August 30, 2015

 Hey Everyone,

    So this week was jam packed full of ... different experiences! I'm just going to start off by saying that the mission is so great!!! And it really is a bunch of awkward moments strung together by a bunch of smaller awkward moments! I love it. So awkward moment number one for this week! Elder Gunnell and I were knocking doors all day and we were so dead tired, we kinda started getting a little goofy. We knock on this apartment door and this huge guy answers the door, so just imagine a huge manly Australian guy with a full beard... and he says in a way low voice "what do ya need" and I was waiting for Elder Gunnell to talk and he was waiting for me, and so after a long awkward pause we both at the same time say "we are missionaries" in perfect unison. I don't know why, but we both started to kinda chuckle! and that chuckle turned into a laugh. and then we both lost it! we both started laughin SOOOOOOO HAARRRDDDD for no reason! we couldn't even talk! We probably laughed for thirty seconds and then I tried to apologize, and I just said " I AM SO . . . . HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA". I can not imagine how the guy felt, he just opened his front door to two young men that were giggling uncontrollably hahah! it kinda softened him up though. After a while he started to laugh with us, and then he said he wasn't very interested but he was really nice about it hahah! it was great

    One morning during studies Elder Gunnell went to get his shoes on, and on the way to the room he decided that he wanted to throw a punching glove at me as hard as he could. So I look up from studying the good word to see a punching glove flying in my direction, so I ducked it! but since it missed me, it hit everything on the desks and ended up shattering a huge glass bowl, tipping over some glasses that were full of water all over his electronics, and just made a grand mess! so we tried our best to have companion study while sweeping up glass shards!

     Oh this guy backed in to our car and destroyed the back left light! The trunk doesn't shut unless you slam it but its still drivable! The guy felt so bad! he apologized like four hundred times! oh and another great experience! I was able to eat some raw pickled octopus!!! and the thing that is weird, it was not that bad! I mean I wouldn't buy it for my self but it was actually pretty good!

     So today was a hard week for our investigators! It seemed like everyone lost interest all at once. But I told you about Algie a few weeks ago! The one that has a really hard life and its really hard to teach him because he talks so much! Well we gave him the book of Mormon on tape, and we stopped by randomly. He didn't know we were coming but he had the tapes playing and he said that he had listened to 3 ne 11-16 and mosiah 1-9 a few times each! and he told us that he loved listening to them! and for some reason this time he let us talk, we taught the restoration and then he said that he would pray to see if joseph smith was a true prophet of god! so we are really excited about that!

       I told you about Rebecca last week and this week she invited us back! We planned a time for service and she was super excited! We ended up weeding her whole front yard and if i must say, it looked pretty good! and then at the end we started to work our way into the lesson. and she totally shut us down! it seems like she lost all interest and that she kinda used us for our service. We tried to set a return apt but she just kept saying no! WHY CANT SHE SEE THAT THE GOSPEL WILL HELP HER!!! it made me pretty sad but we gave her a few days and we are going back to try again and start over!

       But I had a really cool spiritual experience on Friday! I was at the mission office waiting for Elder Gunnell to get out of a two hour district leader council. And this random guy just walked in and started talking to a bunch of us elders and said that he served his mission in Melbourne twenty years ago! so we talked about that for a while, and then he said that he was struggling with some really bad neck pain and that he would really like a blessing! he chose me and Elder Niaker to give it to him!  and after he figured out that Elder Niaker had been out for over a year and that I had only been out for a month he wanted me to give the blessing! So I had him start out with a prayer to invite the spirit and right before we put our hands on his head he said "oh elders I have been inactive for 10 years" and then we started, I have no idea what I said but it was a lot more bold than I ever talk, about returning to church, and the spirit was so strong! I can't even explain to you how strong it was, but when we finished he stood up and was crying and then he hugged me said thank you and then basically disappeared! it was so out of the blue but the spirit was so strong. and it strengthened my testimony even more about the power of the priesthood! I thought it was so cool that that man had the faith to just come in out of the blue and ask for a blessing! and so I have been thinking a lot about faith this week! and I read this story about a man that needed to cross a lake so he hired a young boy with a row boat to take him across! While they were going across he noticed that on the end of the left paddle was a large F and on the end of the right was a large W. So the man asked why, the boy answered that F stands for faith and W stands for works, if you only paddle with the Faith one then you go in circles, and the same with the Works paddle! you have to paddle with both faith and works to go in a strait line! same with us humans! we need to use faith and works to get us to where we need to go! i love this gospel so much! it truly does bless the lives of all those that come into contact with it! I am so glad that I get to share it with everyone! I love you all! have a great week 

-from Elder Wiser 

this is what we did on p-day. we went into the forest and just messed around all day hahah! we couldn't find any hiking trails so we just played around on service roads. these pictures are hard to see but we are balancing a really heavy stick in the air!!

this is my first day tracting in the rain!!!! I was soaking wet!! this trench coat I found in the closet, it was so dirty hahah. it was freezing! and it rained so much!! I wish I could show you the videos of the rivers down the roads!!! it rained forever. oh and when the rain ran off my coat onto my white shirt it like stained this nasty yellow color!! it washed out though hahah ewe