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

   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

 This week has been one of those where my testimony has been strengthened immensely not by just the experiences that I have had but those that others have had around the zone. My favorite things about being a leader in the mission has been not only getting closer to the missionaries I serve but being able to see what miracles happen in their work, especially when it happens to be something I have been prompted to focus on in the district or zone and how the Lord has worked through me. A lot of times as missionaries we don't get to see the "fruit" from the seed that we planted but I feel like I get to see that a lot more in the position i am in and I am so thankful for it.

Why I am saying this is because of the street contacting goal Elder Hadden and I set for the zone last week. We honestly didn't know what was going to happen but knew it would make our work hasten immensely. We received text after text, call after call of these tender mercies that the Lord is putting into our hands in just the first week of striving to talk to everyone, I cant even imagine what will be given to us in 6 weeks time.

    We had a tradeoff this Tuesday with the Atmore elders and I was able to go up to their area with Elder Pearson, a missionary that has been out for about 2 months. We had so much fun and their area is the best for going around and just talking to people, a lot of the south, especially now that it is getting hot are never outside to talk to but that's not the case in their area. Another tradeoff with had was with the Semmes elders. I stayed in Mobile north with elder Lovell (blind missionary) and we had a great day, one miracle. Like I said we don't have many people out in our area to talk to and we had about 30 minutes until our dinner appointment and needed at least 8 more people to talk to to hit our goal. We went back to the car, said a prayer, and I picked a street on the GPS. Once we arrived we turned the corner and there were SO MANY people outside. We not only hit our goal but had a lot of great conversations. We hit our goal and got a new investigator.  Elder Hadden had one amazing lesson with a kind named Darius. He is a 18 year old kid who just had a kid so he was stressing out right at the time we met him. We went over on Thursday and not only was he there but his sister and 2 older brothers. As we taught the Plan of Salvation they loved it and when the girl, autumn prayed she asked if was true and said it would make her happy if it was, i have high expectations for those kids.

   All in all this was a great week for not only me but also the area/zone. i love my mission, i know all us missionaries needs to be inspired, i know that there are angels round about us, and i know that we have greater potential than i think we can even realize. I love y'all, hope all is well.

 What a great week! I would say it is safe to say that this is one of the weeks where i have grown spiritually the most not only on my mission but in my whole life. At the beginning of the week we had our last district meeting of the transfer and although it was a super good district meeting and Elder Miller did an amazing job one of the missionaries that went home last transfer was back down here for his mission trip and came and saw us, I got SO homesick seeing him just 6 weeks later chillin with his parents haha, it only lasted about 30 minutes. On Thursday we had a transfers to take care of which is one of my favorite things to do as a zone leader. We get up early in the morning and pack up all of the people that are getting transferred and go to Pensacola (Fox Run) to drop them off and pick up the new people coming into mobile. Its always so nice to see the people that you've served around but don't get to see all that much.

   This week for some reason we had no tradeoffs so we had a lot more time to work. This week has led to a lot of miracles. My companion, Elder Hadden fasted to find more people because he felt like there were people that he needed to find before he goes home in about a month and the blessings from that were amazing, we had 3 new pretty solid investigators. I also felt prompted to go off of a promise given by Elder Ballard to us that if we street contact at least 10 people everyday we will see miracles in the mission. I set a goal for 5000 contacts by the end of this transfer(6weeks), i have already seen immense miracles come from that. The OYMing goal given by elder Ballard to us has been on my mind a lot the past few days and as i figured out what i needed to do about it was that if we need to see miracles in the mission then we must follow the commitment, elder Ballard has the sealing power just as Nephi (Helaman 10) did and Nephi asked for a famine and a famine came, elder Ballard promised us more teaching /baptisms, it'll happen. I felt a goal for 5000 contacts by the end of this transfer is what we needed to do. Elder Hadden and I OYM'd 14 people on Saturday and it was awesome.   Easter Sunday was one of the best I've ever had. There were great talks, great musical numbers, and a lot of investigators at church...7 between all of us 8 missionaries.

   A I've thought about what I wanted to talked about I reflect on the studies I've hard this past week and a lot of them have to do with the desires we have and how the Lord can and will bless us. There are different levels of faith which I'm not going to go into here but we show our faith by our actions. We know that the Lord blesses us according to our desires and he also will judge us according to them. (alma 41:3) With that being said he will give us things if want for one of two reasons. 1) it will benefit you and others or 2)to teach you a lesson(been there done that!) We get what we go for is a phrase I've been going by a lot lately. Even though I may be showing my faith by my works(James 2:17) the faith is in vain if I don't want to be out and don't want to share the gospel. If you are simply just wasting time then you will not merit the blessings from what you are "going for." much love! all is well

Elder Welch