Elder Hunter and I had a fantastic week this week!  We are having a good time going out and working and having fun together.  We were able to add a little bit to our teaching pool this week and missionary work here is moving forward.  We were able to teach Thomas Smith again this week and we invited him to be baptized and he willfully accepted the invitation.  He has been keeping his commitments and you can tell that he is a sincere seeker of the truth.  While we are able to discuss the gospel his eyes get all teary because of his solid testimony of the Savior.  He didn't live the best lifestyle throughout his life and has found the Savior and has gained a testimony of the happiness it brings to follow his teachings.  We were able to teach him the Plan of Salvation, the most profound message we have to bring to the world.  It was a very spiritual lesson and I was uplifted and edified from it as I think everyone who was there was.  We will be going back to see him tomorrow and will be following up with the commitments we have left in the last lesson as well as the baptismal date that we invited him to.  

  I was able to read a talk this week by David A. Bednar titled Bear Up Their Burdens With Ease.  It is a powerful talk and I learned something I personally thought was profound from it.  In his talk he talked about our own personal loads and how they help us to return to our Heavenly Father.  He then talked about Amulon and how he persecuted Alma and his people.  Alma and his people had done nothing wrong, yet they had been taken captive and placed very heavy burdens upon them.  He then talked about how we should pray for Help and Strength through our trials and yoke ourselves to the Savior so our burdens can be made light (not taken away).  We should not be praying for Heavenly Father to just take away our trials, because if we don't bear our own burdens and face them then we become agents that are acted upon, instead of agents that act.  I found that very profound that as we pray for the Father to strengthen us and comfort us that he will, and we will be able to overcome our problems and challenges.

  We were able to see Mathew this week and we set a return appointment and then he just disappeared.  We are worried about him because he doesn't live the best lifestyle and we aren't sure what happened to him.  Hopefully all is well and he just went out of town for a while.  We were also able to teach a lady named Jamie.  She was a Media Referral like Thomas.  Her husband is a member and was recently converted and she wasn't baptized because she is still smoking.  They recently moved down here from New York and she is really struggling.  We were able to teach them about the importance of scripture study and talked about baptism and she wants to get baptized so we will work on getting her there.  We were informed this Sunday that she was taken off to the Hospital for some psychiatric problems and hopefully she will be back soon so we can continue teaching her. 

  We were also able to teach a lady named Dena.  On Sunday we went by to see if her son was there because he had met with missionaries before and she was there and we started talking to her and she expressed a desire to go to church and to learn more and we invited her to listen to our message as she willingly accepted.  We were then able to teach her the Restoration and the lesson went great!  I personally feel that, that lesson was the best lesson Elder Hunter and I have taught yet!  The spirit was really strong as we were able to testify of the Restored Gospel on the Earth today.  I love how the Restoration flows and how it is so simple and easy to understand the importance of it and we talk about Christ's Church, the falling away, and the bringing back of it.  After the lesson we gave her our classic invitations and also invited her to read 3 Nephi 11.  We will also be going back to see her this Saturday and hopefully her husband will be there so we will be able to teach them as a family.

  I love y'all and hope y'all had a fantastic week as I did :D.  Have a great week this week and be safe!

Elder Willden

This is an old picture from Channel View, TX.  The fire chief let them play in his firetruck.

"Elder Hunter and I got some glasses to look professional so people will listen to us haha."