Quit Being cold, If you Peas....Puddin' that is!

Hey everybody, this week hasn't been super eventful. :) We have been working hard and we are trying to see success here in Grand Falls. The people here are so awesome. :) It was a little slower unfortunately though.

We will keep going!

On Monday we had a hilarious family home evening with all of the active members in Grand Falls itself, which is Sister Borden, Sister Gear, Sister King, and Sister Scott. We watched the broadcast for young adults with them that President Nelson gave. It was so funny, beforehand there was an introduction, where they told everybody that President Nelson was 90+ years old with 93 great grandchildren. When the members heard that, they were astonished and wouldn't stop talking about it. So funny! :)

Tuesday we were going to go to St. John's, but because of a snow storm, it turned out we couldn't go. Another shockin' piece of information we received was that we were going to be the District Leaders for the Corner Brook District because of some health problems the Elders there were having... so that's too bad! Hopefully they will be able to get back up to Newfoundland quickly! 

Wednesday we had the opportunity to hear from the General Authorities on missionary work. It was amazing, and it helped me to gain a better perspective on what I need to be doing to help other people come unto Christ. It set the pace for the rest of our day, and we were able to have good conversations with many different people on the gospel. It was very spirit felt.

Thursday and Friday and Saturday were mostly days of finding and planning. We had a chance to go over to Sister Borden's for a famous Newfie dinner: Jigg's Dinner! It was so good, and we were able to have some good conversations with them about the temple and missionary work. :)

Sunday we were able to have 14 people make it to church, which was awesome! :)

Anyway, that was our week! Hope you all have a good one yourselves! Stay warm! :) It's only -1 F right now here! Not too bad.

Elder Walletless

I Think that is Elder Wanlass under that coat.  It looks like his eyes.  (From his mom)

Here is Elder Kelley my companion.

Happles and Harnges

Hello everybody! :) It's been a pretty good week here in Grand Falls-Windsor. We have been seeing a lot of success and Newfoundland in general has been doing really well. The zone found 18 new investigators, which is incredible!! :) That hasn't happened in Newfoundland in a very long time. Along with that, we were able to teach a young girl named Bryanna Smythe. She is a child of record who lives with her less active mother Melissa! Melissa is super cool, and they both came to church today along with her other 4 year old son Derek. Derek is just a silly little boy! 

Other than that, we have been able to see some good things happen. Monday, as always, we had a Family Home Evening and played some games together as a church family. That was fun.

Tuesday was a pretty simple day, we had a couple of meetings and met with some of the less actives in town. So that was nice.

Wednesday was an interesting day. We were going to visit the Corner Brook Elders, but unfortunately we had our first storm, so we had to cancel it. The Gander Sisters were with us in Grand Falls, and unfortunately they couldn't drive back home because they left their phone in Gander and the storm was way too bad. So we spent the better part of the day helping them get situated in the church apartment. Then we tried to knock, but it was too snowy, so we literally called people in the phone book... it wasn't too bad though. We found a couple of people. :)

Thursday we took advantage of the storm and went shovel contacting. We ended up getting a referral for a lady who said she wants to meet with us! So that's sweet! We also spent some time helping a different lady shovel, and it turns out that her friend had family who were members of the church in British Columbia. They gave us a ton of food and made us lunch. The people in Newfoundland are just so caring. I love them!! We also were able to have a lesson with Bryanna and Melissa, so that was cool.

Friday we went to Sister Borden's to eat supper, and she made goolash! :) It was good. :) The dinners at her house are always so much fun. :) I love it!

The weekend we spent a lot of time trying to find people to teach. It's been up and down, for whatever reason we haven't been as fruitful as usual...but we will keep working! :)

I love you all!

Elder Heslep! (That wasn't even from a Newfie!)

Elder Wanlass and Elder Kelley and the "Gander" Sisters.

Here is an updated photo of the Newfoundland Zone!

I A'int Goin' Dexin'

Happy day, B'ys. It's been a cold winter's week in Newfoundland, and it's been a very busy one as well! We've just been working as hard as we can, and I think that the work is going to just continue to build. We were able to meet with a few people this week, mostly less active members rather than investigators at this point, but the work is taking off in the right direction. 

We were able to talk with Samantha Nickerson and her boyfriend Greg, which was decent, but they were unable to make it to church for one reason or another. It's pretty sketchy meeting there because they have a few teenagers that live above them that are always having really loud and obnoxious parties where they do bad things. So we get yelled at occasionally when we meet them. Fun times!

We also had a chance to stop by Melissa Elliot, who is a less active who moved from Ontario to come up here for work. We are going to be meeting with her and her two kids for family home evenings where we will teach the missionary lessons. It will be a lot of fun, and one of her kids was talking about getting baptized, so that's sweet.

We were able to teach the Restoration to a man named Chris Young this week, which went pretty well. He was open to continue meeting with us, but we just couldn't get a specific return appointment. I feel like if we can continue to meet with him, he would have a lot of potential. His relatives own a candy store in town, which is sweet! :) (No Pun intended)

This weekend we also had a branch activity. It was an indexing day! :) Hooray!!!!!? I put a question mark because literally all of the members said this simple phrase except the relief society representative: "I A'int Goin' Dexin', I have enough family I have to deal with now!" By some miracle, we were able to gently persuade them to come, and they did indeed 'Dex. :)

I still don't really know how to index, but hey, at least good came out of it. :) 

Well, that's pretty much it for this week. I love you all, keep up the good work :) and I will too!

Love you! :D

Helder Wand-less (How have I not used this one yet?)

2016: Wait....What?! That Quick, Eh?

Hello Everybody! Helder Wallace here! I hope you all had a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know that 2015 was eventful for me, I cannot believe how fast it went by! Seriously, I can't believe it. :) 2 years really isn't that long at all.. which is super disturbing!

This week was kind of uneventful to start, mainly because on Monday it was P Day where we had a fun game night, Tuesday we had to move the sisters into their apartment in Gander, so we were out all day then as well, then after we helped the sisters get settled in, we then went back to Grand Falls. The next day we had to drive Elder Sortomme so he could catch his plane to PEI in Gander, and then we worked for the rest of the day, so that was a lot of fun, it gave Elder Siepert and I a chance to talk about what we wanted to accomplish this next transfer. We also listened to some of our favorite talks including "The Will of the Father" by Jeffrey R. Holland. I especially loved Thomas S. Monson's talk that he gave last General Conference on being an example of light and truth. It inspired me a lot.

New Year's was pretty quiet for us. Basically what happened is we fell asleep at 10:30, set an alarm for 11:58, and stayed up for the New Year watching fireworks outside our bedroom window. So that was cool. :)

On New Year's Day, we got to pick up our new companions and talk to each other about the area. My companion is named Elder Kelley. He is from West Point, and he actually went to Syracuse High, which is funny, because I lived in Syracuse! He loves to run, hike, camp, do pretty much anything outdoors, so that is pretty neat. He's been out a transfer longer than me, so he came out in the same group as Elder Taylor and Elder Bate. 

We started out essentially just pounding the pavement to find more people to teach. Elder Kelley and I talked to nearly 80 people in one day about the gospel, which is fantastic. We are going to be working as hard as we can to make good things happen in Grand Falls. We had one less active member and her boyfriend come to church yesterday, which is really cool because that added to our congregation! We had 12 this week, which was the most I've seen come at one time. That was pretty cool. :) We are going to start teaching the boyfriend. He is pentecostal, but wants to be baptized and get married in the temple to his girlfriend (nice goal!) He is very passionate about everything, so he gets a little loud sometimes. But that's okay. :) He will change.

Other than that, that's pretty much been our week. The church is definitely meant to grow here, and I feel like it will. :) I'm so excited for that.

Love you all!

Elder Wallace