Monday, September 25, 2017

Family and Friends,

This week was such an amazing week! Elder Stewart and I are ballin' out here in the YSA branch. Seriously...we are ballin'. Last Monday we played basketball for 5 hours total. My feet were JACKED up all week. I had to do some surgery on my big toe because I had a gnarly ingrown toenail.

Last week President Palmer invited all the Zone Leaders to a service project at his house. His neighbor had to take a fence down because they are putting up a new one I guess. So we went there and it took about 45 minutes due to the amount of missionaries that were there. While we were doing this project it reminded me of doing things with Dad and how technical it was hahah. I loved getting Dad all those screwdrivers, holding the flashlights, and picking up sticks.(: Man I miss all the yardwork at home lol.

So...yesterday Juan was baptized! It was such a great experience. He was so ready to make this step in his life. I was so excited for him and for his decision. He bore such a powerful testimony of the Savior and the impact the He has had on his life. He talked about how Jesus Christ has made it possible for all of us to repent. He then went on to talk about how the Book of Mormon is true and Joseph Smith is a prophet. It was such an amazing testimony and I felt the spirit so strongly. It was also a rare opportunity for Juan as he was able to receive the Holy Ghost font side after the baptism. It was such a great day. Cody, one of our members, baptized him and he said when Juan went to the changing room after he said a prayer to Heavenly Father thanking Him for that experience. I am so happy for him. We will be going to the Temple with him next week!

While on exchanges this week we had a couple of amazing experiences. It was a testimony to me that the spirit really does guide us wherever we go and if we listen we can experience miracles. So I was with Elder Christensen this week and as we were wrapping up our night and heading to institute we decided to hop on our bikes...we could have easily just driven up. So we started riding. We felt like we should take the back roads...we could have easily just went up a main road and had the time cut in half. So as we were riding through the neighborhoods we saw a lady that was frantically moving things out of her house to her car. We asked if we could help and she happily accepted. After we finished loading her car she had us pray for her. She started crying and then told us about how hard the past few weeks were. Her husband had fallen off the uhaul truck they had and had to go to the hospital. She told us while they were in Merced the missionaries down there offered to help her as well. We were able to get her info and send it to the missionaries down there again so that they could help her get everything in order at their new apartment and then teach them! It was awesome. The next morning we went out in the morning and we decided to go to this potentials apartment complex. While we were there I had a prompting to go knock on this former investigators door...I had only heard about him a couple times, but I saw the door as we were coming in and I had an impression to go there. Well as we were parking our bikes the door opened and the former's brother was talking to his mom about the missionaries and said as he was telling his mom he wanted us to come over we showed up. We were able to teach him and give him as a referral to the family ward Elders. It was super crazy.

I cannot wait for General Conference this weekend! I am going to miss the spaghetti and cinnamon rolls, but it is a sacrifice that I can make for the happiness I feel right now. I love my area, I love my companion, and I love the work!

-- 

Love,

Elder Willden

"Me and Stewey"

"Clown"

"JUAN'S BAPTISM" 

Monday, September 18, 2017

Family and Friends,

I mentioned in my letter last week that I was getting a new companion... Well he is here! His name is Elder Stewart. He is from Roosevelt, UT. We both played basketball in high school! The branch down here has nick-named us the "Twin Towers of Turlock." I think that we are the tallest companionship in the mission. We get along very well and I am excited for this transfer with him. It will be a 7 week transfer and then we will have a 5 week transfer after this one. So basically this is going to be the greatest transfer of all time lol.

President Palmer took our district to Apricot BBQ in Patterson this past week. It was super good BBQ. It is super crazy though because this transfer we were assigned to the Crows Landing district which is a 45 minute drive from where we live so it has been pretty crazy. We go to Modesto every week anyway, but it is just pretty hard because we have a mileage allotment and we are all over the place!

 Juan is getting baptized this Sunday! We are so excited for him. We are wrapping up the lessons this week and his interview will be this Saturday. Something happened last week in one of our lessons with him that I thought was really cool. We were teaching him and just reassuring him that he was ready for this step in his life. After we shared a scripture he told us that when his dad and sister were investigating the church several years ago he wanted so badly to learn more and to take the lessons, but he didn't speak up. And unfortunately the missionaries did not ask him if he wanted to learn more. So I feel very lucky that we were able to find him and teach him. He is so ready to receive this message and enjoy the happiness that comes from it. 

We taught Josh this week as well. He is doing good! It was a good lesson on the Atonement of Jesus Christ and receiving the priesthood. We shared the bible video of Jesus Christ in Gethsemane and then read a little bit of Alma 13. It was a good lesson and the spirit was so strong. I feel like the best lessons that I teach and where I am able to feel the spirit is on The Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is everything.

We had a new leadership training this week. It was basically about being loving leaders and not speaking ill of others. I always appreciate the reminder to be like our Savior in everything that we do. Elder Stewart and I enjoyed it and are trying to apply that into our companionship. We are having such a good time down here in Turlock!

My spiritual thought this week is from the young adult broadcast that Elder Bednar spoke at. It was sooooo good. He talked about how we need to be a "welding link" in our generations. What touched my heart from this broadcast is that we cannot have any grey areas in our lives. We need to be all in. As we do this we will bless our posterity. Elder and Sister Bednar did a super good job and I invite you all to watch this. Especially Corie, Chase, Bailee, and Kyle. I appreciated everything that Elder Bednar taught!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!  

-- 

Love,

Elder Willden

Monday, September 11, 2017

Family and Friends,

Transfer calls came last night! I will be staying in the Turlock YSA, but I have a new companion! Elder Stewart! Him and I were in the MTC together and actually were in the same room. I am so excited for this next transfer...it is going to be so fun! And he is one of the few Elders in our mission that is taller than me. As for Elder Robison, he will be going to co-train with my previous companion Elder Payne! He will do a great job!

Oh I forgot to mention that I hope Luke's birthday month is going good! I hope there has been plenty of recreation and fun. I am also very happy for him being able to advance to the office of a teacher!

This week was definitely slow, but we were able to find some success with the investigators that we do have. An update from last week's letter. We taught Juan Lopez twice this week! He is progressing very rapidly. We had a wonderful lesson with him on the Plan of Salvation and he committed to be baptized on Sept. 24. I am super excited for that. He is one of the most humble investigators I have ever had on my mission. He is sincerely trying to come closer to his Savior. He has also been reading the Book of Mormon; he told us that he knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet. As we teach him he always just thanks us for teaching him more and that he is excited to continue learning new things. When we taught him about the fall of Adam he was mind blown. After that super spiritual lesson we asked him to pray. It was a very cool experience for me because he told us that he was speechless. He was so excited to get baptized that he didn't know what to say! It was a super good lesson.

We also had a very good lesson with our investigator Josh. We have been working with him for a month now and he originally set a baptism date for Oct 22. Well, yesterday we were teaching him and we had planned to try to move his baptism forward. So we taught tithing and fast offerings and we were getting into Mosiah 18 (a wonderful passage on baptism and what it entails). After we read the scripture he told us that he wanted to move his date to Oct 7. The spirit is so awesome. We hadn't even extended the invitation to move it and he already wanted to move it forward. So we had a very good lesson with him too. He is in 2 Nephi (my favorite book in the Book of Mormon). So we are trying to help him through that!

We have also been working with some other investigators not as consistently as the former stated. Their names are: Marcus, Alexis, Valerie, Shayla, and Jonathan. We are trying to find some commitment out of them. Marcus is a really solid guy, but is not available most of the time. We have taught him once. He had a lot of questions about religion in general so we didn't get too far into the Restoration. Pray that we can get these people to commit to meet with us more. And that their concerns may be resolved. Thank you!

I want to share a story from this week that I felt was a way that Heavenly Father makes us better in the process of being a missionary. I was on an exchange with another Elder this week. We use the hours from 10AM-12PM to find. So we were out knocking doors...doing our thing. Well that morning could have defined the word "dead." We knocked on 28 doors and no one answered. It was then 11:30AM and we had not talked to but one person on the street. It was rough. I felt like I was not being put into a position where I could train this Elder on how to do a door approach. After a spiritual prompting we started our way over to the college to street contact. We had a total of 20 minutes left until we had to run some errands for other missionaries... Well we got to talk to four people. Three of them were not very interested. The last person we talked to was a girl that was getting ready to go to class. The Elder that I was with shared the picture of Jesus in America. We were able to have a very good conversation about the Book of Mormon and share a copy with her. I thought about this experience and how if we wouldn't have endured those 28 doors and then came to the college we wouldn't have been able to give her that Book of Mormon. If we wouldn't have followed the spirit that morning we wouldn't have been able to do the Father's will. I think this applies to life as well sometimes. Something may seem pointless, but God's timing is perfect. I love my mission and all of the things I am learning. This is a once in a lifetime thing!

I have a spiritual thought from my studies this week. I would invite each of you to read Mosiah 23:1-19. I was thinking about what this chapter could symbolize... I came up with replacing some words. Replace King Noah with Sin. Replace power of God with the Atonement of Jesus Christ. As I read through this I thought about how we need to flee from sin. And once we have fled from sin we need to stay away. We cannot be afraid to be different. Alma knew that they would become corrupted if they chose another king and followed the "precepts of men." (2 Nephi 28:14) So he being a righteous prophet of God warned them and led them to build the city of Helam where they "prospered"! Be courageous, be worthy, and be different! As we run from sin as Alma and his people ran from the armies of King Noah, we can find our land of Helam!

I love this work so much!

-- 

Love,

Elder Willden

Monday, September 4, 2017

Family and Friends,

Hey everybody this week was so good! I hit my 14 month mark this past week and it is scary that I will be in single digits next month...Where is the time going? First I want to tell you all about a miracle that happened at taco bell this week. We were on exchanges with the assistants...I was with Elder Cook. We decided to roll through the bell. Well... We were ordering and the cashier asked where we were from and we told her. She told us that she had talked to missionaries down in San Diego and then she moved up here. She continued to tell us that the missionaries had helped her out a lot in the past. So they will be going by her house in this next week!

We had mission leadership council last Tuesday and it was a really good meeting. We talked about how to correct missionaries in the Savior's way. As we all were learning and being edified the theme of the meeting was to counsel. If you notice in the scriptures it talks a lot about counseling together to make decisions. We even call a quorum of our leaders the "council of the twelve." As we counsel and figure out how to best move the work forward we can have better, more effective ideas than just having a single man make decisions...a scripture that has been ringing through my mind as I have been writing this letter is in Alma 37:36-37 and it reads:

36 Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever.

37 Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day.

As we heed this counsel Alma was giving to his son Helaman we too can be "lifted up at the last day." Recently I have really been pondering my mission. As I was doing that I was thinking about what my personal motto would be if I had one. The words that seemed to ring through my mind were, "ALL IN." With a tag to the scripture Matthew 6:24. Ever since I have thought of this I have had more motivation. I think about my missionary purpose and vision. And then combine it with some personal revelation that I have received. It has been a great tool for self motivation and desire to serve the Lord. I feel like when you are a missionary you always want to give more. So I have decided to just give everything and go all in. I think that this can also apply to life. I have always been taught to finish something when I start it (thanks Mom and Dad). I think this is something that we all can work on...including myself.

Now I would like to share a little bit about how our week went with investigators and prospective elders. We picked up a new investigator this week! His name is Marcus. We tracted into him the other week and were finally able to teach him. He had a lot of good questions. Basically what he believed in is that he can take all positive principles from different religions and apply them into his life. That is what he has tried to do his whole life. We taught him the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We really emphasized the pattern of Apostasy and how some truths were not lost, but a lot were. This man really liked to talk, but we ended up reading a scripture out of the Book of Mormon about our duty as sons and daughters of God. There is nothing more rewarding than showing someone their true identity in the eyes of God. Because some people do not understand that our Heavenly Father prefers the title of Father! He loves us all! It was just a good lesson and hopefully we can get back in there soon.

Kirk, one of our progressing prospective elders took us out to dinner the other night and then we had a lesson with him. He recently started  coming back to church and does not hold the Aaronic priesthood yet. It was an amazing lesson about repentance and God's love for us. We taught him about how repentance is a daily process that helps us change. It is a gift from our Savior, Jesus Christ that allows us to become like Him and our Heavenly Father. It was such a great lesson and we were able to invite him to continue to repent and get ready to receive the priesthood. He is excited for these changes in his life. It is amazing to see the growth of the people we teach day in and day out. Being a missionary is a blessing you only know when you do.

We were blessed to have two of our investigators at church this week! Josh and Juan came! The attendance was weak because of Labor Day weekend, but we think they enjoyed. Josh comes every week and he is preparing for his baptism. We have had such a great experience teaching him the lessons and helping him come closer to the Savior. He is in 2 Nephi and always has really tough questions for us to answer. The Lord helps us out to answer these questions. We knew that Josh was going to come to church so we were trying to get someone else. We decided to call Juan and see if he would come. When we called he told us that he was getting ready for church! And it was his first time coming. It is always so awkward when it is someone's first time...also because of the low attendance, but hopefully he liked it. We were also blessed with a new potential that came to church. She is living with two different members right now because of her not having a place to stay and it seemed like she really loved church. Keep praying that we find new people!

I love the work and I love you all! Have a great week!

-- 

Love,

Elder Willden