Boy oh Boy!

Well this last week was pretty fantastic!  We met with the Sardars every day this week and they are doing wonderful!!  All of them are going to be baptized, but probably at different times haha.  The daughter, Chuzi, is getting baptized this Saturday, January 31!!  And the mom and dad are probably going to be baptized either Feb 7 or Feb 14.  So that's awesome!

Our other investigators are doing great as well!  We currently have 11 on date to be baptized.  The ones coming up the soonest are David Toral: Feb 7, and Kimberly Galvez: Feb 14.  It's awesome! 

I got to go on exchanges with Elder Miller this week.  He is a super cool guy. He's from Utah, go figure, and he serves in one of the spanish wards here in my zone.  It was funny because so far on his mission, he's never been subject to a language barrier.  Since he speaks fluent spanish, he can pretty much always talk to everyone.  But when we got to the Sardars and we were speaking Urdu, he had no idea what was going on haha.  I'm actually starting to get pretty good.  I can speak quite a bit now. It was cool too because we got a referral the other day for a man named Masih, who requested an Urdu Book of Mormon.  So Elder Miller and I went to deliver the book, and he was outside, and so I got to speak to him in Urdu for a minute, and Masih was blown away haha.  I think the last think he expected was to see two white guys jump out of a truck and greet him in his own language.  It was so fun! 

Well, that's kind of all I have to report.  Stay tuned next week for pictures of the baptism!  As well as Transfer info!  This could potentially be my last week in Colton!  That would be sad. Especially with all the baptisms coming up.  But, the Lord knows best.  Have a great week! Love you!

Love, Elder Wise

Hey Hey Hey

Well this week was pretty good.  Let's see.  Well, the Sardar's are doing great!  There was a baptism this week that they were able to go and watch, sadly it was in Spanish and they didn't understand a word, but they enjoyed it.  There are some English ones this week though that they will be able to go to.  After the baptism, the member who drove them, took them to Redlands to see the Temple.  And it has made a huge difference!!  Especially with Gloria (the mom) and Chuzi (her real name is Palwasha - and she's the daughter).  Up until now they have wanted to be baptized, but they wanted to wait awhile.  But now they are a lot more on board and we are shooting for Jan 31.  We have a lesson with them tonight and we will hopefully set that date with them.  Lazarus will still wait a bit because he is still trying to give up drinking tea.  They are the best though.  I love that family so much!  And the best part is that two of the kids will be going to the U in August!  So we will get to hang out after the mission.

All of our other investigators are doing pretty well.  Although we haven't seen Sister Armstrong in like 3 weeks.  She has vanished off the face of the earth.  I miss that lady!  The main struggle we have is getting people to come to church.  They commit to come, we make sure to remind them and get everything set up for them, and then they don't show up.  It's very frustrating.  But, we will get them this week for sure.  

And we got to go to the Temple on Wednesday which was awesome!  It was great to go back finally.  I probably won't get to go again until right before I leave, for my departing temple trip.  It'll be nice to be back in Utah where I can go whenever I want to haha.  

Since yesterday was a holiday we had lot's of free time since we didn't have to email or anything, so we went over to the Sardars and played Apples to Apples with them.  It was a good time!  

Lazarus, Chuzi, and Logan

Do you remember a long time ago how I used to complain about my back hurting while I slept?  It's been that way for a looooong time.  Well, I think it's fixed now.  Let me tell you why.  Nearly two years ago, when Elder Seright was being trained, he baptized a man named Jesse Tung, who is from Taiwan.  Jesse is an acupuncturist.  He's had his practice going for many years and he's helped lot's of missionaries the last couple of years since he got baptized.  Well I met him on exchanges several weeks ago and somehow it came up that my back hurt, and he offered to help.  So that's what we did yesterday.  It turns out that the muscles in my back are just super tight all the time.  So he did his thing and stuck me full of needles and such.  It was great!  He also does cupping, which he also did for me!  Remember that lady in our group in China?  How she had big purple spots all over her back?  Now I have spots too haha!  I'll send a picture.  It was marvelous though. I slept really well last night.  

Well, I think that about covers it for the week!  I'm sorry to hear you guys were sick!  That is no fun.  I've been feeling a little under the weather myself.  

Well, I hope you all have a great week!!  Love you all!

Oh boy.

Well, another week has come and gone.  It was a pretty good one!  I had to do Zone Meeting on Tuesday and it actually went really well!  I was slightly nervous because I was all by myself, but it was good.  There was lot's of good participation from the Zone.

I also got to go on exchanges this week with a guy named Elder Hunter!  He is a lot of fun!  He plays college football and when he gets home he'll be playing for Utah State.  He's huge.  It was really fun to get to go with him though cause a long long time ago (when I was in Palm Desert) he was there too! And I had gotten to go on exchanges with his companion, but not him.  But now I got to!  So it was good fun. 

The rest of the week was pretty good.  We taught quite a few lessons and even picked up a new investigator named Miguel.  He seems super solid too!  His mom and brother are LDS so he knew about the church already.  Hopefully we will be able to start teaching his wife too!  It's going to be great.  The Sardars are doing really well.  They are making good progress toward baptism.  So are the Shads.  The last couple weeks we haven't been able to see Sister Armstrong because she has been sick and out of town, but she's back now so hopefully she will be able to start progressing again.  David is doing well also, but his life is pretty crazy and we have a hard time meeting with him sometimes.  And Jesus, Maria, and Angie are doing really well, but we weren't able at meet with them yesterday because they were so busy.  So hopefully we will see them soon!

Alright, this paragraph is going to be a little trunky.  Since I'm going to have to be coming home a little early for school, I talked to President about it and he has it worked out now.  So that means I now officially have a going home date!  August 17, 2015.  It's so sad.  That's so soon haha.  But it had to happen I guess.  It'll be a few more months until the office starts arranging things for flights and stuff (probably the end of May), but there you go.  Crazy! Just a mere 7 months away.  

Ok, off of Trunky stuff.  This week is pretty exciting!  We get to go to the Temple on Wednesday!!  It's going to be awesome!  I haven't gone in an entire year.  Waaaaay too long.  Although, as President says "We are here to do the work for the Living, not for the Dead."  So that's ok.  But it's going to be awesome! As a result of that however, our P-Day is shortened.  So today P-Day ends at 3 instead of the normal 6.  Which is cool.  

Anyways, I think that's about everything for this week.  I'm sorry to hear that everyone has been sick though!  That's no fun.  

Momentum opened in Lehi?!  I knew they were planning on doing that, but I didn't know it was already done!  That's awesome!!  I definitely want to go there when I get home!! That will be legit! There are going to be a lot of things I need to do when I get home haha.  I don't think I'll be able to cram them all in to just the one week before school starts though haha.  

Nels gave us his old phones huh?  That's so nice of him! He's the best! Thanks Nelsie!  It's an iPhone 5?  Sweet! 

Haha that's good to hear that the lake will be nice and full in Montana!  I can't believe they got so much snow!  That's awesome!  

Well, I hope you all have a fantastic week!!  Love you all!

Love, Elder Wise

Only 5 left...

So I got to thinking the other day, and guess what I realized?  I only have 5 transfers left!  That just blows my mind.  The last 16 months (as of yesterday) have just flown by!!  It's crazy!

Anyways though. This week was pretty good!  We didn't teach as many lessons as we usually do, but the ones that we did teach were bomb.  But I'll come back to that in a minute.  

The week started off with District Meeting on Tuesday.  Which isn't normally worth mentioning but in this instance, it affected the rest of the week.  We had a great training on inviting people to be baptized and putting them on date.  So we took that and rolled with it.  Now we have 9 investigators on date!  And several more coming up next week.  So that's awesome!  The investigators on date are: Sis Armstrong, David Toral, Jesus, Maria, Angie, Iffat and John Shad, and Luke Sardar, and Lazarus Sardar!  All on date for days in February.  So hopefully I get to stay one more transfer!!  If everything goes according to plan, we will be baptizing every Saturday in February.  It's going to be awesome! Coming up this week we will hopefully be able to put a few more.  Such as Kimberly and Janice Galvez, and Gloria and Palwasha Sardar.  So pray for all of them!  Thanks! 

Miracles happen.  We taught the Word of Wisdom to a few of our investigators the other day, and we were pretty nervous about what they were going to say.  But our preparation and prayers paid off and they totally accepted it and agreed with the principles.  It will probably take a little bit more to help them to actually live it, but this was a huge step.  So we are grateful for that.  

Sadly, our new investigators from last week decided to drop us.  They want to stay with their family tradition of Catholic.  We will still be able to swing by occasionally but for now, they aren't interested.  Sad day.  But not to worry! We will find others I'm sure.

Being a solo ZL is a fun time.  Whenever I have leadership meetings I just leave him with some other elders and I go with some other Zone Leaders.  And we never go on splits with members really anyway, so that's not too much of a problem.  And when we exchange with other missionaries, he just goes to their area since he doesn't know ours too well yet haha.  

I'm glad to hear that you all made it home from Mississippi alright!  With only a little drama haha.  

I'm super jealous of the Keb Mo concert though!! That sounds awesome!!  Too bad he didn't sing my song.  

Well, I hope you have a great week!! Thanks for all your prayers and help!  Love you all!  

Love, Elder Wise

Happy New Year!

Well we had a pretty great week!  It was so great to be able to talk to you guys!!  And being able to see all the cousins and stuff for a minute was a great time!!

So this week was pretty crazy.  Let's see...well first off, all of our investigators are doing really well!  Although we are going to be pushing Sister Armstrong's baptism back a couple weeks.  Probably to January 17.  We just need a bit more time to make sure she has it all down.  She's doing really well though! 

On Christmas Eve we had a great lesson with a guy named Jose.  We just talked to him on the street one day and he invited us over to share a Christmas Message.  So we went and did that and at the end he asked us for a Book of Mormon and wanted us to come back and teach him more!  So that was super cool! He's awesome.  And then we did some service for Brother Alvarado.  The Wright family fed us dinner and it was delicious!  The rest of Christmas Eve was pretty much spent playing santa.  We delivered some Christmas presents to some people in the ward, and then we had to deliver all the Christmas packages to the rest of the Zone.  It took pretty much all night.  

On Christmas we did our weekly planning, and then we skyped of course!  And then we had dinner at a members house, and then we spent most of the day delivering Christmas Cards to our investigators.  We didn't really teach very many lessons, but we were able to see a lot of people and wish them Merry Christmas.  And we had a really good lesson with Sis Armstrong and David. We went over the baptismal interview questions with them.  They are both really close to being baptized!  It's awesome! 

And we had exchanges with the AP's the next day which went really well!  I really love Elder Darro.  He is such a cool guy.  We are good friends haha. Pretty much all our appointments fell through, but we did have one really solid lesson with the Sardar's.  They are so amazing!  Even though they don't understand everything fully yet, we can tell they are just so converted.  It's awesome.  Elder Darro and I also went to our favorite restaurant (P&G's) and the owner Pete (who loves us) gave us some hats for Christmas!  I'll send a pic haha. 

On Saturday we had a mission wide conference.  Elder Higham of the Fifth Quorum of the Seventy came and spoke to us!  It was so awesome!!  I learned a TON and I've already seen a big difference as we have applied the principles we learned.  He spoke mostly about prayer, and helping our investigators pray.  And President Miskin and President Madson (the counselors in the mission presidency) spoke a lot about Christ.  How he was the perfect teacher and we dissected all the prayers that Jesus gave in the scriptures.  It was great! 

And that night a member of the Bloomington ward took us to meet some of their friends and we had a great lesson with them!  So now they are our new investigators as well!  

So as you can see, we just had a great week.  Christmas time is awesome! 

Sounds like you had a great week too!  I saw a preview of Unbroken at a restaurant and it looks amazing!  I really want to see that one.  I loved the book! I'm glad you've all had a good time in Mississippi though!  I love that place haha.  

Well, I hope you all have a great week!!  Happy New Year!! Love you all!!

Love, Elder Wise

The Crew at P&Gs

Ocha Heh (It's Good!)

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be fluent in Urdu by the time I leave this place.  Hopefully anyway!  It's such a fun language!

Anyways, this week was chaos.  After finding out that Elder Webb was leaving last Monday, pretty much the whole day was spent packing up all his stuff.  Then Tuesday was spent saying goodbye to a lot of people.  We had some good solid lessons though before Webb left.  Everyone was very sad.  Then came Wednesday.  In the morning we drove around and picked up a bunch of Elders and all their stuff.  This was made difficult because it was pouring rain!  Everyone's stuff in the back of the truck was pretty soaked.  But hey, it turned out alright.  Then we spent the next several hours in a training meeting.  Where I met my new companion.  His name is Elder Cook!  He is from good ole American Fork Utah.  Although he didn't go to AF High School.  He went to Lehi.  So he doesn't know anyone I know.  Lame! He's cool though.  He's had quite a week.  Waaaay different then my first week in the mission haha.  My first week we had no phone, no area book, no investigators, nothing.  

Wednesday afternoon was spent driving other missionaries around and picking up bikes for them and such.  The joys of being a ZL haha.  

Then we get to Thursday.  A large part of the day was spent doing service!  We worked at the food pantry again, and then we went and helped my favorite old man.  Brother Alvarado.  He's the best.  That night we had a great lesson with Sister Armstrong.  And guess who else was there!?  David!  Carlos' brother!  He's back!  We taught them both the Word of Wisdom (that's what they both struggle with)  And it was great!  David is on date again for February 21, and we were able to find out some things about Sister Armstrong that totally change everything!  She is going to be baptized on Jan 3rd!  The main thing that was holding her back is no longer an issue!  I just about cried cause I was so happy.  It was legit! 

We pretty much spent all day on Friday delivering packages to the missionaries in the zone.  And bikes too.  In my zone we have 27 missionaries, and they almost all had christmas packages that needed to be delivered.  So we played Santa on friday.  It'll probably happen again today, because we had to make a trip to the mission office and we picked up a dozen more.  Fun stuff!  

Yesterday was pretty good.  We had several investigators at church, and we had a great lesson with our investigators Jesus, Maria, and Angie.  By the end of this week they will probably be on date to be baptized as well! So things are just coming together around here!  It's great! 

Sounds like everything is pretty crazy back home haha!  I'm glad you all made it to Mississippi alright!  It sounds like it was quite the ordeal haha.  Snowbird sounds awesome though!  I am really jealous.  

I'm super excited to skype on Thursday!  We will be going over to the members house at noon, our time.  So that's probably like what, 3 for you guys?  I will probably call dads cell first, to let you know I'm on.  And then we will only have 45 minutes to talk.  :(  So have some stuff ready to talk about haha! 

I got all the packages!  The candy is delicious!!  And the new pants came and they fit beautifully!  As long as I don't gain any more weight, we will be great!  And I've gotten a lot of the cards, but I am definitely missing a few of them haha.  I'm sure they will trickle in eventually.  

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!!  I can't wait to talk to you!  Love you all!

Love, Elder Wise

We played soccer last P-day.  I am so outta shape!

We took one last selfie with Sis Jones (curly hair) and Elder Webb before they left us.  Luckily Sis Anderson is still here.

Elder Webb and Julian.  So adorable.

Last selfie with Elder Webb and our cuties from Thanksgiving.  Can't believe they've lasted so long.

Baradin Mubarak!

So, we've been taking Urdu lessons from the Sardars, and Baradin Mubarak means Merry Christmas!! Well, when directly translated it means happy big day, but that's what they say! It's crazy that Christmas is next week!  I'm pretty stoked.

Alright.  The big news.  We found out about transfers today.  Elder Webb is outta here!  I'm staying in Colton for another Transfer!! It's crazy! I have been here so long.  Elder Webb is being transferred to Redlands, and his new companion is Elder Raff!!  I'm so jealous!!  I miss that guy.  You are probably wondering who my new companion is.  Well I don't know.  I'm going to be training a new missionary!  So I won't find out who he is until Wednesday.  And to make it more exciting I'm the only zone leader now.  So this next transfer is going to be very exciting! 

As far as the zone goes, there were quite a few changes.  One of the sisters serving in the Colton ward with me, Sister Jones, is going out to the desert, and a few of the other missionaries are leaving as well.  It's kinda crazy, because now, all the missionaries who came to this zone two transfers after I did, have now left.  Jones was the last one.  I'm just out-lasting everyone haha.  

This week was pretty good.  We went on exchanges with some elders.  Elder Hunter and Elder Andrew.  I like them a lot.  I got to go on bike with Elder Andrew and we had a real good time.  We also weekly planned with some of the other elders which went really well. 

All of our investigators are doing pretty good as well.  Although we are struggling to put them all on date.  It's coming along though.  Lazarus is the only on on date currently.  He is so awesome!  

Well, sounds like everything is going well at home.  That's crazy that Nick is leaving already!  I can't believe he couldn't tie a tie haha.  

I'm glad Sadie had fun at the Dance!  That's awesome! 

Kelsey is getting home?!  That's crazy too haha!  Time flies haha 

GG has a time share at Snow Bird??  How is it that I am just finding out about this!?!?  That's awesome! 

I haven't gotten some of the stuff you've sent.  I did get both of the big packages.  They are withholding mail because of transfers.  But I'll be able to pick it all up on Wednesday.  

Well, I hope you all have a great week!! Love you all! 

Love, Elder Wise

P.S.  Jahwil Mazidar hah ------> This rice is delicious!!