Dear family and friends,

 

Well Happy New Years tomorrow everybody! It was great to talk to you all on Christmas and to hear what is going on with all of you guys. It sounds like you all had an awesome Christmas and a fun time up at Mom and Dads and it also sounds like it is super cold over there right now. Here it is about 80 to 90 degrees during the day, so it is staying nice and warm I think at night it has been getting down to about 70 degrees which is pretty chilly here. But I am glad to here that everything is going good, well we had transfers on Friday and I am training now. My "kid," as they call it here, his name is Elder Nelson and he is from Belize, it is a little country that is connected to guatemala. The funny thing is that they dont speak spanish in his country they speak english. So he speaks english and is learning spanish right now, and he looks like Rajon Rondo, for all of you who dont know who that is, he is the point guard for the Boston Celtics, I will send a picture next week. He is a really cool kid and has a crazy life story, his parents died when he was younger and he is the only member from his family and doesnt have a ton of support from his family. So basically he is a super strong kid and we are going to work really good together and hopefully keep finding new people to teach everyday. As far as Ana she is super awesome, we shared with her the other day and she told us that she was reading the book of mormon the other morning and was studying the gospel pamphlet and the spirt touched her, and she said that she started crying. She has felt the spirit and she knows that things are true so she is really cool and I am way excited for her and the decision that she has been making. We have found some more cool people that we just have to share some more with them to see if the seed plants but everything is going super good right now. The time is going super fast and I am just enjoying it out here and Im enjoying this new experience to learn from Elder Nelson. So all is well I hope you guys have a good New Years Eve and a good wedding on the 3rd for Heather and Chase. I love you all and hope you have a good week.

 

Love Elder Wadman

Well Family and friends, Merry Stinking Christmas! 

Well today is Christmas eve and I know I will be talking to you tomorrow but I want to give a little update about these past two weeks. In these last two weeks I have been seeing the Lords hand in the work. Every day as we leave to go to to the street me and my comp ask the Lord to help us be lead to the chosen and elect people that are ready for the gospel in their lives. So about 3 weeks ago we found Ana, the one with the son on the mission, I have already explained a little bit about her but she has been going to church and has really been progressing. She even stopped drinking coffee before we had even taught her the word of wisdom. She has went and found all the paper work she needs to get married and we are planning on have the wedding at about the first part of January, probably a little after Heather and chases wedding haha. And then she will be getting baptized on January 19th so everything is on track with her right now. We also found this other 20 year old kid named Scrailin about 2 weeks ago and last week he committed to a baptismal date and will be getting baptized on January 26th. After the lesson when we put the baptismal date he told us that he had been praying a lot and that he knows that the church is true and that he wants to prepare himself for his baptism. So the other missionaries in our district were have a baptism on saturday and scrailin came and really liked the baptismal service and then he went to church on Sunday and then he came to an activity this morning with us and the young men, so everything is right on track with him too. We have been finding a lot of elect people and the missionary work is really getting rolling here in Los Alcarrizos. I am hoping that the Lord will continue to lead us to the elect people. Just like yesterday we found this guy that has a big family and he told us that he used to share with the missionaries and that he used to go to church. He told us that he really likes our message but that 3 years ago the missionaries that were teaching him were taken out of the area and no one went back to go find this guy and to keep teaching him and his family. He knew a ton about the Book of Mormon and about the church, and his only question for us was why no one went out and kept teaching him when the 2 missionaries got transfered and that he has been waiting for missionaries to come back and start teaching him again. It was a really cool experience, to know that the Lord is helping us find these people that have been waiting for the gospel for so long. So that is what has been happening here in the DR lately. Well I am excited to talk to you guys tomorrow and I will be calling like 12-1 ish, anyways Ill talk to you all tomorrow love you all.

Elder Wadman

Dear family and friends,

 

Well it sounds like this last week was very busy for all of you and that the christmas season is here and that you are all enjoying that. Well I have to send out a congrats to Meagan and Tyler who are going to have another baby July 10, congratulations! There will be a lot of new faces for me to meet when I get home, I am excited for you guys. Well this week was an awesome week in the work. Last, Sunday we knocked on this door and a middle aged lady answered the door and we started talking to her, turns out her name is Ana and that she has a son in the East mission here, and that she isnt a member. So we shared with her, and bore our testimonies and we told her that she needed to read and pray to know the truth. So we went back a couple days later and she told us that she had read and had prayed and that she knows that the Church is true. She told us that Sundays are here only free days, and that she usually does all of her house chores on Sunday but that she was going to do all of her house chores on Saturday from now on and go to church every Sunday. And congratulated her for making that decision and then I asked her if she would be willing to be baptized and she said yes, but that she just needs to get some things done first and I asked what she needed to do, and she told us that she needs to get married, she has been living with her basically husband for 19 years but they just hadn't gone and got legally married. So she told us that she will go and round up all of her information, and that she talked to her husband and that he is willing to get married and then we will go get them married. And that once she is married then she will get baptized, and I said welll that is perfect. So we are going to be doing that this week trying to get all of their birth certificates and papers rounded up and then we will take them to the judge and get them married. She also told us that her husband has shared with missionaries before and that we should try to start teaching him too, so tomorrow night we have an appointment with her and we are going to invite him too, to come and share with us so that the whole family can recieve the blessings of the Gospel. But anyways yesterday at church she showed up early in skirt and everything, basically just a golden investigador, I am so thankful that the Lord led us to her, I bet it is an answer to her missionary son's prayers, so hopefully God can use us as the instruments to help this family come into the gospel. We also found this other guy named Elias and he is just finishing egineering school, but is in the middle of getting a divorce, so basically a pretty crappy time in his life. We shared with him last saturday and he was very sincere and truly wants to come unto Christ and change his ways, so we are going to let the gospel help him out a little bit. Anyways fam the mission is awesome, I am so glad that I have this opportunity to serve the Lord and the people here in the DR. The field is white and it is a great time to be a missionary and to be able to testify of Christ everyday and of his infinite atonement, that through him we can overcome all hardships and all trials, and recieve a remission of our sins. Like President Monson says, the true meaning of Christmas is easy to remember, just drop the last syllable, it's Christ. I love the Savior and I know that He lives and that he truly has given us the greatest gift, and that is that through him we can have eternal life. Anyways fam, I love you all and I hope you have a great week this week. I wont be writing next week because we have a Mission Christmas Conference, but i will write you guys on the pday before Christmas which will be Christmas eve. But I am thinking that I will probably be calling at about noon or one oclock on Christmas. But write me and tell me what would be the best time for all of you and we will figure her out on Christmas eve. Anyways have a good week.

 

Elder Wadman

Dear family and friends,

 

Well it sounds like this last week has been pretty good for all of you, some thunderstorms and stuff like that but all and all a good time. It also sounds like this month is going to be a pretty busy one with all the stuff that is going on for you all back home. With all the weddings and with Christmas and everything, its going to be busy but super fun for you all. Well this week was a great week for me, we have been working a lot. We have basically been knocking doors like crazy trying to find people and we found this one guy on Friday his name is Elias, we contacted him a couple days earlier and he told us to come back and teach him. So we went and taught him and he is actually a really smart guy he is just finishing his schooling and is going to become a civil engineer. Well when we started sharing with him he asked us why there are so many churches in the world today when there is only one God. So we explained all of the restoration right then and there, and about the apostasy and how all the  other churches got started and then how Christ restored his same church in these last days to the prophet Joseph Smith. The spirit was very strong in the lesson and he said wow that makes sense about all the other churches but that God should only have one true church one the earth. We told him that if he truly wants to know if these things are true then he needs to pray and ask God and that He will answer his question so I have been praying for that a lot lately. Also something really cool that happened this week was, like I said, we are knocking a lot of doors these days trying to find people to teach. And a lot of the people that have been listening to us all have to work on Sundays and haven't gained enough faith yet to quit their jobs and look for another one. So yesterday at church we weren't expecting to have any investigators there because we had been inviting a lot of people there and they had been telling us that they couldn't go. But for some reason in my prayers I kept asking for it, that some one, anyone of our investigators  could show up for church on Sunday, well church started and nobody had showed up and I just thought to myself, well maybe next week. And then about 20 minutes into church a guy that we had taught 2 weeks before, that didn't seem really interested when we shared with him, showed up. It was totally unexpected, i was very surprised and then I remembered that it was a answer to our prayers. I truly believe that God hears and answers our prayers and that if we seek we shall find and if we knock it shall be opened unto us. So I was very grateful for the Lord for listening to our prayers . Well as I was sitting in church yesterday something kind of just hit me, it has hit me before, but this time it was completely clear and seemed so easy. Right now in the world there are a lot of bad things and a lot of wickedness, and a lot of ways to get caught up in Satan's traps. Like Alma says we know that wickedness never was happiness, so i was thinking if we want to be happy then we have to be righteous. How are we righteous? It is by keeping all the commandments of God. Think how much the world would change if everybody in this world decided right now to keep the commandments of God, it would be completely different but we know that it is not like that. We also have no power over what other people in this world do but we do have power over what we do. Think if each one of us made a conscious effort to obey all the commandments, to be honest in all things, and to love one of another how much of a difference we could make, and how many blessing we would receive. Like the Lord says countless times in the Book of Mormon if we keep his commandments we will prosper if we don't, we wont. He also says if ye love me, Keep my commandments, so if we love God then we will keep His commandments and when we keeps his commandments we receive the blessings. So basically it all goes back to the primary song keep the commandments in this there is safety in this there is peace. When we do what God wants us to do we have safety and peace and the blessings, when we don't, we don't have any promises. Basically when we look at it in the eternal scheme if we obey the commandments and help others to understand them then we don't have to worry about anything else, because in the eternal scheme nothing else matters. But anyways this week has been a great week for me I am learning a lot these days and trying to be a little bit better everyday. Anyways I love you all and I hope you have a good week this week.

 

Elder Wadman