Crazy Girl

Hello everybody! I'm gonna start off explaining the title, then we will get to the important stuff.

So this morning we were chilling downstairs and heard the doorbell ring about 8 times so we went and answered. It was a lady that was about 40 ish and she was asking us for help. We could tell she was on some kind of drug or she was just vibing real hard haha. She tried to get into our house so we closed the door and told her we couldn't help. She started to cuss us out and was going CRAZY in the street. We got a little concerned about her so gave our good ole buddies in blue a call and they pulled up. Of course when they came she was gone haha so we are hoping that we are safe tonight when we sleep! 

Now that the crazy stuff is out of the way, let's get to the goodies. 

First off, we got new missionaries in our house. Elder Foster and Elder Jarvis. Foster went to Salem Hills and played football and is a big dude! He's playing down at Dixie State when we get home and I really like him! Jarvis is from Arkansas and that's about all I know about him. They are both reassigned, one from Honduras and the other from Chile. It's been good to keep some Spanish going in the house. 

I remember a good quote my freshman year of baseball that coach told me about the mission. He said "90% of the time its gonna suck and you'll hate it, but that 10% you love will make up for it". I thought about this a lot this week. Not gonna lie, I've hated sitting in the house all day and I haven't always had the best attitude. 

Well that 10% of good got to me this week. I was reading in the Book of Mormon when I randomly get a thought to start calling people on the "not interested" list. I thought "well I'm reading a good chapter right now so I will wait until after". Well we all know the spirit never fails and again I think, "Carter close the book and call before it's too late". I knew this was the spirit so I listened and we got to calling. First two were voicemails and I just laughed. Shocker. We keep going and finally someone picks up. 3rd time's the charm. We got in contact with a lady named Tina and has been taught before. We set up a day to meet with her and she is super excited. She has a few concerns about the Book of Mormon. She said "why do we have another book if we already have the bible?". Seriously Tina, could you make this any easier for me? I got SO pumped for this lesson because if there's one thing I can sincerely share my testimony about, it's the Book of Mormon! 

Transfers are this week so we will see what happens. I hope I stay. Anyways, please keep Tina in your prayers and pray she will have her heart softened!

Love you all

Elder Wilde 

Back to Church

Hello Family,

For all of you real ones who have seen Billy Madison and know the song "back to school", just know I was singing that the whole week but replacing the word school with church. We finally got to go to church! Seeing people in person is 100x better than a stupid phone. We were fortunate enough to attend both of the wards we cover and had some bomb sacrament meetings. We were also able to help with the sacrament and it's crazy how different things are now. Because Arizona is the hot spot, we had to put hand sanitizer on like 5 times while we were doing sacrament. The Bishop spoke in both wards and they both had some great talks. Even though we haven't had too much interaction with the ward members, we felt right at home. I was sitting in my seat lowkey hoping I was gonna get asked to speak because I was ready to preach. But, in the states they are a little more prepared for a sacrament meeting and won't call on us on the spot. 

Aside from church it was just a normal week. Julia, the girl we are teaching, had surgery on her nose so she wasn't able to meet or go to church. This week we just set up a bunch of zoom calls for the following week.

We had a cool zoom call with a family yesterday and were able to give some advice to the 18 year old boy who is preparing for a mission. Super good family with strong testimonies and I felt the spirit super strong! 

Really not too much to talk about. We have transfers this week I think, guess we will see. The church is still true.

Love you all

Elder Wilde 

Six Weeks to Sexy

Quarantine life, you know what that means... I'm about to get shredded. Basically since life keeps getting more boring I decided to work out to keep myself entertained Haha. Basically I'm tryna come out of this quarantine looking like freaking Arnold Schwarzenegger. Aside from working out physically I've had lots of time to work out spiritually. 

Before I start with my personal stuff I'm gonna talk about Julia, the girl we are teaching. So she still can't get that permission so we are thinking she'll have to wait until September for when she turns 18. She is planning on going to Gunnison, Colorado for school but she might be doing online if this stupid virus stays around. She has been talking with missionaries since October so she has a pretty strong testimony and our lessons are a little more in depth. We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and her testimony on it is so freaking dope! Like when we teach her I feel like we are teaching a member. Sad thing is she's getting surgery on her nose the 19th so we offered a priesthood blessing and she got excited because she's never had a blessing before haha. So keep her in your prayers because she's awesome. 

Since we haven't done too much I've tried to study a little harder. Not gonna lie it can get hard to just sit and try to read so I've been trying to stay entertained while studying. I've been reading and listening to lots of conference talks, watching church videos, and even looking at a Book of Mormon picture book. You'd be surprised on how much you can learn from a picture book! I read a talk from this April 2020 conference by Joy D. Jones and I loved when she talked about President Nelson answering questions for the primary kids. 

He says, 

"So Moses had to walk all the way up to the top of that mountain to get the Ten Commandments. Now, Heavenly Father could have said, ‘Moses, you start there, and I’ll start here, and I’ll meet you halfway.’ No, the Lord loves effort, because effort brings rewards that can’t come without it."

I love the way I can relate to that. The Lord loves our effort and will bless us for it. I'm so grateful for a living Prophet and his testimony. 

Love you all, stay sweet

Elder Wilde 

Just doing some more studying!

'Merica

I'll tell ya what folks, if this weekend didn't make you wanna listen to country music, eat some apple pie, watch some baseball, and crack open an ice cold mountain dew, you're not American. Unfortunately, all I could do was crack open a few cold Dew’s and yell 'Merica. That was probably the most exciting part of this week. 

To start off on a good note, a member hooked it up with a bunch of groceries for us this week and that was super nice of her! She has a son on a mission in Virginia and was saying "if I do something nice for you then the members there will help my son!". Just shows how great the members are here!

This was definitely the slowest week of the mission for sure because we had like a 1% success rate. Like there really is nothing that happened this week haha. I try to look at the positives but it can be tough. 

We had interviews with president and we just had a normal interview and he asked how I was doing. I told him that quarantine sucks and how bored I get. He told me to focus on my personal study and it will get better, so I did that. I have been reading lots of conference talks from this last conference and of course the Book of Mormon. Straight up the Book of Mormon is the best and I love it. I like to think of how much I relate to it even when it took place over 2000 years ago! When I catch myself complaining about quarantine I try to remind myself about the missionaries in the Book of Mormon and remember how much harder they had it. Even though it's been a rough time in quarantine I still see God's hand in my life and try my best to share it with others. 

Love you all! 

Stay sweet! 

Stay free, 'merica!

Elder Wilde 

Got my name tag in English now.

How awesome are the members here in Gilbert! So grateful for the groceries!

Lot's of spiders and scorpions here

Just chillin'