Temple trip!

My District at the Temple

Whew! What a week! I absolutely love the temple! I wish I would have gone a lot more before I left on my mission. I can feel that it is definitely the house of God. Well, we started out the temple trip with a testimony meeting as a zone in the stake center across from the temple. It was so powerful. It was so great to start out the temple trip like that.

This week has been so busy. I never realized how awesome the Priesthood is. I have the authority from God in me! It's been a week full of priesthood blessings and tracting. The sister missionaries were teaching this lady, and she asked for a blessing. It was so crazy to see the change in the lady from that day and the next day. The priesthood is real.

The weeks are starting to fly bye. It's awesome because Edmond has come alive now. All the college students are here, and the roads are so busy.

Well, Justin Skinner is leaving on his mission to Cali, Columbia on Tuesday. He's been very fun to take to go teach lessons.

So, bashers. For some weird reason they seem to all be from Utah. We were just at the store and I went to go talk to this guy and he started bashing us. He even pulled out a list of scriptures from his front pocket to try and bash with us. I kept trying to leave from talking to him, because we bore our testimony and it was time to leave that guy alone, but he wouldn't let us. I understand, he's trying to save us and whatnot, but he's just got lost in his knowledge.

Service is so fun! We got to cut down quite a few trees! Problem is, we can't use the motorized saw (I forgot what it was called), so we got good old saws. It was actually pretty fun! Elder Marsh was cutting down a smaller tree and it was heavier than he thought it was so it scraped up his hand pretty good. 

I love reading the scriptures! Coming out on my mission has helped me realize that not only do we need physical sustenance, but also spiritual food too. Even more so than physical.

Elder Wheelwright (dos)

HEY Ya'll

Even though I've been resisting saying yall, I still end up saying it all the time! 

Well, this week was crazy! With basically next to no investigators we did a lot of finding! I enjoy tracting, and trying to help resolve their concerns. 

Life is good here in Edmond! We've been teaching this couple about the word of wisdom and the lady that we were teaching started getting mad at me, and all I did was bear my testimony. I was like whoa lady, calm down. It was kinda comical, because later I realized that the Holy Ghost pricked her heart and she just didn't want to change, so she got defensive, but luckily it all got cleared up by my awesome companion. We've been playing guitar at their house to kind of let them know we are real people. It's crazy, because my companion plays guitar, cello, and piano, and I play those too, yet our personalities are different, but he's awesome. Well, now that college has started up, the traffic from UCO has increased so much that now we are able to talk to a lot more people.

It's awkward when we run into a Spanish person, and they can't speak Spanish. We just pull out a card and point to the website and say to visit it :) So I decided to learn the first discussion in Spanish. Here it goes: el Libro de Mormón es verdadero. Jose Smith es verdadero :) How'd I do Austin? 

There's this old lady that we did service for, and she came to church with us. Whoo, talk about nerve wracking. I was worried she was going to shout hallelujah or something like that. We threw a lot of her stuff away because she likes to keep stuff... no bueno.

We went to another church on Sunday because someone wanted us to. It was pretty weird. We sang a lot, and then the minister called me and my companion out of the congregation. Weird. He yelled a lot while preaching. It kinda hurt my ears, but it was still very cool to see other people trying to pursue Christ also. We invited some people to our church while at their church. It was pretty great! Our church is in the fullness of the gospel, and is so true. 

With the spirit and trying to listen to it, I always was wondering that too. Then we watched a talk in the MTC by Elder Bednar and he said to not worry about if it is the spirit or just you, because the spirit is sometimes very hard to detect and if it's good, then it cometh from God :) It's still very hard for me to do it, but I'm working on it. That's awesome your doing missionary work. I can tell you from experience that the missionaries really really really appreciate it, so just imagine how much God appreciates it! That's awesome! 

Do you know what's so crazy!? Pride is almost always the root for sin! It's crazy! I read a talk about it, and ever since then, whenever I get annoyed at my companion for a lecture or something, I tell myself that that's just my pride being hurt, and that I need to get over it, and that pride is no bueno. I need to work on that :) I love you mom! You are so awesome!!! I love you also dad!!!! Write me :) I love talking to both of you. Choose the right!!! The LDS church is so true!! Love you

Elder Wheelwright (dos)

Life! Love it!

How are your investigators doing? Well, we came to a realization that all of our investigators like us over because we're fun to talk to, and we serve them, so we've dropped every single one. They just don't really have a desire to learn. We've tried to instill in them that desire, but it's something we can't do. That takes away agency, so for now, we've dropped all of them, and hopefully they'll gain a desire to once again listen to the words of life.

Lou, how was cleaning her house? It was good! We had to reschedule cleaning her house because of the rain, but we cleaned her outside on Tuesday. I think she's to the point where she wants to investigate the church. When we cleaned her yard, my companion found two gigantic black widows, a snake, and a frog. We didn't tell her about the snake because she would probably have a heart attack, but we told her about the black widows and she freaked out about that... oops!

Aaron. Have you met with him? Nope! He has not contacted us yet and he said he's not going to contact us till he had his life in order.

Bro. Gilbert? We went over a few days ago, and that's when we tried to figure out personally his reason for needed the gospel. Both me and Elder Marsh got the feeling that he doesn't have a reason for investigating the gospel, and that he also has no desire to learn. But we both believe one day he will come to the truth that he needs the words of the Savior just as much as any one else. He's in a good environment of the church. His wife just went through the temple her first time, he goes to all three hours of church, and he prays to God and see's the goodness and charity of people, so I believe we can't do anything for him till he want's it.

So by Sunday, yesterday, we had dropped all our investigators, and we were not sure what to do. So we went on our way to go see some part member families and our way over there, my companion got a very strong prompting to go talk to this lady on her porch. It turns out she was really prepared. We taught her about the Restoration and we all felt the spirit, and she accepted the Book of Mormon and said she'll pray and read about it, and the baptismal challenge was almost out of my mouth and then the conversation got a bit random at the end, and I wasn't able to invite her to be baptized. But that's alright. God has prepared her, and we have an appointment with her on Wednesday.

 School here at UCO is about to start, and we're basically on the campus, so it'll get busy here, and most people we'll find, we'll probably have to refer to the UCO Sister's here. The lady that we talked to and taught the Restoration yesterday will have to be referred to the UCO sisters, unless she is over thirty. 

Ya, dad definitely showed me how to work hard, even out on the mission field my companion grew up on the farm and it sounds like you taught us how to work just as well as he was taught, although he woke up a lot earlier to go milk cows than we ever did. :) 

 This week when we went to see the Gilberts it turned out that their fan in their bedroom overheated, and so they had to replace it, so while we were over there, they had someone replacing it. The fan, it turns out, was built and broke building code violations and was attached to the sheet rock and not a beam. I think God made their fan overheat because it might have fallen. But that's just personal opinion.

Whoa?? Derek is going to Alabama?!?! That's awesome!!!!!! Tell him good luck and that he should write me.  That's awesome Jason got married!! 

I love you! Thank you so much for raising me in the gospel and always being an example to me

Elder Wheelwright

Swimming While Biking???

This week was so nice! A cold front moved in and it rained LIKE CRAZY here! And apparently that's not even bad, but whew! I have never seen so much rain! We went biking in it after a service project at the hope center (basically the DI in Utah) to the chiropractor and it was like I had gone swimming, which I thought was against the rules but hey, I guess swimming while biking is ok :) After a while of biking in it, cars would hit puddles on the road and a giant wall of water would just come at you at hit you! Very fun though! Especially when we got to the chiropractors office and we were soaked all the way through. Which during that time I was on exchanges because my comp is District leader so he needed to go to district leader conference, so after that, we went back to the elders apartment I was with and everywhere I walked in the apartment, he'd follow me with a mop :) It was so funny to just walk around acting like I was doing something, but really I was just watching him clean up after me :) It rained like crazy all day though :)

Also, we found this old lady, the one that prayed with us on the phone, and we went to see her, and so we went to the trailer park where she lived and taught her a lesson...well, tried is more like it, because she'd discuss a concern of hers and we'd address that and before we even got through with that she would start talking about her carpet in her trailer, so we're going to clean her house tomorrow,  :) The work is going great here though.

I ran into my first basher :) He started trying to bash with us and how he was concerned for our salvation, but as soon as he started, we listened to him chastise us about how John Smith made up the Book of Mormon and that he is fine with the one he has, so ya, John Smith...:) It was interesting to say the least :) We did this thing called the power hour, where we share a spiritual message with the members that we eat with and then we ask them to pray for us for the whole next hour and while they are doing that we go and tract their neighborhood out, and I can tell you, God definitely listens to prayers! A little background story; the day before, we tracted for 3 hours and prayed with about two people in that whole time, but no one wanted to listen. During the power hour though, we prayed with 6 people and gave out a Book of Mormon and they said they would read and pray about it. The change between those two days was such a big difference that God had to have been listening to prayers.

So, my watch is a thermometer too I guess :) Some cool new feature or something. on the screen, it got water inside of it so whenever it's over 90 degrees, my watch screen fogs up on the inside, and also depending on it raining it also fogs up :)  And also, it's actually a lot easier than I thought to be able to tell the direction here. Also, everyone's been asking for blessing lately, so quite a bit of blessings! The priesthood is true!

This gospel is so true!

Choose the right :)

Elder Wheelwright (dos)

Elder Marsh

MTC District