Humility and the CHILI KING! - October 29, 2012

Hello :)

This week was great! The baptism yesterday went very well. The spirit was really there! There were some great talks given and it was wonderful! We had an investigator there and she was saying "that was awesome" with a ton of excitement on her face for her baptism which is next month! I love Ocala! It is great!

As for where I will be for Thanksgiving. I don't know! Transfers are the day before Thanksgiving and either Elder Weaver or I will be getting transferred. I think Elder Weaver is going to get transferred but we will see and if I am still here in Ocala, which I hope I am, we will be going over to a family named the McCullough's who are amazing! They have a son on a mission who left just a month after me so that should be fun there. So our pday the week of Thanksgiving will be on Tuesday and on that day I will be able to tell you whether I am getting transfered or not.

Thank you for the contacts and the shoes :) I appreciate it! Also for helping me out with the applications. The sooner we get them submitted the better chance I will have of getting in :)

Being a missionary right now is really exciting. I heard that the church is predicting there will be 80-90 thousand missionaries out :O. (The President just announced that young men who have graduated or earned an equivalent and who are 18 may serve a mission! Also, young women who are 19 may serve a mission. The previous age was 19 and 21 respectively!) President Barry was on the phone with Elder Gonzalez the other day. Elder Gonzalez is the area 70. Elder Gonzalez asked President Barry how many more missionaries they needed and President Barry said that 20-30 would be amazing. Elder Gonzalez replied saying "President, you need to be expecting 100 more missionaries in your mission. Work with the Stake Presidents on where you can put them." Our mission currently has nearly 150 I think. So we are supposed to have 250 in the near future. That is just really exciting.

The biggest thing I have learned this week is probably humility. It is so important to be humble! I wish I wouldn't have my prideful moments haha. It is really hard to constantly be humble and teachable, but I am trying to be. Humility allows us to be able to recognize the spirit more in our lives. When we are humble, we will be able to get along with anyone. When we're humble, we will be a better instrument in the hand of the Lord.

Anyways, that is pretty amazing Dad won the chilli contest again! He is becoming the Chilli King! You really should open up a chilli restaurant Dad :)

Stockman, thanks for the update on the roster! I had no clue who was on the team anymore. Sounds like the jazz have a solid team this year! That is exciting!

Sounds like BYU Football has a bright future too, and from what I here from members here, BYU basketball should be pretty good too! Pretty exciting stuff!

Anyways, that is about all that happened this week. It was fun though. OHHHHHH!!!! I forgot! I had a very interesting night last night. It was about 8:30pm. We had just finished our companion study. We have to do studies even if it's that late a night. We couldn't finish it earlier in the day because of the church and baptism and what not. We planned on going and visiting an investigator really quick before the night was out. As soon as we were about to leave. The Elders that lived with us walked in with a plate of brownies. Elder Weaver and I grabbed a brownie. Elder Weaver is allergic to nuts. Well, there were nuts in the brownies. We had to take him to the ER. He is okay. We were there until about 12:30 last night. So I am a little tired this morning haha.

Anyways, that is about it! Love you all! Hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Wise

INFLUX of MISSIONARIES! - October 23, 2012

Hello :)

I did get the package this week and everything was great :) thank you! And I got stamps and envelopes with that money on my card. Tell Aunty Liana I say thank you for grabbing those shoes for me :)

Sounds like Stockman had a pretty great muddy soccer game haha!

So guess what!? A general authority told President Barry that he needs to prepare to have 250 missionaries in our mission. We currently have 140ish. President Barry said we should start seeing the effects of it in January. WOW! There are 58,000 missionaries right now. And the prediction is that we will have 90,000! That is incredible! I am so excited to see the jump!

President Barry is really making a push to improve because of the number of missionaries coming in, we can set a great example for them. If they follow our example, we will have hundreds of phenomenal missionaries. So it is a pretty exciting time to be a missionary.

For all of our investigators. They are doing well and all progressing along. We should have 2 baptisms this weekend :). We had a great experience this last week with some of our investigators. They had a problem with the Word of Wisdom, specifically with the Word of Wisdom. We taught the Word of Wisdom ( that had been taught it a million times). We offered to take all the cigarettes they had so they can quit right now, and we offered to give them a blessing. We did both and they have not smoked to this day :) The power of the priesthood is real. Heavenly Father wants to help everyone overcome their weaknesses and addictions.

So everything is going great! I love you all and I will talk to you next week!

LOVE Elder Wise

Testimony From the HEART! - October 15, 2012

HEEELLOO!!

This week was pretty good. It didn't go as well as I would have liked as far as proselyting goes until the last day of the week! We have been working with a family who has 2 unbaptized children. Basically, without sharing confidential information. They are going to be baptized on October 28th and confirmed the following Sunday :) It is so wonderful! I am excited for these kids! They are really good kids and they have been waiting awhile to be baptized :)

I think I told you about the Jamaican lady before. Her baptism is all set up for Thanksgiving weekend. Not only her, but her son will also be getting baptized with her now. He started coming to church, going to mutual and he loves it and he has been sitting in on lessons with us. So there are some amazing things happening here in Ocala! The Lord is preparing the people to receive the gospel :) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I got my bike fixed and it is running great now! Hopefully, we will steer clear from problems now :)

Well, besides those two miraculous events coming up in the future that I have told you about. We have a lot of potential for some others as well. I love missionary work. It is so exciting to see these people progress in the gospel and see the spirit touch their heart and change their lives. It is also really saddening when you see someone receive a spiritual witness and deny it.

For Example: Dad asked me about how my testifying from the heart has been going, here is a story. Elder Weaver and I were biking and we saw a man doing some yard work. We stopped and asked if we could help. He denied (no one lets us do service here :( ). We then started talking to him about the gospel. We soon found that he wasn't really willing to listen. I felt then that I should just share my testimony from the bottom of my heart. I testified of a Prophet being called of God and that God's church has been restored through the the prophet. I also testified of the happiness the gospel brings. As I testified you could just see the spirit working with that man. When I finished testifying I asked when a good time would be that we could come by and share more. There was a pause and you could see the spirit working still. He looked at the ground and back up and said "I dont think so." I know that he had the spirit bear witness to him that what I was saying was true. We biked off and when we were far enough away Elder Weaver said "I can't believe he said no. He definitely felt the spirit." It was so sad to see that! But, it is miraculous when somebody accepts it. And it makes everything else worth it. :)

Those zip lines sound scary but fun :) And dang BYU! They better be GOOD next year! Anyways, I love ya'll! Thank you for everything :) 2.2 months till we shall see each other over the internet. And then 4.2 months until we shall see each other again over the internet. And then one month from that time we shall see each other face to face!  haha!

Love

Elder Wise

Would You Sell YOUR Sould for a NICKEL? - October 9, 2012

Dear Family,

Conference was 100% amazing! I was sitting in the church with Elder Weaver and two other spanish missionaries watching conference. Then President Monson said that missionaries may leave on their mission at 18. I immediately began to be jealous. I wish I could have left right out of high school haha. Then he mentioned Sisters. I just thought he was going to move it to 20, but then he said 19 and I was completely schocked! I didn't know what to think haha. It is going to be really weird seeing all these younger missionaries coming out. If I get to see any ahaha.

Then I as I pondered about what would have happened if I would have left when I was 18, I definitely know God called me to come to this mission at this time and to the area I am in at this specific time for a reason. It is incredible to think about.

This week was really interesting. Elder Barnes had surgery on his hand to take a lump out. So he has been healing up. His companion Elder Jensen had to go up to Gainesville. He has a mass on his jaw. They had to cut open the inside of his mouth and get a biopsy. I am 100% sure I spelled that wrong. Anyways, Elder Barnes was on oxycodon and Elder Jensen was on Lowertab. So they were both pretty interesting this week. (Can you see a couple of missionaries on painkillers? :) And we had to help transport them to the doctor and back because neither of them could drive. So it took a lot of time out of proselyting this week.

But, General Conference was incredible. Some things that I really learned was how we need to be 100% obedient and commited to the gospel of Christ. I dont have my notes in front of me so I cant remember who said it. But someone told a story about going to the movie theatre. He was 8 and he only had to pay 25 cents. Then he turned 9 and he had to pay 35 cents, but he lied and said he was 8. He felt horrible and went and told his Dad what had happened. His Dad said "son, would you sell your soul for a nickle?" Wow, that really hit me. Would we really sell our soul for a cup of coffee. Or to go play a soccer game on a Sunday. That talk just really hit me and I really felt the spirit.

Another thing that stuck out to me too was service. There were a couple talks on service. I also really liked President Eyring's talk. "Bold as a Lion". "Soar like an Eagle." One other thing I really learned was how I need to be much bolder with love as I share my testimony. On Sunday night we visited Chris who was baptized about a month ago. I asked him what made him want to listen to the gospel for the first time. He said it was when he first saw Elder Cervo (an Elder that was here awhile back) bare his testimony with such conviction. It was so sincere he said. He said that was the first time he felt like he was missing something.

Then on Monday morning I was studying about bearing testimony. In Preach My Gospel it talks about how important it is to bear testimony from the bottom of our heart. When we do that, that is when the Spirit will carry the message to the heart of the people we are testifying too. I realized that as a missionary we bear our testimony so much that it can easily become a rote thing that just comes from our minds. But when we bear testimony from the bottom of our heart, the spirit will be there with a lot more power. So I learned a lot of good things from General Conference this week that I loved!

Right now in our area, we are working with the same people we were working with before. Unfortunatley they seem to be staying in the same spot. We just aren't pushing them forward and I think that is mostly our fault. This last week was just crazy. But things are still pushing forward here :)

Anyways, it sounds like you all had a good week :) I love you all. Thank you for everything you do :)

Love

Elder Wise

GENERAL CONFERENCE! WOOHOO - October 1, 2012

Hello:)

I am SUPER excited for General Conference! Oh boy! It is going to be really, really, really good! Every friday morning we have our weekly planning. I don't know if any of you are familiar with what that is? I know Teagen knows because he had Preach My Gospel in his mission. Anyways, we sit down for about 2-3 hours and plan out the following week. They have outlines for us how to do it. Anyways, we made some INSANELY good plans this week. We almost have the entire week planned out with who we are going to see and how we are going to help them apply the gospel to their lives so they can gain a testimony. So I am super excited for this next week.

This last week was a little wierd. We didn't have as many lessons as we normally do. We had a couple investigators fall off the map. One of them was actually staying with a member. That person ended up being a con-artist. He got 600 dollars out of the member. It was really sad : ( But, we were able to still work our hardest and we now have a couple new investigators we are working with. One of which is really awesome.

Her name is Shibrice and she is really open and she is sort of church shopping. She is really interested and wants to learn more. We have a couple of investigators who have been investigators for awhile but are progressing along very well. There are 5 investigators we have that would be baptized by now, but because of circumstances are just waiting. For example, one is dating a member in North Carolina. And she wants him to be there for the baptism. So she is going up there for Thanksgiving and she is getting baptized on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. She also has a son that is getting baptized with her :) So things are going really well.

Transfers are on October 10th. So not this Wednesday but the following one. Elder Weaver and I know we will be staying here. However, Elder Barnes or Jensen could be going.. so who knows? Transfers are always exciting.

But, Camas huh? WOW!! It sounds like they are doing a phenomenal job and are being led by the #1 drum major in the world, Micah! OH YA!!! I am excited for them. I hope they kick Union's rear end all the way down here to Florida, and then I will kick there rear ends back up to Washington. By that point they will be soooo emberassed that they will just quit :) I like it :)

And it sounds like that Freshman BYU QB is good! Sounds like I am missing some exciting stuff. But it's okay because you are missing out on the missionary work here ;) haha.. Except not really because you get it all from me.. haha. I am just losing myself now and I have no clue what I am talking about.

Anyways, I love you all! I'll be watching General Conference at the same time as you :D woohooo!

Love ya!

Elder Wise