the chance to see the Christmas Devotional, we had a lesson scheduled at the time, they didn't give a very big head's up notice about it :/

I'd be soo down to work for Jacob and Aaron! Did I also tell you I got offered a job at pizza-pie-cafe up in Rexburg when I am there in April? Thinking about it, not too sure yet.

Well thanks for the email!

Love,

Elder Wrathall

Winter has hit Utah

Wed/Thurs/Fri: All these days can be summed up about the same. We knocked a lot of doors that weren't interested in hearing the gospel. We had barely any lessons because everyone is spending time with their families and they don't want to meet with us when their families are over. For Thanksgiving we had dinner with the Stehli family, they were a nice family, an older couple with two of their sons and their wives were at the dinner. When knocking doors we knock at bishop's house to ask where someone lives he invited us in, we played fuss-ball and ping-pong at their house with two of their sons. Have to have a bit of fun on Thanksgiving! A big reason why we went in too, is because it was freezing cold with about 40 mph winds the whole day. Brrr... This is a true winter this year. It's been snowing a lot which I like!

Elder Clukey makes fun of me because he is from Canada.  

Saturday: We had Nancy's baptism! At about the same time was Stef being baptized up at USU, so sadly I wasn't able to make it up to hers. Nancy's baptism was really good, President came to it, and also Elder Lawrence and Pregnolato. Elder Cruz, who was the missionary here before us came down to baptize Nancy. The rest of the day was more door knocking. 

Sunday: We were asked to give a talk on the welfare program of the church. Which I thought was ironic, because it talks a lot about self reliance, and we aren't self reliant at all. We ask for rides all the time, we live in a members home, the members feed us every day. Haha, oh well. It was really hard actually to give a talk on that compared to my normal talks on missionary work. We also gave a training to members of a different Ward how to do missionary work. We did a demonstration role-play of talking to their neighbors. I role played the member inviting his neighbor, so I, in the role-play, invited him over for steak and salmon at my house. Haha, so now the members know they need to step up their game with dinners ;P

Monday: Flaky people in Ogden, with heir appointments falling through. Forgot about that.

Elder Clukey is doing so much better at teaching I'm impressed! 

That was my week!

In response to my email:

Yeah! I was smart this time and didn't go to multiple thanksgivings. Though Friday we had a Thanksgiving too! That was awesome! Haha

Sounds like you had a super fun week this time.

Yeah I was super happy about the snow. We are not in a car area, I wish we were, our area is pretty dang big, and have a ginormous mountain in it. 

It is December! That is crazy!

Thanks for the email!

Love, 

Elder Wrathall