Happy Valenties Day Yall!!

I hope yall are having a great week! I am lagging on letters from people lately, what gives? :D I found out earliar this week I will be training again, and also opening up a new area! Whoo!! exciting! I am going to a place called Saraland, Alabama! It is just a few miles west of my first area in Pensacola! I hear its a great place and I will be living with some members. Another missionary in my district Elder Jones from Gilbert, AZ is going to be training he has only been out for 2 transfers now but this kid is a total stud at teaching. He had a great trainer Elder Stutz, he was in the MTC with Elder Levi and I. Awesome new missionaries we are getting. The rising generation is rising above us! :D It has been fun with Elder Levi, we have worked hard and had fun. We saw the Wiggins, our recent converts last night they surprised us with pizza! Delicioius! Earliar that day we went to one of my favorite families the Kerns and had delicious PB&J yumm yummm!!! We went to this place "Wakulla Springs" a national forest, thingy place. It was awesome, we took this boat ride around the spring and got great pictures of some gators, birds, all sorts of things. Really pretty! A squirell let us walk right up to it to so thats why he is in the pictures. We've been helping a member here build a brick patio and when we had somewhat finshed we found a brick that had a root through it and the brick wouldn't come off and looked like a hammer, so we took some goofy pictures with it. Then the picutre of our districts last district meeting. Then a gator I think was the other picutre. Oh and the famous WIggins family last night after we ate pizza! That boy there in the front is going to go on a mission! :D We have some great investigators. One of which is really loving mormon.org, its such a useful site to visit and learn from. I am still loving the Book of Mormon and New Testament as well as Preach My Gospel. I have felt such a thirst and hunger this week to read the scriptures I have wanted to stay up late a few nights this week to study. They are so wonderful and fill us with so much light just like Elder Scott said in the last general conference. "Scriptures are like little packets of light that illuminate our minds." :D I hope yall have a great week! I love yall thank you so much for all ya do!

-Elder West :D

Hey!

I almost forgot to write everyone! I got caught up watching mormon.org videos! They are so great! This has been a fun week, Elder Levi and I are having a great time, hitting some down points with finding people but great things are still happening. We had a delicious dinner the other night, we made peanut butter and honey pancakes! They were so good!! Alot to eat though!! We had a cool experience where God placed us right where he wanted us to be this week, we had no idea either. We decided to visit a girl on the roster that hasn't been to church in a long time and she wasn't home but someone was moving in and the son came up and asked, "When does church start on Sunday?" haha I just smiled, I wasn't sure if he was a member or not after some short conversation I found out they were and they had moved down from Tallahassee, we were there at just the right time cause the grandfather was moving in a bunch of heavy stuff and he had food poisoning. We gave him a blessing which was really neat too. Then on Saturday we were able to help them move the rest in. It was so much fun. They are a great family and I am excited they are here! :D We have alot of work to do, and there are souls waiting for us to find them. We will find them! :D The Lord is really preparing them, we just have to hunt them out. "Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." -Jeremiah 16:16 We are here to find people. Finding is best through members so all yall do your part, but we (the missionaries) will search!

Love yall!
-Elder West

Hey!

I almost forgot to write everyone! I got caught up watching mormon.org videos! They are so great! This has been a fun week, Elder Levi and I are having a great time, hitting some down points with finding people but great things are still happening. We had a delicious dinner the other night, we made peanut butter and honey pancakes! They were so good!! Alot to eat though!! We had a cool experience where God placed us right where he wanted us to be this week, we had no idea either. We decided to visit a girl on the roster that hasn't been to church in a long time and she wasn't home but someone was moving in and the son came up and asked, "When does church start on Sunday?" haha I just smiled, I wasn't sure if he was a member or not after some short conversation I found out they were and they had moved down from Tallahassee, we were there at just the right time cause the grandfather was moving in a bunch of heavy stuff and he had food poisoning. We gave him a blessing which was really neat too. Then on Saturday we were able to help them move the rest in. It was so much fun. They are a great family and I am excited they are here! :D We have alot of work to do, and there are souls waiting for us to find them. We will find them! :D The Lord is really preparing them, we just have to hunt them out. "Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." -Jeremiah 16:16 We are here to find people. Finding is best through members so all yall do your part, but we (the missionaries) will search!

Love yall!
-Elder West

Hey Everybody!

We had an awesome baptism!! Two great people were baptized this Saturday and confirmed this Sunday. The spirit was so strong at the service, it filled the room. They have come a long way and shown ALOT of faith to get to where they are now. The Lord works in mysterious ways! It has been a great week, lots of renewel at the Zone Conference we had, lots of rekindling fire. Our testimonies are what I believe to be our #1 motivator. Why do we go to church? Our testimony of the Atonement, The Sacrament and Obedience. Why do we do missionary work? Our testimony of the Atonement and how the gospel blesses families. Why do we pursue school or marriage? They are both great things, it could be to get a better paying job to make more money, or marriage because we just fall in love. I believe a better motivator is our testimony of the prophet, and also the eternal signifigance of marriage in the temples. I find this personally meaningful because as I "remember" the little things, the basics of the gospel, like prayer, reading the book of Mormon, what happened in the Sacred Grove to the prophet Joseph Smith it rekindles in me a new desire, to achieve, to work, to study and to obey. I have a testimony that my mission president is called of God, I am here to learn from him, and he truly does receive direction from the Lord. I have a testimony of Thomas S. Monson. In our zone conference a missionary going home bore his testimony in a peculiar manner, he grabbed a chalkboard and estimated the deaths of a disaster and drew circles correlating to the number of fatalities, the first being the titanic he estimated I think like a thousand, then pearl harbor, then 9/11 then he made one about smoking(biggest circle) and said, when people ask me what the prophet teaches he replies, " How to be a HERO" He explained that a bigger killer is smoking, and that the prophet is a HERO he has taught not to smoke so we don't die, etc. It was a remarkable way to bear testimony and teach. We have a prophet. He teaches us the will of God. He is a hero! Inviting others to come to know this is the most heroic task we can be engaged in. Following the prophet's(heros) counsel is brave. President Monson taught us to stand alone if called upon to do so. Let's be brave! Stand up, and regardless of how we feel, or what others are doing. Follow the prophet! He is truly under the direction of the greatest HERO of all, Jesus Christ. This email is thanks to Elder Chiddister who will be going home soon. His testimony brought me knowledge and resolve. Thank you each so much for your examples. You are great I love yall! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder West