Miracles

How have things been this week? This week has been awesome! It's been a little harder with our investigators, as only two of them could meet with us, and the rest are either avoiding us or are busy. It makes me worried about one of our investigators, because for about two weeks we've been trying to contact her (one of my favorite investigators) and her friend (referral from her) texted us and said to leave Julie alone... Sad day. But the work moves on. 

What kind of miracles have you seen? A finding one. We found two people in this one neighborhood. One of them got antied very hard core after we left, and she doesn't want to meet with us, but that's not the miracle. Right across from her house we taught a lesson to the girl that was living in that house and she knows the Stake President and baby sits his grandchildren. She accepted the BOM and asked for a couple weeks to read through it. Awesome!

Who are you teaching? Well, we are teaching Michael, Trey, Julie (well, was) , Dylan,, Amber, Bro Gilbert,Jenna, Daniel, Paul and Betty, just got married this last week and Betty is Jehovah witness and Paul is a Less Active. Yep, I think that about covers it.

How is the ward coming along? It is going awesome! The sisters in the ward are having a baptism. They are baptizing an eternal, and it's getting the ward pumped because they haven't seen a baptism in about a year or more. We just got a new ward mission leader Sunday. Sad to see our old WML not being one, but Bro. Taylor, the new one, is a man full of many ideas and faith, and I can't wait to see what he'll direct us on next. The ward feels more and more like my family every day. I look at them and it feels like I have known them my whole life, even when I see new faces (I'm bound to because we have 400 active members), but I definitely see a lot of new faces. They have taken me in and made us feel like family. They are a good ward. Even my first week in the ward, I felt like I had known them all in the pre-mortal life or something, because I just fit right in with them :) I'm coming up on 4 and 1/2 months with the ward, and I don't want to leave. I hope I can stay in this area longer. 

Elder Wheelwright

My week

This week was very fun! We got to go to a Catholic Mass yesterday! Our very nice Catholic Priest escorted us into the mass. There are so many churches in Oklahoma! We were looking in the Yellow Pages and there were 27 pages of different churches! Wow! This is definitely the bible belt! 

So, for Preparation Day last week, we went to the zoo! It was an absolutely perfect temperature day! 70 degrees during the day! Then, later that night we went to an appointment. An hour later when we got out of the appointment, it had dropped what felt like at least 20 degrees! So cold! That was the quickest we've ever biked home. The next day it was about 20 degrees! Gotta love Oklahoma! And the rest of the week has stayed like that! Yesterday, about an hour before church it started snowing pretty lightly. People started asking if church was still on. Ha, funny Oklahoma! At church, we had about half attendance, and everyone else was at home avoiding the snow. By the time we got out of church, about 1/2 of an inch of snow was on everything, and traffic dropped to a slow crawl! So many people had spun out and were on the side of the road. The person driving us, as he was pulling out onto the road, started sliding and did a complete u turn on accident and just kept driving and went out the other side of the parking lot. Whew, it was hard not to grab the wheel and start steering for them. 

Elder Wheelwright

Praying in the Bible belt

Sooo, this week has flown by!

It's been a wonderful week of perfect temperatures all day. 

70 degrees all day! Feels like Hawaii... or what I would imagine Hawaii feels like... if it were a landlocked state.

But anyways, you get the point :)

Yesterday was amazing! Michael, showed up to church! He's awesome. He's a bout sixty years old, small and delicate man. We showed him a movie about Joseph Smith, and While showing it to him, he started crying when Joseph died. He is truly passionate about our 

religion. Every lesson we have with him he reminds us that it is his "second time reading the Book of Mormon", and that if he didn't believe in what we believe he would not be reading it. He wants us to bury Joseph Smith under our temple in Salt Lake, just as the Catholics did with peter (I think). He's created a weird hybrid religion with LDS and Catholic. I didn't know you could mix the two, yet he somehow has :) 

I love Oklahoma! They are very proud to be the buckle on the bible belt, and the people here sure are! On Monday, all of our appointments fell through and we didn't know what to do. So... tracting! We biked down a random road and some drunk people yelled at us, so we stopped to go talk to them. Of course, we got a bit side tracked and knocked on this door, and the guy let us right in. He was about 30, had 3 kids. We offered to pray with him, and he rounded up all of his kids. It was soo cool! He invited us into his kids bedroom to get ready for bed, and we all stood in a circle holding hands with his children, and we offered a prayer. After, the children gave each other hugs and then came over and gave us hugs. They were all under the age of about 6! It was so very inspiring that people can have a family like that in this day and age! We then went back to their house another day and the dad let us and we taught them about Joseph Smith. He said he had been praying all week for us to come back (good sign, right?) and then continued on to tell us that he had some things he would like to tell us (uh oh) and then commenced a long sermon about how we are going to be condemned. Nice man... till it comes to religion :)

Well, sorry this letter is not so long. My wrist hurts, and this is probably not long enough to be on the blog. Ah well, do with is as you will.

Come Unto Me and I will give you REST

I feel like the over arching message of this last conference was to "come unto me". They said it many times, and I got the feeling many other times. I've been pondering about that. "come unto me and I will give you rest". For a while, I felt like that never applied to me. I was thinking about how hard this mission is, and that it's not very restful to me. And at church yesterday, I received revelation about that. He has given me rest. We were talking about addictions and weaknesses, and I was told by the Holy Ghost that that is how I am receiving rest. As members of the true church, sometimes we take for granted many doctrines that bring us true rest. During gospel doctrines, we were talking about the law of chastity, and I came to the realization that that is such a wonderful law. We put away the grossness of Satan, and embrace God with our full heart. It holds families together, it keeps you free from addiction. And it's so specific in what it teaches that you don't have room for question. Also, with the Word of Wisdom. Because I've never done drugs, they can't hold me bound. I am receiving rest from the Savior. The commandments aren't a burden, they are a blessing. And thank you so much for raising me in such a wonderful example of that. 

This week, one of the people we are teaching, a Catholic Priest, talked about how he would get an-tied and he would offer a Book of Mormon to anyone who would speak bad about the church, and then he would offer for them to meet with us. He was talking about how a minister of one of the churches was mad at him for taking the lessons from us, and the catholic priest, said that our church was true, and that he would do well to listen to us also. He then offered a Book of Mormon to him. I love Him! He's read the Book of Mormon all the way through already, and he is on his second time. He said that there is no way he would read it a second time if he didn't believe in it already. I asked him what he was going to do about his knowledge, and he said that he was going to use it as a reference material when giving sermons. Not quite what I was looking for, but I don't see anything wrong with that :) 

A death, endowment, wedding, baptism, and funeral

HA, yep, its been a crazy, fun, sad week!

So, to start off, an endowment.

So, in Edmond, a convert of a year was able to go to the temple! So amazing! Her name is Susan! We were not sure how to get there, and all other resources exhausted, we were about to take the car from the sisters (to the complaints of them :)), and they must have said a prayer in desperation! Because at 9:30 pm the night before, a name of a member popped into my head out of nowhere! So we called and immediately they said yes! And what's also awesome about that is, they took us to a Chinese buffet after, which, by the way, is my first one I've ever gone to. It was cool! As I was eating the slightly strange food, I could only imagine what Wheelwright Choro was eating right then :)

 And to make it an even better week for her, she got sealed Saturday! So, in the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma temple, it is literally the smallest temple in the world, and Susan has met with many a missionary. Fortunate, yet unfortunate, all of those missionaries were planning to go to her sealing. So that turned out awesome! And we went to her reception that day, and glorious food was arrayed everywhere. My favorite, mashed potatoes and gravy! Surprisingly enough, we hardly ever have that here. When I thought of Oklahoma, I thought of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and country gravy.

An hour after the reception, in the same building, the sisters had a baptism.

 For a church meeting right before church, our bishop read a quote from Brigham Young about service, and that that is his religion, and said that we were going to prepare for the funeral. The funeral was going to be held that day, and they estimated 600 people showing up in our chapel. Whew, kind of daunting! It was amazing to see all the men, elders quorum, young men, and high priests work together to prepare for the funeral. We set up every chair in the whole church in as many places as we could. The time of the funeral arriving, us missionaries were the ushers. 6 vans full of flowers came and were put in the chapel. The funeral, with it starting at 6:30, and people started showing up at 5. At about 6, our chapel was full, and the gym also, and 700 programs were all given away by then. At least 1000 people showed up, if not more. Every hallway was lined with people, the gym had all the walls lined with people standing, and many other rooms that had speakers in them were full. Many fire-code hazards later, the funeral started. It was absolutely beautiful! So many people gained comfort from the plan of salvation, and so many gained a testimony of it that night. It was a wonderful funeral, celebrated with joy and sorrow. See, as members of the church, there is a knowledge that families are forever, and that there is life after death. Such a glorious doctrine that Heavenly Father has revealed to us, and I'm so glad he has.

 

This week has gave me a perspective on many things! I was able to see all major points of peoples life (except birth, thankfully). A baptism, starting an eternity of commitment to God. An endowment, another step along the stair way of life. A sealing, being paired with a companion of your choice for all eternity. A death, passing on to the other side. And a Chinese buffet to fit all in the middle of that:)

 

So many doctrines benefit us in life. The full and restored truth of it all. So many others could benefit from the knowledge we have been given. Given freely, freely shall I give.

Elder Wheelwright

Elder Wheelwright at the reception

 Michelle and Tom Russell with Elder Wheelwright

Chillin' with brilliance

 

So… Mannequins?

This week was pretty good. It flew by! 

So… funny story. I crashed my bike!

Well, kinda funny. :) So my companion and I were at an intersection and we both decided to go the perfect way so that we could both crash into each other right in the middle of the intersection! And so as we crashed, I tipped over immediately, but my companion is solid. Throughout his mission he's learned how to build his foundation on a rock…especially during dinner, and so he just kept pedaling while I was hanging off his bike. 

Yesterday I would say was the most fun day!! We went to Sunday school for the 16 year olds in our ward. The youth are sooooo funny! One of them, right in the middle of the lesson look over at his neighbor, pinches his skin, and asked if that was a cause of dehydration! It doesn't sound that funny till you hear his voice! That kids family is so hilarious! But anyways, after that we got to go to primary because we didn't have any investigators at church! The kids absolutely love the missionaries here!…probably because we give them candy! Depending on how well they are in primary, they either get 2 pieces of candy or 1. Right after church, while we're going to go get the candy, a line starts forming right behind us of hungry kids! I feel like a mother duck leading them along as they are all screaming for candy and asking us where we hide it at church. I think they've found our latest hiding spot, so we're going to move it again. :) In primary yesterday, there was this kid, Joe, that kept making me paper airplanes and bending the nose in different ways, giving each of them a new name. He reminds me of Mike Yagoobian off of Meet the Robinsons. But when we finished handing out candy and we were talking to the adults, he walks by our bag and just grabs and started walking away. I was just watching, not even thinking about it till my companion noticed. We've got some smart kids in our ward.

One of the people we're teaching has a bunch of these mannequins, and yesterday as we rode by their house, the mannequins were outside, just standing in their front yard, watching all the cars drive by. I think their planning on putting one on the roof as a look out, and another hanging from a tree. They're funny people! They absolutely love sitting outside because on the corner that they live, a lot of people speed, so a cop is there, and they love watching the cop pulling people over.  

It finally got really cold this week! It feels soooo nice! It was around 60, and both Elder Marsh and I completely froze! I can't wait till an ice storm! 

So, as we were knocking doors, we went up to a door, knocked on it, and the guy slammed the door in our face, and as we were walking away, the door popped open and this lady started chasing us and telling us to stop! Happy to oblige, we stopped and she asked us if we were Mormons, and then she invited us inside, to the bewilderment of her husband. The Lord is truly in this work!

I love it! And I would encourage all y'alls to share the gospel, because I know the Lord will help you as you strive to. 

Elder Wheelwright!

So....Chiggers

My zone

Chiggers are... :P . I thought mosquito bites were bad, but chiggers pass it up. They're really cool insects though! We were doing a service project for this lady that hadn't cleaned up her yard in about 5 years and the next morning I woke up with bites everywhere on my leg. No bueno.

Pizza is everywhere here. We've had pizza the past 4 days for almost every meal. I think the members are trying to fatten us up even more than we already are. I love pizza, so I'm totally fine with that! 

So, our weeks been really nice and busy. We are doing a major youth activity with our ward where all the youth are going on splits with the missionaries for this Wednesday activity. So we pulled all the missionaries in our zone and some from another zone. 19 appointments :) Unfortunately we don't have that many investigators, so we've been contacting other members to have a lesson taught to them. It's going to be a fun youth activity. There's about 35 youth attending that activity. I don't think we realized how big it would be till we were too late :) But ya, that's all we've been doing the past week. Preparing like crazy for that activity, which has been really fun. Transfers are this Wednesday and Elder Marsh and I are staying in Edmond, which I'm so glad for. Sister Koyle, a sister in our district, is being transferred out. I can't believe a transfer is already gone! It's crazy!

My Zone at the Temple