OH YA! Week one!

Whew! so much has happened this week that it's absolutely crazy. My first area is the Edmond First Ward. Edmond is such a beautiful place, I never expected Oklahoma like this. Everything is green and people are normal here, but I heard that this is the most normal area in Oklahoma.We live right next to a college campus, so the people here are mostly very young, so it feels kind of like a singles ward... except they're married here. :) My trainer is Elder Marsh! He's an absolutely wonderful Elder! He's absolutely hilarious!

Doing Great in Edmund

Yesterday, he turned to me and said "So, did you know Cain is modern day bigfoot?" and I just burst out laughing, especially because I remembered the show Singles ward 2. And the thing is, he actually believes that bigfoot really is Cain. And he says he know's when the second coming is coming too, and it's absolutely hilarious!! He's a very good trainer though. My first few lessons that I tried to teach, I totally blanked so luckily he helped me there.  Also, my trainer is an absolute clean freak, which is sooo very awesome, because I'm not too big of a fan of bed bugs. :) And it's just me and him in the apartment, and I would almost say with surety our apartment is the cleanest, even though I haven't seen anyone else's apartment.

The people here are sooooooo very nice! It's crazy! When we go tracting, if you ask them for water, they'll gladly give it to you, or for anything else. But then when you bring up religion, it's a little bit different of a story...:) Everyone here is totally fine with talking about religion. It's an everyday part of their lives, as well it should be. :) 

The members here are so nice! They have a calendar they pass around during church and everyone picks a day they want to feed the missionaries! :) So every night we have a dinner appointment with the members, and during that time we try to instill in them how important member missionary work is. I wish I had gotten that before my mission, so I could have helped them so much more. It's crazy how much we actually rely on the members here. Also, sometimes the members sign up to feed us, and they live far away in the city (well, far away is very relative, especially because we're on bikes), so we sadly have to tell them that we can't go, but the member's here are so nice that they insist on bringing us food all the way to our apartment.

The biking here is hot...:) It's been over 100 every day this until today, because a cold front came in and now it's about 84 degrees, which feels wonderful! I'll be honest, the hot here isn't so bad. I don't feel like I'm melting in front of the sun, like in Utah. The humidity is nice :) A few days ago it wasn't as humid and just barely 100 and I'd say I didn't like that weather the most. 

The work goes great here. We are getting this area started up again after it lacking for a few transfers, so the first few days we hardly had any appointments. But luckily, God is on our side, so he provided us with quite a few miracles to help us out, which helps me realize that God want's a willing heart before a prepared one, because I'm definitely not prepared. You can definitely feel God's hand in missionary work. People that normally wouldn't talk to you talk to you and want to know more. And I can constantly feel the spirit, and it's such a lovely feeling. I've never been more happy and satisfied in my life with things I am doing than now. Sure, it's hard, like on my first few lessons and tracting all I wanted to do was hide in our apartment because I was nervous to talk to people, but after that, it became much easier to do that because I could see how God helps them out, and all you want to do is help them out as much as you can, and the way that I know best is to let them know of God's love for them. 

So, on my first day with my trainer we were walking around our apartments carrying the Sisters luggage (our district is me, Elder Marsh, Sister Jones, Sister Koyle, Sister Tutasi, and Sister Odem) and we dropped it off and then as we were walking back to our apartment this guy swimming asked us if we were Jehovah Witnesses (there are a lot of those missionaries here, but for some weird reason they avoid us...;)) and we told him that we were Mormons and then he said that he wanted to meet with us, and that he just had gotten fired from his Job, so we set up an appointment for the next day. 

Another miracle was this lady that we tried calling up. She answered and she started praising us for how we act like good Christian boys should:), and then we set up an appointment with her and she actually prayed for us on the phone! It's so crazy how nice people are here. 

One more miracle from God, even though we've had many others. Yesterday we felt that we should visit this man, and we knocked, no one was there, and so we left our card with our number. Later that evening, we got a call from that persons sister, and it turns out that he just went in for heart surgery (he's got congestive heart failure, which is sad because he's about 30). The surgery was supposed to last about 4 hours but it turned into a 16 hour heart surgery, and he's not doing too well and can't see anyone except immediate family, and so when his sister called us up (she's a member of the church) she wanted us to find out the Elder's in that area and she wants them to give him a blessing. 

Also, I saw Austin Russel?? 

Love you all!!

Stay true to the faith, for it definitely is the true gospel

Elder Wheelwright (dos)