Elder Nathan Walker - Utah Logan Mission - 179 East 800 North - Logan, UT 84321
nathan.walker@myldsmail.net

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Week 25 - Christmas Week

Hey everyone!

This week was great.  Last Tuesday, we found a new investigator named Norman Reyez.  He is from Las Vegas and he is impressed with how we Mormons act and how safe his kids are now.  He has had 3 lessons so far and is working toward baptism.  He is great and asks really good questions.  So we're super excited.  Hopefully I get to stay here one more transfer.

I'm excited to talk to a lot of you on Christmas.  I hope you all are doing well.  I'm sorry I can't write a bunch, today is really busy.

Anyway, love you all!  Have a great week!

Elder Walker

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Week 24 - I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

Hey everyone, this week was pretty good.  We had a good amount of lessons and we were able to meet with both Steve and Valentina on Sunday.  We went over the baptismal interview questions with Steve, to see where he is at.  His only hang-ups are that he does not fully know yet if the prophets are true prophets, and he has a bit of a problem with the coffee and tea part of the Word of Wisdom.  We explained that getting a testimony of living prophets is essential, and that once that testimony is established then any of the issues with things like the Word of Wisdom resolve themselves.  We told him we would start helping him focus on knowing if the prophets are truly called of God and we challenged him to start earnestly praying for a knowledge of the truth.  He agreed.  So, we'll keep praying, I hope he gets his answer soon.  He also figured out I play the violin and he told me that I need to bring it next time so we can play together.

We also have a lot of Less-Actives that we are teaching, and we just picked up two more who want to be taught.  They are all great, I just wish we could find more non-members, but we are looking!

Anyway, cool service project this week!  We were recruited by Elder Dewey to help him slaughter 13 chickens to give to some needy Hispanic families.  So Elder Fortuna sat it out and took a nap instead, but I invited Elder Wheeler and Elder Kuck from the District to come help out.  It was an interesting experience.  After we killed the chickens, we had to pluck them and gut them.  It was a pretty dirty job, but is was for a good cause.  The families really appreciated it.

I was thinking about what to share with y'all this week and Alma 29:1-3 came to mind.
1 O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!

2 Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.

3 But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.

Often times we wish that we could have some awesome power to go and convert people.  We wish we could be Angels, just as Alma wished.  What we need to realize though, is that the Lord has given us our own spiritual gifts, that we can use to share the gospel with our friends and family who do not have the gospel.  We need to be content with what we have been allotted, and not wish for more, avoiding the gifts we have been given because we feel we could use more.

I wish to invite you all to figure out your spiritual gifts, and then use them to increase the faith of those around you.  I promise that as you do this, and as you share the gospel with others, you will become someone's angel.

I love you all and I hope you have a great week.  You are all in my prayers.

Godspeed,
Elder Walker

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Week 23 - The Living Christmas Card

Our investigators came to church and we finally got a translator so we can teach Valentina.  She's such a sweet lady.  She grew up in Communist Russia and she ranted for a really long time about how awful it was. She loves Christ though and she told us that she would read the pamphlets that we got her in Russian.  So we really hope she likes what she reads.  We are going to start meeting with her regularly on Sundays and will answer any questions that she has from reading the pamphlets.  I really hope she accepts the gospel message.  She prays every night that God will just take her home and I am hoping that the gospel will show her that she still has a purpose here is life.

We are still trying to get Steve to recognize the spirit and it is a slow process, but, we hit hard on the spirit and it is a slow process, but, we hit hard on the spirit every week.  He seemed super happy when he came to church this week, but he left right after sacrament meeting.  We might do the living Christmas card with him.  The living Christmas Card is where we get names from the ward council of people to visit.  We then show up in the evening and sing silent night.  Then we ask if we can take 10 minutes to read the Christmas story with the family and share a Christmas message.  Then we invite them to Church and leave a blessing on the home.  Short and sweet.  It's pretty fun.

Anyway, I'm going to cut things short.  Love you all!  I hope you have a great week!

Elder Walker

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Week 22 - Thanksgiving

Hey everyone, sorry that I didn't email last week.  I had a nice big draft all typed out but when I went to send it at a Church Building, it was completely blank, so I kinda gave up.  BUT!  I am writing this week, so hopefully I am forgiven.

Thanksgiving was a really slow week.  We had quite a few lessons planned, and all of them except for our Sunday lesson got canceled.  That was kind of disappointing, but we had a lot of fun with members (they felt bad for us walking in the snow).  For Thanksgiving dinner, we went to the Salisbury home.  They invited us over and at first they were planning on having us from 2 to 7, but we quickly explained that we had another family that wanted us to come over for dessert.  The Salisbury's were a great family, all of their kids were adopted Japanese kids (he went to Japan on his mission), they were super funny.  Sister Salisbury will talk and talk...so we just chatted for a while and then our dessert family called and they were like "When are you coming over???"  It was the Watteyne's, the Bishop's family and they are basically my surrogate family in the Green Canyon Stake (they already call me son, sorry Mom).  OH!  that reminds me!  I didn't get to tell you about my son because last week's email got deleted.  His name is Elder Fortuna, he is 21 years old, he likes to write, and he is engaged to a girl on a mission in Ecuador.  He is a great kid.  He is awesome, and he will be a great missionary.

Anyway!  Back to the Watteynes.  They are fantastic.  They have so many kids and they always insist on playing games when we come over (so of course I had to bring my box of games).  Anyway, they helped me prank Elder Fortuna on his first day.  They pretended to be less-active and anti-mormon.  It was awesome because when they told us we couldn't come in I just made an excuse and then pushed open the door, which caused Sister Watteyne to almost give it away by laughing and Elder Fortuna to be completely shell shocked.  So we let it go on for a while, until Bishop came home, which kinda gave it away.  I knew Elder Fortuna could take it though, so he kinda just laughed it off.  So yeah, we went for Thanksgiving and they wanted to play werewolf, so I narrated and they played.  Then they taught us a campfire game they called "Big Buddha" it was actually pretty fun, but I'm not even going to attept to describe it.  Then I taught them timeline and Coup while we ate pie.  They are now obsessed with Coup and that game is now all that they want for Christmas.  So yeah, it was a good Thanksgiving.

The day before, I got selected to go to a special meeting with someone from the Mission Department in Salt Lake, Brother Donaldson.  We discussed getting back to the basics and putting an emphasis on proper planning.  It went from 9am to 4pm and it was soooo long.  However, we were all spiritually uplifted and it was a great experience.  It is going to revolutionize the mission.

On Sunday, we got to speak in Bishop Watteyne's ward.  He had us speak on Sabbath Day observance.  So I talked about how we all make covenants to live the law of Consecration and how we should be willing to consecrate the Sabbath and set it apart from other days.  I hope someone got something out of it.  Bishop said it was awesome.

So yeah, other than that, we've just been trying really hard to find new investigators.  I did a baptismal interview last night for the Logan East Elders and that went well.  Hopefully we don't get so many cancelations this week

Anyway, love you all, I hope you all have a good week.

Elder Walker