Dear family and friends

 

Well, to start of  I have to say congrats to Brad and Teri and the new Russell Wadman, thanks for sending the pictures, he looks like he is going to be an athlete haha and for reals congratulationsthats great news. So it sounds like you guys have had a great week this week with Russell´s birth and with the snow and everything, sounds like its all going good back home. Well, over here life is going great, Ana got baptized on Saturday and her son came over from the east mission to baptized her. It truly was an awesome baptism, the place was packed with people supporting her. I will send pictures, also we were talking to here before her baptism and we shared with her the baptismal covenant and we asked her if she was willing to make and keep the baptismal covenant and she told us that she would. We explained that she would be taking upon herself the name of Christ and she would be making the covenant to obey his commandments until the end of her life, and she told us something really cool. She told us that when we come back in 20 years and visit her that we will see that she is still firm in the gospel and that her greatest goal is to make it back to her Heavenly Fathers presence with her family and that she is ready to work for that goal for the rest of her life. Really she is a great example to me of faith, because even though she doesn't know everything about the gospel yet, she has felt the spirit and she knows that these things are true and she is willing to put her whole heart into it. We passed by yesterday after and we passed through the commandments again and we told her to never worry about what other people do or say only to worry about the covenant that she has made with the Lord and to complete with it. And then she said that the spirit has touched her heart and that she wont ever go against that. So everything is going really well with her and with our other investigators too. Also, today our zone went to the botanical gardens in Santo Domingo with president and his wife. They did a special activity with us, but it really turned out pretty cool and I am sure that mom would of loved it. I took a lot of pictures and I will send them back home too, but I am going to send pictures next week because the Internet center is having problems and we had to walk to a different Internet center to finish. So next week I will send the pictures.

Anyways I hope that everything is going good for you all back home, I love you all and hope that you have a good week this week.

Elder Wadman

The Wedding

Dear Family and Friends,

 

Well, it sounds like it is still just staying cold for you guys over there and that you are all just settling in to this new year. From what i hear, I take it that you guys didnt go up to Park City this year, or did ya? Well here everything is going really well, I am sending some pictures home of the wedding. This is of Ana and her husband and her family, they got married on Friday and she will be getting baptized on saturday this week. It was a pretty cool little wedding and her husband is really cool too. The older couple in the picture are his parents and they are members of the church and are sealed so he knows a lot about the church. And Ana told him after the wedding that she wants him to start listening to us so that they can go and get sealed together in the temple, and then he actually started asking us questions about stuff. So I am hoping and praying that he will get motivated and start coming to church and get baptized so that whole family can come unto Christ and be sealed for time and all eternity. Also, we started teaching this other lady named Yoris and in the first lesson the spirit was super strong, I could just feel it and I knew that she could feel it too. And then we couldnt find her at home for a while and then we passed by the other night and she told us that she had read the whole restoration pamphlet and that she had prayed and that she knows that these things are true. So I am excited to see what happens with her in this upcoming week. And see how her progression keeps going a long. Also, Yesterday all the stakes in the carribean recieved a broadcasted stake conference from Salt Lake, and Elder Beck, Elder zwick, and Elder Nelson all talked. They gave some great talks, Elder Beck told the people here that if the want to recieve blessing that they need to pay their tithing and offerings and that if they do that they will recieve many blessings that the Lord has in store for them. Elder Nelson told them that they are a blessed people and are a remant of the house of Isreal. He also told them that they need to teach their children English because english is an international languange and also needed to teach them math. And that if they learn those two things that they will prosper. He also told them that they need to stay firm in the faith and always keep the commandments, and he warned them a lot against pornography. So it was a really cool conference and their was a great spirit that filled the room has they were talking. All and all it was an awesome week this last week and now we are just getting ready for Anas baptism this saturday and we are pretty excited. Anyways, i hope all is going good back home for you guys love you all.

 

Elder Wadman

Dear family and friends,

 

Well I am glad to hear that all went well with grandpas funeral. It sounds like it was a very spiritual event, I wish I couldve heard the talks and Elder Summerhayes promises from the Lord, I bet it would have been great but mom and meg feeled me in pretty good. So its good to hear that all went well.

 

Here in the DR we had a pretty good week, we now have got a wedding date set for Ana. She will be getting married on friday the 18th and will be getting baptized on the 26th. Her son will be coming over from the east mission and he will get the opportunity to baptize his mom, so it will be a very special experience for them. Ana is just great and is super commited to what she has now put her mind to. She even payed her tithing yesterday and she isnt even a member yet, she has showed me true faith and devotion and has been one hundred percent comitted to everything since we conctacted her, so I know she will be a great member of the church and is set on having an eternal family. So I am really excited for her and for this big step that she is taking in her life. We also recieved a reference last week, and it was this guy named Martin, he showed up to church with his girlfriend, who is a member, and then he came up to us and asked us to start visiting him. So on tuesday we had our first lesson with him and we set a baptismal date with him in that same cita and he accepted. Then he showed up to church by himself yesterday, because his girlfriend is in a different ward, and then we shared with him yesterday. In the lesson he told us that he had prayed aobut what we have been teaching and then he explained what he felt after he prayed. He explained the fruits of the spirit and we told him that it was the spirit that was telling him that these things are true. He said that he knows that they are true and that he wants to learn more and keep feeling the peace and the happiness that he has been feeling lately in his life. So he is a super cool guy and I hope that he can keep moving forward and work so he can be ready to make covenants with God. So all and all it has been a great week, we are just trying to find the chose people here in Los Alcarrizos. Life is going great and i am enjoying this time that I have to serve the Lord. I love you all and I hope that you guys have a good week this week.

 

Elder Wadman

Dear family and friends,

 

Well I just read the emails and heard the news about grandpa. I am sad to hear that he has passed on but it is a happy sad, one full of joy and of love and of hope. I am happy because I know that grandpa endured to the end, and he showed each one of us how to keep fighting and to enjoy life even through all of the times of adversity. I love that man, and I am going to miss him and his always happy and giving attitude. The great thing is though, is that I know I will see him again, I know that we will all see him again. Like it says in Alma 40 11 and 12 that in between the time of death and the Resurrection all men are taking up to the same God that gave them life, to be in His presence, I know that grandpa has been taking up and has been in the presence of God. And then it says all of those spirits that were righteous will receive a state of happiness, which they call paradise, a state of rest and of peace, a place where men will rest from all of there afflictions, their pains and their worries. I know that grandpa was righteous man and that right now he is in the spirit paradise, doing the work that continues after this life. He was a great example for us and I hope the we all can live worthily that when it comes our time to go to the other side we will able to be there with him in the spirit paradise and we can wait for the resurrection and the final judgement and live for eternity with him and with all of the family in the celestial kingdom. We've just got to keep living the gospel and fulfil with our covenants and with the commandments of God. So I am going to miss him a lot but I know that I am going to see him again and that grandpa is doing just fine over there, and I am going to keep on working as hard as i can to help some more families learn this same knowledge that we have as members of the church, and to help them become a forever family.

 Also, congratulations Heather and Chase on the marriage. I hope that everything went well at the wedding and that you guys enjoyed the day. Sounds like it was a great spiritual experience at the temple and that everything after went well too, so congratualions! Also, mom happy birthday! I hope you have a great birthday today and that you guys do something fun, like maybe go cross country skiing or something ok? But seriously happy birthday mom. Well I will just give you a quick update on whats going on here. Yesterday we had a lesson with Ana, she is the one that will be getting baptized this month, she is super awesome. We taught her tithing and fast offerings yesterday, and when we started the lesson I asked her what she had learned from reading the pamphlet, she basically explained the whole thing and told us that she was going to pay her tithing and fast offerings. And all of that happened before we had even explained what tithing and fast offerings are. After we got done teaching the lesson she said the prayer and she thanked God for sending us her way to help her get on the right path. She said that before when her son was on the mission, he would always invite her to come to church and she would always say to him that Sunday was her only day to wash and that she needed to cook and stuff so she never went. And then she told us that when we passed by a couple weeks ago she decided that this was her time that she needed to put her whole heart into the gospel and get baptized. She started tearing up and was basically thanking us for finding her and getting her on the path that leads back to God and it made me cry because I felt the Spirit and I knew that it was the Spirit had led us to her. It was probably one of the greatest experiences that I have had on the mission. Anyways, I hope that everyone is doing good back home with the news, know that I love you all and I hope that we can draw closer to the Savior through this experience. Have a good week.

 

Elder Wadman