New Glasgow....I think that's our Area....Right?

(June 6, 2016)

Hello everybody! This is Elder Wanlass! :D This week has been absolutely crazy. We've traveled so much it's not even funny. Elder Hunt and I have had less time this week to proselyte in our own area than we had outside of our area, so that's pretty insane. A lot of it was due to the meetings that we had, as well as exchanges with the assistants, so it's been pretty interesting.

I'll give you the lowdown:

Monday was our P Day, but around 7:30 we left to go to Halifax (1 1/2 hour drive) and we stayed the night there. It was a pretty good P day, we worked hard with what time we had, so that was fun. :)

Tuesday was a fun day. We spent it with the Assistants making travel plans and then working a little bit. There was a lot of rude people we met street contacting, but we had a few good conversations with people. At the end of the day, Elder Hunt and I drove back to New Glasgow at around 8 pm.

Wednesday we drove all the way up to Sydney, Cape Breton for District Meeting (3 hours) we met there and afterwards we drove back and got home at around 5pm (3 more hours), then we drove to Sackville, Nova Scotia and stayed the night there for a meeting we had with the Mission Leadership council on the following day. (1 1/2 drive)

Thursday we spent the day with the other zone leaders and STL's. We got to go to the temple, and it was amazing! :) I love the temple and the feelings I have when I go there. :) We had a meeting in Halifax for a good few hours (until 3:30), and then we got home at 6pm.

After that, we had a couple of regular work days, but it wasn't as spirited as it could have been due to the week just being so crazy. 

Sunday we had an amazing opportunity to go to Sackville, NB to hear Dale G. Renlund speak to the saints in the two stakes! It was so cool! I had an opportunity to see members of the church in all 5 of my areas that I've served in! :) Even from Grand Falls! It was such an amazing experience. Not only that, but I got to see most of my companions on my mission. (the ones who aren't home or in Newfoundland anyway.) It was pretty weird, it felt like a yearbook day in a way. Haha! :)

I love you all! It was good to see so many people I love this week! Next week will only improve things! :)

Elder Wanlass

Reap What You Sow, and Sew What You Rip and The Cabot Trail

Hello Everybody!!! This has been a decent week for me and for the NSN Zone! We had a pretty cool experience this week. Elder Hunt and I got to go on the Cabot Trail, which is an 8 hour scenic drive in Northern Nova Scotia (Cape Breton). It was so cool to drive and see the sunny places and the rough Atlantic Ocean as the day got later. Super sweet. My mom will no doubt have posted pictures of it at this point. I'll let the pictures do the talking for me.

Anyway, we got to serve in Sydney, Nova Scotia for a day, which was super cool! The atmosphere just feels really cool, and stuff is busy there. The area is made up of several decent sized towns and a city, so there is a quite a lot for two missionaries to handle by themselves. I worked with Elder Taufer, which was pretty cool since we went to Layton High together. It was a pretty good exchange and we got to know each other a lot better.

We also had an awesome district meeting and when we returned to New Glasgow there were bright green leaves on the trees! Up to this point the area had been full of dead looking trees, but as soon as we left they all bloomed! It's so gorgeous right now! 

I felt that I should also bring up that I taught myself how to sew this week! I have had several pants bust open in certain places, so I decided that I needed to make them last, so I learned how to sew. It doesn't look all that bad either, so I'm excited to get better over time. 

Other than that, we taught C. this week. She is doing pretty well, but due to a meeting we had with other missionaries we weren't able to get to our appointment with her in time. It was a little disappointing, but we were able to follow up with her reading and she has read 7 chapters since last week! It was so cool! She seemed a lot more interested in coming to church as well!

Anyway, that's pretty much all! I love you, stay strong and have a fanTASTic week! Bye!

Cabot Trail in Cape Breton

Standby...Cabot Trail

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! Sorry everybody for the inconvenience. Due to Elder Wanlass being temporarily unavailable, there will not be an extremely long or meaningful letter this week. Elder Wanlass is in Cape Breton currently, under President Pratt's request, and he will be going on the Cabot Trail, a really cool scenic drive. :) He loves you all!

Elder Wanlass

Hey Mom!

I'm actually still on Cape Breton, and I don't have long to email, so it's perfectly acceptable that you letter is shorter this week. Mine probably will be a little shorter too. I don't even know if I'll get to do a good weekly email for everybody. Give them my apologies. Anyway, C. is doing well. We met with her this week and established some follow up. She is awesome. She seems very willing to come to church, and I'm excited for her to develop in the gospel. We met a new investigator named J., I messaged dad about her. You can ask him. We also met with T. and had an awesome lesson with him on faith. He has been lacking in purpose and has wanted to find more in his life, and we had an amazing spirit filled lesson. It was so simple, but we testified of how we came to know that the church was true, and he felt it. It was so cool.

Right now, the weather is pretty rainy. Cape Breton is usually like that, but it's been pretty warm this week. We got to take our suitcoats off.

As for funny things, we were street contacting in Antigonish and this lady who I stopped was WAY too happy to talk with us. She was in her late twenties and was really klutzy. But she said that she "Was a single mom with one child and that she was really cool." She also told me that her religion was based on a level up system. She was a Level 4 Healer...(a nurse) I was pretty surprised that that was her level, because she had been talking about it like she had been doing it her whole life, so I was expecting her to be like Level 80 or something...anyway that was really funny. We also talked with a former investigator who took the Bible very literally and was going to take a plane that week to hike the deserts of Israel without food or water because Jesus did it. That was odd. Elder Hunt and I got out of his house and he said: "D.'s freakin' weird!" It was really funny. :)

I have indeed been loving the people more. :)

Cabot Trail

Elder Bennett and the Newfie Subway Card

Hello everybody! It's only been five days since the last emailing session due to last week being transfer week, but quite a bit has happened in the past few days, so I suppose I'll be able to share all of it!

First of all, on Wednesday, it was a pretty fun day. We went bowling with the Sister missionaries, ate lunch, and relaxed. It was a long P Day, but it was a good one. That Wednesday night we had a few area meetings on what we needed to do for our area, which was quite a lot of fun. :) Good things are happening here in New Glasgow!

On Thursday, we worked hard. We knocked quite a bit in Northern New Glasgow (Trenton) which was a lot of fun! Elder Hunt and I decided to knock a street that had been knocked within the last six months, and as it turns out, we picked up four potentials of all young families! It was amazing to see that the Lord puts people in our paths that are interested. We have an appointment tonight with one of those people! It'll be sweet! Other than that, we prepared ourselves for Friday. Elder Randall K. Bennett of the Seventy is planning on doing a mission tour this week, but before he did that, he wanted to meet with the Mission Leadership Council (Zone leaders and STL's and the Assistants) and talk to us all.

Friday we spent the morning in Dartmouth with Elder Bennett. Elder Kelley, one of my previous companions in Grand Falls, gave me a Subway Card from Sister Borden! It was so nice!! Anyway, on to Elder Bennett. He talked about a LOT of things. I learned MANY things. One thing that stuck out to me was that He felt like our mission didn't love the people as much as we could in our mission. There is a feeling of hard work, but without charity, or the pure love of Christ, we wouldn't be able to be as successful as God intends for us. It caused all of us to reflect on what we needed to do better, and I admit, that sometimes I am not as sincere as I should be in our missionary work. That night, Elder Hunt and I decided that we were going to focus on loving the people. We went to Pictou, Nova Scotia where we had a lesson with a potential investigator named Sara. We talked with her for a while about the church, and began teaching her the Restoration. In the middle of it, her younger sister named Tina came out. Tina was going to smoke, but when she saw us, she put out her cigarette and listened to the lesson. They both have been reading the Book of Mormon. I have a testimony that sincere love is what will make a difference in the work.

Saturday was a very rainy day. It just so happens that the one hour that we decided to knock was the rainiest hour of the day. Aside from that, we also helped one of our GatorAid families move some stuff from their basement. We also watched Stake Conference. :)

Sunday was a nice day, we were able to have a good correlation with Brother Mackinnon and the Sister missionaries. We sang for the people in one of the homes here in town. It was a good time. 

Well, thank all of you for reading this far. :)

I love you! (and I do mean it!)

Elder Wanlass

A Well Deserved P Day

Hello everybody! It's been two or six days since I last emailed! It's transfer week, so P Day is on Wednesday instead of Monday, so I'm glad nobody was super alarmed at the lack of writing.

This week was quite fulfilling. Elder Hunt and I have been working hard. We've found 3 new investigators in the last week and a half. The work has been moving so amazingly in this area. Even though it's not a big town, it's got so much potential, and it continues to amaze me how the Lord blesses us as His servants here with people to teach.

With the success of finding people comes the chance to teach, and Elder Hunt and I have been working really well together to make these things happen. We taught two lessons yesterday - and both of the investigators we taught are now both on date for baptism, which is amazing to see. Jonathan is continuing to do well, and he's planning on coming to church this Sunday to see for himself if this church is true. 

I don't really know what to say. It's been fun, the work has been paying off, and we continue to work hard. Last night Elder Hunt and I went knocking in Trenton, the northern part of the New Glasgow Metro. Unbeknownst to us, the street had been knocked not too long ago, but we went for it. We talked with four families that wanted us to come back and teach them more about the gospel! It was so cool. I definitely know that the Lord is putting people in our path to find them. 

We went on exchange with the Truro Elders on Monday. We went to their area, and it was a lot of fun! I went with Elder Alger, who is a great missionary! He has served in Caribou and in Grand Falls, so we talked a bunch about those areas. Truro is a fun area. It is very similar to New Glasgow, however, people in Truro are a little bit more city kind of people. It is called the "Hub of Nova Scotia" so a lot of traffic goes in and out. It's the same size as New Glasgow, but New Glasgow is more spread out, so it doesn't feel like it is the same size.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and we had a good exchange!

I love you all, it's been a great week! I'll email you next Monday!

Love,

Elder Wanlass

My Days in the Metro

Hey friends, family, and acquaintances reading this right now!!! It's good to hear from all of you! (Not enough of you write me, sadly.)  :( But things are going well here in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, because me and Elder Hunt had to go on two exchanges in the city this week, we didn't really get to work as much in New Glasgow as we would have liked, but it was fun all the same.

We started this week by going to Halifax on Monday night. We didn't do much else on that day.

Tuesday though was great! We had an exchange with the assistants and I spent the whole day in Halifax. ACTUAL Halifax. It was pretty neat. Halifax in actuality isn't really THAT big compared to other places, but for our mission, it is definitely the biggest area to serve in for sure. There are so many people just walking around. We street contacted for three hours straight, which was a lot of fun, but it was a little insane to me how many people we had talked to. I was with Elder Argyle, who was my zone leader when I was in St. Stephen. He is from Kaysville, and went to Davis High, so that was kind of cool. After the street contacting, we went to see a recent convert named Wayne. He was baptized a month ago, and I met him the day before his baptism. He is super strong in the church and he fed us spaghetti with carrots in it! (It was really good.) The whole day we had a member with us named Brandon, and he is a really nice guy and wants to do good things. He street contacted people with us! That was neat!

Wednesday we then went across the bridge to Dartmouth, which is part of the Halifax Metro, and is the section that is in our zone, and we did an exchange with the Dartmouth Elders. It went...interestingly. I liked it actually. :) The Dartmouth Elders don't have a car, but we do. Elder Hunt and Elder Hovey took our car and went around town contacting former investigators in the area book. Elder Marcelino and I talked to a TON of people it wasn't even funny. We went street contacting, we went trail contacting, and we even bus contacted! It was neat being able to take a bus around the city. I was getting the hang of it. Elder Marcelino and I taught a lesson in the sketchy area of town, which was funny because for me, I didn't realize it was going to be sketchy until we got off of the bus. The lesson went really well. We taught a mom and her two kids, and we all said a kneeling prayer in a circle. It was amazing. After we got out of the lesson, it was nigh around 8 in the scariest part of town. There were plenty of hooded men walking around, but we ignored them and walked to the Bus Terminal. :)

The rest of the week was kind of a blur, mainly because a lot of our lessons we've set up have fallen through, but things have been really solid otherwise. Elder Hunt and I are doing well together, and I'm loving the missionary work. :) I can't say that enough!

Love you all!

Elder Wanlass

Halifax City

Elder Hunt

Moncton Once Again!

Hello everyone! This email might be a little shorter than my other normal length ones, but we'll see. :) I personally have had a really quick week. It's been scarily quick. Anyway, we have been doing pretty well here in New Glasgow. Unfortunately, we weren't able to meet with any of our investigators this week, and we didn't find anybody to teach. But a lot of that Elder Hunt and I attribute to the fact that we weren't able to work in our area for 3 days! So that was interesting.

Monday was just a regular P Day. We started out by knocking a fairly long street as well as contacting a few people who are interested in learning. We set up some appointments for this upcoming week, so that's something to look forward to! :)

Tuesday was an Antigonish day. It was a little slower, but we street contacted and knocked, so that was a lot of fun. :) Many of the young people are starting to move out west for the summertime, which is disappointing...but there are still a lot living here still. :)

Wednesday was funny. After District Meeting, we had a really good opportunity to serve a nonmember named Donald. He wanted help with his wood cutting, so Elder Hunt was able to use the chainsaw and I split some wood. It was a good time. We aren't even close to finishing, and we probably won't help him much after this for the sake of time, but we are trying to get the Priesthood to help out with it. We shall see.

Thursday was our trip to Moncton, which lasted the entire day.

The rest of the week was simply working! We did our best to try and find new investigators, and we are set up for a strong week this next week. :)

I loved Jeffrey R. Holland's talk from this recent General Conference. It really rang true to me. We must continue to look forward and God will always bless us. I know that this is true. I love this gospel, it's helped me out so much!

I love you all as well!

Elder Wanlass