Joshua's email - 1/22

This week has been pretty good! I was really nervous for Elder G's transfer, and to see what my new companion is like.  His name is Elder C J, he's from Bountiful, Utah.  He's 6'6", and very very smart.  He knows a lot about pretty much anything.  He's extremely focused on missionary work and serving others, and I admire that a lot about him.  He's teaching me a lot and I hope I can teach him as well.

This past week, we've been working hard at finding people to teach, expanding our teaching pool.  We had a coordination meeting with the Bishop to discuss which of the less active members we should focus on, and that was really helpful.  I witnessed how inspired the bishop is here, and how reliant upon the promptings of the Holy Ghost bishops have to be.  We went through a list of 40 or so names and, one by one, Bishop told us about each less active and part member family.  He gave us advice on how to help each of the people, and I'm glad we can be a part of strengthening and uplifting the Sun Prairie ward.

I have a pretty funny (and crazy) story for this week.  A few nights ago, while knocking, I mentioned to Elder J, "One of these days, we're going to knock a door and it'll be a member from the church that I won't even recognize."  Two days later, we began knocking some doors after dinner.  We knocked the whole street, and decided to knock one more before we left.  An old grumpy man in a dirty robe answered the door.  We shared briefly what our message is, and he said, "Come on in.  HONEY THE MISSIONARIES ARE HERE!!!"  A little confused, I asked, "have you met with mormon missionaries before?" He replied, "I AM ONE!"

We were still a little puzzled about the validity of his statement.  He invited us in and told us to sit down on the couch.  Elder J commented on a large, curved knife mounted on the wall.  The man walked over to the knife, pulled it down, and flung it from the sheath, sending the knife right in front of my face.  He put the knife back, and then pulled out a pistol that was placed in the strap around his waist that held his robe together.  Immediately Elder Jensen and I looked at each other in complete terror.  We could both see our lives flashing before our lives.  The man sat down and polished his pistol, and then picked up another handgun sitting on the table next to his chair and polished it too.  His wife walked in wearing a very small robe that made us feel really uncomfortable. I know this probably sounds really, really bad, but everything turned out okay.  We quickly realized who the people were, and that the bishop had warned us to not visit them.  They're not dangerous or anything, just a little mentally unstable.  They actually turned out to be really nice, and we had a long conversation about their cats with them.  We read a few scriptures from the Book of Mormon, and the visit turned out to be really pleasant, but it definitely freaked us out at first.  HAHAHA

Other than that, we spent a lot of time this weekend finding people to teach.  We've got a few return appointments already, so that should be good.  The Sun Prairie ward is still awesome, and I love it here.

I think I mentioned K in my last letter, so I'll just re-cap his story.  We knocked a door, looking for a less active member, and found  out that the member had moved.  K now lives there, but he agreed to let us come back and share our message with him.  We came back for our return appointment, and he wasn't there, so we left him a passalong card that offers a free Book of Mormon.  He requested one, so we received a HQ referral for K.  We spent all week trying to catch him (he's very nice and very interested in our message, but he works a lot of unexpected hours for a moving company).  On Saturday night, we tried knocking his door one more time, with no luck.  We decided to go to the gas station to get something to drink and to use the restroom.  Guess who I ran into! K!  He came up and started talking to me, and at first, I didn't even recognize him! I visited with him shortly and he seems really interested in having us come back, so we'll definitely be working with him from now on! We just need to find a good time to catch him!

Anyway, that's pretty much my week!  A lot of hard work going on here! Hope everyone is doing well at home! Love you all!

Elder Whicker