8/7/17

Family and Friends,

This week was very good! Besides the fact that I got pink eye again. Which was really weird because it was the same eye and the same time of the year that it happened last year. We were shut in the apartment all day last Wednesday. It was not good. But we definitely deep clean our apartment and I got to read pretty much the whole book called "Our Heritage." It is a book that reviews briefly the Church's history all the way up until today. It was really good. I got to learn more about a fraction of some of the sacrifices made to bring the Gospel forth in this dispensation. It was really amazing.

Something really cool that happened this week is that Marcus, one of the members in our branch, invited us over to dinner last Tuesday. Well his Mom is a Willden! So I got to talk to her a little bit about our history and things like that. I have never met anyone outside our immediate family named Willden so it was a great experience for me. Also yesterday Elder Robison and I were able to attend Stake Coordination Meeting. Which was presided over by President Willden. I mentioned this to Mom and Dad, but he reminded me so much of Grandpa. It was weird. It was a very awesome experience to have though. Thinking about it I realized that I was able to ponder on the sacrifice that was made by Charles and Eleanor Willden as they were our Pioneers. The sacrifices they made allowed me to be in that room with a common descendant that is serving now as a faithful Stake President. It was a very spiritual experience for me.

In our recent efforts to follow our Mission Presidents counsel to seek more finding opportunities, Elder Robison and I found 3 new investigators this week. 2 of which are very solid. Valerie, Alexis, and Josh. Valerie came to church and expressed that she was very uncomfortable, so we are going to have to work through that and get the branch on board to fellowship and to do whatever we can to make her feel comfortable. Alexis on the other hand did not come to church, but we had a wonderful lesson with her last Monday. We had a member there with us and she expressed her want to be baptized into the church. So we will continue to teach her and to help her gain that solid witness. Her story is kind of cool. She was investigating back 3 years ago and her step-father would not allow her Mom to sign off on letting her be baptized. She was forgotten. And we got a referral from some other Elders to see her and now she is getting ready to make that covenant again, but now she gets to decide on her own. Last, but not least Josh is the boyfriend of one of our members. He has been coming to church for 4-5 weeks now and has been really confused so we offered to teach him. He accepted our offer and we taught him yesterday the Restoration of the Gospel. He has no background of religion at all and the only thing he could say he knows is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He was gnostic before he came to church. Well after our lesson with him we asked if he would want to follow the example of Christ and be baptized. He said yes! He has already read the beginning of the Book of Mormon so we will keep working with him, but we are very excited.

We had a lesson with Brandon this week and it went very well. We needed to explain to him that we are never going to have a perfect knowledge. He seems so enthusiastic when we meet with him and then he does not do anything about it. He did not show up to church. I can tell he wants to be baptized, but he is going to have to start coming to church so please pray for him. We also were able to have a lesson with Jonathan this week. We taught the Plan of Salvation. Jonathan is a really smart kid. He was asking us a ton of questions and by the spirit we were able to answer them. We told him how important it was to follow our Savior and he recognizes that. He is truly seeking an answer from God whether or not to join the church. We asked if he would be willing to be baptized. He said that he had already been baptized Catholic. It was cool to explain to him the authority that our Church holds in these latter-days. I know that he was feeling the spirit. We gave him Mosiah 18 to read and he committed to pray about baptism. It was a good experience.

I love the work!

-- 

Love,

Elder Willden

Mom,

I had a very good week this week. I met President Willden. It was so cool. I told Dad this, but he looks like Grandpa and is just a lot more mellow haha. It is cool that I have met these great people. I really like the kid in the branch that we are related to. He is leaving on his mission soon.

I hope you had a very good Birthday! I did not have a good day that day because I woke up with pink eye....AGAIN. Haha. Sister Palmer put us on quarantine for the day so we were stuck inside. So I read about the early history of the Church and cleaned the apartment. haha

Sounds like a lot of good is going on back home. I love it out here. Thanks so much for the pictures. That baptism day one is pretty cool. It made me think of that day. I told Papa I wasn't going to wear a white shirt to my baptism and I can't remember what he said, but I remember that he told me something really encouraging and after that I had the desire to put the white shirt on. I think he might of told me how important it was to show God we love him or something like that. I remember that because of the Spirit I felt from him.(:

Love,

Elder Willden

Animal friends while tracting

Mom received these pictures through text after a dinner appointment with President Willden's
daughter, Sister Kim Centeno and family, on August 1, last Tuesday.