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!