2nd Week in Cumberland Maryland

This week has gone so much better than last. I’ve been out a month!!! That is so weird to me!! It honestly has gone by so fast.. There have been hard times and there have been great times! God Speed is real! Well my companion is really cool. He is about a foot shorter than me and he is energetic and is a great teacher. I’m learning lots. He has been out 11 months and is excited to hit that 1 year mark! I’m excited for that day as well ;) Thank you for the advice on the bible bashers! We haven’t ran in to any this week because we choose to stay off those streets.. Also, We are allowed to wear sweaters here!! My apartment is really cool! It’s the biggest one in the mission! The dishwasher works and we also have a washer and a dryer in our apartment! We go to a local library thingy to email every week!

   We also eat with members every night usually! And they usually feed us well! We also had to cook our own meal yesterday because no one signed up to feed us. So we were cooking stir fry and I was using oil on the stove top, and I actually caught the stove top on fire for like 20 seconds! lol All the smoke alarms were going off and all. It was quite the experience! We also have pretty good neighbors! 

       We actually committed 2 people to baptism this week! Their names are Hunter and Barbara.  Hunter is 21 and Barbara is 57! They will be Baptized October 7th!! I was so happy when they said yes!! We have a lesson with them tonight and we are teaching them what to expect in the baptism ceremony! We are also planning to commit 2 more this week, so hopefully 4 total!

My companion and I are in the same area with 2 sisters! We cover the same ward and all.  So believe it or not, there is more Steelers stuff here then Baltimore Ravens.. haha its crazy!! I even Got a Terrible Towel!

I had a weird experience this week! I was in an investigators house and I really had to use the restroom. So I asked the lady if I could use it. She says yes and her son starts taking me down these dungeon looking stairs, so automatically death enters the back of my mind.. lol anyways we get to the bottom, and the door is like this little kitchen cupboard in the wall haha so I climb in this door and the ceiling is not tall enough for me to stand straight up. And I look around and see that they have this HUGE toilet right in the center of this huge room! This room is also their pantry.. Their bathroom is right in the middle of all of their food. It was weird! The toilet was like a throne looking over a kingdom!

       Nothing huge has been happening this week though! We have been teaching lots of lessons and have been visiting lots of people. The missionary life for sure takes a while to get used too! But it is getting better and better each day!

Its been a great week and hopefully all is going well for you! Love you all

                                                                                                    Love, Elder Welling        

    

Ups and Downs for 1st Week

 I made it to Maryland and I am doing good! Hopefully everyone at home is enjoying life! I’m glad to hear you got my package and all of that! This week has had its ups and for sure some downs. I got here to Maryland and we went straight to the mission home. We then had dinner and got to know everyone. We then were each interviewed by the mission president and we didn’t go to bed that night until 2am.. it was rough! The next day we headed out to our new areas and got our companions! My companions name is Elder Sterling Fitzgerald. He is from Pleasant Grove Utah, and he is short! haha He is also really energetic! 

       I am in Cumberland Maryland. My area has 3 states in it! We have Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia! We have a little bit of everything. We have the city, we have the slums and ghetto places and we have the country. But all together it’s a pretty sketch place. People were not lying when they said it was a scary place! My area has all the seasons we do, it is beautiful here. The leaves are starting to change colors and all! You can send my winter gear and rain jacket and all that whenever!

       We have 60,000 citizens. We have 1 ward in our HUGE area, we have 1 church building in our huge area, and we only have 125 members. So when people see 2 white guys from Utah and Wyoming walking around the streets, they have no idea who we are. This is nothing like Utah. Imagine walking out to half court naked at an EHS varsity basketball game, while everyone is staring at you, that’s what it feels like here. The Apostasy is real everyone. There are churches on every corner of this city, and they are not LDS churches. There are churches of every kind here. The members we do have treat us well though! But for real, no one here has even heard of the Mormon church. And if they have, they have been told it is "evil"

      My experience this week was really bad, but then it got better. My companion and I were walking up a street called Columbia Street. This street has garbage laying everywhere, and bricks are falling off the houses and the walls are cracking and all. It’s just a really different place. There are people smoking everywhere and it’s just a sketch street. Anyways, we are walking up this street and we see a Black guy sitting all alone on his steps, so we walk up to him and ask if we can share a message. He agrees. While we are talking, Black guys just start piling out of this house from the door behind the guy we were talking to. So 2 white guys from Wyoming and Utah are surrounded by a mist of darkness.. lol This being my 3rd day in the field, I am in the process of crapping my pants haha, all of the black guys that came out are smoking cigarettes and using the F word all over the place. Anyways, we just keeping talking to these guys about the Book Of Mormon. A black guy that is freaking huge, stands up and starts trying to bible bash us. When we couldn’t answer his questions they all laughed at us and pretty much just mocked us.. We walked away quite embarrassed. So we continue up this street and we see another black guy sitting on his porch.. of course, my companion stops to talk.. So we ask this man if we can share a message about Jesus Christ and he too agrees.. So we pull out the Book of Mormon and show it to him, and before we could even talk he says

"That right there is a false book"

Me and my companion kind of taken back by the statement say what?

He says "You both are going straight to Hell for preaching that book. It’s evil. Just because you 2 dress up all nice, doesn’t give ya the right to be talking about a fake book. Nothing adds on to the bible."

He then proceeds to say that we will go straight to hell for even trying. He says that we shouldn't play with our lives like that. 

     Its moments like these that leave us shaken. Especially because the LDS community is the only light in this big dark place! but even in our darkest times here in Baltimore, I felt Gods love more that day than ever before. I knew what I was doing was right. Even though it was humiliating. This man yelled at us in middle of a street in front of all the people. But, What I was doing was right. I wanted a stronger testimony so that I wouldn’t be sad in times like that, and I got one. God loves his missionaries. 

    My Elder Oaks experience was awesome. We were in the MTC and we were teaching an investigator named Fernando. He was really really difficult and asked weird questions. And one of the questions he asked is, "How do you even know that Christ lived and died for us? There is no proof."

Well that kind of slapped me in the face. I had never in my life kneeled down and prayed to ask if Christ did suffer for us. Now obviously he did. But I had never asked for that personal witness. So after that meeting around noon I went and kneeled down and asked. Well later that night we had a devotional! no one knew who was coming or who was going to speak to us, so we all went to the devotional and sat down. To our surprise, Elder Oaks comes out and sits on the stand! in awe, we all stand up and are excited! we sit down and Elder Oaks gets up and begins talking about how through the infinite Atonement of Christ and the Ressurection, we all live again. It was amazing. Hearing him bear his simple and short testimony of the Savior was powerful. That is when I knew that My Savior lives. I have also come to know of his divinity by bearing testimony of him. Every time I bear my testimony on the Savior it grows.

    I have had the opportunity to teach a lot of lessons already! I didn’t think there were this low of living conditions out here, but there are.. it is sad to see people struggle. But seeing the light come into their eyes when the Savior in mentioned in unbelievable. I met a man this last week, and his name is John Long. We started talking to him and all of the sudden he just breaks down in agonizing tears. He looks up and says "My son committed suicide 2 months ago" Me and my companion bore solid testimonies on the plan of salvation and he had a light come back into his life. It was amazing. He is our most solid investigator right now.

We have 7 solid investigators that are new since I have been here. We are teaching a total of 22 people! We are staying busy!   Tell Grandma Welling I love and miss her!

                                                                                                                                

 Love, Elder Welling

Week 2 at the MTC

The second week has for sure been so much better!! Time flies in the MTC! I leave in 7 days from now.. haha it's weird to think about! This time next week I will be in Baltimore!! Yes, it was awkward pulling my pink shirts that were supposed to be white out of the dryer.. my district elders thought that was quite funny also! lol I have bleached them 3 times so hopefully they work out! The elevator story will never get old! Haha it was so funny! 

The MTC is amazing. The spirit that is felt here is like no other. There are 3000 missionaries here with the same purpose and the same goal and that is why the spirit is so strong. The Lord definitely blesses us. We see his hand in our lives daily. We have been teaching 2 investigators. And we just picked up another one yesterday named Fernando. I have no idea why they keep giving us Spanish people.. they are hard to understand sometimes and I'm deaf so it doesn't make it better! Haha anyways the 2 investigators we just finished teaching were so awesome. John Garrett is the older guy and he lost his wife due to breast cancer! We taught him 5 times. And he also wants to get baptized! Our other investigator is named Alexander. He is from Peru and wanted to make better decisions in his life. So we taught him 4 times and tried to center every lesson on the Saviors Love. In the 3rd lesson he asked us what the steps were to be baptized. So the 4th lesson we taught him all about taking the name of Christ upon him. He is not a member and was really interested in what we believe. So we asked him to be baptized and confirmed a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! He agreed and he was so happy! He then took his phone out and took a selfie with us. I wish I could get that picture! He then said:

"I am so glad I came here. You 2 Elders have changed my life. I was a complete stranger and I still felt cared for. Seriously." 

So I then wrote my email down on a paper and told him a missionary never forgets his first baptism! So he is gonna write me when he figures out when it's gonna happen. I'm pretty sure John was already a member. But Alexander isn't! It was just a really good and happy feeling that I can't describe. I was happy to see Alexander start to experience the joy this gospel brings to lives. It was great!

We only get to go to the temple on p-days! And i really like it! I went this morning! Also I told dad about me leaving next Tuesday. I have my flight plans and I'm very excited!! I'm also excited to tell you that they are allowing us to call home in the airport after we go through security. So you guys should figure out what we should do. What phones to call and where you will all be! I can't wait to talk to you all! Let me know the plan through Dear Elders! 

I heard jesses farewell went good! Hopefully as he gets dropped off today he will be okay! I remember the first day you guys dropped me off and it was terrible. Haha also thanks for the quotes. They help a lot! I leave for Baltimore at 4:50 Tuesday morning so the call will be early in the morning! Just let me know the plan! I wanna talk to grandma Welling to so include her and grandma and grandpa hatch!

Thanks for the packages and Dear Elders this week! All those packages of food were heaven!! Haha I've almost ate all of it! Now I'm starting on the Oreos!! Haha and I'm sorry Labor Day wasn't as good as usual! I enjoyed the pictures from dad though! It was cool! Well I will look forward to calling you next week! Just let me know the plan! Thanks for everything! Love ya. I can email the rest of the day. So if you have anymore questions I can answer whenever!

Love, Elder Welling

 Elder Blyle

Random Pics of MTC