Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Hello!

This week was pretty good!!  It wasn't super duper exciting though.  However, we did break our teaching record from last week haha.  25 lessons!  Woohoo! For reals though, like nothing really happened this week.  Carlos is doing really well.  It's his wife's B-Day today so we went over to there house this morning before she went to work and taped a whole bunch of balloons to the door and wrote her a little note and stuff haha.  And we are also going over there tonight to go over what we read from the BOM the last couple days.  Also, it turns out that the Sisters who were teaching Carlos before we got there didn't do a super great job, so we have started teaching all the lessons over again, to refresh his memory.  So that's cool.  
We saw Ransom a few times this last week which is ALWAYS a blast!!  He is seriously the coolest guy ever.  He's been working on our watches and so this week, on Thursday, he is taking us out to dinner and presenting them to us haha.  I can't even wait!  Also, I really need to make sure I stay in touch with him cause he invited us out to his Ranch in Arizona in a couple years.  The plan is I'll call him up, he'll fly me out in his jet, then he'll put me in his helicopter and we will fly to the ranch.  Once there we have free reign of horses and pretty much every out-door toy you can think of haha.  And 146,000 acres to play on.  plus, he has big rafts and you can go down this river on his raft, it's about a 6 hour ride, and then get helicoptered back hahaha.  The man is unreal.  And if you get bored with that, you can try hunting down his Kangaroo which roams around up there, or take pictures with the peacocks.  
Ladies and Gentlemen...Ransom!!


Haha so that's really all that happened last week.  Not much more to report.  Hopefully this week will be a little more exciting. 
The California trip sounded super fun!!!! I'm super jealous!! I can't wait until the reunion tour when I get to go too!  The beach and everything sounds awesome!!  And what a cool story!! The return trip sounded awesome!  Even though it took you a long time to get home, that is just a crazy story. 
It was weird to think that you were so close!  Especially for your last night here haha.  I'm glad you all had a great time though!  I can't wait till I get to go!
Holy moly!  I'm glad Grandpa is OK.  Thank goodness for the Holy Ghost!  It's sad to hear that the bike is messed up though.  Is he gonna get it fixed?  Be sure to give him a big hug for me!  And grandma had pleurisy?  What the heck.  I will definitely be praying for the old people! 
Love you guys!! Hope you have a great week!! 
Love, Elder Wise

Monday, April 21, 2014

Easter Week!!!

Well this week was pretty AWESOME!  We were able to teach 24 lessons!  A new record haha!  Plus we found 4 new investigators!  So that's awesome!  One of our investigators, Carlos, is progressing really well.  He's been taught everything so it has been kind of tricky coming up with stuff to teach him. But this week we figured it out.  We are just gonna go the the whole Book of Mormon with him!! We set the goal to read the entire thing in 40 days.  So we read 13.5 pages everyday.  And we go talk to him about it every couple days.  So that's awesome!  He loves it too which is the best.  Plus, a week or so ago he prayed about the BOM and got his answer and he said "I know the Book of Mormon is true 120%".  He's just a BOSS!
We were able to see our friend Ransom this week too!  He is like the coolest old guy ever.  Right beside Grandpa, Bro Green (from the desert: hypnotist guy), and a few others haha.  Well he has around like 200 ish watches.  Old ones.  Watches from like 1930 to present.  And he is one of the few guys around that knows how to fix them and stuff.  So here's the best part.  He's gonna give us some!  He is giving each of us a 18-22 Karat gold watch with diamonds, and a less showy one we car wear around that is made out of stainless steel.  They are old ones though.  The kind you have to like wind up every so often.  It's freaking awesome.  I am so so so so so stoked.  He is pretty much the nicest guy ever.  Like for reals.  

Anyways, that about wraps up my week.  Missionary work is awesome!  I love being able to meet so many cool people! Sharing the gospel is the best!  I love you all!!  Have a great week!

Love, Elder Wise

Monday, April 14, 2014

WooHoo!!

So last week was pretty great!  As you all know, we had a baptism!  Bobby is officially a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  It's pretty great.  The first counselor in the bishopric baptized him and Elder Raff and I were the witnesses.  It was sweet!  Super fast too.  From the opening prayer to the closing prayer it was 20 minutes.  Which was what bobby wanted so it was good!  More baptisms should be that fast haha. 




The rest of the week was kind of slower.  We taught a bunch of lessons and stuff but nothing too exciting.  Carlos, our main progressing investigator, is super cool.  He has a baptism date set for June 14.  And him and his girlfriend (who's a RC of a little over a year) were married last week.  And he came to church yesterday too. He's a really cool guy.  They have a couple kids, Julian and Damian, who are CRAZY!!  Julian is 2 and most of the time he runs around in the nude.  Haha super funny.  He loves it when we come over though.  They are pretty fun. 

And that's really all that went on last week.  We found out about transfers today though! Looks like Elder Raff and I are staying together here in Colton for another 6 weeks!  That's fun!  He's the first companion I've stayed with for over 6 weeks since I was with Elder Seright.  So that's kind of nice haha! 
But yeah, that was my week!  This week should be awesome!  I can't wait for Easter!  It's gonna be great!
Anyways, I love you guys!! Thanks for your support and prayers!  I need them haha!
Have a great Easter!!

Love Elder Wise

Monday, April 7, 2014

Am I Really in Cali?

Haha so a little explanation about the title thingy.  I LOVED Elder Holland's talk and it just blew me away when he said he was more sure about the Restoration and the BOM being true, than he was sure that he was standing at the pulpit. Mind blown.  So now I'm not really sure I'm in Cali.  Haha that was kind of a lame joke but whatevs. 
Anyways, this week was pretty good! Our investigator Bobby is still on track to be baptized on the 12th, so that's super exciting!!!  It'll definitely be the highlight of this next week haha.  And obviously, the highlight of this last week was General Conference!!!  I loved it!! We watched it at the stake center in Rialto.  Since it was so far away we just hung out at the SC all day on Saturday, and on Sunday we watched the first session over there, and we watched the last session at a members house cause they really really wanted us to and they fed us dinner and stuff.  So it was pretty good.  My favorite talks were  Elder Holland, Elder Hales, Elder Nelson, Elder Christofferson, and the whole 1st presidency in the Priesthood sesh.  Haha I have a lot of favorites.  It was just awesome! 
I really missed spud nuts though.  I'm thinking that that will have to be the dessert at my homecoming.  :)  So get ready for that!  It sounds like it was a party Saturday night!!!  I didn't have a party haha.  We got an ice-cream cone from McDonalds.  Then went out and tried to see people haha.  It was good though!
It sounds like things back home are pretty crazy!! I'm glad that the RS cooking thing went well!  And I am SUPER jealous that Sadie gets to go skiing this week.  Deer Valley is great! And Spring Break is a great time!  Maybe you should go waterskiing!!  I would be down.  I day dream about waterskiing pretty much every day.  Not even joking.  I miss it so much. 
And yeah, Brother and Sister M went to Utah for the weekend so I gave them some of my pants to give to you cause they are super duper tight.  Hopefully they can get a hold of you sometime.  If not, it's cool.  I'll get them back and mail them or something. 
Well, I love you all!! And I love Missionary work!  Keep being awesome!  Oh, and like they said to do in conference, this last week we were studying chapter 5 of PMG.  We pick a chapter every week to focus on and try all week to really focus on applying the things in the chapter.  So there you go!  I don't really know what chapter we will be studying this week.  Haha
Love You!
Elder Wise

So a couple weeks ago I wrote a letter to an elderly less-active couple in Yucaipa who I made friends with way back when.  Well this letter came in the mail the other day.  It blew my mind haha.  I was pretty surprised.  Hopefully you can read it.

The Earth Moves!!

I'm sure you all heard about the earthquakes around here. It's a fun time!! I actually didn't feel them at all but the other missionaries in our apartment say that the whole place was shaking pretty good.  But we were out on our bikes and didn't feel anything so no worries.
This last week was pretty good!  We taught a personal record of 23 lessons!  So that was cool.  And Bobby, our investigator who is getting baptized, is still on date and progressing, but we are pushing the date back to April 12.  So that's awesome!  We also picked up a couple new investigators this week.  Johnny and Carlos.  We have only talked to Johnny once, but Carlos is an investigator that the Hermana's have been teaching for a while.  He is on date to be baptized in June.  He's a pretty cool guy.  I don't really know much about him yet.  

This week we also had exchanges with our district leaders, which isn't normally worth talking about, but the Elder I was with for a day was the Elder that Elder Seright trained after me.  So all day we were reminiscing back to Yucaipa and all the people over there haha.  It sounds like Roger (if you remember him) knows the church is true but his wife doesn't really want him to get baptized, so he won't.  Which is a bummer.  And Leonard (the crazy old mexican guy) went to church once but still doesn't like taking lessons haha.  So that was fun to have an update.  

And I can't wait for conference this weekend!! It's gonna be so great!!  It's just awesome. Haha I love it.  

It sounds like life in PG was pretty good this week!!  Way to go on making student council sade!!!  That's awesome!! 

Lunch at school with Lucie sounds super fun!!  I can't wait until I can do that!! haha 

That's awesome to hear about Madi and Tien!  It's great that Alex got to baptize!!  And Bro James could confirm!  

I am so excited for Lucies baptism!!  Her plans sound really awesome!!  I will definitely write a talk and send it home and stuff.  That'll be really cool! And I'm glad you liked my video about baptism!  Haha I enjoyed making it!  

Thank you so much for your support and love!  I love you all!!  Missionary work is awesome!! 

Love, Elder Wise