A Journey's End

 Our story begins two summers and three winters ago.

Tracting with Christmas lights. 

Where a young man sought out to serve God. 

He had come a long way in his studies, and his training but he still had much to learn before he could take on the northern Bible belt.

In preparation for his adventure he sought out the best training at the missionary hold or MTC. Many days he toiled with endless amounts of meetings, trainings and studies. He even spent his first Christmas there, surrounded by fellow warriors and friends sworn to a similar cause.

A fine day of service. 

After three weeks of rigorous training he was sent to the northern region of Idaho to the city of Post Falls. There he learned disappointment, sorrow and grief, fitting for his first proving grounds. If it hadn't been for his struggles he would not found his strength, he would not have learned hope, love and that his God was with him.

From there on he toiled, bringing the good news to all with ears that hear, and hear a little and there a little he made a difference. 

There were many who served with him as friends and companions. Together they fought for the souls all who lived near them, bringing the Hope of God's Light wherever there were those in need.

Many times this young man traveled this country, going from town to town, city to city. Each having their own set of mountains to scale, rivers to cross, lands to settle and challenges to face. Each with a different lesson to learn and with many contenders in the work.

Perhaps the most mold loaf of bread 

I have every seen in my life baked on October 25th

Throughout his journey he brought many witness of that merciful God that sent him, the very Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords, even Jesus Christ. Through this Christ, this young man touched the hearts of many. He while relying on Christ was able to change lives as they were brought to believe in Christ's word.

We heart attached a door - 

that Elder came home with me

Many seasons passed this young man by, many times he faced the foes of the blackened pit, along with many who would mock and ridicule. Those that would talk for talking sake, and argue with empty threats. All who failed in their objections to tear done this young man's faith. Little did they know, they only sharpened this young man's resolve to see this through to the end, not to prove them wrong, but to serve more faithfully to that Christ.

A nice poinsettia tree

Much time has passed since the beginning of this grand adventure. But alas, now is the time for a journey's end for our young adventurer, Elder Willis. 

This mission has been long and hard, but it has been worth far more than anything this has world to offer at this time. 

I know that it has been worth it, and even though it's almost over I will continue to make it count.

I know that Jesus Christ has been with me during these past 2 years, and I know that He is with you as well. During our good times and during the bad. He comforts us in our afflictions and consoles in our time of need. I'm am proud to serve in the Washington Spokane mission!

Thank you all for your continued support. You all have made this a great mission. Thank you! 

Goodbye Spokane!

Nothing but Rotten Nonsense

Well, our past week has been wack.

Our apartment of Elders

Most of our finding efforts were spent texting people about a Live Drive Thru Nativity at the Temple.

We literally went through every number in our area book and sent them an invitation. We sent around 200 texts, but only 15 responded. It wasn't just us though, the members and other missionaries also got the word out as much as they could. They probably worked as hard at it as we did. 

The Night of the Drive through the Nativity

In the end it paid off. There were tons of people coming through the Nativity. I heard that more than 1,000 cars drove through. (This was over the space of 3 days, mind you, but we were still glad that so many people came.)

Now we got that out of the way, let's get to the Rotten Nonsense.

We went exploring and found some good places to take some pictures.

We were given 2 turkeys for Thanksgiving. We only just finished the first while the other was chilling in the fridge. Only just a few days ago it started stinking up our fridge.

We didn't know what it was at first, I still wanted to cook and eat it, but the other Elders were doubtful it was still good..... And they were right. 

so we had to run all 11 pounds of rotten turkey down from our third floor apartment. It wasn't the most pleasant experience I have had on the mission, let's just say that.

Lots of lights where we are at. This is the nice looking one.

Not too many people we are teaching are really progressing. We are teaching more returning members than actual non members at this point. But the returning members are some of the coolest people I have taught in a good while. 

This house gets more and more decorations each day.  I'm told by the 20th they finally finish putting out everything.  (The neighbors say it's disgusting.  That's how much stuff they put up.)

Well, it's only been three days...

There isn't much that has happened since Thursday, but here is what I can report on.

We have been able to get in contact with two very solid returning members. 

They both have gone through some rough things in their time away from the Church. Both of them, after they experienced some loss in their families, felt God guiding them back. I can't really get into details for privacy reasons but I can tell you that there aren't many people who are as prepared as them to come back into the fold.

I gave a talk on gratitude yesterday. 

Timing couldn't have been better, especially with President Nelsons message to us last week. I see it as the lord reminding us that despite our poor circumstances we still need to show our gratitude. I like the way Elder Uchtdorf put it in his talk, Grateful in Any Circumstance. " It is easy to be grateful for things when life seems to be going our way. But what then of those times when what we wish for seems to be far out of reach? Could I suggest that we see gratitude as a disposition, a way of life that stands independent of our current situation? In other words, I’m suggesting that instead of being thankful for things, we focus on being thankful in our circumstances—whatever they may be."

Can we all adopt the same way of thinking? 

I was told it was a good talk, however whenever I give a talk it is about 60% different from what I have written. I'll just attribute it to the Holy Ghost. He sure give some really good talks.

I met a family here who remembers an elder Phelps back when he served here. (for those of you who don't know, he is someone who used to live in my ward back at home). They said that he had spent a lot of time at their home years back. Thought that might be cool to mention. 

In other news I have also been called as a district leader halfway through the transfer. I can't talk about specifics but I can say crazy things have been happening here in Spokane.

Hope y'all are able to enjoy the now official Christmas season! That's right it starts after Thanksgiving not before. Don't worry, you can still repent. 

A sudden change in the wind with a chance of drumsticks

 

I cooked my first turkey, it was a success!

I am so sorry, I had made this all ready to send just a few minutes before, I only had to put in the pictures. Right then my companion had to call my mission president, so I wasn't able to send it out on time. 

This will just be another long one. 

Well it looks like we are plummeting back into phase one here in Washington.

We don't know all of the details of what we are going to do, but I think it's safe to say that we will be going back into staying inside and only having online lessons. (sarcastic* yaaaaay!) 

One picture of me on front of the temple.

But it's not terrible, it will end two days before I go home, so I may be lucky enough to spend some time with some of my good friends who are also leaving the same time as me.

Another picture of me in front of the temple. (there will be more) 

Well, so for what we have in the works here in Horizon Hills ward is pretty limited. We have lots of people on our list of potentials - more than 10 times what we had in our last area. The problem that comes up is that we wither can't get in contact with them, or they won't commit to having us visit and share a short message. 

We have a few people on the list of persons to teach, but there are only a few worth mentioning. 

One is a young boy who has been taught by the missionaries for almost 3 years. His family has lost interest but he is still chugging along. He really knows his stuff. He only doesn't commit to be baptized because he wants to know what other religions are out there and he wants to explore them. Luckily we managed to get to to church yesterday. Afterwards there was going to be an activity for the youth, we asked him if he would like to go, but he declined. Unknown to us though, there was a girl in the ward who later texted him and got him to go the youth standards night. Props to the girl who asked him.

I was showing the world what I was grateful for.

For some reason all the leaves in the world decided to fall in one night. 

So we had several people texting us asking us to help them rake their leaves and such. Some of the sisters in our zone even needed some assistance with some huge jobs that some of the people they taught had.

One lady we teach likes for us to gather all the leaves in bags so she can give them to a friend of hers who raises rabbits. Apparently, according to her, rabbits eat the fallen leaves. I never knew that before.

Besides that nothing else is new. We try to get in contact with the people we teach but have no luck other than the few I have mentioned.

Next week. 

Happy Thanksgiving ya'll! 

Alright lots of raking leaves that are wet and rotting, not surprised. People wait till the last second to start raking their leaves, the problem with that is all the leaves get wet from the rain which makes them heavy and slimy. I am not a fan.

Just a fraction of the leaves that we have raked.

We have had lots of good member visits. 

Unfortunately lots of people continue to cancel on us, but we at least can tell which ones cancel, because they don't want to see us or because they actually were busy. 

We had a Facebook referral, finally. 

It's a lady who doesn't have the time to take down her pool, so she wants out help. Interesting service and I can't say that I have ever done anything like that before.

Unfortunately we lost a companion, he had something come up at home that he had to attend to, so now I am no longer in a trio. 

My good friend Elder Catmull.

Another unfortunate thing that happened, we can't have Thanksgiving dinner with the members like we had planed, so now as I type this I am cooking a turkey. It's my first turkey so I don't know how well it will turn out, but I'm sure that it will be good. Members are still bringing us food though. The turkey cooking is one of two turkeys we were given along with a bunch of other things.

We get to have dinner with our district at least...... And it was a blast.

The sisters made breakfast, looks like we were the only ones who brought Thanksgiving themed food but hey, we feasted. 

When we got home after some members from our ward gave us even more food. We don't even have enough room in our once was practically empty fridge. 

We have a lot to be grateful for, especially that video that President Nelson made a few days ago. If you haven't watched it yet you'd better do it quick it is a touching video that can help anyone through a rough spot in life.

My time is about up, thank you for all your Thanksgiving wishes. I will see you all soon, just about 20 days away. Be ready for me. 

For those of you who didn't know already, 

This is what my mission president looks like. (yes he is in 2D).

My Time Has Come...

I'm not happy right now, I just finished my weekly and was about to press send, but I instead pressed paste and deleted all that I had just wrote. The first half of this email will be for last week...

The family that hosted me my first day in the mission. 

Never though I would see them again, let alone serve in their ward.

So my time to go has finally come, I'm leaving Orofino and I am going to Spokane Valley.

It's no Valley of the wind like Spanish Fork, but Spokane Vally has some good qualities. For instance, the mission office is there and the temple.

I will be close to the APs (assistants to the president) which might be a little over bearing, but I don't know these guys, they may not be all that bad. My new companions are Elders Brown and Elder Catmull and I don't know a thing about them.

Our Zone

I'm going to miss Orofino, the rednecks with guns, the deer that have no idea that the road is the wrong place to to stop running. All of the hardy members who aren't afraid to speak their mind and the beautiful landscape, those hills and valleys teaming full of wildlife and scorched earth from fires. It really is a wonderful place.

Well, we met some cool people the other day.

We offered to serve one guy and he beamed when we said that. He had gone through some back surgery recently and was unable to change his flat tire. He was more happy to let us help. After he was ready to listen, asking all sorts of questions about the Gospel. His wife who was a member helped out a lot as well.

Our sleeping arrangements.  I have top bunk.  

It's fun, but I have to be careful about bumping the light at night 

since I am so close to the ceiling.

We went looking for a young man named Joe, and found at the address an older Joe. He was the father of the Joe we were looking for. Both Joes were great guys, both ready and eager to talk with us, just not this week, but next. They said that they wanted to talk about the BOM and even discuss a little about it as well. I'm super sad to not be able to teach them, but I can't really complain. I'm just glad we have people to teach now. (don't know what's happening with the text right here, just ignore it.)

Roll out the red carpet, because I'm coming home in 6 weeks.

It's been a blast and I'm not done yet, but I am bound to make a difference in Spokane Valley. 

Okay next week...

So this week things have been dropping temperature wise, good thing I'm already geared up for it.

So far we haven't had much success in this area. 

Spokane Temple

This area is where lots of missionaries end their mission (we call it dying). I am the third one in a row for this area, and even next transfer.  I'm Com companion Elder Brown stays in this area he will end up dying as well, making it 4 in a row. 

This area is really neat. Lots of ground and houses to cover, and lots of opportunities. I hope that I will have more to report on next week but so far not too much has happened. 

The other day we spent our service helping take care of some horses and removing all the moldy hay they had in their barn. In this zone all the missionaries show up at one service, so it was packed with missionaries. 

Only about 5 weeks left, gotta make em count! 

I hope everyone will have a good week, I will be trying to. I don't have much more to write about so until then. 

Winters invitation

Brrrr, it's cold out here.

A cat broke into our apartment. 

My companion made the mistake of feeding it 

before we kicked it back out. 

May as well take a picture though.

Who would have though that Orofino (labeled the Banana Belt of Idaho) would have such low temperatures before Halloween?

I was a little surprised by this sudden change in air, but the cold doesn't really phase me much. I have a companion who really doesn't like the cold we have experienced so far, but the jokes on him, this isn't as cold as it gets. 

Winter should know that I can't just come in uninvited, but what can we do huh?

It's Me.

How is everyone doing? I don't hear much of what's happening with my buddies these days. I just keep forgetting to message and email y'all, not counting my weeklys of course.

Still don't know what my flight itinerary is. Would have gotten it a few weeks ago, but the virus and political unrest may have delayed the final decision a bit. I'm still pretty confident that i will be coming home around December 16, but who knows at this point? About 7 weeks to go? 

Fog filled Valleys

Funny story, I met another Willis family in my area. They are members but because the virus we haven't been able to meet them until now. They are a really cool family, a lot like mine, but not 15 minutes away from three different temples. The all have awesome testimonies of the church. I was shocked to see the 13 year old boy share his testimony of the Holy Ghost. Just a stellar family.

The valley the tracks run through.  

It was brisk, but pretty.

There are some members in our area who own a considerable amount land that goes over some train tracks. 

The tracks have bridges that are out on both sides so it's pretty isolated. However this did not stop them from making the most of these tracks, they had made a gas powered platforms that could move back and forth on the tracks. It doesn't go very fast but it was a fun ride. There are pictures to come. 

Our Snowy Landscape

We have a lady praying for a baptism date. She has been a wanting to be baptized for a while now and now she has made up her mind on the idea. Hopefully I will be around when she gets baptized.

A members past time, making and flying remote control planes.  

They can go anywhere from 60 to 120 miles per hour.

I don't know what it is, but I seem to have caught the local red neck bug. Once I get home I want to go hunting with some of my mission buddies. We have long talks about hunting stories in this area, about how some of the members just shoot from their bedroom window and manage to score dinner. Or a 13 year old boy will be walking around his property and shoots a Turkey and a Grouse at the same time. I may have a story or two like that after a while.

Our little train contraption.  

We had seat belts in case you're wondering. 

And once again, it wasn't fast at all.

I really need to get going, but I hope you all have a great Halloween. 

Please let me know if you went trick or treating, or if any of you had any other cool ideas for fun on that fun Spooktober day. 

Until next time. Enjoy the pictures.

Brand new missionaries/ splitting logs

Hello everyone, I'm jut going to say right now, this email will be a little shorter this time. 

Anyone for duck soup?

But without further adieu here was my week:

We went on exchanges with our zone leaders. 

Both trios stayed in Orofino and that evening we found 6 potentials for Orofino. 

Some more promising than others but still its progress. 

Splitting Logs with the Ward

One lady worth mentioning. We set up a time to visit her a few days after she was found.

I wasn't the one who found her so I had no idea what to expect. 

She is very shy and doesn't do crowds at all. She even gets really stressed out by small things. Upon arrival we met her mother, who greeted us with distaste. Turns out previous missionaries visited her late at night and pushed themselves onto her a little too strong. The mother was there to make sure that we didn't do anything to make her daughter stressed.

Only halfway done with the work.  

We then had to unload and split

All in all we had a good lesson with her, but she said she would prefer to set up lessons instead of us. She wants to be prepared for us when she wants us over. This basically told us that she doesn't want us to come over anymore, it's all in her hands. 

We have two just ordained Elders in our ward who are in the online MTC. 

Their p-days are on Saturday, but because they can't really do anything due to the missionary rules, they want to come out with us to find and teach. So we happily obliged and had a good time.

Unfortunately not too much happened that day but next Saturday we are going out with them again. Fingers crossed for miracles. 

A Great View of the Valley

Last week a sister called us in a frantic panic.

She had sold her house and had to be out by Saturday.

So we had saved the majority of the day to help her out, the the day of the service came.

We didn't know when she wanted us over, so we called her up asking if we could be there by 10:00. Turns out that her boys the day before we had planed to help her, came and took care of everything. So we kinda got trolled there. 

Another Great View

The same day also helped our with chopping wood for some members in need. 

It took longer than expected and took us a whopping 4½ hours.

It wasn't easy, but it was fun. We mostly stacked and split wood with mauls. But it was cool to be surrounded by chainsaw cutting logs for us to load into the truck.

Well I got to get going now. Hope you all have a good week. 

Spontaneously attacked by a swarm of Lady bugs

The District

I bet you never heard a more strange title for an email.
It's no competition, but I'm just saying, it's a strange one for sure.
Well here is the story. 

A foggy and rainy day.

We offered service to a family that needed their flowers dug up. They plan to put in something the deer won't eat like bleeding hearts or something. My companion was a landscaper before his mission. He knew how to make the job quick and easy for us.  It would have been the perfect service if it hadn't been for those ladybugs. We dig up the roots of these flowers and in big clumps falling from the roots and dirt there were thousands of ladybugs.
It wouldn't have been a problem.... If they would just sit still. After a few minutes we had swarms of ladybugs just flying aimlessly all throughout the area, getting in our hair, calling up your pants legs and just being plain annoying. I never though I would see so many in my lifetime! 

A nice day for church. 

Next we tried to visit some members, but they told us they weren't interested. As we drove away we found two old guys trying to lift a heavy wood stove into a truck bed. My companion asked if they needed help and they didn't hesitate to yell, "Yes!"

Local burger joint. Only fast food in the town.

After helping them out one of them took off to deliver it while the other stayed behind, because it was his house.

We got to know a little more about him, he was a pretty interesting fellow. 

Flower Service

He had traveled the world helping various militaries in other countries. He trained combat medics and was able to make a great living for himself. He was Jewish, but he said he wasn't, but he was. 

He talked about going to the synagogue, or that he would only read the book of Moses and he believed that Jesus Christ was only a prophet - lots of stuff like that. Maybe he has an identity crisis or something. Because he wasn't really open to hearing our message out, but still said we could come over and visit.

The Lady Bugs

Those are the highlights for this week. 

I'm sure the pictures will tell you a little more. II will talk to ya all next week. 

See ya!

For a youth activity - 

Don't worry, I took no part in it

Game Time

Master Shifu

Alright, quite a bit has happened for me this week. But because I wrote so much on an unpleasant experience I had I will only touch on 3 subjects for today. 

First: we helped some members move the stuff from their closed store. 

We expected it to be a long service, but no where near as long as we expected. 

They had opened up around the time the virus became a worry for the world and everyone went in quarantine. They found that it was extremely bad for business and they had to close down their newly opened store. 

It took us about 6 hours of lifting to empty the store of all they owed. 

Second: we had a lesson set up by some members. 

The guy we were going to teach had been trying to teach the members how to play Dungeons and Dragons (I'll refer to it as D&D for the rest of the story). The deal was that we teach a short lesson and he would then teach us all all how to play, or so we thought. 

We arrived right as they were done eating dinner. As we sat down, our friend (I'll call him Dwain) brought out some pre-made character sheets and we jumped right into a story. My companions and I did not expect this at all. I figured that we would take forever explaining how to create a character and all that but nope. 

It went a lot longer than expected. Our adventure was simple, but we made it more complicated. To cut the long story short my one of the members tried to steal what we were trying to protect, so my companion made him soil himself and the member was kinda mad at this so he made his character kill himself. 

That's was our experience anyways. 

It was really fun, I was shocked to see my companions enjoying it, they seem to be more of the spoil sport type to me but they are alright. 

Third. On Saturday I woke up with the same sore throat I've had for a month. The members who we were going to watch General conference told us they woke up feeling under the weather, so I thought (oh no, I don't want to get them any sicker than they are, I'm going to load up on vitamin C). What a terrible mistake I made!

I hope this doesn't come off an angry, I'm laughing about it now, but then I was regretting just about every life decision that lead me to that point. 

So what happened was that I took 1,500 mgs of vitamins C more than 2 thirds of what the body can handle per day 2,000 mgs. 

I was fine until halfway through the first session. I felt a very violent heart burn and intense nausea. I was hoping this was something that some medication could fix like pepto bismal, but boy was I mistaken.

By overlording on vitamin C I threw off the pH level of my stomach acid. This made me unable to handle any food.

At first I was very covert about it. I snuck out to our truck during a Hymn and downed a couple pills to calm the raging storm in my stomach. Immediately after though hurled it back up. 

Thinking the worst was behind me I went back inside and acted like nothing had happened, wrong. The members gave me a cinnamon roll and halfway through eating it some time later I had the same results. 

Knowing now that something was wrong, but being a missionary, I still ate the food that was offered to me, like a broken pencil sharpener taking the pencil and doing its job, but throwing all the shavings around in the air like confetti. (I wasn't that bad, but I thought a good visual would be nice).

The members were being nice, but oblivious to the fact I was ill ,gave me more food, but I had learned my lesson this time around. They are some of the nicest members I know in the area and I don't hold them even with the slightest contempt. 

My companion a little bit less oblivious than the members noticed something was wrong, and offered to let me lay down in the back of the vehicle instead of driving the hour back home.

Keep in mind that I was still feeling heavily nauseous and it was a bumpy ride.

I'll just say that it was more than once that I made them pull over so that I could get a quick ab workout, and it was only the day before where I actually had a legitimate ab workout. Needless to say that I was hurting.

Around the time we got back in town I was pretty drained. My companion suggested that we go to the store and get a Powerade to resupply those lost electrolytes. Then I saw what would save me, it's bubbles and carbonation beckoning me to take a sip Ginger Ale! A drink I knew that would helped my troubled stomach. (as I was writing this, I was struggling to come up with other names I could use instead of ginger ale, like red head whiskey or Irish swig but I realize that it would be easy to confuse with real alcohol so I though it would be a bad idea. I think I would never put anything like that in one of me weekly emails. 

Anyways that drink saved me, and from the point I started sipping it I started feeling better, the battle in my stomach was dying down and I haven't lost lunch since. Now I'm all better, just have sore abs.

That's my report for the week. I hope y'all had a good General Conference like we did.

Mmmmm..... Road kill.

 

My other new companion, Elder Poulsen

Helloooo everybody!

Once again we have a wonderful day as the temperature proceeds to drop from comfortable warm temperatures.

Lately its been rather chilly, I'm starting to have to wear a light jacket everywhere I go now. 

You all know this man, it's Elder Vazquez, we came out together.

Things have picked up now that we can actually get back to work. Already we have had more lessons than our previous week and we aren't being close to done yet.

My new companion is companions are crazy and fun. We have had many funny moments already, one of my favorites involves road kill.

Every time we pass by a roadkill that wasn't intact, one of my companions either wants the meat or the pelt of what the animal is. So far he has not had success, but I believe that will change soon.

He also tells members if any of them hits a dear to call us so we can take care of the body. 

Orofino Mountain Range

So far we have done a ton of service. Just the other day, we helped some members move out for about 6 hours. We have helped others by digging fence posts and building additions on to homes as well. The service just keeps coming. 

Orofino

We have been having some sweet lessons.

Lately there has been a returning member reaching out to us. Her family lives in the ward as well, but she wants to avoid them for the time being. She had toldus that she wanted to change and work past all of her mistakes, and upon further discussions it seemed to me that she didn't need to talk to us as much as she needed to talk to bishop. (You see, our leaders make sure that we understand that us missionaries are called to teach not to council. They tell us to leave it to people who have been around longer and would know how to deal more delicate situations). After a while we were able to convinced her to talk to the bishop and since then she's been on cloud 9 (she's happy). 

Orofino is pretty

We have lots of plans in the works for teaching people. We plan on rallying the members to help us find and teach. If we are successful in this we will be able to revive the work in this area. I will let you all know of our tender mercies when they come. But for now I must go.

I love you all and thank you for your support and emails throughout my time here in the Spokane Washington Mission.

Sunset