From Elder Wertner

Hey Family!

Wow I was so excited to get all your letters. Today I had 13 emails waiting for me! That was a little overwhelming. I didnt even think I still had that many friends..... Haha Man that was rough hearing about the smoked beef brisket. Just brings a tear to my eye..... I cant wait to check it out in a little bit.

Now let me tell you about ¨This week¨ Oh this beloved week of faith trying experiences. First off a preface. This week On wednesday I got a letter from the stake. Their is a stake service missionary that writes a newsletter toi all the missionaries in the stake. It comes out about every 6 months. I just got the 2nd one. I absolutely love this letter. It gives me an update on a lot of the other missionaries and has alot of inserts from letters from missionaries. Well I was reading it, and I got to the conclusion that some of the guys were being a little too negative. I thought to myself, ¨Of course the mission is hard, and has difficulties, but why would you ever write your family these things?¨ So after thinking that.... I thought about how Dad always said that nothing is ever a done deal, if something bad happens, just power through and find a way to make it work. Now with that said, we got hammered on bad news this week. Just like I feel obliterated, haha. BUT we saw some cool miracles and weve been seeing what prayer, and hard work can do you. I realized I havent been writing too much about our investigators. Let me tell you, we got some All- Star investigators. All of them have their trials, of course, but there is nothing cooler than seeing someone handle their trials with the newfound gospel principles. So I thought before I got into the ¨Story Time¨ and tell you about how we asked for a ride, a truck pulled over and my comp got in, then as I was getting in the back, he took off way fast, still holding on, i jumped on the back of the pick up, but couldnt get in the actually bed part, so i was standing on the bent down bumper the whole way........ So before I get into those type of stories for the week I thought I might give you a look on what´s our All-Star Roster looking like for Inv. And new converts. SO here we go.... First off At Center we got new convert Dianey, Shes the mom of 4 kids, husband is still looking into the church, She got baptized a few weeks ago. Shes At center because she already read throught 1 nephi and has taken notes of what she feels when reading. Not only that, BUT shes got us teaching 2 of her neighbors and their Families.Next at Power Forward We got The Bernal Family Also converts. Its a family of 6 That we baptized the kids because the Parents got baptized when they were 9, but never returned to church. Now they are fully active and a bunch of studs. They hooked us up with 3 families to teach and a spaghetti dinner last night. Dad is a citizen in the US and is taking off to work there for a few months because the bills are getting way bad..... But they are very humble, and studs.Next at Small forward we got Doña Vicky (Or MRS. Vicky)Shes an investigator lined up for this weekend to get baptized. She LOVES talking about her kids and GrandKids And i LOVE to listen. Shes awesome and likes applying God to her family and everything she does.At shooting Guard we have Evelyn and Her family. Her sister is member, but evelyn wasnt. So we baptized her, now the family is active, and The sister went to youth conference this past weekend. She is constantly Giving us references, and trying to teach all the neighbor hood kids. She absolutely loves us.Then at Point Guard we got ANgel. Weve been working with him for a few weeks. Hes this 12 yr old, and his sister and cousins and Grandparents are members, but him no. So hes been coming to church and well make him a deacon afterwards. Hes going to be a church leader someday. HIs baptism will also get moved to this weekend so his mom can go, then we will be working with her.......Honorable mentions would be Maria Guadalupe who came to church with us this week, the only problem is she has 3 kids and a boyfriend. The Big NO NO is that her boyfriend has a family...... We will be laying down the law with them on that one. No exceptions.Also Carolina gave us 4 references of her friends who want to be members of the church. Only problem is they live in another area..... Thats a bummer.Right now this is what we are working with. Of course theres a bunch of other people, but their benchwarmers right now until we see some real good changes in their playing ability. This week all of Sonora gathered all the youth that are members and had a huge youth conference. Us missionaries in Hermosillo, we got to help out for 2 days. One day we had a bunch of stations, and the different groups would run to each station and follow the instructions to get a stamp. They needed like 15 stamps to win. Well one group had 13, and they were begging me for 2 stamps. Of course I Said NO! Well Ok, I said yes, but only if when they are running back to the judges table, they chant my name. Well they did it. And a half an hour later elder Hatch comes up to me and says, ¨You know, I just saw the funniest thing. I group of 15 kids ran by chanting your name, And I thought to myself, Only Wertner would do that.....¨ There were 800 youth that came. It was huge. Then they did a cultural dance thing in the night. Man It was so cool. They had dances from all over the world in an auditorium of about 4000 people. Alot of investigators came. To close it, we (the missionaries) Sang Called to Serve, and then finished with the song ¨Army of Helamen¨ Now imagine the spirit that filled that auditorium when 40 missionaries sang those 2 songs. We had investiagtors all over the place wanting to be baptized and go on missions. Haha I loved it. We had exhanges with the Zone leaders this week. I went with one of the ZLS and they had problems with this investigator. So we were teaching and Shes been way mad with God because her 2 yr old died a few months ago. So I was letting the ZL talk, and I was praying that I could say what needed to be said. And right at the exact moment, I felt like I should take over. And I did, and I asked the lady this question, and she just looked at me, then looked down, an started bawling. And I read this cool scripture, and bore my testimony about eternal families. That her baby already is with God, and that one day she will see her again. Then she accepted a baptismal date! When we met back with my comp and the other Zone Leader. My comp for the day was like ,¨Elder Wertner, Just decided to take over on the lesson, made our investigator cry, and then put a baptismal date for next weekend, Weve been working with her for months, I have no idea how he did it¨

I LOVE being a missionary!!This week we ate deer tacos. They were bomby.I love you all and cant wait to see pictures of Laurens Baptism.I know the church is true and Heavenly Loves Us. I know families can be together forever.I also Have a testimony that we will always be faced with trials, but that never means the games over. There is ALWAYS a way to suceed. If you dont get it at first, try another way, and another and another until you finally get it done.love you all!

Love Elder WertnerDO WORK!!!!