Missionary Letter #37

So this week we had a lot of wonderful things happen.

First off, we had a baptism!!!! (Applause)

Second we had the wonderful opportunity to not get a call for transfers last night, which means me and Elder Robinson and I are companions for one more transfer. (Booyah!!!)

So now that I've established the basic outline of our dynamic week let's get into story time (I promise I'll go in detail for the baptism... Later in the email of course :) )

So there's this fantastic kid in our ward named Juan. He's  over-all one of the greatest people I think I've ever had the privilege of meeting. Despite his testimony and his love of the gospel he's never really shown a desire to serve a mission. Something that my companion and I have always wanted to help him consider is how a mission could help him.

So going back a few days we found a new investigator who agreed that we could share a lesson with her. We didn't know what the situation was so we decided that bringing him along would hit two birds with one stone. We'd have a third male (just in case) and we'd also try to help him feel the spirit of the mission.

So we get him and drive to the appointment. Get out and walk to the door, pasted on is a note that basically says, "Not interested."

My companion and I shrugged it off, this was a normal week for us, it came with the gig. Juan, however, seemed to contemplate over it. I began to worry that this wouldn't shed the mission in a positive light for him. On the drive back to his house he asked us "How can you guys just shrug it off?" I joked that it came with the job but then my companion said that we were serving not for the bad times but for the wonderful moments when the heaven's seemed to open and the Lord smiled down.

Juan grinned, and as he got out of the car he said, "I guess I'll have to remember that for my mission." Then he walked away. (Que explosion in the backdrop)

I remember having a similar experience when the missionaries asked me to come over for a member appointment. I drove down the street to the Hess's home and met them there on their bikes. In the twenty minutes we spent there we  shared the message of the Restoration, gave a prayer over the home and then left. In that brief time I felt the Spirit testify to me of the truthfulness of that message, and I'm glad that Juan was able to feel some of it too.

Anyways about the baptism Sharon is now a member, the program was wonderful and the funniest thing was that she brought to of her friends who before the program looked at the church as if we were some kind of cult, but by the end they were smiling and grinning and thanking everyone for letting them come.

To put it bluntly---

Awesome

Loves to all,

Elder Wolford

Missionary Letter #36

This week it was practically all sunshine. Although after hearing that Utah suffered from extreme weather conditions I kind of thought we should match suit so...

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We had way to much fun taking that picture

Anyways as far as the things we've been doing we've been getting pumped because our investigator is getting ready for baptism!!!! Honestly she's golden, but because I feel the spiritual inclination to share this story that means all'yall  gotta hear it.

So my former companion Elder Olson (who is like a brother to me) called up a potential investigator when someone sent a referral, to make a long story short this person's daughter had just been baptized and wanted her mother to be too. So he gives her a call and she's really not interested.
This was all before we were assigned to serve together in Niagara. So we get there and he gets a call from Sharon saying that's she's been incredibly sick and that her daughter said we could give priesthood blessings. So we did with one of our members, fast forward a week or two and she's asking when she can be baptized.
Absolutely golden. So anyways we're planning on a baptism in a couple of weeks here so keep your fingers crossed.

This last Sunday (Fast Sunday for us) after church we went out and I just had the inexplicable pallor of doom hanging over me because we didn't have any food left in the fridge. So while planning for the day we got the text from one of the members

"Dinner appointment?"

DREAMS DO COME TRUE!!!!!


I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week, remember DREAMS DO COME TRUE!!!!

Missionary Letter #35

This was a fantastic week! Not only did we have the wonderful opportunity to hear from the prophets and apostles but we also had a manhunt out for us...

....I can explain.

After I talk about General Conference a little bit, just to build tension and get the facts established.

So I would love to pick a favourite talk but I loved a lot of them. President Utchdorf's and Eyrings made my super pumped during priesthood session to go out and magnify my calling like the Hubble Telescope. Elder Hollands on the 'songs we cannot sing' made me feel both like a sinner and a saint, and President Nelson's was absolutely fantastic.

To get everyone hyped for this we sent huge amounts of texts reminding everyone when and where General Conference would be. Remember this as it's important to the story.

After the last session on Sunday closed we had pizza with a member. I must admit I've never had mushroom, pinapple, fried onion, pizza with gouda cheese sprinkled over the top. I believe the fact that her husband's form Belgium influcened that. Anyways we went home, got ready for bed and fell asleep. Nothing to abnormal accept for the fact that we didn't get any calls. Which isn't frequent but irregular.

We wake up the next morning ( #PDAY!!!! ) and get ready to go about doing things. We check the phone, nothing on there. So we go to email (Lo and behold that's where I am now) and open up our myldsmail accounts.

This is what we see.

Elder Cruz: Where are you guys is your phone dead?
Elder Martin: Where are you guys is your phone dead?
Elder Martin: Respond are you ok?
Elder Martin: What's going on?
Elder Martin: Are you dead?
Elder Cruz: We've called a few of the members and they can't get ahold of you either
Elder Cruz: Are you dead?

Apparently all those texts and messages we sent out blocked up the service on our phone and we couldn't receive anything any calls/texts or messages after that. We were literally in the dead zone.
We responded and got the whole thing sorted out before they called the cops. I learned a valuable lesson from it though, missionaries in the days of olde didn't have communication like we do. And despite the twenty year old flip phones we possess can survive a nuclear bomb they still help keep the work moving.

And make sure no one's died or something... That's nice too.

After that complex conundrum we've got a lot to reply to, but that just comes with the gig :)

I hope all y'all have a fantastic week, remember to not do drugs and stay in school!

Loves!

Elder Wolford

Missionary Letter #34

Elder Robinson and I have been having a blast this past week. I'm not sure how but I think the correlation goes something like this.

Good Weather & Good Work = Happy Missionaries :)

Smiley face include with equation.

Good things have happened this week. For example: One of our members who has expressed that he really likes us (something about us being good missionaries) was doing his home teaching at an elderly members home. She hadn't been feeling good so he went over to check up on her. Lo and behold her granddaughter was there and when he asked if he could share a brief message with them they accepted. He talked about the Plan of Salvation. We don't know all the details but something about what he said fascinated the granddaughter. She had never been a member and neither had her parents. The hometeacher said that if she wanted to learn more he could contact the missionaries and set something up.

#hometeachingmiracles #dopeopleevenusehastagsanymore??? #outdated

In other news we're going to the temple this week and there is General Conference. Both of which I'm super pumped for. I don't think I've ever been this excited to hear from the Apostles. We're inviting all of our investigators out for it and we know that one has already accepted so we're excited for that.

I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

Elder Wolford

Missionary Letter #33

So this week I picked up my new companion Elder Robinson, he's a native of Cedar City (and we already established that we know none of the same people) but it's really fun to serve with him because he knows where everything is in South Utah.

We had an interesting stake conference this week. One of our new converts came to us before the broadcast began and said, "Hey what's all the food in the gym for?"

I was super excited to think that for the first time in my life we were going to have steak after stake conference.

But lo and behold, (it wasn't steak). Instead we learned that a baptism for a child of record was happening that day after the conference and that we were invited. So after frantically filling the font and grabbing the programs and getting everyone situated we had the baptism.
It was fantastic.
Afterwards we all went to the gym (where the previously mentioned food was) and we had a blast. The mother was Filipino  and as such there was a ton of food, ( which leftovers we were graciously willing to accept) and going to the father I complimented him on the baptism and said it was amazing.

I will never forget his reaction as he turned towards me with reverence and joy said, "That was perfect."

And it was perfect.

In my own mind that story is pretty hard to follow up so I'll close here.

Loves!

Elder Wolford

Missionary Letter #32

This week was an absolute blast.... Let me tell  you about it!So about half-way through the week some power from on high decided that as missionaries we'd had it to easy with the weather. The sun was shining and it was nice and warm. Everyone was wearing a coat  as a courtesy to the month of March more than a need to stay warm. 


It was really nice.
Then everything changed when the wind and snow came. Which actually really helped us because a lot of the members realised that it was really cold and invited us over for dinner. (or something along that kind of logic) #missionariesworkbetterwhenwe'refed

Other than that though it's been a great week for our investigators. We set one with a baptismal date (whoot whoot!) and another we fellowshipped with some members. That went well, she brought her two little girls over to the members house and their kids had an absolute blast downstairs with the members kids. After we had finished the lesson the two little girls came up and said "Mom we should do this again*"

*Matthew 21:16Then we learned that my wonderful companion was getting transfered. The call went something like this

Mission Pres: Elder Olson, I'm sending you to open a new area
Elder Olson (hesitantly): Ok sure thing President. Where's the area?
Mission Pres: ...
Mission Pres: ...
Mission Pres: Downtown Toronto

I would like to say that I got there fast enough to catch him before he passed out but that would be a lie. 

A little something about my companion, he has only served in really small towns his whole mission. Niagara is the biggest place he's ever served and it's got 80,000 people. So he's literally going somewhere larger than all of his area's combined-

Multiplied by 100.

And it's a bus area. 

Anywhoo I'll be staying here for a little longer to enjoy the Falls. 

Loves!
Elder Wolford

x

Missionary Letter #31

So this week we were instructed to do and instruction on Comp unity. This was of course only the day before and we were told that we'd be doing it in front of the whole zone (of about twenty missionaries) so we were kind of in a panic to figure out what we'd do. We discussed a normal instruction but decided we'd do something a little different. I felt prompted to talk about one of the greatest companionship's of all time.

None other than Alma and Amulek. 

So we cut up some cheap sheets, threw them over our head and gave an instruction as if we were Alma and Amulek. Not to be prideful but it was pretty awesome. 

Another fun experience this week: We went to a members home for dinner last week, (they're about my parents age) So their daughter and her husband were there having dinner too. She told us that she would be having her baby tomorrow and so they were really nervous and excited. We came back to check up on them this week and they showed us the baby girl and after letting them show her off we left. As we walked out my companion looked at my in fear and said "Elder she's only a few months older than me and she's a parent"

We spent a moment in the car considering that strange set of circumstances. 

The work is going really well here in Niagara, I love this area so much because there are a ton of people and you never know what you're going to run into. For example when you knock a street and then go to see a member and realize that you knocked their house without knowing it was them and now you kind of feel awkward because they didn't answer when they were home last time. #avoidingthemmormons

I love you all so much and hope you have a fantastic week!

Elder Wolford :) 

Steven Letter #30

This week was one of the strangest on  my mission. The pattern of our day to day routine usually went something like this. 

We wake up and it's snowing like there's going to be five feet of snow by lunch.

We get ready for the day, the snow has stopped.

We study for an hour, it's getting warmer

By the time we leave the apartment it's all melted.

It's Utah weather. Everyone here is saying things like "This weather is awfully weird." and I'm saying things like "Hmm this is super nice weather eh?" 

I've unconscious begun saying 'eh' to people, and one member actually asked if I was  a native to Canada because I've been using it. I must admit that that was an extremely good moment for me. After that appointment I turned to my companion and said something along the lines of.

Operation report: I've infiltrated the northern state and managed to blend in perfectly with the locals. They don't suspect a thing. Wolf Cub over and out. 

By the way Wolf Cub is my code name. No I didn't pick it, my district leader did. 

I read this scripture this past week and I'd like to share with you all. 

2nd Nephi 12: 2-3

 2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, when the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.

3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

What I took from it was if we go to the temple we will better know the Lord's plan for us. 

I love you all, I promise to write more next week!

Elder Wolford