October 29, 2013 Elder Bryce Whitaker - "Hola Rosario Argentina!" At LAST!

Week Ten North Carolina! (Last week there...)

So today was crazy. this whole week been massive and really long. just one big massive blur. but i will try to figure out what happened which day. and this letter will probably be short cause its 850 and we gotta leave soon so.. sorry in advance. 

Tuesday, we had zone conference. it was really cool. that was the day i learned that i was staying here longer. also i have to do MORE paperwork without my mom doing it for me. so tomorrow we gotta get that all figured out.  the rest of the week i barely remember.

These two are of my English District after they cancelled our Spanish Districts which was a sad day.

           Weexchanged with the assistants. it was really fun but sad too. i didnt get to watch the assistant that came with me teach because it was our best spanish day ever and he doesnt speak a word of spanish.... oh if you didnt know i am doing whats called "zebra work" where you mainly teach english but if you find hispanics its fine to teach them too. but yeah that was fun. i enjoy working with the assistants. they for sure know what they are doing, in english any way;) 

Our desks in my old house, haha guess which one is mine:) I promise i was the clean one but after studies I just never put everything away because the next day i didnt want to have to waste time to find it all again. 

i just thought of this just barely. but we were walking down the street and there were two guys standing on this deck a ways up, with the cop near his car with the lights on a ways up the street. hopefully you can visualize that but oh well. so as we were walking, we were right across this tiny backroads street from two guys on their porch and i was like, yeah lets try and talk to em. so i waved and basically yelled, how yall doin!? well instead of looking at us they looked confused down the street behind us. so we were like ok??? weird but i guess they are just ignoring us. well we are still right in front of them when that cop car drove up and asked them if they had called the cops about two guys walking around the streets. and both of them looked at each other and were like, "no we havent seen anyone all night" 

we were literally ten yards from the people and i could have slapped the cop car, but no one ever even looked near us or anything. so either i am just that sly, or something was going down and we just had a little cloud around us like "these are not the droids youre looking for" it was just kinda funny as we walked off and talked about it. 

So that brings us to Saturday. I dont know if any of you heard about the Elder that died in Cali from a bike crash. but he was from Charlotte which is thirty minutes from where i am serving. so our mission president asked us to go to the funeral and support the mother, who lost her husband as well about five years ago. well one of the 70, Elder Zwick, came and presided over it and it was amazing. he had all of the full time missionaries (FTM) stand and said that he and his father were now serving as companions and were with us. it was just really cool and you could feel the Spirit. so then we were asked to go to the burial. all about 100 or so of the FTM's went and after the dedicatory prayer and that, we all sang "called to serve" quietly. It was amazing. the Spirit was so strong and everyone was just sobbing. it was a very cool experience. 

if you want, there is a video a member here found on youtube of it. apparently i am in the center and my hair is shining like usual. 

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-k8J87PNrXk&h=lAQGSBQ5x

Sunday was weird too. this one elder just came back and the guy before him spoke for a half hour, leaving the poor guy like five minutes, well the bishop told him to talk for as long as he wanted. and he did. and FIFTY minutes later we sang the closing prayer and i said the benediction. it was insane!!!! he talked completely through sunday school!! haha 

today, which should have been Pday, was really good. we left at about 740 and went to Ihop with some other Elders, then to a meeting down in Charlotte with that same Elder Zwick and his wife. they taught us and it was just really neat. Sister Zwick told us about their handicapped son that was able to be set apart as a missionary for a week to go work with his brother in tailand!! it was so cool. the only people he could talk to while there that spoke english ended up being baptized!! when she told us that the spirit was so strong. i wont lie, i was battling the tears. i thought of Colton and if he wants to come out, suit him up and send him:) it was just the cutest story ever. but i really enjoyed what they talked about. it was a good day today.


oh and im sending these today because i wont be mailing next week cause i am flying out at 330 and my final flight leaves at 7 and i get to argentina at 6. so that will be fun. if you want to send me one of those phones that would be cool but no worries. i can buy a card in the airport. 

Well thats all i have for the week. hopefully i have time next week to write. i know they are going to let me call you all so that will be fun:) 

love you so much

Elder Whitaker

NC Week 9 and counting....

Hello Family and others

Well this week has been a great one.  We have been doing a lot. so i am now serving with the Zone Leaders, and that has been fun. but man, we never sleep. ha it has been a big adjustment to that. we always have stuff to do at night and now i am making phone calls with em and all that fun stuff. but they have a lot of investigators, especially compared to where i was. the first day i got here was really funny. back in Burlington we had our weekly goals and all that, well my first DAY here we hit almost all of em. like lessons and visits and all that. ha it was really fun. we have been super busy. 

Funny and also cool story. So we have an investigator, Brother Treece, he is about 61 or so. 60's for sure, and he is an Atheist. He hadn't prayed for 38 years. so they had been working with him for a while and about the second time i got to meet with them, he finally prayed. it was really cool. well the third time he prayed or the second, cant remember, but we were all kneeling there. and after he said the prayer we looked at him and asked him how he felt and how he thought the answer would come. well he said "well it aint no boomin voice" and literally like a second later, there was this big BOOM outside. hahaha it was sooo funny. like i dont know if it was lighting and thunder or what, but the timing was perfect. it was really cool and super funny.

We had stake conference down in Charlotte this weekend. which was really cool. they invited all the Elders and Sisters to go to the Adult session of Conference. so i now know what yall do in that!!! but it was neat. our Mission President spoke, and that man is the bomb!! i love him. he had the coolest talk and everything was just sweet. then we had the next days, one of our investigators, who will get baptized the weekend after i leave.... came to church. and there was a recent convert, emphasis on recent. he had been baptized two days before. and he was invited to bear his testimony in stake conference!!! like on the spot cause one of the speakers got sick and couldnt come. well he nailed it!!! he talked about a young man in a testimony meeting that had born his testimony and it had really touched him. he talked for a little more about him and then he paused, and said, then i asked that young man to baptize me. and wow. the Spirit just flooded the room, our investigator did like a gasp awww thing and it was just awesome. 

Then last nights dinner........ hahaha oh family... i havent changed a bit. 

so we are walking up to this house, nice house, and i see two big dogs, one lab and one just chunky and about as tall as Dixie. so i am thinkin wow, thats a big lab. and then oh my goodness!!! this Great Dane shows up and i am like one stair or two below it. and its almost at eye level!!!!!! it was huge!!!!! its name was Zeke and it was soo cool. the family had a raised up table and big bar chairs up next to it, and this thing could look right at your plate, like how Dixie just stands there and pokes her nose over the edge, about like that but higher and youre four feet in the air. when we were sitting on their couch i was looking up at it! i mean this thing was large in stature! hahaha

then we got to play with it. he went out back a got a "stick" i kid you not, like four feet tall and the thickness of a baseball bat or more and he was just running around with it!!! so cool. so we went inside and we are all crammed on the couch, and he (Zeke) walked up, turned around and sat on the couch!!!!!!! with his front legs on the ground and all!!!! it was soo funny. so we, with the dog, shared our thought, then we were going to say the prayer. 

well Elder Fowles was going to say it, and had just started when all of a sudden this mammoth hit me in the face with his head and like slobbered on my face!! and of course i audibly said "Oh jeez!!" ha well then we started giggling...... and then Zeke walked right over to Elder Fowles, who's desperately trying to keep it together and wacks him too!!!! and that was it. we lost it. we started laughing so hard. I looked at the mom and she was covering her face in her hoodie just dying, everyone was laughing, E Fowles just ended it and we just laughed oh my goodness it was soo funny. 

so yeah everyone, even missionaries arent immune from laughing during prayers...

Great to hear from you all!!

love you all so much and we will talk to you next week. 

Elder Whitaker

Got my VISA!!

So this week was pretty crazy. after i finished emailing last week we got a call from our president and we had a huge talk about our numbers and what was going on there and he started talking about maybe closing our area and that he would get back to us. well Pday was about to end and we still didnt know so we asked him and he finally said we would be staying. and then began the longest week ever. it was so slow!! ha we knocked A TON of doors. like all day. it was fun but we just couldnt get any lessons in. we did find one really cool family that had a lot of questions and we taught them a little, but we had to leave for english class so we set an appointment for the next day. well we came back with a member, and in our branch, getting a member is an accomplishment by itself, well turned out there werent there so that was a bummer. then we went to english class that night (both nights no one was there) so that was all tuesday through thursday. then friday we just did what we had done thursday, we passed out these announcements that everyone should watch Conference. well i feel bad cause i told people that they could watch it at home, well they didnt broadcast it in spanish but we didnt find that out till the saturday afternoon session was half way through. so then Sunday. 

Sunday was a really epic day. we got up and did the usual. we were studying Oh wait. 

Ok so friday and saturday, literally for two days we played the worst game of phone tag ever. Our PRESIDENT called and we couldnt get on the same schedule!! it was awful, so finally he calls Sunday and we dove for the phone. We just talked about our branch president and our ward mission leader and how things were going. Then he (not knowing he was on speaker) said "we received notification that Elder Whitaker has obtained his Visa"!!!!!!!!!!!! then i dont know what happened. i was literally running around and i did push ups for a while and punched the air for about ten minutes. i was so fired up. but yeah then the phone got passed to me and he told me that i will be flying out the 22 of this month!!!! and then he complicated things. 

He said that since nothing was going on in our area that i would be moved to an area where they have more Spanish investigators than they know what to do with. then he told us that he wanted to make this transfer happen Sunday night. and that we would have to leave straight from the church building to go to Gate City so i could be picked up by the assistants. but the difficult thing was is that it was 11:00 in the morning, Conference was at 12 and 4, and it takes us 15 minutes to get to church.which only left me an hour and a half to pack up everything and leave. 

i have never moved so fast in my life. you should feel my bags though. they weigh like eighty pounds. so imma be mailing some stuff home here like next week and the next. so be looking for those. its gonna cost a fortune. :) but yeah, now i am living in Gastonia, the water here tastes weird, ha random fact but yep, and i am in a trio, with two zone leaders so thats fun. i am excited to get to work. 

just funny how right when i had accepted that NC could be my mission for a long time is right when i got my Visa. When you fully accept what God has in store for you, he sends you a blessing just lettin you know he is watchin out for you. 

Thats all i got this week. 

Les Quiero

Elder Whitaker

Responding to where we should send his birthday present:

1264 East Hudson Boulevard apt O as in oh 

Gastonia NC 28054

haha very light. cause honestly i swear the big one weighs at least 70. i would say 80's even

ha ha oh boy. well yeah. food is always good. i can always hook up my new comps.

but yeah not a whole ton of sugar though i havent been into sugar out here. 

oh did i ever tell you that i have sensitive teeth apparently. yeah had to go to the 

dentist a few weeks back. they did it for free so its ok but yeah. crazy. i got some like prescription stuff. but the sensodyne isnt the worst idea cause i will need some for when i get down there. 

ope no idea. but yeah. thats my address for now. everything is great. the elders i am with are champs and we will have a great time. love you so much.

im jealous of the snow and stuff. oh!!!! i really need to have you send me some cards for my camera cause i dont know where to get em. and im lazy. 

but uhh, what else, thats all i got, i left my list of stuff to put in letters at home. 

oh did you recognize that australian guy!! he came to our stake a while ago. that was cool. that fly is now famous. uh. oh. those running shoes i bought are small now. and oh haha im getting fat. those pants from CTR are cryin when i put em on. :) funny. 

also if you have our new family pictures on paper yet, send one of those. 

tell Dixie hi for me. 

Love you 

tell scotty hi. 

Elder Whitaker 

ha theres no time in the day! but we are heading out. also, how do you fix the hem on pants, cause the missionary mall ones are all the way apart now and the left leg is coming out the bottom. so if you could let me know that that would be awesome. imma ask some members if they will do it.

LOVE YOU 

Elder Whitaker

EW: I think it is an xD card. uhhhh. i have no idea. but if you buy it at walmart and send it i think i can exchange it out here. its a Canon i think. wow i really dont know anything about it. but i will find out and let you know next week.

byee

EW: b day is next week mother... awkward. ha kidding. but thank you

me: Birthday week starts on Thursday this week so really I'm just very efficient!

 EW: valid point.