Happy Spri-Are You Serious?! It Snowed Again!

Hellllllloooo everybody! :) It's been a great week here in New Glasgow! Things are happening, people are listening to us, and we are having a good time. :) I've very much enjoyed Nova Scotia since I've been here. We found 3 new investigators this week and taught 8 lessons, which is a fantastic week for us! :) I've sincerely enjoyed my mission. It's meant so much to me to be able to serve my Father in Heaven in this marvelous work. I love Him.

On Monday we had a decent day. We went to an appointment that we had with a man named David. He was a member referral, but we weren't able to contact him. His house is so big and we can't knock on the inner door because his outer door is always locked...so we are going to try again this week. It could be pretty promising. He wants to come to church! :)

Tuesday was a great day as well, we had exchanges with the Truro Elders, and they came here to New Glasgow. I went with Elder Smith for the day, and Elder Hunt with Elder Alger. Elder Smith is awesome. He is a new missionary who just came from the MTC a few weeks ago, and he is a great missionary and ready to work. We had a blast going to Antigonish, (one of my favorite places) and teaching people. We ended up teaching two lessons while we were up there. We found a young couple who are really promising. They are getting married in June, and both agreed to be baptized two weeks after their wedding if they know that the Book of Mormon is true. It is very promising! We've just had very solid lessons this week, and we were able to hit most of our goals. After we taught them, we taught Fred, the native investigator, once again. We read 2 Nephi 31 and taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He seemed to understand that baptism is important.

Wednesday we had our District Meeting, and it turned out to be kind of a weird day. We had a lot of plans fall through, which was pretty disappointing, but we still had a blast, and it was a lot of fun to find.

Thursday we went out to Antigonish again. It is always so fun. We taught another lesson to the young couple, and tried to teach a lady who wanted me and Elder Smith back, but she lied to us twice about moving to two different imaginary addresses..so we decided not to worry about her at the moment. :) We then drove to Pictou for another lesson with a new investigator. She is an older woman who loves the Elders. When we invited her to be baptized she said: "Well....Probably!" and then she said yes. :) So that's good.

Aside from that, the rest of the week was snowy, cold, and not as fulfilling. People shut down when the weather is bad, I'm convinced of it. 

Anyway, that was a general synopsis of my week. Things have been pretty solid. It's been fun. :) I've enjoyed this week, and I love the work of the Lord! Have a fanTASTic day everyone! I love you all!

Elder Wanlass

Different pins for the different areas served.

Antigonish.....The Dream

Hello Everybody! It's been quite an amazing week, if I do say so myself. We started out with a pretty strong P Day. We made some bold goals and set some plans on how we would achieve the goals we had set. We also cleaned the apartment and got prepared for the rest of the week (how fitting, I suppose).

We had made a personal goal for ourselves as the Zone leaders that we would try and make our area hit the gold standard this week. The Gold Standard is a model example of what we should be aiming for in our key indicators.

Tuesday was a pretty good day. We went out to a university town that is in our area called Antigonish. (the T is silent). Antigonish is home to St. Francis Xavier's University, and it is a nice mix of old and young people, and you get people from different locations as well. It's a Catholic school, and a religious community. I like it there. The only downside is that it takes about 45 minutes to get there. In any other area I would consider that a long drive, but after serving in Grand Falls, driving feels so short. And it's worth it to go this town. :) We had one investigator named F. He is native and is interested in the gospel. We had a pretty good lesson with him on the plan of salvation. He just needs to come to church, but it's been hard for him. We are going to try and help him understand what makes our church so unique. Other than that, we street contacted (I LOVE IT) and knocked and found a few people who were interested.

Wednesday was a fun day too. We had our Zone Conference in Dartmouth (Halifax). We received some great training from Bro. Cartier, an institute teacher who is impeccable. He taught us about what Faith really is. One thing that I found in myself that was lacking, was that I set goals for myself that I felt we could achieve, but didn't ever consider specifically asking the Lord what He wanted me to do. To make up for that, I've been thinking consistently about what I can do to do what Christ would do in EVERY situation. It changed the course of our week quite dramatically.

Thursday we had another Antigonish day. We had the opportunity of knocking to start. We don't have a wall map of Antigonish quite yet, so we didn't choose where we would knock until later. We drove past a few streets, and ultimately, we decided to knock Hillside. We knocked the whole thing, and found some success, but we decided to knock a small connecting street as well, and two young couples answered the door and said that they'd be very open to meeting with us. We are going to try to see them this coming week, and I'll let you all know how it goes.

After that, we had a lesson with our new investigator D. She is sweet, and very prepared. Within the past few months she has had some family members pass away and wants to become more spiritual. We were able to teach her about what we do as missionaries and shared the restoration with her. She liked what we shared, and we are teaching her this Tuesday! She is great! :D

Friday was another interesting day. The sister missionaries had found this Nigerian man who recently moved into all of our apartment building. His name is J., and he told the sisters that he would be willing to meet with us. So we decided that we would go upstairs and see if we could set up a lesson with him, and it went very well. He is a strong Christian, and he wants to follow Christ. We were able to discuss baptism, but he said he wanted to first read the Book of Mormon, but sounded very optimistic about it all! :D

Saturday was quite the week. We ended up finding for 8 hours. It was a lot of fun though, and I didn't feel like there was anything else we needed to do. We got several potentials who seem open to having us come by! I feel very good about this coming week! :D

and Sunday we didn't have church due to a snowstorm, so I still don't know very many members, but we've been stopping by and introducing them to me, so that's been good. It's just been strange not knowing anybody, really. :) 

This week, all in all, went really well. And this was only my first week in New Glasgow! I can't wait for the weeks to come! :D

Love you all!

Elder Wanlass

 My new companion Elder Hunt from Spanish Fork, UT.

 Donairs!!

My new space!

I'm New in New Glasgow!

Hellloooooo everyone! I'm back, after a relatively shorter letter five days ago, it is nice to be able to have a little more time to send out emails. Things have been fanTASTic so far with Elder Hunt. We are both excited to be working in New Glasgow, and even though things haven't been the ideal the past couple of weeks, we are going to change everything!

Nova Scotia is a lot of fun. :) The church is a lot bigger here than in New Brunswick and Newfoundland, so everything feels a lot closer. I'm still not quite used to it. :) But I'm still a zone leader, and we are over the Nova Scotia North Zone, which covers the island of Cape Breton, the peninsula (Truro and New Glasgow), and the part of Halifax where the temple is located. (Dartmouth/Cole Harbour) So that's neat. The zone is pretty solid. We have some amazing District Leaders and missionaries in our zone are a good balance between skilled and new, so that is definitely refreshing from Newfoundland where everybody was ending their missions.

This week was pretty quick. I mean, it's only been five days since I last emailed, so it was a little quicker. I was able to see some pretty cool sights in St. John's before I left for the mainland, like Cape Spear, the most Eastern point in North America, as well as some lighthouses. It was really windy, but quite a sight!

The work here in New Glasgow has been pretty fun. :) We are both hard working and we both want to exercise more faith and find people to teach. It's going to happen. We've already found some pretty solid potentials, so it's been amazing! :)

Anyway, other than that, General Conference was amazing! One theme that really stuck out to me this time around was a sense of hope. I'm trying to avoid negative and discouraging emotions by looking at what God can do and surrendering myself to his will. I feel that I will be able to do that even more so. :D

I loved Jeffrey R. Holland's talk. The most fundamental principle truth of the gospel is that God will always love us!!! So amazing! :D

Anyway, I love you all! I promise there will be more stories this next week!

Elder Wanlass

Pictures from Cape Spear before I left Newfoundland.  This area is the most Eastern part of North America.