One more week has come and gone! This week is transfers week and I am staying in Mobile for another transfer but Elder Hadden will be leaving for the last 40 days of his mission and go to Tallahassee. I love Elder Milne. I am getting Elder Joshua Wright....my district leader in the MTC, I really wanted to serve with that kid and now we will be hitting our year marks together, I am really excited about this next transfer! This past week was pretty good. Monday we had a really really hard lesson. We were teaching Rock and for the past few weeks we have been teaching him the gospel of Jesus Christ but we are teaching it principle by principle. This last week was Baptism. The lesson was fantastic and he said he was willing to make the change if his wife was willing to and then we had to drop a bomb on him...he can't get baptized for a few more years because of some problems he has had in the past so we had to tell him that. Luckily president smith is working with us to get it approved via first presidency. Really really hard lesson for me to swallow! After that lesson we went up to Grovehill to spend the night and then go to their district meeting in the morning. I had an amazing tradeoff there with Elder Douglas, I have some gorgeous pictures from that neck of the woods but will have to send it next week, i would buy that property up there any day...the people are little crazy but i love them! We had a tradeoff with Monroe A on Thursday and oh man was it crazy! We left about 10 minutes late and when we were about 20 miles out of Mobile we came to a dead stop! We were stopped for about 2 hours and found out later that 2 semi trucks crashed blew up and that 1 died. We were so lucky that we didn't get caught in all of that. We did a church tour with the jones family which went well but their commitment level always changes, the one who is on line for where they should be is Darius, the first kid we talked to. I love and miss y'all, wish i could tell you more but i have to go help Elder Hadden pack!

Elder Welch

   Weeks just keep going by and by faster and faster and just when I get to the moment of when I don't think they can go any faster..they do. Man I love my mission and will miss it when it is gone. We have seen a lot of great miracles come this week which I will be able to elaborate more on as I continue the letter. 

 On Tuesday we got to go to our district meeting in Mobile and hear Elder Miller talk about what we can do to have our baptismal dates progress toward that day. The cool thing about baptismal dates is that for the mobile district who had 4 BCD's two weeks ago, as we did the numbers this week and they came in we saw that just that district had 11 BCDs for this week, 4 of them being ours that I will talk about later. I had a tradeoff with Elder Mclaws, a new missionary in the mission in Mobile as well that day and the first thing that we did was go to a family history event that the stake was holding on for nonmembers. I was able to help this older lady who had never done work before. I helped her put her name in and her parents, the next thing that we know I've found a link to someone else who did her line already and it went back to 200AD. In a matter of 1.5 hours she went from nothing to 200AD. The spirit of Elijah is real!

 We got a return appointment with her. We had two other tradeoffs this week, one with Monroe and another with the east elders. One of my favorite things to do as a leader is to be able to be so much closer to the missionaries than I would as someone without an assignment. About the 4 baptismal dates Elder Hadden and I recieved...so you all know about the OYMing goal that has been set for the zone and this is actually a fruit from that, one of the first people we OYM'd actually. Alma Jones, Darius Jones, Victor Smith, and Dominique Smith (same family, different names). Elder Hadden had a lesson with them Friday while I was up in Monroe and extended to the 3 boys the date. Last night we went over to follow up on the commitments we left and saw the mom, Alma (great Mormon name, I know). She expressed to us some problems she was having and we offered her a blessing. Elder Hadden gave her a beautiful blessing and afterwards I testified of the authority and Elder Hadden extended a BCD to her and she accepted. We had a great week for the zone too! Just a few highlights of many! The zone hit about 30% of the OYMing goal for the transfer but this week in particular was great as far as those numbers go. We went from 9 BCDs last week to 14 this week (we really need to work on getting them to church these next few weeks and making sure they are progressing). We have just seen how Ether 12:6 has come to pass and Elder Ballards promise for OYMing people. IT WORKS! Family History. IT WORKS. I feel like everything I've been trained on thus far is just coming together perfectly and I am seeing the blessings from it. Awesome week! Love and miss y'all. All is well!

  Elder Welch

   I find it a great blessing that exactly 11 months ago I gave my mom and dad their last hug for 2 years and yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to them over skype, what a blessing technology is! This week was very busy for us as zone leaders. On Tuesday we had zone conference with the Mobile stake (50 missionaries) with the assistants and President and Sister Smith. It is always great to see them and hear what president expects of us. One thing that was different from the rest of the zone conferences I have been to is that we usually get training on how we can teach and work in different ways but this one was almost all about basically "cleansing the inner vessel and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also." Elder Hadden and I talked about Ether 12:6 and how we need to have faith tried before we can obtain miracles. The next day we had our tradeoff with Elder McPherson, one of the APs. That kid is so cool, I couldn't say enough good about him. We had our interviews and service that same day so we didn't really get to proselyte much with him, still a blast though, I learned a lot from him. There has been a really really big push for family history in the mission for the past 6 months or so and since mine had been done pretty well there was a wall at my German lines and this week I was able to break that down and go back farther, it was so nice, a stress reliever for sure! Investigators are all about the same, progression has been a huge problem for us recently. Rock however did bare his testimony to us about the prophet joseph smith and the Book of Mormon, he cant get baptized but he is definitely on the road to conversion!

     As far as a spiritual thought goes I've been studying about knowledge/light and how important it is. I know that "we cannot be saved in ignorance"(DC 131:6) but as i studied more i found that in the bible dictionary under knowledge it says that "we only progress as fast as we obtain knowledge"...that's here and after this life!  Christ always refers to Himself as the light of the world and the truth(DC 88:6), He also gives us that title in a few places in the scriptures(matt. 5:14 for example). The more knowledge we obtain the more we will radiate with light. All of this put together I have realized how important study is. As i sat and did the math for how much study we do on just our mission it ends up being 1460 hours...a doctorate degree is 1440...we can become "doctors of the scriptures" in the worlds eyes by the end of our mission if we use the time effectively. An important part of the church is "remembering" and a great deal of power as His servants is remembering the knowledge that we've already received. knowledge is power. Love and miss y'all

All is well

Elder Welch

  What a hectic week, it definitely has thrown everyone off of their game. We knew a huge storm was coming in last Monday but didn’t know the magnitude of it...nothing happened Monday but Monday night it was CRAZY!  It rained 26” in 24 hours. The thunder and lightning literally sounded and looked like a constant war zone, the sky was always lit up. The next day Elder Hadden and I were getting ready to leave for MLC (mission leadership counsel) in Tallahassee when we received a text from the assistants. MLC had been cancelled for that day and that there was going to be an emergency conference call in an hour. As we conferenced in we had to report to President Smith on how everyone handled the storm.  He told us that that was just mother natures "warm up." He asked us to stay inside for the day, that evening we had a terrible storm. Then on Wednesday we thought that we would be free to work but because there were sink holes that swallowed trucks and one in Pensacola that was 40' deep, we had to stay in that day as well.  Tornados were around us but none hit us.   I guess the worst storm in this part of the nation for years, we were on lockdown for 2 days straight...so boring! As a missionary all you really have to do is just sit there and read what you want but you can only read so much in one sitting. Luckily Elder Hadden and I had 2 other sets of Elders come over so we wouldn’t go completely insane.....all in all we were able to remain safe. “The Lord has always testified through the elements"-President Smith. With two full days of not being able to work I was a little worried about our goals and actuals but they were actually really good! We got to teach a lot of people and things look like we have great things coming for us in the future. While I was on a tradeoff with Elder Clayton up in Saraland (which was a blast) Elder Hadden had an awesome lesson with a family.  I haven’t met them yet so I can’t really elaborate much on that but more will be coming soon! 

      I wanted to talk to y'all about the impressions I had yesterday while sitting in Elders Quorum. We were talking about the women in our lives and what influences they had on us. Of course my Ma came into my mind and the role she played in my life. I thought of the great women in the scriptures and the like attributes they had with my mom. I have talked previously of the great examples my parents were to me a few months ago with the example of the Stripling warriors. Fathers are great and all but we get to call on mother’s day for a reason. Sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, missionaries, and even the great prophets wouldn’t be who they are without a great influence of their mom. I honestly couldn’t stop myself from tearing up a bit in church yesterday and it’s been a long time since I have done that on my mission. I love you Ma! I’m thankful for all you’ve done, and for all you will continue to do.

Love and Miss Y’all

Elder Welch