Christmas Day Skype

Skyping with Elder Wheelwright

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Mom & Dad - in Moses Lake (at Alisha's house)
Alisha & Braeden - Moses Lake
Nikki & Scott -  Snoqualmie Pass - on the phone (they were on their way home from Moses Lake)
Travis & Kathryn - Germany

Suprise! Merry Christmas ... again

Things changed again and I'm emailing right now.

Hello. It is closer to Christmas now. Only a couple more days. ​
​I got the packages, and I couldn't carry them all. Thank you all for them! I'll have even more fun opening the presents. I'm thinking I might bring them when we skype, but I will be biking there so I don't know. I'll see how hard it would be. 

This week has probably been one of the best weeks of my mission. It's also a week we've been working the hardest. Weird right?   We set a goal to teach ten lessons this week, and by golly are we going to it. Today is the practically the last day we have to it. But we will do it. We've been working hard all week to achieve this, and the goal is coming in sight. Our hard work is going to pay off. It will be glorious. 

Elder Hendrick went sledding again.​
​It was a bad idea. But it was funny.

We have taught a lot of people that I haven't ever been able to get in with and its been pretty awesome. 

I made the tree from the package. 

​
​I'm still sick, but I've been feeling better and I'm on the up slope. 👍

Anything you guys want me to do or bring to the skype?

Elder Wheelwright

Happy Holidays

Good Morning.

I have mixed feelings of this week. It was both good and bad. I have been sick all this week as well. I thought I was getting over it, but then I was down again. I've revamped my drug supply again and I'm picking up a prescription today. So I've got drugs. We live next to a a senior missionary couple that is a doctor. He is the doctor that is over the whole central United States missions, so I got the hook ups. Though I've been sick up and down , I refuse to cancel any appointments. I just fake my way through it. That's whats been good about this week. We have been able to teach a lot this week despite being sick. 

We found and contacted some new less actives. We ended up teaching our investigator Tony twice this week. We need to keep working with him to get him to full understanding and belief of the restoration and then he will be golden. 

Christmas is coming up.  So the plan is that we have sacrament meeting at 11am and we will skype like 1 or 2pm.   We found a house that we can go to.   They'll also feed us lunch. Pretty sweet.   So that's the plan. 

I also haven't gotten any packages yet, but I've been told I have mail. So hopefully. 

The weather here has been pretty cold, going into the negatives. We were biking home on Friday night in a blizzard (pictures) when some members saved our butts by giving us a ride when they saw us biking. Nobody else is stupid enough to bike in that, so they knew it was us. I think the cold got to me, because I was really sick that night, but lived. 

While we were waiting for our ride to church yesterday, we found a sled and Elder Hendrick went sledding in his suit. 

On Wednesday we had Zone Conference and it was really good. A Brother Jacobs spoke to us and he was amazing. He is from Utah and he is some high up guy in institute. He told us about the levels of Christmas.

Level 1: Santa Claus

Level 2: Silent Night

Level 3: The Adult Christ

Make sure you are on Level 3

I think we will be emailing Saturday the 24th next time because things are closed on the 26th so see you then.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Elder Wheelwright.

Another text message picture

"Had your great missionary over with the zone for gingerbread house decorating.  Enjoy!"

Drugs are my friend

So I've been sick all week. And it finally seems like I'm in the tail-end of the worst of it (besides a sinus infection). Elder Hendrick has been sick a little bit, but the other day he crashed his bike. Or his bike crashed him. He has a crappy bike that is stuck in the high gear and has so many problems. He found it in a dumpster last transfer. We thought he broke his hand, but the doc says that it's not. so that's good.

So our time teaching Sharon is taking a break. She dropped us hardcore the other day through text, but we are going to delete it and pretend we never got it and keep talking to her. 

We have had a lot of appointments fall through this week (all of them) but when one didn't answer the door we decided to go to another investigator that I haven't seen in months. It was miracle. We found him and we were able to teach him and pick him back up. 

When all things went wrong we kept working even though we were both sick, we saw a miracle happen.

Today is Zone p-day and we will be having a gingerbread house contest. Fun stuff. We'll be having zone conference this week. And as a Zone we are going to go caroling at the big mall in our area. 

As far as the skyping will go, we will be doing it on Christmas sometime. We will figure out something more concrete by next Monday.

Happy Holidays,

Elder Wheelwright

Elder Bingham and I

Space Cauliflower

Hello all.

This week has been pretty good. My new companion is Elder Hendrick.He has been out for 15 months. He is an Army brat and has lived a bunch of different places. He left from upstate New York and will be going home to Hawaii. He is an fun fellow. He likes to have fun and we get along pretty great. 

We were able to meet with some of our investigators this week. We met with Anthony and taught him the plan of salvation, but I still don't know how much he really is getting out of it. Its very hard to squeeze even a few words out of him. Both he and his dad are practicing Catholics, but he and his dad haven't shown any resistance to us coming over. 

Tony is a tough nut to crack though. I don't know what to do with him. He is awesome but it's hard to commit him to anything, especially to come to church. But we will keep working with him. He would be a great member of the church.

Sharon is also hard to get to church. She always says that she will come to Gospel Principles, but something always comes up at the last minute and she doesn't come. Bummer. But we will keep trying. 

I've been really sick ever since Friday. and it was pretty bad last night. Didn't get much sleep. Both me and Elder Hendrick are sick.  But I push through it, especially for the ward Christmas party on Saturday.   It was very good. The food was catered by Kneaders and it was delicious french toast. I ate so much. And then we waited in line to sit on Santa's lap. It was pretty awesome. I will get the pictures of that eventually. I won the gingerbread house contest as well. I won "Best Cauliflower". Elder Hendrick suggested that I make the Space Needle, but it turned out to be a cauliflower. I want to get the picture for that as well. 

Later,

Elder Wheelwright (Cauliflower Master)

December 1 - text message received

Day of Service.  Thanks to your son.  Sister Baxter.  Tallyns Reach Ward.

Tidings of a Sad Missionary

Things have been a bit off this week, and things will be changing today. My companion Elder Bingham will be heading home today. I've known all week but he actually told me Friday. There were lots of meetings with President and lots of phone calls (with president and Elder Bingham's Family). I won't go into too many details but anxiety, anxiety attacks and he says he has gotten multiple promptings that he is needed elsewhere. Now I won't be a judge of him. I would rather trust in him. I'm just being his friend. 

That aside this week was way better than last week as far as the work goes. Were able to meet with Sharon last Monday. We had a good lesson about the atonement and trials. She wouldn't agree to coming to sacrament meeting, but she did say that would come to Gospel Principles, but that didn't end up happening. Me and my new companion (I don't know who yet) will meet with her tonight and talk to her about her testimony. 

We also met with Tony this week (at Del Taco again). He is a truly outstanding and amazing person and he has so much potential, and I just need to figure out how to unlock it. We are meeting with him this week again as well.

#LIGHTtheWORLD

^ Watch it. Live it. Share it.

See y'all next week,

Elder Wheelwright

LIGHTtheWORLD

Since a new star first appeared above Bethlehem, Christmas has been a season of light, reminding us that Jesus Christ is the light of the world. Together, we can celebrate His birth by making the world a brighter place, just like He did. #LIGHTtheWORLD

Transfer 4 - November 21 2016

Hello Peeps,

So my new companion is Elder Bingham. He is from Plaincity, Utah. He likes hunting and fishing, and his family raised cattle. He is a complete departure from how elder Hills is. Two different people.

Training is a hard thing. I don't prefer it.  I have never had an equal companion. I want to have a companion that is better than me, because I suck. I want to be trained more. But what can you do. I guess I'll deal.

So it finally got cold here. We got caught in a blizzard on Thursday. We rode our bikes through it. Not the safest but it worked. Each of us had one of our brakes frozen.

I bought a winter jacket just in the nick of time. I bought it the last Monday, and it served me well. It's pretty warm.

We had an appointment with our investigator Sharon for Thursday night, but she canceled it because of the weather. Sad day. I was willing to bike there too.  But we will be meeting with her tonight.  We are just at the stage where she needs increase her testimony so that she has more desire to quit coffee and come to church. 

We have other meetings set to go see Tony and Michael later this week. Michael is crazy busy as always, working two jobs. And Tony on the other hand has nothing to do.    We are going to eat lunch with him at Del Taco again this week.   

Sadly last week we didn't get around to riding around on an electric tandem bike. We decided to instead go to the church building and spend one last pday with the elders that are getting transferred. Maybe someday.

Good Night,

Elder Wheelwright

Round Two

So next Wednesday is transfers again. Looks like it will be a repeat of this transfer. By that I mean that I will be training another fresh from the MTC Elder in this area. Looks like I won't be sweeping again, thankfully. Also the zone that I'm in has been shrunk from 2 districts to 1 district. Lots of missionaries serving in two wards. Elder Hills be leaving to be trained by someone else.

Other than that we were able to meet with one of our investigators on Saturday. He decided that he wanted to meet at 9:00am. We'll take what we can get. He is a busy man. We were able to teach him the Plan of Salvation. He received it well, and we gave him a French BoM so he can read it better.  But he has a crazy work schedule for the next couple weeks, so we are going to meet him after black friday.  

We've been trying to meet with this other investigator that we found a couple weeks ago, but he has no short memory basically, so he doesn't remember if he is busy or not. But we are going to meet him tomorrow.  Hope for the best.

There is an electric bike shop here in the southlands mall where Elder Hills has gotten a lot of his repairs at. And we have plans to rent an electric tandem bike to bike around a reservoir (8mi). It will be quite an experience. I will get pictures. Supposedly its a pretty beautiful ride. My goal of a tandem bike will be sort of completed.

By the way the weather has been amazingly warm here. Pretty hot during the day, and only recently has it been chilly at night. But I hear that that will change. It will be really warm until this Thursday, than it will snow. Its so unusual for Colorado to be this warm this time of year. 

Well that's about it for this week ladies and gents. Oh and Elder Hills almost took out (got taken out) by a deer. 6-7 point buck actually. He came around a corner of a trail really fast to get up a hill and the deer just looked into his bike light and walked off. It wasn't scared of people.

Later,

Elder Wheelwright.

Daylight Savings is of the Devil

Daylight savings is such a pain. It gets dark so early and that makes missionary work so much harder. And unsafe too. We are supposed to avoid riding bikes in the dark. Which is hard to do when it gets dark at 6:00 pm. Well, what can you do. 

On Halloween we had a pumpkin carving contest for zone p-day, but only three of us had stuff to carve. And one of them was spaghetti squash. It turns out that it's hard to find/buy pumpkins on Halloween. 

Nothing too much happened this week, but we did find a new investigator on Tuesday. We were tracting one of the last buildings in this townhouse complex, and a guy named Anthony (20's) let us in and we taught him the restoration. Throughout the whole thing he only said about ten words. He said he would read the book of Mormon. We are going to follow up with him sometime soon. I hope it works out. He might have some sort of mental illness, but he functions well. 

We had another meeting with our investigator Sharon. We followed up with her on her coffee challenge (50% less), and it turns out that she did it for a while, but it got too hard for her and she went back to normal. We recommitted her to it and told her to pray for help, just as she did when she quit alcohol. We also had dinner with her at another member's house yesterday, and that was cool to just sit down with her and have time to talk in a less formal setting. She just really needs to come to church. I think if she just came every week, things would fall into place.

We also got a referral from church HQ about a guy (Bill) who went to the fort collins temple open house and wanted to know more. We were pretty excited. We met him and set up an appointment for Friday. Friday came, but it turned out to be a pretty bad day. All of our appointment besides Bill's didn't happen. And our appointment with Bill was not what we expected. He turned out to be a college professor of world religion. And he majorly talked about how he doesn't believe Mormonism because of Joseph Smith and polygamy. He knows more about church history than 98% of the members do. It was a pretty bad appointment, but we are going to meet with him again and we are going to bring our bishop with us. That will be a fun time. Bishop Leavitt is a pretty awesome guy.

 Yesterday we started trying to work with the members more. We asked bishop and he marked up a ward list and gave us lots of people to go stop by and lots of work to do. I really like it, because we are here to help the Bishop and the ward in their missionary work, and so often it feels like we are so separate from the ward (especially this ward). Working together with the ward is a must.

I'm going to go play some more tennis today with a priest age youth before we have dinner at his house.   That will be pretty fun.

Have a wicked fantastic day

Elder Wheelwright

Another surprise text from Colorado!

These cute boys are at our house right now! So sweet...and really funny!

We have 2 missionaries out right now too! One in France, one in Chile, so our hearts go out to the missionaries!

I'm still alive and mostly well

Hello,

So this week I had a huge wipe out on my bike. Turns out trying to race on a road bike with skinny tires on a gravel trail is not the best idea. the tires slid out and I skidded on the gravel for at least 15 ft. No permanent injuries. I just wrecked my shirt and pants. I'll try and get my slacks repaired, but we'll see what happens. The white shirt is still usable. 

I think I forgot to mention that one of the sisters that came out with Elder Hills is in my zone and she is from Washington. I think she said she was in the Hylabos ward. She is Sister Mietus. We knew some of the same people. 

Also my previous companion's family (Elder Hardman) lives in Warden Washington, not too far from where Alisha and Braeden just moved to.

The other day I saw a pretty sweet meteor. Elder Hills was in the public restroom and missed it, but it was sweet. It was super close and it almost touched the ground, but it burned up in a nice array of colors.

That guy Michael didn't come to church, but we were able to catch him home again, and we set up a return appointment. We are going to meet with him again this week. We also found a new investigator when we were tracting last Wednesday. His name is Tony. He is a super nice guy and he loves to talk. He is just meeting with us because he is nice, but we will show him the right way. He is the most humble person I have ever met. 

We were finally able to have a meeting with one of our investigators, Lars. He is like 16-17 years old. He has lots of drug problems and he has gotten into the wrong crowd, but he wants to change. He said he is neutral as far as religion goes, but we will see. 

Happy Halloween! We have to be in our apartment by 7:00pm tonight so we don't meet any of the crazies. 

Boo,

Elder Wheelwright

I have a blog??

I have a blog apparently. Hello bloggers.

This week has been fairly lame in some ways. All of the appointments we had scheduled with our investigators canceled or didn't happen. We had lots of bike troubles, and by we, I mean Elder Hills. He got flats on his front tire daily. Luckily on Saturday he got his own bike, and he is ecstatic. He got it from craigs list and payed $650 for it. Its a full on mountain bike with full suspension, and has phat wheels. Horrible for roads, but you know, he's happy. Well one day we were walking because right after dinner the tire was popped, and we had an appointment with our investigators, so we walked all the way there, only to find out that they have company over and that we should have texted before we came. As if it was our fault. People these days. 

To all out there: Please be responsible adults.

Good things happened this week too. We taught this guy named Michael. He is the coolest kind of African (not racist). He is fluent in french too. He had tons of good questions that we were able to answer about the "Mormons". We taught him the restoration among all the questions. He is super busy, and only said we could talk with him for a half hour, but he kept talking to us for an hour because he found it interesting. No return appointment, but he said he would come to church. But alas, he didn't. We will give him a real talking to this week. 

We also talked with this really awesome Lutheran guy named Ronald. He is an outstanding guy. A go getter, do-it-yourself personality. Much of the time, it felt like he was very subtly cautioning us to rethink what we believe, because the devil still gets you even though you may have 97% of the truth. He was talking about that scripture in the bible about judgement, and how Jesus said "I know ye not" even though the people did all kinds of service in his life. Ronald is super smart, but all he focuses on is the scriptures. He doesn't take revelation from the spirit.

Have a nice week!

Package time 

Thank You Nikki (for the package)

Another surprise text message.....

Hi Sister Wheelwright-
My name is Tara Kay. I'm in the Colorado Southlands ward where elder Wheelwright is now serving. My family had them over for dinner this week and I thought I would send you a couple pictures. He is a stalwart young man and doing a great job serving here. We really enjoyed visiting with him and his companion. We will have them over often. :)   Have a wonderful day.

Hey Y'all

Something cool happened this week. We got to watch the Fort Collins Temple Dedication. That was yesterday. Dieter F. Uchtdorf dedicated it. It was a really cool thing. What I liked the most was the talk Uchtdorf gave. It was just different from how it would be in general conference. It was great. First Temple Dedication I've seen. I wasn't there. It was just broadcast to stake centers. Still cool. 

The work here has been better than it was last week. We were able to meet with some of the existing investigators. Dave and Christie, and Sharon. Dave and Christie, it's hard to tell how much potential they have. Dave doesn't seem too interested, but Christie is a lot more religious than Dave and she seems to have more potential. Sharon is a bit of a special case. She has had lots of rough times in the recent past. A very messy divorce is the bulk of it, because she can't see 3 out of 4 of her children right now. And this creates the problem of her not wanting to go to church. When she goes to church she sees all the happy families and children, and that kills her. The other problem is coffee. She drinks a lot of coffee. She would be baptized, but she doesn't want to unless she feels she could be 100% committed. So we challenged her to drink 50% less coffee for now. I don't know how that is going. We are going to check with her today. 

We did however find this lady named Amy a park. She has a little girl named Hannah. She seems pretty interested. She has lots of potential. She said it was good timing that we talked to her. Something happened in her life recently. So we gave her a BoM and our number, but we forgot to get her contact info. So we for the next 5 days kept swinging by the park to maybe find her there, but no luck. Then one day we were contacting some potential from the area book, and we go to find this guy named Mike. Mike turns out to be Amy's husband. What a miracle. We haven't had a chance to get sit down and teach her yet, but it's in the process. 

Good stuff. Have a nice week.

Sayounara,

Elder Wheelwright

Fort Collins, Colorado Temple

Columbus Day

Hola mi familia. Soy un misionero de la iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días.

Transfers happened. But jk, it wasn't that intense. It's just me training in a new area. Me and my companion Elder Hills are in the Southlands Ward in the Arapahoe stake. Lots of changes. Everything is so different than from my last few transfers. I have never swept into an area. It was "white washed" as an older generation would call it (sorry guys). It is indeed a biking area. We are currently borrowing the Assistants' bikes. I do believe that I should buy a bike this transfer. Not only am I in a bike area, but Elder Hills is a bike expert. He built bikes back home and he did downhill mountain bike racing. He is from New Hampshire. Last Wednesday I went and picked him up on his first day here in the mission field. That was the longest transfer day ever. We got to our apartment in Southlands at like 8:30pm. The Ward Mission Leader fed us dinner then. He and his whole family are some of the best people on the planet. 

We do live in an apartment. It is so different than living with a member, as I have been my whole mission. I miss having members. Especially the ones I was living with previously, the Macabes. There is also like nothing in the apartment. I mean, it's furnished pretty well, but the kitchen is where I find it lacks. And it sucks. It sucks to have an empty kitchen. The previous elders (Elder Christensen and Elder Holtry) left no food. Nothing but half a loaf of bread, a tub of butter some old grapes, and a bag of whole garlic. (Elder Christensen loves garlic, and I will gladly make use of it) We made an emergency run to Walmart across the street. (across the street is a huge shopping center, "Southlands Mall"). Even then, we still just lived off of PB&J and cereal for four days. #MissionaryLife. We bought $120 of food stuffs yesterday, so we should be good.

The work has been pretty dead in this area for the time we have been here. But this week is looking up. I think we have like four appointments scheduled for this week (two of them tonight). It is weird leading an area and training a new missionary. Though Elder Hills is pretty awesome. He is better than me some areas. He will be an outstanding missionary soon enough. Hopefully I can contribute in that regard.

Shout out to a certain newly engaged couple. Congratulations.

Y'all have a great week. 

Buenas Noches,

Elder Wheelwright

Bro and Sister Macabe

Southlands is in the southern part of Aurora

Surprise text!!

Received a text tonight!  

"Had your sons over for family night tonight! They're wonderful missionaries.  You should be proud! Thank you for letting them serve us here in Colorado."

Transfers... Happened (Oct 3, 2016)

So things are a bit interesting this coming transfers. I'm moving areas ... with a new Elder. I am training. He will be straight from the mtc. This will be an adventure. Sweep training. It will be an experience. And I'm fairly certain that this area is a bike area, unless it has changed this transfer. 

It has been a busy weekend. We had a tight schedule what with our appointments and General Conference. General Conference was pretty great. I don't have any favorites yet. But is was great. The Saturday sessions we were able to watch with our ward mission leader and Armando. And between the sessions we helped him with his family history. It was cool. 

Yesterday we went tracting to find this one member's non-member girlfriend, but we instead ran into (at the first door) another girl who was super nice and she met one of the missionaries in our mission like 1.5 years ago. Growing up, she had lots of bad experiences with religion, and had most of the bible memorized (she's only 19). We invited her to the primary program this week and she seemed interested. We will see.

Nothing else of much note has happened this week. 

Your favorite elder,

Elder Wheelwright

Week 6 coming again

Transfers are coming up yet again. I find out next Monday.

This week was less busy than last week, but we got more missionary work in. I went on exchanges with Elder Wohlrab (DL) in my area. So I led everything that day. It wasn't difficult. It was kind of refreshing. 

Last Monday we was zone pday so we got together for lunch and had a BBQ and played sand volleyball. That was pretty fun, but I got a bad blister on my foot. 

We found a new investigator last week. We were contacting a potential investigator and they didn't answer, so we were about to drive away but we went to the house next door and we knocked. The guy is a 55 year old retired Russian physicist. He has studied religion a lot and he is interested in having discussions, but he probably doesn't have much potential. His two room/house-mates have some potential. They are very nice as well, but they had to leave for work when we were there. Perhaps in the future. 

On Saturday we were able to contact a less active who was baptized 7 years ago. She is really good and she just had life changes and she stopped going to church. She is the best less active I have seen. She has lots of potential for coming back, plus her husband is a non-member. PMF for the win. We will see. And her cat loved me and was all over me.

Yesterday we contacted another less-active and that was a pretty sad experience. He is in his forties, he served a mission, he was a bishop, he had lots of stake callings. The only reason he hasn't removed his records is because he wants to respect his father. He respects and knows what being a missionary is like (he said it was the best two years of his life). That was the only reason he let us in. He is a Vice President for a company that manages more than half of the world's IP networks and internet traffic. 

In happier (?) news, me and my companion are the "moms" of the district. We got the van and we bake/bring the missionaries treats. Interesting.

We are finally meeting with Robb, that investigator who dropped us a while back. We have an appointment with him at 1 o'clock. 

I'm also very excited to play tennis right after that. I have been trying to play for months, but finally I found a member who can play with us. Pretty fun.

That's all this weeks folks

Bye,

Elder Wheelwright

Broomfield Days

It has been a crazy busy week, but not in really in a missionary way. On Tuesday we moved into another member's home, The Macabe family. Super nice couple. She is actually the daughter of the member we were living with before. The house is really nice as well. 
Wednesday we had Zone meeting that went over-time and took much of the day (and the ZLs forgot about us and left us at the stake center with no car. They came back and got us later). Friday and Saturday was crazy busy because of this fair or festival called Broomfield days. We did lots of service for it. We helped a lot with the Classic Car Show, with making the lines for the parking slots and then directing and helping people park. Friday was all the prep work, then Saturday was the actual event. It was pretty fun and interesting. There were about 250 cars there. Immediately after we were done helping with that, we went and manned a recycling station for 2 hours. It was at that point the APs tried to fool/surprise us by finally getting us a vehicle. We finally got our mom van. I'm the designated driver for it. Its so nice having a car.

 Also I ate stuffed moose heart for dinner the other night. It was edible. Weird texture.

Armando is still going strong. We are now teaching him the recent convert lessons and he is still awesome. He will be moving soon though. He will be moving to a place not to far away, and still in the mission, so I could still see him again. Plus when he gets sealed in the temple next year, I will be able to attend that.

Nothing really much else going on. We've been trying to get a hold of some people, but no luck. 

Oh, and I crashed in my bike. I was carrying my suit and shoes over my shoulder with only my left hand on the handlebar. My companion stopped at a crosswalk and because the left side of the handlebars have the front brakes, things didn't go to well and I ran into him. I landed perfectly and nothing really happened except to my hand. My index and middle finger got beat up on the second knuckle, and my index finger was a bit swollen. Everything is fine, but it hurts and it will take a while to heal because it is right on my knuckles. 

That's about it for this week. 

Farewell,

Elder Wheelwright