9 May 2011

Thanks for the emails. It was nice to call home and talk with Mom and Dad and Steven and Michelle.

A few comments from last week’s emails – Dave, freshman year at BYU I got called to be secretary in my Elder’s quorum by a president I had never met. He never met me either. It was a miscommunication between the president and the high council member and some other things that I don’t remember. But as we started working together we realized it was what the Lord had in mind. Cool.

Brad, some advice for your brother-in-law as he is about to be set apart as a full-time missionary – Mom took notes of my setting apart and typed them up for me. It was something so small that I have been eternally grateful for. No missionary that I’ve talked to remembers really well their setting apart. I remember a lot thanks to Mom. I would recommend recording it if there isn’t any instruction manual saying you can’t. He’ll love you for that.

This week church was great. The three people, youngsters actually, that should be getting baptized May 28th came to church. The secret to their success is this: one is the son of a less-active member, one is the niece of our ward mission leader, and the other is a cousin of a recently activated member. Awesome.

But it wasn’t all roses this week. President Brigham Young made a wonderful quote once about whenever the saints start to build another temple the bells of hell begin to ring. President Young said, “Let them ring.” We’ve been hearing those bells all week.

One of our investigator’s suddenly fell sick and passed away. His name was Miguel; he was the one that got married the week after we got here. Unfortunately, he didn’t progress as he should have. It’s really sad. It was cool to see the branch work together to help this family. Natalia is now a widow with two young daughters.

Apart from that almost all of our lessons failed us and we lost a few more investigators.

Oh Megan, I read a talk last week and thought of you – Elder Perry’s “Mothers Teaching Children in the Home.” It was one of the past few conferences. My advice would be to teach your class as if they were Wyatt. Or teach your class to teach you how to teach Wyatt. It was a really good talk. Or you could practice your lessons teaching Wyatt. Oh, and I liked the photos. Thanks.

Oh, and Mom, remember Elder Thornton who was in my area before I got here and you saw his blog? I called him last night to tell him about Miguel. He said he’s been updated by his dad by my blog. Cool. So here’s a shout out to Brother Thornton. Elder Thornton is a great elder.

I love you all. Thanks for the support.

Elder Whitaker