Week 57 & 58: Prayers!!

I'm so sorry I didn't write last week!! I was struggling to figure out what to write anyways, and I didn't have a lot of time. That week was kind of rough (lowest numbers I've seen my whole mission). The other Elders in the city call us the Berrendo farming system, because literally all we did that week was find golden English contacts and then pass all of them off to the English Elders.

Sad news, is Adilene moved to Mexico (crying emoji). It was sudden too, so we weren't able to say bye. She's going to go to the church's there, and we're just praying that she gets in contact with the missionaries. Please add her to your temple prayer list if you can!

There's another friend we have, his name is Omar! He's married to a member, and his daughter was baptized 2 months ago. He's met with missionaries for 17 years, and comes to church every week with his family, but hasn't gotten baptized. We eat with them every week, but he's hard to get in contact with, but we finally got a good sit down discussion with him. He said he just doesn't believe in Joseph Smith. We talked a lot about the lesson of the restoration, and he's going to start reading the Book of Mormon again, and praying for a spiritual witness. Please pray for him too! One, that he'll receive his witness, and two that he'll act on it.

The biggest struggle we have right now is we need more friends. We're trying, but we haven't been finding very many people. Sorry for asking for so many prayers, but please pray with us that we'll be guided to those who have been prepared for the message of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A small thing that I've been thinking about this week is faith. Exercising faith isn't a thing we do just when we have gaps in our knowledge/understanding and aren't sure what to do. Faith is the fire that fuels us to keep going when we don't know how. Idk if I said that right, but I've been thinking about Ernest Shackleton, and his story. If you don't know it, go search it up! They basically got stranded in Antarctica for a long long time. It's incredible, and in their situation they had 2 choices. They could choose to have faith, or to despair. Because they had faith, their odds changed, and while all of them should've died, they all made it back home. Faith truly is an incredible power.

- Elder Wride

(Wesley's mom here explaining these panda photos. He said that they had a challenge in their district to share a certain thing on social media, and they were to report back that they did it by posting a video of their companion ship fighting in slow motion. Wes and his comp took it up a notch, by Wes wearing an American flag cape, which he took of for the battle, and also sporting a flag tie and his new Texas boots!)