Week 28:Prayer is 100% real!

Hello my wonderful family,

Scripture of the week: D&C 128:22

Well it sounds like life on the homefront is going quite well. This week has been.... well its been wicked crazy. It seems as if my life never stops spinning, but its great, i am just as happy as can be. So big news, last monday night we recieved a call from President Wilkey and he informed us that Elder Uhl would be being  transferred to a new area. So Elder Uhl is now in Derry New Hampshire. So yes that means i have another new companion, and it also means that neither of us know anything about the area. In mission lingo when two new companions go to an area it is called a white wash. So this has pretty much turned into a white wash, the extent of my knowledge for the area came from my one week of being here with Elder Uhl. So needless to say this week has been rather crazy.

My new companions name is Elder Vanderholm, he is from Spokane washington. He has been on his mission for 9 months. It feels a bit wierd being senior companion in a companionship where i have been out less time than my junior companion. But the best part about him is he grew up on a dairy. Well kind of a dairy, his whole life they milked 6 shorthorns by hand. So its pretty cool we are both dairy kids, and we just happen to be in one of the highest dairy populated areas in the mission. One of these days we are going to find a dairy that will let us do service for them. But we have had no such luck yet. 

 

 

President and Sister Wilkey left Thursday the 27th. For his last goodbye he sent a voicemail out to the whole mission. It was really awesome, i just wish i could have said bye in person. But hey its all good i will see him when i get home. He promised to go on a horse ride with another elder and i. and he doesnt like horses so it should be fun. 

 

We get to meet the Stokers this coming saturday. So i have no new updates on them as of now but next week i will be able to tell you all about them. 

 

My District is doing awesome. The two brand new sisters are adjusting into missionary life very well. Elder guinn and elder chapman are rocking things down in lyndon. Oh and cool thing about the Lyndon ward, the new councilor in the bishopric is Brother Batchelder i never really said much about him, but he was less active when i got to lyndon and now is in the bishopric. Isnt that sooooo wicked awesome? 

 

 

Being district leader is great. I am always pretty much on the phone, either answering questions, or doing call in reports, luckily i have a very well behaved obedient district so i dont have to do any disciplining. My favorite part of it is teaching and preparing the lesson for district meeting. Its really cool to feel the spirit in a meeting full of 8 missionaries. We are all there for the same purpose so we all bring a very special spirit. Its really cool. WE are given a lesson outline, but are also told to teach and prepare what we as district leaders are inspired and what the district needs most. Its been really neat to see how most the time the lesson gets shifted in a different direction than what the outline says. I love it so much. 

 

Sounds like my family has turned to quite the group of world travelers. I am quite jealous that you are going to oregon, so you best take plenty of pictures and send them to me. My new area is absolutely gorgeous. The lake  is awesome and we of course border Canada. Yesterday we went to a town called Derby Line, and if we had missed the exit to get there we would have had to go through a customs check so that tells you how close it is to the border. Derby line is also the home of Cowtown Holsteins so dad i'll need that address. Vermont is so beautiful i hope you all get to see it someday. Granted the humidity kind of stinks but you get over it.

 

Our car was involved in a hit and run this week. we parked it to go tracting and came back and it had a massive dent in the back door. I was super upset, but luckily the church has wicked good insurance. 

Pretty big dent! :(

So we have a washer and dryer in our apartment so we dont have to go anywhere to do laundry, and we do emails at the church. Our apartment is nice, much nicer than the lyndon apartment. Sometime maybe ill send a picture of the place. 

We have some pretty awesome investigators. One of my favorite is a lady named Pat, she is in her 70s and is the absolute best cook in the world. 

John is a guy in his 60s he is a football fanatic so we get along quite well. 

Matthew is in his 30s and has 5 kids, he was recently divorced, so that is rough. Coolest thing about him is he is almost finished with the Book of Mormon. 

I will be heading down to lyndon to conduct two baptismal interviews on the 10th. One for Tina, and one for a guy named Rob who the littleton sisters are teaching, im excited for that. 

Well to close i will tell you about the awesome dinner we had last night with a family from utah. they live in st george and come up here every summer for a few weeks. they had us over to there lake side cabin it was so gorgeous i will include some pictures. this lake is lake Willoughby which is the deepest clearest lake in vermont its a glacier lake. Its not the big lake right in Newport that is Memphremegog.

 

Lake Willoughby

But family i sure do love you! hope you have a wonderful week in Oregon, remember take lots of pictures. 

 

Love Elder Zilles

 

P.S This week we knocked on so so so many doors and no one would let us in. I was getting so discouraged. So i prayed that the lord would help me have a better attitude and would help me increase my desire to find people to teach. And he did. So always remember that the power of prayer is 100% real. 

 

Leave it all on the field.