Look closely: I am doing a cartwheel when I scored

Dear Family,

Well this week sounded like it was really fun for my and dad up in the yurt and the pictures were pretty cool too. How much snow is there now back at home? Anyways, this week was really good for us we have been doing a lot of the same. Being whitewashed in the area left us with no real investigators so we contact a lot set a bunch of appointments and teach a bunch of citas, and we are getting a few people that are progressing a little bit. The other day something really cool happened we were out contacted and we were contacted this one street and half of the street was in our area and the other half of the street was in the other elders area but we were up on a third story apartment building and this guy waved us down from the other side of the road and so we went over there and he just started talking to us and he asked us to share our message with him so we said a prayer and we shared a couple scriptures and you could feel the spirit. then he asked me why i was here doing what i do and I told him because of my testimony and because only through coming to Christ and accepting of his gospel, only through that can we have eternal life. We also told him how the gospel will bless him in his life and bless the lives of his family as he accepts. He is a golden investigador that wants to learn more and so we gave him as a reference to the other missionaries because he is in there area. But that was a super cool experience. And yeah we are still just working a way here in enrriquillo and it is going really well. Also today we played our zone vs another zone in basketball and that was really fun too. And the zone we played with, was my last zone that i was in so I got to talk with Elder king and hear about our investigators in Bayona. And I came to find out that Anita that was going to be baptized she fell through too, but king is doing good over there and keeping bayona going good too. And some of our other investigators over there are progressing, so that was good to hear. Well I hope that everything is going well back home for you all and that you all are having fun. Anyways love you all and have a good week.
Elder Wadman

Bednar

Well family this week was pretty stinking awesome, im not going to lie. First off, on saturday was super sick! We had a conference with our whole mission so i got to see all the guys that i used to live with and stuff and the guys from the mtc and stuff so it was really cool. Then our conference was in the institute building in Santo Domingo. So what happened is, they opened up two rooms in the institute building and then our whole mission fit in their and i sat on the 2nd row of chairs. And this conference first off had Elder Bednar, Bishop Mcmullin from the presiding bishopric, Elder Gonzalez from the presidency of the seventy, Elder cornish from the seventy, and another elder from the seventy that i cant remember his name. and they all sat down in front of us 200 elders and gave us a conference. Elder Bednar said this might be the only time in your life that we will sit with this many general athourities, with only this many people, so yeah it was pretty cool. Well Bednar had some really cool stuff to say, basically he didn´t give a talk he gave a guided discusion and taught us how to teach better. He said so many times in the social aspect of the church we do something stupid and that is, we ask questions with selected answers already in our head. Like in our classes at church someone will point someone out and ask what are the three points of the baptismal covenant, and even if someone knows the answer they usually get nervous and cant remember. He talked about how the spirit can not go forth and teach in situations like that. He showed us by example, questions that we should ask. Questions that are more broad that reallly get people thinkning and questions that let the spirit teach. He said that we aren´t the teachers, that the spirit is the teacher. We need to go and take them the message and then get out of the way and let the spirit touch their hearts. Then he also talked about spiritual gifts. He specifically talked about faith and to obtain faith is a spiritual gift that God gives. We cant just pray for faith and get it. God has to have confidence in us first and then he will give us spiritual gifts. He also opened it up to questions at the end and that was really cool. He explained about about when president monson was called to be a prophet and the whole process, and how he knows without a doubt that president monson is the prophet. And at the end he bore is Apostolic testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and the restored church of Jesus Christ. He said its all true, all of it. And when he bore his testimony it was so powerful, all of us were blown away by the spirit. My eyes started sweating a little bit, and i was like oh man i can´t be tearing up right now, but as i looked around at the other elders and my mission president and everybody in the room had some tears in their eyes it was super powerful. He said at the end that we have the same scriptures as him and that we kind find the same answer as him. He said that is one of the reasons they all came, to show us that we dont need a general athority to answer our questions that if we truely study it out we can find the answers ourselves to the questions we have. Then on sunday our stake had a conference with Bishop Mcmullin and he promised some great blessings to the people hear in the Dominican Republic, that as they keep the comandments and our faithful they will recieve all of the promises that he gave, and they were great promises. So yeah that was my week it was a pretty good week. I hope everything is going really well back home and that you all just keep rocking it. I love you all.
Elder Wadman

ENRIQUILLO

Dear Fam,

Well this week has been really good. I recieved one of the packages today with all the photos and the cd and stuff it was awesome! thanks momma. Also, we have just been going hard each day trying to find people to teach the message with. And we are starting to find some investigaders. We are teaching one kid that is 13 and his older sister is a member and wants to go on a mission. But this week we taught the plan of salvation and we really explained it well. Like we took about an hour expaining the plan of salvation with scriptures and everything. We told him about the three degrees of glory and that the only way to make it to the highest degree is through repentance and baptism, and then we asked him what he is going to do? and without pausing he said I am going to repent and be baptized, and be saved. I kind of chuckled to myself,because of the way he responded but he was sincere about it so we will be setting up a date for him to get baptized sometime soon here. We also have started teaching these two families that are really cool and have a lot of interest  in the message and they have been reading a lot. So we are starting to get things started here in Enriquillo, and we still our talking to a bunch of new people each day so we sould be finding some more people soon. Also, this saturday Elder Bednar is coming to speak to our mission, and we are all really excited to hear him. There are some big things that are going to start happening in our mission. We don´t know exactly what is going to happen but we know something big is coming. They have been opening up new areas that have never had missionaries there before and in the last two transfers the mission has grown by almost 30 more missionaries and we are supposed to grow even more this next transfer. Also, there isn´t a single stake outside of santo Domingo, or the city. And we are pretty sure they will be opening up a stake out in the south, as it is called. The south is everything that is west of Santo domingo in our mission. Basically, think of it as what we call the south in the states, that is what it is like out in the ¨south¨ here. So it is pretty crazy that they are opening up a stake out there. So all and all everything is going really well here and i guess we will see what happens. Anyways it sounds like everything is going really well at home and I hope you all are finally getting some snow. Well I love you all
Elder Wadman

Enriquillo

Wow well this week has been crazy. Me and Elder Brezack got transfered into enriquillo. it used to be a two man area and now they just made it a 4 man area. Elder Brezack is from Nebraska and is basically the only mormon from nebraska too ha just messing but he is really cool. Also i live with elder Morgan, he played football at idaho state before the mission and his dad owns a huge cattle ranch up in idaho, i love hearing his stories about the ranch his uncle owns a business called Morgan Hay too. I dont know if any of you have heard of it but it sounds familiar for some reason. And I am living with my first dominican now his name is elder Chapman and he is really cool so we are having fun. Anyways, mom I think when you looked on the map you looked at Enriquillo de Barahona, which is right on the beach and out in the country. But I got transfered to Enriquillo de San Geronimo, which is basically smack dab in the middle of the city. And people are super rich here. They live in big mansions and apartments and everything is really nice. I think this is as close as you can get to a state side mission while still being in the Dominican Republic. We have been knocking on a ton of doors these last couple days trying to get new investigadors but the people here are a lot quicker to reject the message of the gospel, its alot different than Bayona where everyone was really accepting. But the upside is that this is the most organized ward and strongest members i have seen here on the mission. Yesterday we had ward council meeting and in Bayona ward council meeting consisted of the bishop maybe one of his counselors and the missionaries. here we had the bishop all of his counselors, two secretaries, a president from every organization. And probably some other people because the room was packed. And then they talked for and hour and 45 minutes it was crazy! Also i have a ward mission leader for the first time on the mission too. So that is the upside. The ward has been giving us lots of references and I think we will be working a lot more with the ward in this area. I am really excited to get some stuff going here and get to working. So thats whats going on right now. Well it sounds like you all have had a pretty fun week up in island park AND with everything that is goiNg oN. Well i love you all And have a good wEek.
ELder Wadman