Monday seems like it was so long ago thinking about the things that I want to write about. First off I wanted to talk about something that effected the rest of my week. On Monday we as a mobile ward group of missionaries always play basketball. We had been playing for about an hour and were about to start another game. Right before we started I was just shooting around and decided to shoot it from the other side of the gym. I missed. As it was bouncing back to me and with it being the world cup i thought that I should try being a little bit of soccer star. I threw my left foot up to kick with with the outside of that foot(just like I would if I was walking right next to someone and could kick them in the butt). I kicked the ball but it didn't go anywhere, it just stayed in that crevice of my foot. As I fell I tried to catch myself with my right foot but couldn't get my foot planted firmly on the ground(just the inside of my foot was). I heard a loud pop and then it didn't feel all that good right after that. My first thought was that I had just dislocated my big toe. I felt my foot as saw that everything was in line so I took my shoe off and it was already bruising and blowing up like balloon. For those of you that know me, I don't really bruise all that well. The worst of all of that bruising came Tuesday night and it was just really stiff and had a gnarly bruise on it the rest of the week. Once I finally went to the doctor on Wednesday and they X-rayed it they told me that i had torn a ligament. Fun stuff huh! It doesn't hurt all that much anymore, just annoying to walk and hurts my knees to walk all weird. I just need to count my blessings because I really should have dislocated my knee!

  We had 3 tradeoffs this week. The first of all of them was our tradeoff with Elder McPherson, one of the assistants. I love that kid, he is super cool and such a good missionary. We were able to meet with the high counselor over missionary work with him there and we taught a really good lesson. I had another one with the Elder Pearson who serves in Atmore. That guy that talked to dad a few months ago in church saying that someone he knew was in the same mission as I was, the missionary he was talking about is Elder Pearson. He is from Panaca. Another cool thing that we found out that we were given our patriarchal blessings the exact same day as each other back in February of 2009. Who would have thought of that huh?! All in all this was a lot better week for us , I'm really pleased with how all of it turned out. Darius is still on our radar but we had to drop his baptismal date for now, he just hasn't seen the gospel as much of a priority right now, he'll come around!

   My mission has been so good for me. It has been weird to be in the beginning of my second year in the mission thinking back to how far i have come from a year ago. I have a firm testimony now that people do not change, the gospel of Jesus Christ changes people. We have had our personalities since before we came to the earth and those will never leave us. I am the same "Landon" that left a year ago personality wise but my goals, values, and attributes have become more firm. I have been changed, conversion is a real thing. If you want to change for the better you can not doing it without it lasting unless it is done through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Love and miss y'all

All is well

Elder Welch

 This week we got a lot accomplished but it felt like it took a lot longer than any other. On Monday last week we headed on up to Atmore Alabama for their district meeting on Tuesday morning. I love being able to be put into a position that I get to be really close to so many missionaries, it is half the fun of being a missionary when you get to be around such a strong friend group. After an awesome meeting that morning I got to go on a tradeoff with Elder Peterson from Colorado here in Mobile. We had a lot of dropped appointment this week but the contacting time we had was pretty good. The highlight of that tradeoff was definitely going to Chipotle for dinner, it's one of the only good Mexican restaurants in the south (Mobile has awesome restaurants). The investigators we have right now are still working on the problems they were last week. We got a headquarter referral last Saturday that I talked about in last weeks email, their names were Lisa and Israel Felix, from South Africa. On Wednesday we followed up with them and they have been doing so awesome! Israel was on mormon.org, reading the BOM, and just researching all he can. He was already pretty spiritual in the beginning so it wasn't very hard to fix that. Darius is experiencing some opposition but we are trying to help him through it. Thursday is probably where most of the frustration started. We set an appointment for our Chevy Cruze to go into a dealership 2 weeks ago just to get examined because of a recall that was sent out. Nothing ended up being wrong with the car but it took them 6 hours to figure that out. Luckily we did our weekly planning there so we stayed pretty effective the whole time waiting.

    As for the spiritual thought this week I wanted to talk about analyzing ourselves. I want everyone to think of all of the covenants they have made with God and every single thing you promised that goes in line with that and become better. In all covenants we make we promise to do missionary work in some way shape or form. Missionary work will only move as fast as the members do. All is well, love and miss y'all.

  I'm sad and grateful all at the same time to say that I have hit my year mark. Sad because half of my mission is gone and boy did it go fast! Grateful because of all that I have been able to experience in this year, it has been amazing! Ill explain more of how that day went down a little later in the email. This week was the last week of the super stressful transfer but boy was it fun the past three weeks! We started our week off by having our zone training! Elder Wright and I had so much to cover and not enough time...even though the meeting is 3 hours long! President and Sister Aukema of the mission presidency came to speak to us and they did a great job talking on unity. Over all it was a good meeting with a lot of insight from all of the Elders in the zone. We had a tradeoff scheduled that day to go to the clear top of our zone with the Toxey Elders. i have been in branches before but i have never seen so many small towns in my life! They literally just have like 10 towns with like 1,000 people or less in them. I praise those elders with all of the work they do with so little people. While we were up there we did some service for this couple(mowing a lawn)...I will reference that later in the letter. I also found out that the guy who came up with the energizer bunny commercials and the happy cows commercials is from that little town of all places too. The things you find out when you are in the south...it's amazing!

   Thursday was my companion's and my year mark. First of all I don't feel any older, second of all it was just an ordinary proselyting day that we had. That evening however is when the party began! We are allowed to have an hour for dinner so at 8 o'clock we went home and invited the other elders in our complex to come eat with us(it was the missionary's 6 month mark that week too). A tradition in missionary life to burn a tie at 6 months, a shirt at a year, pants at 18, and a suit at 2 years. I had a shirt with a stain on it so i couldnt have thought of a better way to get rid of it! Look at the pictures I sent to see how all of that went down, it was really fun.

   We traded off with mobile south that same night and Elder Truman from St. George came with me in north, he's a stud, I can definitely see him as a zone leader in the future. So kind of a tangent but it is needed to tell the next story correctly..It's been blazing hot down here and it has also been humid so mosquitoes have been munching me all up!  When I woke up that next morning my leg itched and i thought it was a mosquito bite so i itched it but i felt what i thought was a scab hanging halfway off. As i looked closer I realized that I had a stinkin tick. I was so annoyed with it but I think it was from that service i talked about up in Toxey. I was working on that thing from 6:30 to 8! Its all good now though.

  On Saturday for some reason was just not my day, i honestly don't remember anything but 1 big thing happening that day that just didn't sit well with me. We had to drop Rock because he has just lost too much steam from him not being able to be baptized. I was so upset, that was the last thing that i wanted to do here in mobile, he was progressing so well! Don't let discouraging things kill you forever!

  All in all it was a great week with a lot of fun things that happened. I am grateful beyond belief for all that has happened in this short year and cannot wait for the next to come. All is well and I'm lovin every second of it!

Elder Welch

  I remember thinking at the beginning of last week that I had had a really hectic week and that this week it was going to slow down. Yes I got a lot done and had a lot of fun doing it but have I slowed down at all? Nope! I am thankful that I am staying busy though. It is always better to have too much to do rather than not enough. On Tuesday we got up and were able to have a personal study (even though it wasn't much of a study because we were so excited about our trip to Tallahassee) and then we set of to pick up the south zone leaders and the Pensacola zone leaders. When we leave mobile we have to get onto a huge bridge to get to Daphne. As we got on that bridge we made it about 50 feet off of the on ramp and then hit a dead stop. Obviously I planned for extra traffic time but this was not the most ideal way to start the trip off. The jam only lasted for about 30 minutes and then we were home free! Since we are the furthest zone from Tallahassee we had about 5 hours of driving before we got there. Once we got there we played a bunch of games with the sister trainers, zone leaders, the assistants, and president and sister smith. We got to have a fire and have a testimony meeting around it as well, it was an amazing experience. The next day we had the Mission leadership council which goes from about 9-3 and there we were able to get a ton of good insight on how we can be not only hard workers but smart workers.

   Once we got back to Mobile we were able to get back to work! Darius Jones has been a huge highlight for us recently. He has been progressing beautifully! His date next month looks like it will go through as long as he keeps on doing the things that he is now. Rock has lost a lot of steam since we told him he cant be baptized right off the back and we got an ear full on Monday about it from him in his lesson. We were able to stay calm and try and help him realize why, today will be a make or break meeting, keep him in your prayers.

   Elder Wright has had quite a week as well. I'm not sure how many of you have seen the "not top 10" on ESPN but he has had many of his not top 10 moments this week and I wanted to share a few of them with you, i have a few pictures to show. First off we cut our hair on Monday and last week was the week he needed to. Us missionaries don't have the most money in the world so we usually cut it ourselves and he has been doing that for the past year. As he was in the bathroom cutting it and i was writing some of your letters I heard a scream from him in the bathroom. I got up to see what the problem was and has i looked at him everything seemed to be just fine..then he turned around. He was trimming around the edges of his neck when i guess a hickup came and the clippers went about half way up his head. I had to help him taper it the best i could but it was still about to the middle of his ears. he was a great sport, it cracked me up. The second thing he did was during a lunch hour. Elder Wright likes to experiment with the things he eats. We had bought a bag of fries and were going to eat some of them but just like any other westerner would do we wanted to eat it with fry sauce!(no they dont have fry sauce here, crazy I know...the don't even know what it is) i was content with the normal mayo and ketchup but he wanted to go further so he started searching out our spices. He saw the cayenne pepper and he went for it. Like most old spices in missionary apartments..he thought it was caked so he put his finger over the lid and attempted to shake it up. Next thing i know the lid goes flying as well as about 1/4 of the cayenne in the bottle. It goes all over the kitchen, up his nose, in his eyes, but luckily not on me. he was a great sport and was trying to chuckle the best that he could but couldn't help but cry. I may not have been the best companion at first because i just started laughing like crazy! I must have been rolling on the floor for a good 2 minutes. I believe the best part of it all was his face. I had to make up for my laughter by cleaning it for him while he was in the shower. He was burning for a few hours after that but is all normal now. the last thing that happened to him was nothing that he did but something that happened to him. we had a tradeoff in Lucedale, Mississippi and elder wright went there and i stayed in our area. When we came back to pick him up his hand was twice the size that it was due to a spider bite(its back to normal now.) all of these things combined just made it not the best week in the world for him.

   I know the church is true, we have prophets today, I know not only missions change lives but also missionary work in general. Love y'all! all is well

Elder Welch

  What a crazy week it has been. Tuesday and Wednesday of this week flew by because we had so much to do before Elder Hadden left on Thursday. We had a full day on Tuesday, not even enough time to do our studies all of the way through! I had to get the travel arrangements done for transfers and south zones which wasn't all that bad. When my life started to get extremely busy is when Thursday came around. I had to get the cars there, make sure everyone else was there, they had all of their stuff and make sure them and their luggage fit. On the way back it was even crazier though because I didn't have Elder Hadden. It was a tough goodbye but that kid will go on to do some amazing things in his life! 

  I met up with Elder Wright who is almost the same as he was in the MTC (personality wise) so i was happy about that, he's a super funny guy. Throughout the last few days we had to come up with a focus that we wanted for the zone this coming transfer. I don't think I've ever talked about it but we have a really really young zone! I am the 3rd oldest one here, a lot of missionaries get trained here. With that being said we felt like it would be good to focus on teaching them a lot of the basics that they will need to be good at in order to be effective on the rest of their missions, I feel like it will all go really well. We had a conference call with the district leaders to talk about the focus and what they want to focus on in the coming transfer and we have really really good leaders here in the zone. As far as our investigators go, a lot of them have either progressed rapidly or just stayed the same which makes our job really easy on knowing who is prepared and who is not. Rock is the one that has been progressing but cant be baptized and ever since he has found out about that he has lost a lot of steam, we have a really good lesson we will teach him today that will hopefully give him a higher vision of what the lord is doing with him. Darius Jones in doing awesome! He is one of the members of the family we set a BCD (baptismal confirmation date) with and really the only one progressing right now, heh as just sky rocketed. His baptismal date is for July 12 and i believe that that will happen! A cool story from this week is that one night as we were planning we decided that we were going to go tract a certain street. As we came to that plan the next day and tracted most of the street we saw two boys playing kick ball. We gave them a picture of Christ and just moved on to more. Without any luck we decided it was time to go back to the car. On our way back one of the boys piped up and yelled..."you can go knock on my grandma's door" as he pointed to it. First off I don't know how we missed that door but we had a great conversation at the door and got a return appointment for this Friday. It shows that even if we make the effort and don't know what exactly to do the lord will make a way for us to accomplish his purposes! Yesterday we had a cottage meeting where we went over to a members home, assigned someone from the ward to give a talk on conversion, and invited as many investigators as the home would allow and it was AWESOME! I recommend it to everyone that owns a home. It changed not only the investigator but it gave the members a glimpse of what missionary work is like. I know the work is true, the more you give the more you get, and he always makes a way to accomplish his will. Much love, all is well!

 Elder Welch