Mommy!!!

Wow that is a lot of stuff that is going on back home! Caleb is killing it with the whole baseball thing with all of his games it sounds like!  I was looking back on some of the memories that I have had in the past with sports and some of the experiences that I have had playing sports with my siblings and stuff this past week. I realized that in high school runners and football players just usually don't get along and actually look at each others sports in disgust... I think that it is so funny how just in our family we have runners, football players, and now baseball players and we all seem to get along for the most part. We all have our moments of getting annoyed and stuff but it is really cool how close you get to people when you live together! :) But thank you for always keeping me updated on everything going on for sure! Also I thought that it was really cool how you shared the experience that you had when you were younger with your primary teacher. In my patriarchal blessing it tells me that I will be an example to kids, and it tells me that again in my blessing from the stake president. It specifically tells me to fold my arms and close my eyes during prayers. Even those super small things are picked up on!

This past week was transfer week and I am still in the office with Elder Babcock!!! We got a new companion too named Elder Belnap and he is super awesome. We are going to have a blast this transfer, and have already had a super fun time this past week with each other! I will just kind of walk you through my week this past week and maybe you will be able to relate with all of the craziness that happened... :D

Monday: We woke up as usual and decided to go out and exercise like we usually do on a P Day. But then we got to the office and found out that we were actually really not going to get much of the P Day today... President Toone was still in the hospital and was going to be released sometime that day, but he didn't end up getting out until like 6:30 pm. We started looking at transfer board by ourselves and President Toone told us that we needed to seek the direction that the mission needs to go by ourselves this time until he gets back. We worked on the transfer board just about all day and then at 6:30 when President got back we worked on it some more! It was a day full of transfer fun for sure. We got to sleep at 11:30....

Tuesday: Today we had to get all ready to make the calls to the entire mission TONIGHT! We finalized all of our plans for the transfer and then we actually got to go out and teach on of the people that we are currently teaching here. She is super cool and so open to learning about the gospel. If there is one thing that being in the office has shown me it is that if we are doing all that we can do to get out and work in our area we will be blessed so much with the people that we will find and talk too! She is Japanese and soooooo cool!!! We always have her read/pray in Japanese and it sounds soo awesome! 

Then tonight we talked President Toone into letting us spend the night at the mission home with them! But rather than just being boring and sleeping in the mission home we got permission to camp right outside in the backyard which was way fun. President Toone was even cool enough to order us pizza that night... it was 12:30 by the time the Pizza got there!!! :D I think that we were up until about 1:30 that night... ;P

Wednesday: We spent all day today with the new missionaries that came in Yesterday. We got to have some study time with them and then had a little fireside with them that night. The fireside was super powerful and everybody who was invited had a great time! Probably one of the coolest things is that we invited on of the trainers to come to the fireside and the trainee didn't even know that he was his trainer until the next day. It was good for the trainer to get to know his trainee a little before they were companions! We were up until 1:30 again.... ;P

Thursday-Sunday: Honestly all of these days are just a huge blur because we were so busy making all of the housing arrangements and talking with all of the missionaries that got transferred... we transferred about 70 missionaries to a new area and had to combine about 8 areas in the mission. It was kind of a mad house in the office for this past week... But it all worked out and I am starting to get back onto my sleep schedule again which is good! ;D

I can't wait for this upcoming week and all of the fun that we are going to have out in our area working! We are going to go for another great week of teching and I know that we will be able to do a ton of things with our ward this week! I'M STOKED!!! Love you all tons and keep being the best family that a missionary could ever have!!! 

Love ya,

Elder Brandon Wallentine

Mommy!!!

This past week was just super crazy so most of the days I don't even really remember what happened... But it was super cool for sure! On Monday we went out and had our P Day as a district. We went and had burgers at Five Guys and then went over to the institute building and played some soccer. It is so much fun playing sports with the group of missionaries that I am with right now! But with this next transfer we are going to be getting a lot of different missionaries in our zone so we will see how that goes... :) It is super weird being on the other end of the transfers where I get to help know where everyone in the mission should be transferred too. But it is really fun for sure to get to spend all of that time with president figuring everything out. 

We had a super fun trip this week also though. We left on Tuesday night to head down to Yuma Arizona to go on some exchanges with some missionaries down there. To get to Yuma it is about a 3 hour drive so it was the longest road trip on my mission so far! It was a blast though!!! I got to drive the whole way because my companions don't really like driving, but I LOVE it! When we got down to Yuma I went on exchanges with one of the Elders that I was a zone leader for when I served in Mesa and we had a blast. I got to see a Zonkey (Zebra/Donkey) It was a super interesting thing to see here... Instantly I thought of the Liger from Napoleon Dinamite. It was awesome and we quoted that movie like all day long because of it!

Then on Wednesday night we had to come and head right back into town so that we could be in our area for Thursday. On the way back up to Tempe we stopped at some Sand Dunes and got some super cool pictures! :) That was a blast. We ended up getting home from Yuma at about 11:00pm... It was so weird being on the road past 9:00 haha. But we got back safely and got all rested up for the rest of the week.

On Friday we went on some more exchanges with some missionaries. Elder Janis went into South Phoenix, Elder Babcock stayed with a companionship in Tempe, and I got to go back to Maryvale!!! It was so much fun going back there because the missionaries that have taken over that ward just got there so I knew the area better and was able to show them around to some of the people that I taught while I served there. It was awesome and I was able to get some pictures next to some things that I had seen about 18 months ago! That is weird to think about.

Ok so even though we had all of those exchanges to go on this past week, that was not even the craziest part of the week... President and Sister Toone were in Dallas Texas for a Mission President Seminar this past week so we were kind of playing as the mission president for the whole week. Any questions that would have gone to President Toone came to us instead so that was fun... It for sure kept us busy and on our toes. But then to add on to the load when President got back into town he got really sick and has been seeing some doctors for the past few days, so we have been having to work on the transfer board by ourselves. It is a different experience for sure doing it without President Toone there. But we got to go and see him last night and he is doing awesome!!! He should be out by today so we can meet with him again!!!

Thanks for the awesome letter again and I am so glad that you guys always keep me in the loop with all of the stuff going on back home! I love you tons!

Love,

Elder Brandon Wallentine

Mommy!!!

So, I am getting a little bit nervous about this upcoming transfer because I might be taking over as the oldest assistant... I have noticed a pattern in my mission so far though. After I had been in the mission for only 6 weeks, and was only half way through my training, President Toone called me to be a trainer. Then when I was called to be a Zone Leader, I was trained for only 6 weeks before I got a brand new Zone Leader to train. Now I have been an Assistant for 6 weeks, and may be training some brand new Assistants this next transfer... It is going to be super crazy, but it is really good to know how much trust President Toone and the Lord have in me.

If I have not been a quick learner before my mission I will be after this for sure! :) It is awesome to have the chances to serve other missionaries like this, but one thing that I especially want Tyler, Emily, and Caleb to know is that all of the real work happens when you are out with your companion TEACHING!!! Having leadership is awesome and all, and if you get a calling you need to magnify it to the best of your ability, but NEVER think that just because you don't have a leadership assignment that you are not SUCCESSFUL! That is mostly for when they are on their missions haha.

I have loved every second of my mission so far and am going to continue loving it for the next 3 months! 

Love you tons,

Elder Brandon Wallentine

Mommy!!!

That is kinda a bummer that dad wasn't able to make it out to the Priesthood session this year... All of the talks in all of the sessions were super good though and I made sure to take some good notes so that I could stay awake the whole time! I really liked Elder Holland's story that he told about the boys going climbing as well! That was super amazing how he explained that even though that brother told the younger brother to go look for a branch, the brother really stayed there the whole time. The Lord always knows what we are going to do and when we will need Him the most! Then when we do need Him he will show us that He is reaching out to us when we are trying to make the big jump. It was super cool!!!

We went and did a lot of exchanges all around the mission with a ton of different missionaries! It was super cool and it will continue to be super cool when we get to go into other areas and learn from the other missionaries! I went on exchanges with Elder May and so I got to go back down to Maricopa for a day!! In that day one of the kids that we were teaching down there got baptized and confirmed! That was so cool to see him get baptized by his grandpa. We got some good pictures, but I will have to send them to you next week for sure! It was an awesome experience though.

I'm still alive and kickin' out here in the mission and I plan on continuing to work hard for the next 3.5 months while I am out here! It is so weird to think that I have been out for so long and I just barely turned 20. It is really cool though because I feel like I have gotten a little bit of a jump start on life! It's going to be awesome! Sorry that this letter is not super long and detailed... I just wanted to let you know that I LOVE YOU, and your the best Mom I could have asked for! Oh, and I got the whole family some shirts from a service project we did!!! :) Love you all tons!!!

Love,

Elder Wallentine