Serving in the 'Gue

July 25, 2016

Hey everybody! :)

This week has been pretty hectic, but it's fun. For the rest of the transfer I'm going to be serving in Montague, PEI, which is a small retirement town of 2000 people. :) It's going to be a blast. :) I'm in a trio with my former companion Elder Dooley and another French missionary Elder Raveneau. Thanks everybody for taking time to read this email. :) I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for me in this area. :)

Love you all!

Elder Wanlass

A Teen No Longer.....

July 18, 2016

Hello everybody, as the title of the email says, I'm now officially 20 years old! That's super weird. It doesn't honestly feel that I'm that old. I still feel 18 sometimes, and according to people on the street, I look no older than 14... but that's okay, it was a pretty good week. :)

We started out by having the Summerside Elders over for exchanges from Monday to Wednesday. It went pretty well, and we had a good time. I took Elder Warren out on Tuesday, and we did a lot of finding, and found some pretty solid potentials. One of them was a lady named Velma who had ordered a media bible from our church a few years back. She was thrilled to have a copy of the Book of Mormon, and she found our church so she could come prepared to meet us. She's super solid, and we were able to teach her a couple of times this week. She is cool, and plans on rearranging her schedule so she can come to church next week.

Aside from that, we went out to a restaurant called Maid Marion's with a friendly man named Earl for my birthday. It was really sweet of him. He's in his 90's, and loves us missionaries. However, he doesn't want to join the church, but he's a really good guy. He's a legend.

The rest of the week has been up and down, we are finding a lot of people who are interested. We are trying to maximize our time here because there are so many tourists it can be hard to sift through everybody. :) Things are pretty good though. I love the work. I love Charlottetown.

I love you all!

Elder Wanlass

Moncton Memories

July 11, 2016

Hello everybody, this week was pretty interesting. We've been working hard, and this upcoming week will be pretty cool because we are going to be hosting the Summerside Elders for exchanges tonight and tomorrow. It'll be a lot of fun, and I'm excited to be able to work with more missionaries.

This last week we had the opportunity to serve in Moncton on Tuesday with our zone leaders. It's pretty weird being with missionaries whom I talked to on the Zone Leadership meetings now being my leaders, haha. The exchange was pretty fun, and I did enjoy myself. I had a chance to teach a couple of lessons, and one of the women we taught actually just got baptized two days ago, so that was a really neat experience. :) 

Other than that, we have been working really hard. Talking with a lot of different people. It's pretty cool. On Tuesday we went to a Bahai community meeting (we were invited by a potential investigator) and we met a bunch of people from different cultures. The next afternoon we were street contacting and we bumped into this Japanese girl who we met at the meeting, and she was super excited. She wanted to meet up with us. We taught her the Restoration at the library, and it was pretty cool. Unfortunately, she said that she wasn't interested a couple of days later, but hey, at least we taught her.

We have had a bunch of 15 year old girls chase us around as we've been walking downtown lately. Girls are crazy. That's what I've learned on my mission. Anyway, we also talked to a really cool girl that is from Toronto originally but is performing in theatre here in Charlottetown. There are a lot of swing dancers that we meet on the streets here, which is so cool. :) We are meeting with her tomorrow.

Anyway, that's pretty much our week! I love you all!

Elder Wanlass

I'm Now Definitely Serving a Foreign Mission....

July 4, 2016

Hello family, friends, and associates and strangers!! :) This is Elder Wanlass. Happy Canada Day and 4th of July for all of you North Americans out there. It's been a busy day here in the paradise of Charlottetown :) I love the atmosphere. We were able to briefly see some performers acting on the street. It was so cool. :) Anyway, other than that today we had some really good fish and chips. We have definitely been working hard, and we've seen good things happen. We taught 4 lessons this week, which isn't bad. We were able to find three new investigators, so that was pretty exciting! :D

We decided that one night we were going to knock at 6 pm. Unbeknownst to me, and Elder Von Trapp forgot, that we had a correlation meeting at that time. Anyhow, despite that, the first door we knocked on let us in. They were a Syrian family that spoke Arabic and very little English. However, Elder Von Trapp knows a slight bit of Arabic, so we were able to get in the door. Their daughter who is 20 spoke English, and so she translated for us as we taught the Restoration very simply. It is pretty cool.

I'm still getting used to how many immigrants are here in Charlottetown. It is my first area where a significant amount of people do not speak English whatsoever, so it's definitely been an adjustment. When we go street contacting we talk to a lot of Chinese people, Middle Eastern People, and French people. It's pretty cool. We also run into a lot of tourists, but I guess that's what you get when you are serving in paradise. :)

Aside from that, we worked really hard this week. Elder Von Trapp and I gave a training in Zone Training on Becoming a Consecrated Missionary, and what we need to do to make that happen. We both felt really good about it, and the zone leaders and STL's were happy with us, so that's good. :)

I love you all! that's all I want to share, it's really hard to type on this tiny keyboard. 

Elder Wanlass

Charlottetown!!!

June 27, 2016

Hello friends, family, and every other person who is reading this! It has been quite the eventful five days. :) After emailing last week, I packed up all of my stuff and we drove to Truro that night so I could be picked up by the transfer van. After that, I was swiftly taken over to Moncton, and then we drove to Charlottetown from their. It is so beautiful here. The drive was pretty scenic, and I loved crossing the Confederation Bridge. It took about twenty minutes, and their wasn't any traffic. :) It was pretty cool to look out and see the ocean all around us. I definitely wouldn't want to drive on it during a storm. :) 

PEI is pretty neat. The dirt is red here for whatever reason, and the grass is super green! :) It makes for a beautiful contrast. I love it so much! It feels like I've stepped back in time as we drive through the countryside. It's so neat because even though Charlottetown is the capital city of PEI, it still doesn't feel super big, except for in the downtown. We street contact a lot, which is kind of a novelty for me. I am not super used to it, but it's growing on me. Usually we have to find people to talk to in the first place, but now people are just appearing everywhere.

It's pretty cool because a lot of people are immigrants from other countries here as well. My companion Elder Von Trapp is something of a language enthusiast. He is assigned to be a French missionary, but speaks English, and a number of other languages. He always speaks to people in their native language, which is pretty cool.

Right now we are teaching a Chinese family. It's pretty interesting, because the ward here has some members from other cultures here too. There is one member from Taiwan that speaks Mandarin who translates for us when we teach Chinese people. It's pretty interesting. We would teach a point of doctrine super simply, and then the member would expound on what we were teaching in Chinese. It is different, but pretty cool. :)

Anyway, that's been our week! Hopefully we will be teaching more this upcoming week. We will work hard and make it happen! :)

Love you all!

Elder Wanlass

My Little Sister's Birthday Present....For Me.....

Well everybody!!! I'm sad to say it, but I'm leaving New Glasgow! My memory doesn't really remember this last week too well just because it's been nine days since the last P day, but we had a lot of fun!

I'm being transferred to Charlottetown, PEI! :) I'm super excited to go there, it is a beautiful place, especially in the summertime, so I'm very excited to serve the Lord there. It's going to be fun, I'm finally serving in a city rather than a town, so that'll be cool! :D Transfer letters came out on my sister Reagan's birthday! Happy Birthday to her! :)

Anyway, we went on a couple of exchanges in between today and last Monday, so that was fun. I'm so happy to be able to serve the Lord. :)

Sorry this letter was so short! Just know that we are teaching and finding people! :) It's going well! See ya next week on the island!!

Elder Wanlass

Who Knew That's All it Would Take!!!

(June 13, 2016)

Well, everybody, it's been a pretty fun week. We had a lot of good things happen in our area, and all we needed to do apparently, was be in our area for the week. It was a pretty good time today, we had some miracles happen, and we have a lot going on for this next week. :)

Monday was a nice relaxing day. We went knocking out in the country. Thorburn, NS to be exact. It was a pretty nice place, people would let us in to talk because none of them had ever seen missionaries before. We met one family out there who we hopefully will be able to teach. :) Here's to hoping!! Other than that it was a pretty simple P Day.

Tuesday was where things really started to get exciting. We started out the first hour of the morning by getting a new investigator, who was a referral we got while knocking. He was pretty cool, he is a jack of all trades kind of guy, he used to live in Alberta, and he works a lot. We are excited for him. He had learned that our church was the fastest growing in the world, and he had to figure out why. So cool! Later on that day we went to Antigonish to work there, and it went pretty well, we taught a lady who we knocked into on her patio. She was pretty nice and we are going to teach her tonight as well. She wants to know how she can be with her family forever. It was a really good day! We also taught a man that used to investigate the church, but was too busy at the time. His name is Ozzy, he is super funny and we feel like he will be a pretty good investigator to work with. He is seeking for additional purpose in his life.

Wednesday was District Meeting day in New Glasgow, so that was a relief. After that, we went park contacting because it was pretty sunny outside, and went to a dinner appointment with a member. She is just starting to come back, and her husband and her were so cool. I'm glad we got to meet them. :) after that we had a lesson with a kid that the Sisters had found in Thorburn. He is a pretty cool guy, he is very simple, and he is a pagan, which is pretty interesting. We are going to meet with him tomorrow. But he was pretty cool! :)

Thursday was another great day. We had exchanges with the Truro Elders, and they came to our area. We split off and Elder Lerminez and I went to Antigonish while Elder Hunt stayed in New Glasgow with Elder Alger. It was a good time. We learned a lot on the exchange, and we ended up teaching a really solid YSA age girl! She's so cool! She's loving the Book of Mormon and it's good to hear that she is enjoying it.

Friday was a little scattered, but it was still a good planning day and we worked hard in Trenton for a while.

Saturday we helped a family with their insulation and ceilings, so that was fun. I got to put insulation into the walls, since I'm a little shorter, but it was fun. We also had a really successful primary activity that was a blast too, and we had a lot of less active members come.

It's just been a very fulfilling week this week. I'm so glad I get to serve the Lord with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. I love the gospel, and I love how much it has helped me in my life. I love being a missionary. :) I'll talk to you next Wednesday! :)

Elder Wanlass