Week 34

Low quality picture of a really high quality car!

Hi y'all!

How was everyone's st Patrick's day??

This week was great, but it definitely had its fair share of
disappointments. Jerry was a solid new investigator, but when we
showed up Tuesday morning for the lesson, he told us never to come
back. Then Tuesday night, per request of Elder Arnold last week, we
had to drop 2 of our eternigators, Sheena and Antonio. We are doing
everything we can to find new investigators!

Wednesday we had an awesome lesson with Danny, we brought a bunch of
kids from the Mission Prep class, and they did great! They all had to
put in their two cents, and it was a really long lesson, haha, but
Danny loved it. And we got him on date for baptism April 16th! So
that's the good news! The bad news is the phone call we got from him
this morning...he is having marriage issues and wants us to stop
lessons for a while until he gets stuff figured out.
(

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo) Its so dumb how once we start making
any progress with someone, Satan steps up his game. I wish our
investigators could see things from our perspective!

On he Bright side, we've been stepping up our finding efforts this
week, specifically with e members of the Ward. On Friday, we made a
TON of cookies and brought them to our investigators, recent converts,
and a few specific members and asked for referrals. Haha we thought a
little bribe might help ;) we had some success with that!

Friday night was the Agua Fria Ward st Patrick's party. It was a ton
of fun! Plus, we have SWEET members! A few people brought their
nonmember friends and introduced them to us, so we can start meeting
with them this week :)

Saturday and Sunday were stake conference. We had Elder Teh from the
70 come. It was awesome to hear from two GAs in two weeks! He shared
some cool things about simplifying and focusing on what's important.
President Griffin also spoke, it was a good meeting :)

That night, every single one of our appointments fell through, so we
decided to sit in on mission prep. It was great, but the best part was
after it was over. Brother Doyle, an older member of the Ward who also
came, decided to give us a ride in his wife's car, the batmobile. A
2016 Corvette Stingray, with lots of extra things that I don't know
what they mean. I guess you could say it was a good night :D

Also to note, we saw a wolf on the way home. A full grown white wolf
crossed the street right in front of us! So what's the smart thing to
do? Obviously flip a u-turn and follow him down the street. We
followed him with a flashlight through our window through the
neighborhood for a while (umm?), until he dissapeared into a field. It
was like something out of a sci-fi book! It was awesome :)

Spiritual thought! We sang hymn 43 in stake conference, and this line
really stood out to me!

     "In the furnace God may prove thee, thence to bring the forth more bright,
     But can never cease to love thee, thou art precious in his sight."

I know that God loves us more than we can imagine. Whatever we go
through, however hard it is, never EVER feel like he isn't there! He
knows exactly what we need, and he has so much in store for us. He
leads us along at the fastest pace we can handle, because he is a
perfect parent, and he knows how to best help us reach our eternal and
glorious potential. I love him so much :)

I hope you all have a fantastic Easter week!!
-Elder Wheeler :)

Pictures!!!

This is my desk in my new area!

My new comp- Elder Phipps

Knockin' Doors!

Week 33

Hello Everybody!! :)

The work goes on! Here's this week's highlights:

Finding! Finding new investigators, dropping old eternigators, and
building member missionary work! Elder Phipps got really sick the week
before I got here, and the work died down a little, so we're trying to
turn this place around. We have a lot to do, which keeps us busy :)
speaking of...

Sick! I got to spend all of Saturday in bed. Feeling a little under
the weather all week, and I guess it finally caught up with me. I
slept 18 hours in one day and it felt sooo good. I made it through 6
hours of church Sunday, but passed out when we got home. Feeling
better everyday, hopefully I'll be 100% by tomorrow :)

Mission Tour! Elder Arnold of the 70 came on Thursday, it was awesome!
He doesn't mess around, all of our eyebrows got a little singed. He
had some great advice about finding new investigators and becoming
better missionaries.

DANNY CAME TO CHURCH!! It was awesome! He loved it and really feels
like this is the right thing for him to be doing. We should get him on
a solid baptismal date this week :D

Spiritual thought: In 1 Nephi 17, the lord asks Nephi to build a ship.
I think it's really interesting the first thing he says in response.
He doesn't ask "why?" or "how?" or even "what should I do 
first?" He
asks [paraphrased] "where should I go to get ore, so that I can make
tools to build it with?" Then he makes a bellows and fire and the
tools and starts taking action to accomplish what the Lord asked him
to do. We see the same example with the Brother of Jared. The Lord
asks him what he thinks he should do to obtain light in the barges. He
exercises his faith and makes 16 small stones for the lord to touch
and make shine. Sometimes, our Heavenly Father doesn't tell us all we
need to do. He tells us the end goal, and he promises guidance, but he
expects us to use our agency to press forward in the best way we know
how. D&C 9:7-8 says this pretty clearly too. As we prayerfully and
wisely make our own path towards God's end goal, we show our faith,
earn the trust of God, and most importantly, become more like him.

Great Scott I hope you all have a great st. Patrick's day!

-Elder Wheeler

Week 32

Hiya!

How's the world outside of Arizona? Cuz this place is great!! I love
Prescott Valley, it's beautiful up here, the weather is perfect, and
the people are awesome! :) This week was still a little stressful and
weird... it takes a while to get used to new streets and names...but
I'm learning and it gets a little easier every day!

So a few big things happened this week:

1- our zone was asked to start biking more (I just got away from
that!) so we went and bought a really nice bike for Elder Phipps.
Biking here is a whole different story than the valley, there's less
light and no sidewalks and everything is either uphill or downhill.
Biking is nice because you get some fresh air, plus it's easier to
contact people along the way. But I love driving! You can get places
sooo much faster and fit so many more appointments into a day! But
president is inspired, and he says this will help our numbers, so
we'll do it :)

2- our zone set some pretty hefty goals for this month. We are doing
everything we can to find new investigators and get people to church,
and just the last few days the lord has put a few people in our path
that have a lot of potential! Setting goals with faith brings
miracles! :)

3- Danny. He was my first lesson in the area. He is super excited
about the church and keeps asking us for scriptures to read
(yessssss). He's been sick lately and hasn't been able to make it to
church, but hopefully this Sunday he will!

4- we put Aiden on date for baptism! We planned to teach his grandma
Debbie about baptism, but the spirit took control of the lesson, and
we ended up putting him on date for April 9th! I love when that kind
of stuff happens in a lesson, it just helps my testimony that Heavenly
Father is mindful of us.

5- service! Like every day this week! We raked leaves, moved rocks,
put up shelves, moved bigger rocks, dug ditches, painted a house, cut
down trees, and have just as many service projects planned for next
week. It keeps us busy and is fun :)

6- this morning on our way to the park for exercise, we almost got
sprayed by a skunk! I saw it just as it put its butt up in the air and
I've never seen Elder Phipps run so fast!! #closeencounters

I wanted to share a spiritual thought with you guys: so I was reading
in Jacob 7 about how Sherem tries to make Jacob doubt his testimony.
There were a lot of other people who were deceived, but Jacob wasn't.
He had a foundation in the scriptures and in the Holy Ghost, so when
temptation came up, his testimony was strong enough. Especially in
these last days, there are a lot of things that try to deceive us, and
there are many more to come. Satan is a smart guy, and if we don't
have a strong foundation in the scriptures, and a strong testimony of
the Holy Ghost, we will be deceived. It's sooo important for us to
study the scriptures, because that's how we receive revelation. That's
how we feel the Holy Ghost. We can't be deceived if we learn to
recognize God's voice :)

I love all of you guys! I hope you have a great week :)
-Elder Wheeler :)

Week 31

Hiya :)

My new area is awesome! I'm up north in Prescott Valley with Elder
Phipps, over the Agua Fria and Mingus Foothills wards. The members are
awesome and gave me a really warm welcome. We get to drive everywhere,
and the temperature is perfect all day. It feels like I'm back in
Idaho! Also, my roommates Elder Tribe and Elder Hedrick are really
good cooks, so we all pool our money together and eat like kings every
day. We're grilling steaks for dinner tonight! So um yeah, I like it
here :)

This week was a little crazy, I was trying to get all settled in and
learn my way around. It's so much quicker to learn an area when you
can drive! I love how open it is here :) we actually took our bikes
out for some contacting a few nights ago, just because it was so nice
out. Video to come

We had some really good lessons this week too! Once I get our
investigators' names down, I'll tell you more about them :) haha also
did a lot of service, painting walls and packing uhauls and moving
rocks. We're staying busy, which makes the time go fast!

I don't have a ton of time, so this is goodbye for now. Hope y'all
have a great week!

-Elder Wheeler :)

Weeks 29 & 30

Hi :)

Did you guys watch the game last night? Yeah so did all of
Glendale...haha last night was wayyy slow. We were really hoping the
Cardinals would make it to the Super Bowl the year we served here! We
were all excited and ready to go buy Super Bowl shirts...

This week went fast!

We are now official Arizonians (pretty sure that's a word). We spent 3
hours Tuesday morning on top of a 20 foot ladder picking oranges, and
the rest of the day picking thorns out of our arms. Haha it was crazy,
but homegrown oranges and grapefruit are worth it!

Max is a less active kid in our Ward who just turned 8. We've been
working with him for a while to get him ready for baptism, and on
Saturday he was baptized! It's awesome to see people come to Christ,
whether it's introducing them to Christ, or bringing them back :)

Also, it's warming up! 80 degrees feels nice now, but we're not
excited about what's coming...

Other than that, this week was kinda disappointing...we had a couple
solid (or so we thought) investigators tell us to stop visiting, and
not a lot of progress with our other investigators. Just one of those
weeks I guess :P

I hope you all have a great week!
-Elder Wheeler :)

Week 28

Hi :)

Did you guys watch the game last night? Yeah so did all of
Glendale...haha last night was wayyy slow. We were really hoping the
Cardinals would make it to the Super Bowl the year we served here! We
were all excited and ready to go buy Super Bowl shirts...

This week went fast!

We are now official Arizonians (pretty sure that's a word). We spent 3
hours Tuesday morning on top of a 20 foot ladder picking oranges, and
the rest of the day picking thorns out of our arms. Haha it was crazy,
but homegrown oranges and grapefruit are worth it!

Max is a less active kid in our Ward who just turned 8. We've been
working with him for a while to get him ready for baptism, and on
Saturday he was baptized! It's awesome to see people come to Christ,
whether it's introducing them to Christ, or bringing them back :)

Also, it's warming up! 80 degrees feels nice now, but we're not
excited about what's coming...

Other than that, this week was kinda disappointing...we had a couple
solid (or so we thought) investigators tell us to stop visiting, and
not a lot of progress with our other investigators. Just one of those
weeks I guess :P

I hope you all have a great week!
-Elder Wheeler :)