Elder Landon Welch

I might say this a lot but I really do think this was the fastest week of my mission, it flew by! We had a lot of appointments set up so I think it was attributed a lot to that. On Tuesday I had my final zone training and it was really good, I feel like the zone leaders touched on everything that the zone needs, I wish they would focus more on families though. I was asked to teach about all the work we have been doing up in Troy with members and I felt that went well. Most of that day we tracted around and tried to set up appointments for the rest of the week. Wednesday was our really good day! We had a family history appointment with one of our really good potentials and we got back to the 1400's in about an hour, she was so excited about it, we have an appointment with her this week(unfortunately I will be on exchange) my companions are planning on moving into the doctrine with her this week, pray that she will be accepting!

We have also been meeting with an excommunicated member for a while and found out he had a massive heart attack this week, i think he had 5 100% blockages in his heart...I didn't even know we had that many passages! Thursday was a crazy day, we got soaked! I know that the rest of the USA is under a storm cloud as well but we were POURED on for a good hour while tracting, only 1 person even invited us to come in needless of how dangerous it was to even be outside, the guy that we talked to was a super good guy though, he is moving to Colorado this week so hopefully the concentration of members there gets him! This week was really just a good ole proselyting week. Nancy and Will postponed meeting with us until fall due to how busy they are going to be this summer so that was super sad!

It was sad to hear about Elder Perry's passing and how sudden it was. In one month it went from no pain, to cancer, to terminal, to death. That doesn't happen normally, that illness was guided, he was needed, and if any of us know Elder Perry, he is doin work on the other side! See everyone in 10! love yall. All is well

Elder Welch

Hey hey everyone! I hope that life is treating you all well! This week has been super long but super good! We had dinner with the Ryans, and he went to go talk to a nonmember woman with an overrun yard by vegetation. She was very grateful, and he brought up the gospel with her. She's had lots of simple but precious contact with the church. She would absolutely love the branch to serve her. She's lat 50's, working 60 hours a week to support her son at college, her daughter was brutally murdered, and she's been recently widowed, she is someone that would benefit so much from the gospel. We'll be serving her here in a couple weeks, but we're really hoping to be able to teach her as well. Awesome Brother Ryan did it again! The Lord prepares people to receive His message.

On Tuesday we had exchanges. All of our appointments fell through, but we were able to find some super cool people to teach. We worked with Elder Davidson, who goes home with Elder Welch, he's quiet but he has a strong testimony and is super humble. Wednesday morning we were on the Mike Amos show. Its a super small show that has some pretty boring commentary on sports and stuff haha, but the guy, Mika Amos, is super nice. He gave us a pretty good image on his show, that is until he asked about why he brought up temples, and our different beliefs in the Godhead. Haha, not exactly sure he was intending to be controversial, but he was a nice guy. After the show he fed us lunch, and some preacher guy for a non-denominational church joined us. He is pretty familiar with Latter Day Saints, and was asking some deep questions...but not exactly with the intent to learn. Haha, at least he believes in, and loves God! We met with the Flinns that afternoon.. We talked to him for a while while his wife was talking to a friend. He isn't a member but is a super nice guy. They're an older couple. We learned about their background, he was Catholic, and she was Mormon, but they decided they didn't want to be dis unified so they decided to be Methodist together. He's had a previous baptismal invitation though. He seems like he's a person that is willing to learn, and he has a good relationship with Christ. They were super happy during our meeting, we taught them a lesson on the sacrament, but unfortunately they wouldn't commit to coming. But they have really good potential! Never give up hope! We met with John Dillard, he committed to come to church, but sadly didn't show up. He's progressing little by little though. We were able to meet with Nancy and William that day. We taught them some more words, then she had some pretty funny questions, such as, "Why do Americans put ice in their drinks?" "Why do Americans go out to get the mail with no shoes on?" "Why do Americans run when it's hot outside?" After answering the best we could we talked about the nature of God and Jesus Christ. William is familiar with our faith a little bit, and brought up the temple, and asked if we have more than one wife. Haha, we had to get over those road bumps, but they're still super open to learning, we'll be teaching them with Brother Terry to get over the language breach this week. That night we went out on Elder Quorum visits, and were able to talk to some people and set up some appointments with them. It was pretty beneficial.

Thursday we met with Linda Meyer as usual. Bill Allen was there again, her little old friend. He said that he had read Alma 32, and felt sorrow to repent. To the point that he was crying. He is a super sweet guy, but the thing is, the people there have mental incapablities. We stopped by Patrick afterwards. We talked to him, he was pretty mellow again, but he opened up a little more. He hasn't read the Book of Mormon yet, so we pulled it out and read with him. He's going through a lot right now, so the gospel can really pull him out of his struggles. We went to see the Richards. He was still at work, but we were able to meet with her. She has lost a lot of her functioning because of strokes and heart attacks, but she is such a sweet woman. She listened to some of the Book of Mormon with us. She mentioned how her husband has been regaining his testimony and his motivation towards Godly things. She said that he'll come home from work now and read the Book of Mormon, or ask her to play it on CD. She is excited that he is building his testimony again.

Friday we did service at McClelland's zoo. He has ligers, tigers, bears, lions, parrots, monkeys, pythons, alligators, so many things haha. We were taking apart some of the old cages that he had for his animals. It was some pretty tiring labor, but he sure appreciated it! He introduced us to his tiger Tabitha, it growled at it us, he rescued it from a man that had beaten it all the time. The tiger loves him. All of his animals do. We saw the big giant ligers, they're named Tom and Jerry. Mr. McCllelland talks in an Australlian accent. Haha, he's quite the character, a super nice guy. Brother Ryan did service us with us there. During the week I was biking up a bit of a hill and lagging behind. A black guy rolled down his window, and asked me what it was that we do. I told him briefly, and he was interested, so I snagged his number before I continued. We were actually able to teach him Thursday night. He kind of lives in the ghetto, but he's a nice guy. He's been looking for the truth for quite a while, trying to decide if religion is real. We shared the message of the Restoration with him, his cousin sat in, and was very involved in the discussion. His cousin has felt like all of the churches are going against each other, and that there should be one established truth. The lesson went well, another person came in and sat in on the lesson for a bit. We'll be returning to teach them again.

Saturday we did our service for Brother Ryan. We went to a house he's renovating to sell, and cleaned it up, and prepped the floors to lay panelling. I left a nice footprint in the glue they spread on the floor haha, they scraped it off though. We helped with that for a while. After, we went to go visit a headquarter referral that asked for a Bible. She lives in the projects, (government housing), but she accepted it and said she would meet with us sometime. We went to go see her next door neighbor, Nakita Fenn, who is a less active member. She let us in, and we talked and shared the sacrament message. She expressed how she's really been wanting to come to church, but doesn't have a car, and her elderly mother hasn't been coming lately. We're getting it set up for her to be able to have a ride to church each week now. We mentioned her neighbor and Nakita said she would be willing to let us teach the woman in her(Nakita's) home. We've found some super amazing people this past week.

Sunday we had a good church meeting. President Salmon's son returned from his mission and gave his homecoming talk. It seems as if he's changed a whole lot. None of the people we invited to church came but Ed Stevens. I'm impressed with that guy. The highlight of the week was with Kathy Hannah. We went to visit her, and she invited us in. Her 24 year old daughter was there as well. She asked what we would be talking about with family history. We went right into it getting information needed to do it. While she was giving it to us, she talked to us and we got to know her. She was super nice, and was pretty curious how a missionary runs. She asked how we could already be Elders at such a young age. We really got into a gospel conversation. Her daughter really wants to find out her heritage on her Father's side. They'll be moving somewhere else in Troy this week, and would love help, so we'll be helping with that. Kathy want to involve the rest of her family in our discussions, and would love for us to start sharing gospel messages with her. It was such a tender mercy to come across her. She told us how she is having a hard time believing in the Baptist religion, because they are falling so far away from the truth, and crumbling in their faith. She said she doesn't agree with the Trinity, and knows that Heavenly Father, Christ, and the Holy Ghost are 3 separate beings. She is really wanting to find a way to strengthen and unite her family, which is why we'll be teaching them together. Such a blessing! Biking back from finding some awesome people tracting, I fell off my bike and scraped up my hands, haha, but hey, I'm still doing well! The thing I learned this week is attitude! No matter your circumstances, attitude will determine the success and happiness that you find. Hard things happened this week with me getting hurt and such, but as I pushed through with that positive attitude, that my wonderful companions helped me to have, I was able to receive learning, and able to recognize numerous tender mercies. Take care everyone! Make sure those attitudes are what God wants them to be! We have the ability to grow and learn in ANY trial and experience we go through. I love ya'll God speed and God bless!

Elder Teancum Pusey

This week has been really busy with traveling and service opportunities! I will list some of the main highlights. As far as proselyting goes the time solely consecrated to that was very slim this week but on Wednesday we had a fantastic day doing it! Last week we tracted into an old lady and invited her to to do family history with us. This week we had a follow up with her. The appointment itself was useful for family history but the greatest blessing of it all was she wanted to set up another time when she could have her daughter in laws over so we could help them too! She is also very easy to talk to about religious things so thats a hurdle that won't be hard to jump over. We OYM'd a Chinese lady our 6th day here about Chinese class and as she has come she has expressed interest in wanting to know more about the church as well(she is the one that asked what the purpose of life is in the middle of the class). We finally got to meet with her this week because of the campus being closed and she even brought her husband! The believe in a supreme power but with the way China is they haven't been exposed to that knowledge that much. They are fantastic people and will be a little harder to teach but are teachable, great things are coming for Nancy and Will(American names).

On Friday we had zone conference in Tallahassee, it was really weird being back because it seemed like I had never left. The conference was uplifting and we were given a lot of good direction on what needs to be happening. I think the coolest thing that we saw there was that we as a companionship had come up with some of the things they talked about in zone conference before they were taught to us, The Lord is in charge of the work and if we are willing he will guide us as a group in the same direction.

This past weekend was the special Olympics for the state of Alabama and we got to help out with that all weekend! Thursday we helped set up for the dance afterward, it reminded me of prom, super weird! Saturday morning we helped out with the weight lifting event and that was crazy to see! There were guys that ranged from 25 years old to 75, I don't even think these guys had pain tolerance. There was one kid that was 110 pounds and he benched 225. Thats a ton of weight for that little guy! All in all it was a lot of fun to work this week and to be out doing different things. Next week I will have a lot of good things to talk about again such as, petting a Liger, tiger, lion, holding a python, etc. Stay tuned! love and miss yall. All is well!

Elder Welch

Boy was it good to talk to everyone yesterday, even Romney was able to slip in before she leaves on her mission! This week we have been blessed so much but it has been really really hot! We cover a whole county in this branch and don't have a lot of miles so we don't get to some of the surrounding towns all that much, however, on Tuesday on our way back from district meeting we decided to stop and see the less actives in Brundidge. The first 3 houses we went to were very interesting. The first house had a shattered screen door...all of the glass still on the ground, the second one had a shattered window, and the third one was burnt down completely. Im not sure what happened because we weren't able to talk to any of them but the signs don't look very good for members in that area. On Wednesday we had a fantastic day! We taught two twins we are meeting with before they left for a graduation weekend with their mom and it went great, the only thing their struggling with right now is the language of the Book of Mormon but they will be use to that as they continue to read it.

About 5 weeks ago we were given a member referral from the Whitings(greatest family in the FTM) and have been trying to get a lesson with them since that point and finally got in! With us being in a trio we can go into a home without any other male there so with Natalia Spivey who is 17 we didn't think twice about walking right in when she invited us in. We had gotten through all of the first lesson up to the point of me literally about to quote the first vision and then we hear the door open...at that point is when we realize we are in a house with a teenage girl without a parent and knew there was about to be something that made this lesson eventful . In comes momma bear and the first words she says to us is that she was a little upset we are there without a parent. I completely understand where she is coming from, i can only imagine 3 young men in the house with Sabrina sitting there listening to them. However! We invited her to sit down and then retaught the restoration, she calmed right down and the spirit was so strong! We are trying to set up another appointment now, please pray for them! I have learned over the months of my mission that 2 things happen regularly....1) satan is really good at interrupting at good points of the lesson(Restoration/Book of Mormon) and 2) Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways and lets it all work out in the end.

Thursday we got to read the bible for 15 minutes. In Troy they have a marathon of it were they read it nonstop for 4 days before the national day of prayer, I think it was good for us to get up and for people to see we believe in it too, you'd be surprised at how many people think we don't. We had a lesson that day with Rob Evers, we had been teaching him family history and this week we taught him the Family history to gospel message and then taught him the restoration on another day. He is so prepared! He loved the lesson and then asked for all of the scriptures we used. That night we sent them to him and he said that he and his fraternity brothers had lengthy conversation about it, a whole fraternity of investigators hopefully is coming from this! Rob is home for 2 weeks and then will be back so hopefully he continues to progress! That night we taught a less active member that returned from his mission 7 months before. We taught him 3 Nephi 11 referring to the sacrament(Ill teach it to people later, that chapter and subject may not seem to go together in your minds. The lesson went great and we will be going back next week.

All in all the week has been great, family history is BOOMing here! I am sad to say it ha taken me 23 months to jump on board but it works so well, roots run deep in the south. I was able to teach gospel doctrine class this past Sunday which is a little bit of a difference from what most missionaries are use to, the topic of the lesson was sacrifice. As I thought of the great sacrifices in the scriptures I thought of the story of Abraham. We look at what the Lord asks Abraham to do and can only imagine how hard that could have been. As my thoughts turned to the weekend I had ahead of me I drew a parallel I never had before. I think this story applies in our day to parents, specifically mothers who for a short 2 years have to sacrifice their children to serve and honor the Lord. I believe the blessings of Abraham are some of the greatest this world has ever seen and likewise have been a witness of the blessings of my parents letting me serve a full-time mission, I will forever be grateful for the opportunity. Love and miss yall! all is well

Elder Welch

I've been doing college stuff so this is going to be a little shorter than normal, sorry! This week has seemed as if it has just blown by! It may have something to do with the fact that last week was a 9 day stretch from p-day to p-day. For everyone that is unaware, I will be staying in Troy for my last 6 weeks with Elder Pusey, Im pumped! As for the week, it was a lot less wet than last week so that is a plus right off the bat! I have probably mentioned it a million of times in my previous emails but with campus closing we are slowly trying to get off of it, some how the investigators we have right now just keep pulling us back! On Tuesday I had my final exchange with one of the district members and Elder Pusey took over the area for his first time, he did a great job; I went down to Ozark with Elder Moss. The first people we went to see were basically the stereotypical southern people, i love em! We taught at 20 year old kid and after the lesson his 80 year old, toothless grandma came out and started talking a lot about how the death of others has ruined her faith. The reason Im telling you this story is because of this. When we were about to head out she turned to me and said "you're new." I explained that I was from Troy and was just there for the day. She proceeded to tell me how much she loved the missionaries and as we were walking away she got our attention and said "boy, if I was 40 years younger I would take the new one for a spin." Thats right, I have been on college campuses for 3 months and the first person to hit on me is an 80 year old lady, Ill take what I can get I guess! The funny thing is thats not the only story. On Saturday we were doing service for the city of troy at an art festival. We ran into some of the students we teach english to and it was small talk. Eventually one of the girls that is rather out spoken says this in broken English..."why are you two always together? (looking at me) do you love him?(pointing to elder Pusey)." Trying my hardest not to die laughing we explained who we are. I love Asian people.

This week has been a little bit of ups and downs in a small period of time. Within the week we have had 3 different people bash us but have also given 4 blessings. We have see a lot of amazing things happen, preparing us for the area:

1) Rob- we found rob a few weeks ago through a family history contact. He had an emergency appendectomy so we hadn't seen him for about a week. We finally saw him this week and worked on his family history once more. Last time we only got to about 1900s on both sides but after an hour of research we were blessed to go back to the 1300s. He was blown away! It was a perfect opportunity to extend an invitation to learn more about why we do family history. He accepted and we will be teaching him this week.

2) Megan and Mallory- Elder Pusey contacted Megan on the exchange and she set an appointment up with and him also referred him to her twin sister, she accepted to come to the appointment. We taught them at the end of the week and they have been the most prepared people we are teaching up to this point. One of the great things about them is they don't go home until July so we can teach them this transfer!

3) A less active/recent convert family came to church for the first time in months!(she had her leg amputated) All is well here, until next week. Love yah!

Elder Welch

9 days between p-days makes for a long week! The biggest thing this week was trying to work around all of the southern rain, for some reason it was a down poor all week. Not only was it hard to think of backups but a lot of the appointments we had didn't show and a lot of the time it was because of the rain, the Lord always provides a way though. Tuesday we had district meeting in Ozark and I was really excited for it because the assistants were having exchanges with the zone leaders last week so they got to come to my district meeting, it was really good to see them again. One positive thing about it raining that we saw this week was that people feel bad for us when we tract in the rain so we had some good success with that this past week, a few good potentials for the coming weeks.

I feel like this week was all that different than most weeks so it is hard to write about but some of the major lessons learned this week was. 1) Effort is all that is required, if we have good intentions then the Lord will provide a way to do the things he need and wants us to. He blesses those that work. 2) We have all seen that satan usually tempts us right before and right after a big spiritual event and I have see that the Lord also preps us for times when our faith will be tried. Two specific experiences.

The first one was on Saturday. All of my studies seem like they are about district meetings for some reason and I feel like the district here needs a revamp on their potential so I studied about that, that night however; we just got out of a priesthood session of stake conference and had about an hour before the adult session so we decided to go get something to eat. While we were at the restaurant a random guy bashed us super hard! His main jab was us believing we have divine potential. It wasn't until the next day that I realized i was prepared for that experience.

The next time was when Sunday night. We have an awesome ward mission leader and he had set an appointment up with his friend for us to teach. We started the lesson out and a lot of times I feel like we work the spirit up to be the strongest at the restoration but for some reason the beginning of this lesson was extremely powerful, one of the more powerful ones Ive been in when talking about the first two points of the restoration. Within 5 minutes after that he was on a 40 minute shpeal about who knows what, all he cared about is that we were wrong. I think the only reason the spirit was more strong at the beginning was because we needed that before what was coming. If we're good to the Lord, he'll be good back. Very simple. Love and miss yall

Elder Welch

It doesnt seem like much has happened since last pday so forgive me for the length of the letter. Tuesday we had to get up a little early to get to the stake center on time for my district leader council with the zone leaders and then zone training afterward. I really really enjoyed the counsel that was given in these meetings. Even though 3 different groups taught they all lined up perfectly not only with one another but also with a lot of the impressions I have been given. One of the main focuses we've tried to have since that point has been families and specifically family history and we have really seen the fruits of that effort.

One good example was on Wednesday. We had set a family history appointment up with a super cool guy on campus named Rob. We went in and did family history with him but he didnt really have much information about his family so we rescheduled with him. As we were walking out of the library I dont even remember what we were talking about but I do remember him saying something about a stake down where he was from so it caught us off guard. Come to find out his best friend is on a mission right now and he said that he believes and lives basically everything that we believe he just doesnt know much and is skeptical about the Book of Mormon, he has GREAT potential...and all because he was interested in family history.

Our ward mission leader told us an interesting fact. In a poll that was taken a few years back only 7% of people were drawn to the gospel because of the actual doctrine. Only those who truly understand the bible will understand the need for restored truth. So now what do we do? "Enter in another way"-Alma 8...FAMILY HISTORY!

Thursday we had a crazy experience too. So I OYM'd a girl named Alisha our first week here and the appointment we set up originally fell through and so we didn't pay much attention to her after that. At the beginning of this week we got a text from her saying she wanted to set up another time which never happens so we were pretty pumped. When we met with her on Thursday we were just getting to know her and then she called Elder Pusey a greenie. Only Mormons know that. We asked her her last name and come to find out she was a less active member the whole time....white washing problems! She didn't say anything the first time we talked to her. She is super cool though and we are going to start working with her. Other than that we have been blessed with a lot of appointments and just trying to hasten the work here. I love Troy, I love my companion, and I love how my mission has unfolded. I just pray I am learning all the lessons I am needing to. Love and miss yall! All is well.

Elder Welch

Another week in Troy yields great results. This was one of those weeks that when thinking back on it all of the days runs together, I will try to mention the things that stood out. Troy is a kind of area that we teach a ton of first lessons but anything after that is hard to catch so that has been our main struggle in the work. One such lesson was on Monday. We were teaching a girl named Adrene at the campus and had gone through the entire restoration and was just wrapping up the Book of Mormon and how to know it is true.The next thing we know here comes up one of her "friends," he sits between us and her, and then just starts bashing us...right in the middle of the lesson! I told Elder Pusey to take the investigator off and then I handled the basher..more like occupied him while Elder Pusey finished teaching, we'll see if we see her again.

Embarrassing moment for the week(really for my entire mission). Everyone that has been reading these emails know that we have been doing member lesson to try and find people to teach. We were teaching the Whiting family Sunday and the lesson was the Plan of Salvation. We were to teach it very briefly, do a spirit punch during the atonement, and then relate it to family mission plans. As we were teaching the atonement we wanted to watch the Because of Him from last year and so we were searching it on him iPad, for some reason it was ridiculously hard to find. We thought we had found it so we started playing it but i couldn't see the screen because I was holding the iPad for them. The music was the same and so it had me convinced. About a minute into the video I heard a woman crying on the video and was caught off guard. I quickly turned it around and saw that it wasn't even close to the right one. The members explained it was a woman's testimony of Christ while explaining and showing some experiences from her pregnancy. There was nothing too inappropriate on the video but it definitely didn't give the spirit power punch we were expecting. Super embarrassing. The funny part was this family was the only one in the branch that are pregnant haha.

Monday night we went over to a members house to not only have dinner but to also teach their friends! The lesson went well, they live 20 minutes out of troy so follow up has been hard but we trust the members to follow up with them, thats their job once they are the fellowshipper. Tuesday I taught district meeting and then had a tradeoff with Elder Kimball from California. He has been out about the same time as me so it was nice to talk about the good old days. Funny story for the week came on Thursday. There are a ton of Asians here in troy for some weird reason but we always try to tap into that as a teaching opportunity by teaching english. Its funny to do that in and of itself but there was a specific experience at the end that made it all the better. Back story: We OYM'd a lady named Nancy our first week and invited her to the class and she showed up. One of the members is really good friends with her husband so we were introduced to him too. I found a Chinese plan of salvation pamphlet in our apartment so decided to give it to him to give to Nancy's husband the day before the class(we see him everywhere). Fast forward to the class on Thursday. We taught about things in the airport and at the end we asked the class if there were any questions. Nancy raises her hand and says "What is the purpose of life?" Because of us teaching it at the college we cant really say anything during the class so we tried to say we will talk about it later, they are super solid! Pray for them. Conference was great! The weekend always seems like it goes by way too fast. I came in with multiple questions and came out with answers to guide me. I know we have a prophet on the earth today, thats all that matters. Love and miss yall! All is well!

Elder Welch

Well I cant believe that it has already been a week and a half here in Troy, I feel like we are finally starting to get out of the "acceleration stage" of Troy and are finally starting to get up to speed...it makes things a lot more comfortable for us(:

This week has been full of miracles! Our main focus in coming into this area was to work with the members to find success and so we talked to a few areas in the mission having success with member work and have come up with a series of lessons to teach them...it works Beautifully. Our first lesson with a member family was the Whiting family. The Whiting family has the reputation to be hard on missionaries and have high expectations for them so for this being the first one we were doing was super nerve racking! We taught the restoration focusing on the process of revelation God has for us to be guided(the first vision was a form of revelation, prophets, etc), we ask them how they came to know the Book of Mormon is true(basically how they've used and gained revelation in their live), and then share the quote by Thomas S Monson "Now is the time for members and missionaries to come together to labor in the Lords vineyard, to bring souls unto him." We emphasize revelation again and tell them this quote is telling us members can get that revelation for missionary work too. This is just one of 5 lessons but it has yielded great results...if any of my missionary homies out there want more info on it, hit me up! We have to type the series up for the AP's next week so i can send it to others as well. Monday we went to a members house and they gave us one referral already(we will be teaching them Monday). The Whitings have already given us one and are working on another one, it's just going really well, we've been blessed.

This week we have been in the building up stage from the whitewash and so we have been able to teach the Restoration quite a few times but now its time for us to help them progress. It's easy to teach people on a campus but a lot are noncommittal. I taught my first district meeting this week and I felt like it went really well, I'm focusing on those member lessons.

With being on a campus there are a lot of activities that we do to try and get in contact with people and interest them in the gospel possibly. The highlight of my week probably is every Thursday when we get to teach Chinese students english...there are millions here in little troy, they crack me up! I want to teach one super bad! Other than that a lot of this week was trying to get a committed teaching pool and contacting! Im pumped for general conference. all is well, love and miss yall #BecauseHeLives

Elder Welch

For those of you that dont know, I was transferred this week! I am not serving at the tippy top of our the mission in a small place called Troy, Alabama and training Elder Pusey (Pue-z). He is from Toelle, Utah and went to BYU-I for a semester before coming out. This week was crazy all around because first of all on monday we had key indicators and that morning we had to get all of the logistics figured out. There was black boxes put into our cars last transfer and when the guy from salt lake came to put those in he said that we were going to be losing 18 cars from the mission, we had to figure out how to get all of those cars in during the transfer but it worked, my companions figured it out once I was gone, theyre studs. Another thing that was good about monday was that our district won the dodgeball tournament again!

Tuesday we had a good district meeting! Elder Hintze is the best district leader I've had on my mission and I am patterning a lot of what I want to do in district meeting after what he did. We picked up the new missionaries that day and it was fun to know who my companion was going to be and watch him that day before it was announced on Wednesday. On Wednesday was a very emotional day for me. I am not one for change, I think I get attached to things pretty easily, and I knew I was leaving behind something I had worked on so hard for the past 9 months. The bright side of leaving was that I got a hug from Sister Smith! That is something that no one usually gets until they are going on the airplane, it was the closest thing I got to a momma hug in a long time.

I was really unsure what Troy was going to be like but the best thing I can describe it as as far as size goes is about the size of Wells. The bright side to it is that there is Troy University which increases the size about 30%. We have done a lot of planning the past couple of days because we need to get a direction before we work and a lot of it is now starting to come together. Our plan for this area is to work the campus in the day time and during the night to have at least 1 member lesson a day about missionary work. We really want to involved the members in the community. We can baptize all we want on campus but it wont give support to the branch because they travel back home after they are done with their schooling. We think its a good combination. I love everyone, I love missionary work. Expect miracles! All is well! Love yall

Elder Welch

What a great week! I am going to the beach today because it is one of the Sister's in my district birthday, party time! Today I don't need to really talk about the specifics of the week but I just want to highlight some of the main tender mercies. Its been board week so we have been busy with that, it was also spring break for FSU and FAMU (FSU even kicked all of the students out of the dorms so there wouldn't be any partying, there was no one on that campus!) so we were a little worried that the work was going to be really slow but its been amazing how the Lord has provided.

Tender Mercy #1- We were walking around on FAMU one day trying to find anyone on campus and we came across one dude. His name is Sekou Muhammad...guess what religion he is!? It doesnt matter though. We shared a family history card with him and he was down. Not a huge miracle that we saw him and got a return appointment with him but it leads up to our second tender mercy.

Tender Mercy #2- We were at the family history appointment with Sekou and the library was about to close. He said we could go to a different room and continue but because of our busy schedule that day we ended the appointment with him even though he wanted to continue. As we walked out of the library in the architecture building we said our goodbyes to him and started heading for the back door (the same door we came in from). As we approached the door we all stopped and thought that it might be smarter to go out the front door to save some time, especially since we were in a rush!

When we went out of the door we were walking up to the sidewalk and crossed paths with a guy. His name was Clayton and he talked to him for maybe 15 seconds explaining the family search website, gave him the card, and then said goodbye. About 30 seconds later when we were about to get into our car he yelled back to us and asked us if we were affiliated with the "Mormon church." We all turned on a dime and concurred! He talked about how he is from Brazil and was wanting to get in contact with missionaries to learn more about the church, he even tried to call the 3rd ward bishop but no luck. We set up an appointment with him.

The amazing thing about this story is the chain of events that led us to this man.

1) We scheduled the Family history appointment with Sekou at the perfect time and in the perfect place..and might I add, on a week where no one else was there!

2) Even though Sekou wanted to continue and was extremely interested, we ended up leaving a little early.

3) We were prompted to go out a different door.

4) We were directed to Clayton at a perfect time. (We were in such a hurry we wouldn't have went out of our way to talk to him.)

5) We only have one side of the story of how we were led to him, we are sure how he was led to us was just as inspired. There is no doubt in our mind that his ancestors led us to him and prepared his mind to accept the message.

Tender Mercy #3- The lesson we taught Clayton was amazing! We found out that he is from a small country town in Brazil where he said he never sees missionaries and that he was a foreign exchange student for this year and goes home in June. We taught him the restoration and boy was it powerful, probably top 10 of my mission on the scale of spiritual. He is so good at keeping his commitments...to be continued!

There are so many tender mercies that are right under our nose, if we dont look at the big picture, with an eternal perspective, we wont see them! The secret to happiness is gratitude! Love and miss yall!

Elder Welch

What a blessing this week has been! I always feel like I have more lessons learned that I do stories to tell on p-days so please forgive me if I can never express myself the way I want to. The Lord is good to His missionaries. On Sunday we had stake conference and we were privileged to have a member of the seventy be in attendance. I had been praying for answers and confirmations the week of stake conference and I love how the Lord answers them through leaders. More than anything else, I gained motivation and more of a desire to work throughout the week because of that.

On Monday it was another busy day in the office and then a long drive over to Crestview to tradeoff with the Mobile zone leaders. Elder Riddle, Elder Palau, and myself stayed here in Tallahassee and worked the campuses. Elder Riddle is currently serving in a super small town so the pace of campus pumped him up, I love my area. We taught Celine and since she is leaving for Utah for the next few weeks it could have potentially been the last time I will see her on the mission. It's no fun leaving converts. Great lesson though! Wednesday was a cool day for a couple of reasons 1) Sabrina's birthday 2) MLC and 3) anniversary when I was assigned as a zone leader, it's crazy how fast a year goes by. We were asked to teach at MLC on Monday and so you can imagine the time we had to prepare for that with the tradeoff in the middle. We had some extra help and it went well. On Thursday we had another tradeoff, this time it was with the Fort Walton zone leaders. Elder MacLay, Elder Sorenson, and Myself held down home base here in Tally. We had a lot of appointments but they unfortunately fell through so we contacted a lot on FAMU. Normally people on FAMU are super nice and open to talk but for some reason Satan was pushing against us extra hard. We were bashed a couple of times, not many people out, it randomly started raining. We knew that there was going to be something good coming up though, Satan doesn't push extra hard for no reason. Friday we had one more experience when he was pushing back. We had an appointment fall through but saw a guy that we started talking to and ended up being able to teach. He had some concerns but the main thing that we saw was that when we were talking about 2 important things people starting coming out of the house or someone called him or some commotion happened that drew his attention away. The first time was when we were reciting the first vision, the second time is when we were teaching about the Book of Mormon, and the last time was when we were throwing down on anti doctrine! When the Lord hastens his work, so does Satan. When the day starting to draw to a close we had one last appointment with probably one of our most solid investigators so far, her name is Jackie. We have taught her the restoration super simply prior to this so we wanted to review it with her. It was such a powerful lesson. She talked about how she had been planning on getting baptized when she went home from break but now was second guessing it because of what she is being taught and what she is feeling. I would probably say it was in my top 10 most spiritual lessons.

My overall tender mercy for this week has been something that has been a mission long endeavor, I would possibly say even before that. Story time! About 13 months ago when I was a district leader serving in Mobile I was on a tradeoff with a missionary that was going to be going home a week later. When we were laying in bed he was discussing some of his plans. Whenever missionaries start talking about it I get a large amount of anxiety that comes along with the conversation. I remember the next morning getting on my knees and asking for help to be able to focus and for things to work out in time so that I can dedicate myself. Fast forward 5 months and I am serving in tally. Missionaries always talk about where they are going to school and try to recruit other missionaries but Elder Musgrave, who I only served with for 2 weeks said I should apply to BYU and that time it stuck with me. Eventually I decided to take action but realized I didn't have a good enough ACT score to get in, so that was my first step. Once I took the ACT I received my score back which was the EXACT SAME score as last time. So a little frustrated and upset and with some counsel from my good ole ma I still followed what I felt and still applied to BYU. This past weekend I get an email back from BYU saying that I hadn't been accepted to attend school there. I hope everyone can visualize my faith being crushed with each one of these blows. I was frustrated not only that I didn't get in but that I felt like I had wasted so much time. Why did I feel like I needed to do all of that stuff? Since I knew that BYU wasn't an option anymore I went back and emailed my counselor from SUU to start getting the ball rolling on things I need to do. Then I got the answer of why all of this even needed to happen in the first place. I get an email back from him saying that he was excited about my decision and due to me retaking my ACT my scholarship had been reconsidered and it now didn't cover half of my tuition but now covered quite a bit more. Nothing is a coincidence, all of those steps were necessary. The blessing that I was given here was great but I just love looking at God being so aware. The Lesson learned like I said at the beginning meant so much more than the experience itself. Love and miss yall. All is well!

Elder Welch

Hello Everybody!

This week has been so good! On Monday it was a bit hectic because President needed to change transfers up a few times so that means we were busy calling people and informing them and also organizing the logistics of the whole event. Later that p-day we also had a bi-zone dodgeball tournament, we came into it being 2 time champions but this time we lost it in the finals...sad day. The plus side of all of this is that our district now will destroy in the tournament, I'll mention that later on in the letter.

On Tuesday we had a really good district meeting and President threw down in the mission wide conference call about consecration. He listed like 5 things he wanted missionaries to be or have as attributes and then asked for 50 elders and 50 sisters to email him this week to volunteer. I know if the mission takes this seriously that the work here is going to BOOM. The rest of that day we were preparing for the new missionaries to fly in. We were lucky that the flight got delayed about 30 minutes, it helped us out a lot. Transfer time has to be one of my favorite parts about this assignment. We get to see the new missionaries fresh off the plane and spend that whole day with them and train them. The rest of the week we get to spend with the missionaries that have been here for a while.

Wednesday we had a fantastic meeting with the missionaries that are training the new ones. Even though we were the ones that were teaching, I learned so much for the people in the room, we had a lot of fun role plays too. We got a new companion. He actually goes home at about the same time as me, he is a spanish missionary so they go home at weird times. He was a zone leader in the Fort Walton zone for the past 9 months and he made that place boom so we thought we'd see what he could do for the mission. His name is Elder Palau. The rest of the week we have been trying to figure out what we are doing on campus and get a lot of the information on the church records all squared away. We had a little bit of time to go on campus yesterday and there was SO MANY PEOPLE. I was quite overwhelmed. We not only cover FSU now but we also cover FAMU. We got to walk around FAMU for about an hour and we saw two black guys singing and holy smokes they could throw down! I have never heard anything like it in my life. It was one of those situations where you don't want to mention that you sang in choir too because you don't want them to make you sing haha. It's been a great week full of blessings. i hope all is well at home. Love and miss y'all!

Elder Welch

This week was packed with a lot of different activities that have ranged all across the mission. Monday we were supposed to go to Dothan to help some sisters move out of their apartment but that ended up getting cancelled so we were left Monday evening with an empty schedule. We ended up staying busy in the office though so no problems there.

Tuesday we had district meeting and our district leader was super sick the whole meeting! An hour into the meeting he had to sit down and I taught the rest of it for him. I love training missionaries, we don't get as much an opportunity to do it as zone leaders or district leaders. We had to help a senior couple the rest of that day with unpacking the things they acquired when they moved people.

Wednesday was a special day for me but also kind of a tough one. We travelled to Fox Run (where I started my mission) to help the elders move, yes one of the two companionships in that area aren't going to be there anymore. The bright side of the day was that I got to go on a tradeoff with the elders for that day. I didn't get to see a ton of people that I taught but I did get to see Cody Cousin, someone that I baptized when I was there, He is doing great and I saw the ward mission leader and it was just a good reunion to be back in fox run all together.

Thursday we travelled back to Tallahassee all day. Friday we had to do a lot of our weekly duties that we hadn't gotten taken care of yet so we weekly planned, unloaded our trailer, went to the dumps for the first time on my mission, they are TOTALLY different in the south. Saturday was a great day. With not having many people to teach we contacted for about 3-4 hours. I honestly wasn't as use to it as I was in Mobile so I was kind of rusty and I was super intimidated! We had ward conference Sunday and Riley was confirmed, great meeting! When we contacted on Sunday I felt a lot more confident. Sorry for the short email but know I love and miss everyone, all is well!

Elder Welch

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