Learning New Skills!

2-10-14

I totally miss the snow!  Not the cold, but the snow.  This week was a bit more exciting than last week.  I got to take a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class from a less active member where he taught us a bunch of ground fighting techniques.  It was all super cool.  I can't remember what style of Jiu-Jitsu we use to take, but this was completely different.  I remember that we learned a lot of standing self-defense when we took it, but this was all ground stuff.  He also had us do a kettle bell workout that was super exhausting.  Apparently, he went to Russia and learned a lot of what he knows by having a bunch of professionals basically beat him up so he could see how they fought.  He has been doing it since 2009 and he is super good.
Saturday we went to go help build a house for Habitat for Humanity and I learned a lot about construction.  The Church was building this particular house and we started at 8a.m. and went till 3:30p.m. for the day.  We constructed the walls and put siding on all of it.  I have some pictures that I will upload so that you can see.  Right after that, we went to a new move-in and helped them cut down a tree.  So, I got to learn how to use a chainsaw.  It was pretty fun and quick.  I have some pictures of that as well.
This week was a whole lot of service and I loved it since I haven't had too many opportunities to give service for others.  Everyone usually turns us down because we are dressed too nice and they don't want us to get dirty.  I'm still trying to figure out this area and get to know the people, but it's coming along, and I love working with Elder Fisher.  He is awesome!  I may possibly end up getting a new companion, though, because he has to get knee surgery soon and so he might be heading home to do that and recover, so we'll see what happens.  Love you!

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

Enjoying the area and companion

2-3-14

Things are going good for us here.  Elder Fisher is such an awesome companion.  I love him and I love the people here.  A lot of the members here are older and they are all so nice.  There is a lot more diversity to work with here and it makes working with members a lot better.  Even a lot of the less active members are nice and let us come over and teach them, unlike my last area.  We are just in the process of just figuring the area out and knowing what works and what doesn't.  I think that this area has a lot of potential, though.  We just need to rely on the Lord to know what to do in order to get it all going.  I did get your letter this week, thanks.  Thank you for the recipes.  We made some breakfast bars for lunch and they turned out great!  Elder Fisher calls them monsters because they start out nice, then they blow up into a beast thing.  It makes sense to me.  I don't really have any exciting stories this week to tell.  All we did was go around and try to figure out what we should do since neither of us really know the area.  Our ward mission leader is pushing us to reach the standard of excellence that the church has set of 20 lessons a week, and we could have made it this last week, but practically all of our appointments fell through.  Hopefully, this week will go a little better.  I always have and I always will continue to pray for you guys.  Love ya!

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

New Area

1-27-14

I have been transferred to Port Charlotte.  My new area is great!  I am on full car, and the people here are awesome!  I feel like a new missionary again since i don't know the people or the area at all, but I hope that I can learn quickly.  We just had Stake Conference on Saturday and Sunday, so I didn't get to meet too many members, but I met quite a few at the Ward's talent show on Friday night.  There are a lot of older members and they are all so great!  A lot of them are really willing to work with us and help us, unlike the last ward where everyone is young and in school or at work or just always has something in the way.  One of the older couples even gave us each $65 in gift cards to Burger King and Chick-Fil-A.  Our ward mission leader is great, too!  He is completely on board and works hard to help us get lessons.  In my last area, the most lessons we ever taught in a week was 13, now in this area we reach about 20 or so.  People are home and willing to let us talk with them for the most part.  I'm loving it so far.
My companion is Elder Fisher and he is from Las Vegas.  He has been out for 14 months and he is 20 years old.  Just like all of my other companions, he is super big into things like football and other school sports.  I don't think I will ever get a companion that likes anything but school sports.  Oh well.  He is a great missionary and he is our District Leader.  He and I get along great.  He loves to cook and so I haven't cooked a single meal since I've been here.  He cooks and I just wash the dishes. Like me, he is super clean, so we never have any messes, and I have been having really great studies in the morning since it's just the two of us and not 4 Elders that distract each other.
For family scripture study, there are tons of scriptures that I use when we teach lessons.  Maybe something that you guys could do is pick a section or a doctrinal topic out of Preach My Gospel to read and look up all of the suggested scriptures that go with it.  Whenever i study out of there, or choose a topic to study from the Bible Dictionary, I learn a lot more.  If you are all studying the Book of Mormon right now, read, "The Keystone of our Religion" by President Ezra Taft Benson.  That should help everyone understand why studying the scriptures is so great.
Saturday, we had a mission training where Elder Kapishka of the 70 and Elder Thompson of the 70 came and talked to us.  Everyone thought that the training was going to be about us all getting iPads, but it wasn't. We are suppose to be getting those soon, though.  But, the training was so cool and it was all just focused on being exactly obedient like President Cusick has been telling us all the time.  Sunday was Stake Conference and there were 48 Stakes throughout Florida and Georgia involved in a broadcast with Elder Russell M. Nelson.  It was good.  We just watched it from our church building.
Well, I hope all is going well at home and that everyone is getting along.  Let me know if there is anything I can do for you.  Love you!

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

Getting Transferred

1-20-14

I'm being transferred.  I don't know where to yet.  I'll let you know next week.  So don't send anything this week to my current address.  I will have Elder Barnett forward the letter you last sent to me.  Thanks for making those changes on the iPod.
It sounds like you all had a good FHE.  that's definitely something really good to work on.  (We had a FHE on helping strengthen one another in the family and also on realizing everything we do to one another is also done to the Savior).  I hope that Whitney and Vanessa are getting along and things are improving.  You'll have to let me know how things are going with dad's back and whatever else is happening around home.  (I told him that we were really trying to STUDY the Book of Mormon)
I love studying about the power of the Book of Mormon.  There is a whole chapter dedicated to the Book of Mormon in preach My Gospel and it talks all about the converting power of the Book of Mormon.  I love it!  I have just started reading from the beginning of the Book of Mormon a few days ago and I'm learning a lot more about it.  At the same time, I am also going through it slow, like one chapter a day and writing a ton of notes.  After about two weeks of this, i am only in 1 Nephi Chapter 5, but i have gotten a ton out of it.

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

Will he be Transferred?

1-13-14

Well, we have transfer calls this Saturday and I might be leaving or staying.  If I leave, it will probably be on the 20th of this month, so I might not be here.  I don't know how I feel about possibly getting transferred.  I want to experience another area, but I know this area so well now, it would almost feel like leaving home again-haha.  I'm kind of hoping I will so I don't have to bike all the time, but so many areas are being put on full bike, so who knows.  I may get transferred to another biking area if I do.  There are some Garner's here, but not the one you mentioned.  We have had a ton of opportunities to talk to people while we are out biking, and most of them are interested in learning more, but almost all of them are YSA or they live in some other missionaries area.  It's been a little annoying, but I guess it doesn't matter who it goes to as long as someone teaches them.  This week, one of the senior missionary couples gave me a chord sheet and some songs I could play (about 13 of them), but I've already played through them about 10 times each and now I need new songs.  If you could find some hymns or instrumentals that are either strumming or tableture, that'd be great!  This morning a member from the other missionaries ward, who lives with us, came to our gym to show us a good workout.  He is a personal trainer and he is going to set up a workout program for us based on our  gym equipment.  He had us work out chest and back today, and it killed all of us.  Elder Barnett didn't end up doing it.  He has his own little program, but the rest of us got worked.  It was a circuit training that we rotated between 4 things.  We did a set of 25 reps for each station, then 15, then 12, then 12 again, and then 50 to end it.  None of us could really get through it without taking a bunch of breaks.  That was the first time that I've really worked out super hard since I've been out here.  Now my back and chest are dead.  He told us to take a tone of protein after we work out and a little while before we go to bed each night.  I think I might take some protein in the mornings, but not at night.  Hopefully, this will really get me back into shape.  He gave us so many great tips for exercising, though.
This week, not too much happened.  We had some good lessons with some investigators and we invited them to church, but no one showed up.  Of course, it was an amazing service.  All of the Sacrament talks were about the Godhead or on the existence of God.  M. Arsenault wasn't there this week either, and she is the one who is atheist.  So that really stunk!  But, this last Wednesday, we met some guy who is originally from Honduras, but he came over to America when he was a baby.  He has some major mental issues and is legitimately crazy.  He has been baptized into about 18 different churches throughout his life.  When we talked to him about the restoration and a little bit about baptism, he was like, "Dude, I'm kind of tired of getting baptized."  It was funny.  But, he is really interested and we will probably meet with him this week.  Love ya!

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

A Great Experience

1-6-13

My ankle is doing great (he spranged it a couple weeks ago playing p-day basketball).  It's just a little stiff from healing.  Last night was a really great experience.  We had a member come out with us to a lesson with the Parker family.  The member is actually from Logan, UT.  He served in your mission, Dad. (St. Louis, Missouri)  His name is Bro. Rasmussen.  He came out with us to the lesson and it went pretty good for the most part.  We taught about the Plan of Salvation and we had a really good discussion.  I think that I've told you a little bit about the Parkers.  Elder Lott and I found them a few months ago and they were just moving in.  We offered them the Savior's Peace and Blessing and it went really well, but for some reason they ended up going back to the Methodist Church.  But, at the end of the lesson, we were talking about the Prophet and priesthood authority and how through modern revelation the Plan of Salvation was revealed to us.  At that point, the wife said, "You know, I don't think that this whole authority thing really matters, to be honest.  I mean, as long as you have faith in Christ and you're going to church , it doesn't matter if you have a prophet and authority or not, and it doesn't matter what church you join."  After she said that, in my mind I was just thinking, "What?! How is that not important?  Of course it's important.  You're not understanding this right!"  After that we all just testified of the importance of why we need a modern day prophet and how Christ's Gospel has been restored.  We talked about how in order for them to find out if what we are telling them it true that they need to pray and find out for themselves.  Luckily, they agreed to do that, but for the most part they pretty much told us that they were good with their church.  When we left, I was pretty sad and confused.  They are such a great family and I just didn't understand how they couldn't see that this is what they are really looking for.  On the way home, Bro. Rasmussen started talking to us about the whole situation.  He said, "Elders, I know it's hard for you to be working with this family and them to not really see it the way that you see it for them.  I know that it probably wasn't that great to know that you somehow inspired them to go to the Methodist church, but I believe that the Lord uses other churches to prepare people to receive the Gospel."  I was kind of confused at this point, but it started to make sense.  He continued to say, "The Parkers are not ready at this time to accept the entirety of the Gospel, so God has led them to a church that has certain truths that they are ready to accept for now, until some point in the future when it won't be enough to satisfy their ideas or questions that they may have about life.  At that point, they will be ready to accept the Gospel and will be converted.  What you need to do now is get them to read from the Book of Mormon and to really question it, because it is not something that can easily be explained away once someone has a knowledge of it.  There are too many things pointing to the fact that it is true and that it is from God and not man.  So just continue to work with them, and don't worry."  When he shared that with us, mainly for me, it settled all of the questions and concerns that I had about the Parkers.  I had never thought about the whole situation like that before, but it made perfect sense.  It was such a great thing to think about.

Love,
Elder A. Whaley

The Elders with the food storage given to
them by Ward members.

Elder Whaley's Christmas message
made from pictures!

Most of the Christmas Loot!

A New prospect

12-30-13

Well, this week we had a guy named James stop us and ask what we do.  He has seen us around a lot, but didn't know what we did.  We told him that we are missionaries and we told him briefly about the message of the restoration.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and a pamphlet and set up a return appointment.  He has been Baptist all of his life, but he is looking for a change in religion, and he is interested in learning more about our church.  Right now we aren't working with anyone who is progressing, so we are just doing a lot of biking and talking to people.  A lot of the appointments that we have been setting up, however, have been canceling on us at the last minute, so we end up biking even more.  So, we are in the mode of finding people to teach right now.

Love,
Elder A. Whaley