The Goofballs on Campus

Hello everybody! Elder Wanlass here in Grand Falls! It's been a pretty fun week this week, we saw a few cool things happen and got to go on a faraway journey to Paradise/St. John's Newfoundland! 

Monday was a pretty good P Day. It was pretty relaxed and we got to clean the van and all sorts of "fun things" like that. :) We also got to watch Meet the Mormons with some of the members, so that is cool.

Tuesday we had some meetings in the morning, and then we went out to Botwood for the day! :) Botwood is a small town a little closer to the shore. We knocked out there a little bit, and we were decently received. We still haven't found any new investigators as of this week... but we are working on it. After we had knocked the street, we actually got a media referral from somebody who lives there who wants a Book of Mormon, so that's really cool! :) We will hopefully be able to meet them today, but we won't have much time to since we will be in Halifax on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. 

Wednesday we had District Meeting where I trained on how we need to prepare our hearts for the work. I feel like the training was well received. After that we made the 4.5 hour long drive to St. John's. We had a chance to work with the elders there. I went with the District Leader, who was my former zone leader when I was a District Leader: Elder Dudley, and Elder Kelley went with the other two companions: Elder Hogg and Elder Julian. Elder Dudley and I had a pretty successful night! The first door we knocked on let us in. His name was Eti, and he's from Nigeria. We taught him the Restoration and the spirit was so strong throughout that whole experience. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he wanted to read it. His girlfriend was on the phone with him and she was in Nigeria at the time! That's so neat! After that we stopped by several other people who were interested and one guy who was not at all.

Thursday we were still in St. John's and split off into our respective groups. :) Elder Dudley and I went to MUN University and contacted people there. It was so cool to see how diverse people were and how many young people were interested in learning more about the gospel. After that we toured some of the sights, like Signal Hill, a cool lookout point where you can oversee the city, and then we went street contacting and stopped by some less active members as well. The day was very successful.

Friday and Saturday were just working days, we are really trying to build up our area.

That was pretty much our week. We had a smaller group on Sunday due to some people being sick and others being tired, so that's where we are at right now. Hopefully this next week we will be able to see some excitement in our own area. :)

Love you all!

Elder Wanda

Signal Hill in St. Johns, Newfoundland

With the beauty comes the snow! (Grand Falls)

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

Merry Christmas!!! A Week of Wonder!

Hello everybody! :) It's been a good week. We've seen so many miracles in our trio it's not even funny. Christmas was amazing, and even though we couldn't proselyte for a full three days, we still managed to have an amazing, fun, and successful week. As a zone, we had what I called the Week of Wonder, which is essentially a week where we look for the tender mercies God has sent us everywhere. For us here in Grand Falls it worked amazingly.

We had three different instances where people came up to us and asked us to meet with them. We also were able to put two people on date for baptism, which was our strenuous, but possible goal. :)

Miracles happened all throughout the zone, and I feel like it went pretty well. :)

Christmas was also fun, I got to Skype home, so that was cool.  :) 

Grand Falls is definitely one of my favorite areas I've served in. It's so fun, the members are unpredictably silly, and we have a good time and work hard. 

That's all that I have this week! Also there are sisters going to Gander, which is part of our area! Crazy!!

Love ya,

Elder Windloss!

From his mom:

His emails have been very short the last couple of weeks because of his added responsibilities.  I will add a little of what he shared with me.

Hey Mom!

Thanks for the Skype call, it was good to see you. I feel like this work has blessed my life forever. I have been able to see a great change in me since the beginning of my mission, and I'm so happy for what I've been able to become. 

Basically we just kind of hung out on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. We were asked not to do missionary work, so it's been pretty boring. :) But I have enjoyed pondering about the Savior and what he means to me. I got the bear (Elder Biscuit) from the Christmas Zone Conference for a White Elephant Gift. A Sister gave it to me. 

Yeah, Elder Kelley is awesome. I was his district leader in Hampton when we was in Saint John, and he actually went to Syracuse High! He likes running and is pretty fun. :) Looking forward to it! I loved the package.

I love you mom! Hope to hear from you soon! :)

Elder Wanlass

Christmas morning!  

With a trio together there is bound to be a lot of presents under the tree.

The very middle of Newfoundland.

Playing with the selfie stick. 

(Elder Siepert and Elder Sortomme)

O Christmas Tree-O

Hello Everybody! It's been a pretty crazy week! My companion at the beginning of the week was sick for three days, so I just stayed in the apartment and called people. It wasn't the most exciting, but I did my best to make things happen. I got a couple of referrals, and I was able to set up a couple lessons, so that was really good. :)

On Thursday we made the road trip over to St. John's, which is 5 hours straight of driving! St. John's is a pretty cool city. It's about the size of Halifax, and it's just a nice branch! 

We had a fun time at Christmas Zone Conference, we got to sing hymns, focus on the Savior, and have some fun. I got to MC at the talent show, which was so fun! :)

After that, we took pictures. It's weird, because Sister Pierce, Elder Craig, and I all started out in the same District, and we were all at Newfoundland conference, so we took a picture of that! :)

I also said Goodbye to Elder Hardesty. I'm really going to miss him. But I know that he will be able to help people out in Dartmouth.

The trio is doing well! Elder Siepert and Elder Sortomme and I are having a good time, and we are seeing miracles happen. We had a lesson on Saturday and it went really well and we were all pretty unified. The spirit was strong. :) We are going to have a fun week next week!

Anyway, I love you All! :D

Sincerely,

Sister Swarenson?! (yes a member called me this.) :)