4/28/14

 Sounds like y'all are really busy!  Did everything work out okay in the move?  I hope everything is going okay, I have been praying for y'all frequently.  Every week we get to take an hour and go on Mormon.org and check out the website and go to Mormonchannel.org.  There is a video y'all should watch.  It is called Come Unto Christ.  It is awesome.  Anyways, on Saturday night I found out that I will now be being transferred.  There are only a few places I can go being Kingwood, Summerwood, Beaumont, or Vidor.  I will let y'all know next week.  I am sad to leave Baytown and one of my greatest companions, Elder Davis.  Elder Davis and I had a really good week.  As y'all know we have been having a hard time finding new people to teach.  Well, this past week we were able to find 9 new people to teach!  2 of them are really awesome.  Their names are Travis and Chris, Travis is 23 and Chris is 18.  We have been teaching them daily since we first taught them and they keep wanting us to come back.  They will be getting baptized soon I am sure.  I guess I will find out later on.  We were also able to teach a Family this week!  The parents names are Jorge and Erika their children, beginning at the eldest, are Isaiah, Romeo, and Mia.  It was really awesome, the lesson went really well.  I hope that they will continue to thirst for the gospel and get baptized.

  We were able to teach Paul the Mann this week.  He is disappointed that I will be leaving and Elder Davis will be going home in June, but he is still improving.  We have a member over with us every time we teach him, his name is Robin.  They get along really well and hang out all the time (it is such a weird relationship, but hilarious), so Paul will be okay when we leave.  He continues to struggle with smoking, but we are planning on doing the Stop Smoking Program with him which gets you off the addiction of smoking in one week.  He is a character. 

   We did a lot of tracting this week.  My feet really hurt, but by the end it was all worth it, being able to find those whom our Heavenly Father has prepared.  I love being a missionary it is such a blessing to be able to go out and serve.  Throughout the week this week I have had the wonderful opportunity to read through the story of Abinadi.  I love how Abinadi does not fear the opposing King Noah and his priests.  He stands strong and finishes his message and then when challenged about what he has shared he continues to stand strong to it.  I love his strict obedience to the Savior and his willingness to "stand completely and utterly alone" (Jeffery R. Holland).  I pray that I may have the strength to always stand strong against adversity and never give into those yelling from the tower in Lehi's dream. 

  I love y'all and hope y'all have a great week!

Elder Willden

4/21/14

Elder Davis and I had a good week this week.  We were able to go out and work hard!  We didn't teach too much, because we are struggling to find investigators that can meet often and will keep commitments.  We did a lot of knocking doors this week.  Our feet were sore, but we are glad to be able to go out in the spirit of the Lord looking for his prepared children to deliver his message to them.  Yesterday we were looking for a spot to tract and we found one, parked the car and started knocking.  A few doors in I realized that on exchanges another Elder and I had knocked it before.  We decided to just knock it again.  As we were going we went up and talked to a guy and he told us that he used to live in Utah, got baptized a Mormon, and eventually stopped going to church and moved.  That was over 30 years ago!  And, since then he had not seen missionaries until we went up and talked to him.  We tried to convince him to let us come over and teach him, but he didn't want that.  He said he had too busy of a schedule.  But, he told us that he would come to church sometime soon when he has work off.  We got his name and address and will be following up with him if he doesn't show for a while.  It was a miracle!  God placed us into his path.

  We also had another miracle right after that.  We were walking up to a door and a guy just runs outside and says, "I have been waiting on y'all to come talk to me!".  He proceeded to tell us that he has always wanted to know what we talk about, but has never had the chance to.  He was 21, engaged and going to college.  He doesn't live in the house we were at, he was just there for Easter.  He had lots of questions, then he asked us to share our message with him.  We were able to teach him on the front porch, the spirit was very strong.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and some reading assignments.  We aren't able to teach him again because he goes to school in Louisiana, but he committed to request the missionaries to come by on Mormon.org.  It was an awesome experience and I was so happy that God lead us there and we kept going even though we had knocked it before. 

  We got to teach Paul the Mann quite a bit this week.  On Friday night we had an appointment and when we showed up he was really drunk.  He had, had 5 beers.  It was the funniest lesson I have ever experience.  He made us go to his back room and show him how much we benched at the start and then we went to the living room and he started bringing out dumbbells for us to curl with.  We kept trying to get him to sit down, but he just wouldn't.  We decided to video it.  I can't wait to be able to show y'all this video, it is so funny.  But, anyways long story short, he lifted a little bit and sat down and we had a pretty good lesson.  We got him to church on Sunday, but he felt sick so he went home.  He is a character.

  We had a great week full of spiritual experience's and hard work.  I love y'all and pray for you nightly, by name.  I know Heavenly Father is taking care of y'all as he is taking care of me. 

Elder Willden

This week was a great week!  Elder Davis and I have been working hard and are joyful.  We have been doing this thing where we try to serve one companionship in our zone a day.  It is awesome.  Our zone continues to be the most productive zone in the mission.  They are awesome missionaries.  Anyways, do y'all remember who Paul the Mann is?  Paul has been being taught for a while now and he had only been to church once.  We were able to get him to church this week!  It was awesome, and now we are working to overcome his smoking addiction.  Smoking is so bad, it is an extremely hard addiction to overcome.  But, a few things about Paul.  He is an older man, he had back surgery and talks about it all the time and how bad his back is.  He is very self conscious about what others think about him.  He is a character.  But, he is going through a lot of trials at this point in time.  He hasn't seen his daughter in 8 years or so and she is married and has a kid.  He has recently been talking to her over the phone.  She told him that she would come visit this last Wednesday.  She never showed.  He also has been going through a few other problems.  He has a good heart for others.  We will continue to work with him and hopefully we can help him overcome his trials. 

  We also taught Lambris this week and same story over again.  His dad told him he can't go to church, but he is all good to meet with us.  It doesn't make much sense and Lambris is sad that he can't come to church.  But, he is doing missionary work.  He showed the Book of Mormon to one of his friends and now they read together with his friends family out of the Book of Mormon.  He is an awesome teenager.  We weren't able to meet with Lisa Ferresh.  Someone died and she had to go and attend their funeral.  We will be meeting with her this week.

  I love missionary work!  It is so fun to talk about and learn about Christ all day every day.  Elder Davis and I have been doing really good he is awesome!  I told him about mom's cinnamon rolls and he really wants them.  He kept asking me if I could get you to send some.  It is up to you though :).  I hope y'all know I truly love you.  Y'all are a big motivation for me to keep going.  I know this is the Lord's work.  It is hard sometimes to think about it because we get caught up in other things.  We should always be missionary minded.  If we look at Alma the younger.  He was the Chief Judge, he had a lot of responsibilities.  He was very busy, but when the people began to become wicked, he gave up the distractions around him to do missionary work.  He even gave up his position as Chief Judge.  We live at a time of wickedness, we cannot allow the worldly things in our life get in the way of us sharing our wonderful and life changing message. 

Elder Willden

Elder Davis and I had a wonderful week.  General Conference was awesome!  I loved the beginning talk by Jeffery R. Holland.  We must obey God's commandments.  We cannot make excuses.  Many churches are giving in to worldly pressures, we will never give in, we are the church of Jesus Christ and he never gave in to outside pressures, so neither can we.  General Conference was just amazing.  The spirit was very strong throughout it, now is the time to apply it though.  We must live what was taught and never forget it.  We must look out for the destructive danger of Pornography.  That is a Big problem now today, I can testify of that.

  It was also pretty awesome to get to see Elder Aidukiatus in General Conference, he is a really good man. 

  This week Elder Davis and I had a great opportunity to teach a lady named Lisa Ferrish.  She is the Manager of an apartment complex.  We taught her inside of her office and it was amazing.  The spirit was strong and she told us that she believes everything that we taught her.  Afterwards we went back to teach her on Friday and she had kept all of her commitments.  We also set a date with her for the 20th of April.  And she told us that she watched some of General Conference on her computer.  Heavenly Father is preparing people, it is our job to find them. 

  We also had Zone Meeting this week.  We had a man in our ward that used to be in our mission presidency speak, his name is President Pomeroy.  He spoke on giving up our will to the father.  It was very spiritual and inspiring and then we had a few more talks with some sisters and we spoke about how to be a successful missionary.  Then, we sent all the missionaries on an easter egg hunt!  It was so awesome and funny.  But, in the end all of us left inspired to be better missionaries.  I have some pictures but accidently left my camera at home so I will send them next week.

  We were able to teach Lambris again.  He continues to read and pray.  He asked his dad if he could get baptized and he was told no.  We will continue to work with him and the Lord will make up the rest.  He is a good kid.  He loves his Savior and wants to follow his example. 

  That's about it on investigators right now that are actually progressing that we are working with.  We are focusing on finding, looking for those who are prepared.  He is obviously providing like we see with Lisa. 

  We were able to go on an exchange on Friday with an Assistant.  His name is Elder Wright.  When we got together the Thursday night, he realized that he had the suit of an Elder that had to go home for medical reasons who was leaving later the next day.  So, we had to drive all the way to Kingwood early in the morning.  And, turn around and drive back for Zone Meeting.  It was fun. 

  Anyways I had a great week and I hope that y'all did as well.  Love y'all!

Elder Willden

one of the members took them golfing on pday
March 17, 2014

Random Squirrel

The Bay  is in the Baytown Area.  Elder Willden
 and Elder Davis spent some time last week there tracting.

Elder Davis and I had a good week this week.  Hunter Pentecost got confirmed this week.  After he got confirmed we sat down in the chapel during sacrament and he leaned over and said to me, "I feel so good".  I love being able to witness people take steps in their life to come closer to the Savior.  He is also now sharing the gospel with one of his friends who came to his baptism.  He is an awesome kid and has helped many people around him, and will continue to be an uplifting influence as he continues down this path.  Elder Davis and I also had the opportunity to participate in teaching the 5th Sunday lesson.  We had 10 minutes to talk about how people are being prepared by the Lord and he is leading us to them or them to us.  It went really well and hopefully we were able to help our ward in their missionary work. 

  Elder Davis and I did what you call a blitz, where you go with another companionship and work their area together to help build it, with some Elder's in our Zone.  I was with Elder Satele who is from America Samoa, and Elder Davis was with Elder Hofstetter who is from Minnesota.  He has such a funny accent.  But, it was a really good blitz.  Elder Davis and Elder Hofstetter were able to find a new investigator as Elder Satele and I went and tried some former investigators.

  We were able to teach Lambris and he is doing really well.  He has just been really busy lately.  He told us that he has been reading the Book of Mormon with one of his friends.  He told us how much he loves the Book of Mormon, because of the truths that are in it.  We invited him to be baptized on the 20th of April.  He just needs to get his parents to allow him to come to church and everything will work out, so we need all the prayers we can get.  

We were also able to teach Claire Mercury.  Claire wasn't able to read the Book of Mormon so during our visit we read with her and her kids.  It was a really good lesson, but she needs to be reading before we can move on to other things.  She also gave us a ton of food again, she is like our little mission mom.  She is always trying to take care of us... it is awesome. 

  Overall this week was a really good week and I was able to learn much throughout it.  We have our MLC meeting tomorrow, so that will be fun.  Anyways love y'all and hope y'all have a great week.

Elder Willden

**Here is a public apology to all family members that Chase has neglected to write back or thank for your prayers as well as gifts....I chastised him a little....really only a little because we know he is busy.  Here is how he responded.  Hopefully you will hear from him this year!  I am not sure who has written him, but hope you know our whole family loves and appreciates even your thoughts about our missionary! I know he loves any letters he gets.  Much love, Rhonda)

Mom, I would like to apologize for my neglect of writing those who have sent gifts or just written me.  I realized that I had written Brad's Family but haven't even sent it and that was a long time ago.  If you could send me an email next week of all those who have written me and not received a letter back, so I can make remedy that would be much appreciated.  Love you!

Elder Willden

This is Elder Hofstetter.  He is a new missionary in our Zone waiting for his visa to go to Brazil.  His mom follows the blog, so he really wanted me to get y'all a picture for her to see.

This is a cheetah cat,  it is part cheetah part cat.

This is a lizard Elder Davis caught.

***The pictures did not come through, but last week Elders Davis and Willden were doing some service and saw a big worm.  Elder Willden paid Elder Davis $10 to eat the worm!  Missionaries, but still crazy boys!!!  (Rhonda again)