Week 3 - First Companion - Elder Wible

Hey everyone!  Just wanted to let you all know that the mission is going great, I'm loving it so far. I'm serving in the Smithfield South Stake, as well as the Smithfield YSA, so me and my companion cover 17 wards.  As a result, the work is going great here, we already have two baptismal commitments set and we are expecting to get 3 or 4 more this week.

So far, we haven't had a single dinner appointment, our Ward mission leaders are dropping the ball. But we survive, many of the local restaurants around here serve missionaries for free, or members sitting at other tables will pick up the bill.  Benefits of serving in Utah I guess.

I've also found out that missionaries are treated like rock stars here.  You just walk down the street and almost every car will honk at you and the family inside will wave excitedly.  We get mobbed by groups of kids all the time and so we teach them tricks and ask them which of their friends still need to be baptized.  They give great referrals.  My first day here I was tracting at USU with a temporary companion and we got mobbed by a group of EFY girls who said it was their goal to take a selfie with the Elders, so we stopped and took a few.

On Saturday we got to be a part of the parade in Hyde Park.  Everyone in Cache Valley comes and lines the street while we missionaries run down the sides of the street in the pouring rain, going crazy and high fiving everyone.  I'm pretty sure I managed to get the whole town, hopefully nobody video taped me, I was very energetic.  But yeah, it was awesome, everyone loves us here, it takes a while to get used to it.

So my trainer is pretty awesome, or should I say crazy.   He has a ton of energy and he is hilarious. His name is Elder Wible, like the Bible, and he is my father.  Surprise!  He's also from Oregon!  He lives in Portland, in West Lynn.  Anyway, we have a lot of fun, and we've had a lot of good luck so far.  He had someone videotape my birth, but I think it's too long to send in an email.  We got the Spanish missionaries truck because they were putting way too many miles on it, so a few of the pictures I send are selfies of "Linda" our Nissan Frontier.  I think today we're going to look for a big stuffed animal to Velcro to the bed.  We also blast Disney music while we drive, and rock versions of Primary songs and we sing along, quite loudly...

But anyway, I miss you all, I hope everything is going great back home. I'll attach some photos real quick.  I took some more on my camera that I'll send to my mom and she can put it on her blog thingy.

Love,
Elder Walker

P.S.  I almost forgot!  I went to a Muslim barbecue on Saturday as well.  It was awesome!  Quite a few interesting discussions though.

This is a Hippopotamus Sharpe, I've never seen one before.