Investigators

4-22-13

I hope everything is going well and you're doing alright.  This week has been really great!  We have had lots of service opportunities, 18 hours, and picked up 2 new investigators and have a meeting with them this week.  One of them just told us to come over and talk with them.  They have 4 boys and it's a Hispanic family.  We set up an appointment with them and the other is a referral from some other missionaries that they street contacted and his name is Wondafresh.  He is Ethiopian and seems pretty interested in the gospel-so we'll see how that goes-which is pretty cool!  One of the services that we did on Friday was with one of the authors for the multiplier effect, Lois Allen.  I think it's about leadership. She is a very nice lady and a really good cook(he always seems to mention something about food-LOL).  We are also making a raised garden for someone in the ward, but their ground is really rocky, so we had to use picks for it.  This week has been getting into the 80s, so it's been hot.  Today we went hiking for a p-day activity.  It was pretty fun.  We just went with our zone.  Everything is going well here and I hope everything is alright at home.  Love ya guys!

Love,
Elder Whaley

Shad-the guitar man!

?

Tan Man

*Just a little bit of information-a man from Shad's ward (Brother Cook) that he is serving in, emailed us and told us thank you for raising such a wonderful young man and sharing him with them in the San Jose mission.  He also told us that he's a hard worker and healthy and has a great sense of humor.  Apparently, they let the missionaries take oranges off their tree.  They also feed them and try to help the missionaries the best they can.  He mentioned that it's a new way of doing missionary work and they are trying to get use to the new way and help the missionaries.  It was great to get this email and we were pleased to hear that Shad is doing well.

Dear Family,

It's pretty crazy that I've been out over 2 months.  It feels longer than that-time flies by so slowly-haha.  Ya Brother Cook is a really cool guy.  He has an orange and lemon tree so he has so much that we take some and eat it.  He taught us how to make lemonade with the lemons and it's really good!  That stinks that the weather there is so yucky, because the weather here has been nice, but really hot.  I got a hair cut by a Tongan Elder and I had a bad tan line from my hair.  It was ridiculous.  It's really sunny here so I am really tan with a super farmer's tan.   :)  On Saturday we did 10 hours of straight service and then the next day was fast Sunday and so I was super hungry and super tired and sore.  It wasn't that great of a day and I was kinda grumpy.  :/  Hopefully, my body can recover.  It sounds like June will be pretty crazy, but good.  Something really cool happened on Thursday.  We went to go teach a less active member of the ward, but we didn't feel like the lesson we were going to teach her was right, so we prayed on what to teach her and got a prompting to look over our notes from General Conference.  We picked out Elder Uchtdorf's talk about God's hope and light.  We went with the bishop to her house and gave her the lesson(talk).  The whole time we were there, the Spirit was so strong and after we were done, she said she really needed that since she is going through a hard time.  It was such  a cool awesome lesson we had with her.  I loved it!  On Saturday, we got to go up to the temple and do a session and Brother Paulson took us up, but we missed the session we were planning on going to, so we  went to the visitors center and watched a movie about the saints settling the bay area in California.  It was pretty cool.  The Oakland temple is really beautiful and you can barely see the Golden Gate Bridge from there.  It was pretty cool.  Anyway, hope all is going well.  Love Ya!

Elder Whaley

Shad and Elders at the Oakland Temple

Elder Vance, Brother Paulson, and Elder Whaley
at the Oakland temple.

Loving missionary work!

Mom,
I wasn't able to see the video of Austin getting his mission call.  I think you can only send pictures to my email, not videos.  That is freakin' awesome that he's going to Florida.  That's good that you get a break from school for a couple of days!  I'm glad that Matt is doing well.  It will be interesting to see if he actually writes-haha.  That's awesome that Lyndsay got her mission call to San Jose, CA.  I think she will really enjoy it and tell her she is lucky because the mission president really loves the sisters and will do anything for them.  He is awesome!  I was able to watch conference.  I loved it all!  The talks were all great in their own way and I would love a copy of the Ensign to reread them! We are on bikes all the time, but lately have had problems with them like with flat tires and my tires blowing up!  You asked about my backpack.  It works great!  I just had to buy a rain cover for mine since it's rained a couple of times.  Other than that, it works great!  Yes, I have taught a couple of lessons.  There are a couple of less active families that we are working with that are coming back to reactivity.  One of them is Sister Drove, who is Fujian.  She is awesome and really loves the gospel.  She is such a nice lady and really enjoys us coming over when we can.  I really enjoy teaching her.  I made breakfast bars-they were really good!  Anyways, I love you and love doing missionary work!

Love,
Elder Whaley

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to you, too! Thank you for the package! It was great and the cookies were really good. We went to a member’s house and had dinner and it was really good! It’s really nice here. It’s been in the 70s and a couple of times in the 80s haha. Joseph Smith is awesome! I actually had to give a talk last Sunday and I talked about the restoration. It actually went pretty well. But, I haven’t had anyone who didn’t believe in Joseph Smith yet. We went on splits on Friday so Elder Dean and I went and did service at a senior center serving lunch and there were some high schoolers there volunteering and one of them was asking us questions, which was pretty cool. She thought we were weird and that we just believed in Joseph Smith and so we talked to her for a while. Then we asked her if she wanted to go through the lessons but she said no. It was great to not really have a commercialized Easter because then I could really feel the spirit and focus more on how great the atonement is. It was so cool to meet Elder Holland. He brought such a strong spirit, but he mainly talked about how we need to become better missionaries and give it our all. It was a super good talk! We are assigned to the Moorepark ward. My companion is from Mapleton, Utah. He has been out for almost a year. He is pretty cool- we like a lot of the same things so its good. He doesn’t like the idea of pulling pranks or jokes. He hears from his family just through email. We don’t have tracting because our mission is a pilot mission for service and the rescue program and so they’re seeing how it works out without tracting. Oh man, I am excited to see where Austin goes on his mission. I think he will go to the Texas mission for the U.S. and for foreign um... England or France -something like that. We will watch conference at either someone’s house or at the stake center. Macy’s already engaged? That’s awesome to hear! Tell her congratulations for me!  Thank you so much and I love you guys. I hope everything is going well!

Love,

Elder Shad Whaley

Shad with his Easter basket and Easter tie!