Last transfer!

Well, tomorrow begins my last transfer, but I'm not thinking about it too much. Or at least trying not to. I am being transferred, and I'm going to be going to a neighboring area, the Rockbridge area in Buena Vista. I'll be covering the Rockbridge and Buena Vista Family wards, and will actually be able to work within BV now. I'm pretty excited. I get to stay in such an awesome place, be around some awesome missionaries, and finish my mission with a great missionary! His name is Elder Neal Butler, and he's from Chicago, IL. He's been out for about a year and a half now, and I've gotten to know him really well over the course of my mission. I've been his Zone Leader a couple times, and I've been on several exchanges with him in the past. I love Elder Butler!

Things in Lexington are going good! I'm really sad to leave this ward. I love the members here so much! But BV and Rockbridge will be great too! I'm still gonna be working closely with a lot of students, of W+L, VMI and SVU. In Lexington though, we have had a couple good interactions this week with investigators and stuff. We had another good lesson with a guy named Sammy Moore. His choice to investigate is really a suprise to a lot of people, because he's apparently really non-commital and stuff, but he has kept all the commitments that we've asked him to do! He's cool, but he might be dropping us soon. We feel like he might be at least. :/

Also, we tried a former investigator, and he wasnt home again, but we talked to his daughter, and had a good conversation with her. We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she said that her family just quit their church because of politics and they want it to truly be about Christ. We did invite the family to come to church, but theyre going to be busy for a couple weekends.

It's really sad though that we havent seen the success that we had hoped for while I was here. But We worked way hard, and I absolutely love this ward!

Elder Shain C Wiederholt
888 Oakwood Rd Ste 310
Charleston, WV 25314

A week of service

 Literally. We probably did some sort of service at least 4 hours of every day this past week. Needless to say, we're going the Ammon Approach. If you don't know who Ammon is, then you should read about him! Alma 17-18 baby! But yea, we've come to realize that since the work here is really slowing down as far as personal proselyting goes, we need to really work on building trust with the members. It's really working I think! It's great! We're really starting to help members to share the gospel and invite their friends to learn from us. It's definitely different, and slower compared to personal contacting, but that's alright. We're both convinced that neither of us will likely see a baptism for the rest of our mission, and so we're just trying to build the area for missionaries in the future. That's our motivation right now.

I finished my picture for President and Sister Pitt! It's based on O' Jerusalem by Greg Olsen. I called it O' Charleston. Some members in the ward were kind enough to build a custom frame for it as well. I'll send a picture of it. It was started when I was in Charleston, back in March. I didn't get a chance to work on it in Clarksburg, and since I've been here, I've been working on it every day during lunch or after planning at night. Needless to say, it rocks. I feel like there's parts that I could've done better, like the lower right hand section looks really flat compared to the rest of the picture, but that's alright. It was good enough to catch the eyes of people at SVU and get me an offer to do schooling there. We'll see. I don't know quite yet.

We're teaching this one guy names Sammy Moore. He's the county commissioner or something like that. He knows a lot of people, and a lot of people know him. We talked about our first lesson with him in Ward council, and said his name and we got some weird looks from people. A lot of people said "good luck, Elders." Well, we taught him for a second time yesterday, and have a third appointment with him on sunday. He said that he initially wanted to meet for educational purposes for his job since the mormon church is so dominant in the area, but I personally think that might be changing. In a week, he read a huge list of answers to questions of the soul in the Book of Mormon, started reading from the Book of Mormon, watched the Restoration DVD and read the Restoration pamphlet. We only told him about the pamphlet and the DVD, and only showed him the Book of Mormon. He has some awesome questions. He even told his friends at work about us, and when they dumped Anti on him, he withstood! Oh yea! There could possibly be a miracle brewing. We'll see!

So we have a wrench thrown in our plans for next transfer. We have to move out of our apartment tomorrow for students to move in on Wednesday. The Zone Leaders(who are in our ward as well) are being kicked out of their apartment for a new set of missionaries being put in for the YSA stake. So neither of us have an apartment as of the end of August. We're trying hard to find a place in Lexington, but students are moving in quick. And to make things worse, it appears that there's a law in Lexington that says that no more than 3 unrelated people can live in a single home or apartment. Soooo yea. We're working on it. We're trying to figure out if it's really a law or not. There's some lawyers in the ward we're talking to. Haha. We might be living in a member's basement for my last transfer! It's a good thing that we've been building trust! Nothing to worry about though. Who needs purse or script, right? The Lord will provide, and none of us are really panicking. But, as a result, please send all mail to the Charleston address.

Love yall!

Elder Shain C Wiederholt
888 Oakwood Rd Ste 310
Charleston, WV 25314

I'm not trunky, I promise

Holy cow! Blessings so large that theres no room to recieve them, baby! Haha! The beginning of the school year is coming upon us. We will be having at least 7 new families in the ward in coming weeks. That's incredible! One family we met is the Lee family. They're not asian at all, but they're way sweet. They're way loaded too. They moved into one awesome mansion. They told us that they moved into a place on the corner of Sellers Ave and Main, and I thought for a sec, and I was just phew! That's a nice place! Haha They're way cool. They're from Mesa, AZ. It's way nice to have some new youth in the ward, including a priest age young man. Their oldest is starting at BYU-I here in a couple weeks, so we're losing her. Thats alright though. Another family we met is the Nielsons, from Logan, UT. He served in the WVCM in 2004-06. He's way cool. We haven't gotten to know them too well yet though. They were visiting his areas this weekend.

Things are going well in our area as far as the work goes. We're really trying to work hard, and stay focused. Especially since we're both going home in October. I have mixed feelings on transfers in two weeks on wednesday. I want to be able to finish my mission here, and I love serving with Elder Weitz, but I know that if we finish together, then we're going to be replaced with two missionaries that know nothing about the area. So all the hard work that we're doing to build a relationship with the members could easily be smashed. It's very sensitive. For the sake of the area, I hope that there is a transition to new missionaries, even if that means me leaving.

We've been really trying to be more bold lately. We had a door approach where a man shook our hands, and immediately tried to bash with us by saying that we dont believe in the Bible. Well, My companion was carrying his quad, and I had a mini KJV in my pocket. We totally put the kabosh on that one and many other things he tried to do by just simply sharing a scripture and testifying of Christ. My favorite line that we said was when he was accusing of putting Joseph Smith above Jesus Christ. We said that's not true, and proved it. He said that his preacher said that's what was going on. We told him that we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and that the Church of Joseph Smith of Latter-Day Saints doesn't exist to our knowledge. He also said John Smith instead of Joseph Smith. I said "Sir, it's Joseph Smith. John Smith married Pocahontas." That helped to lighten things up a bit. Afterwards we went and taught the Chair of the Chamber of Commerce in the county. We had told some of his associates in the ward that we had an appointment with him, and they said "Well Elders....Good luck!" Well, dear members of the Lexington Ward, that lesson rocked our socks. Haha. Sammy Moore is his name. And he did say that he wanted to learn about the church for educational purposes, but that he would read and pray about the Book of Mormon, and if he thought it was the Church of Christ, he would follow it. Good enough for me!

At church, we had an interesting sacrament. Sound was out because of a lightning strike. Bishop got up and told the ward how lucky they are to have such sweet missionaries. I'm not bragging, I swear, haha. But then, a crazy lady got up and started to rebuke the missionaries for not going completely out of their way at walmart to give her a pamphlet or invite her to church when she was less active. In the missionaries defense, she's nuts. And she would like just say hi to them. I dont know if she realizes this, but we get tons of hellos at walmart because we're in one of the most condensed towns of mormon poopulation on the East Coast. Anyway, we're trying to do better and actually talk to people who say hi. She was right about one thing, you never know when those people saying hi really need someone to talk to. Thankfully though, she was quiet, and like none of the investigators there heard her little rebuke. Phew!

Well, those are our sweet experiences lately. Sure do love ya!

Love, Elder Shain C Wiederholt
888 Oakwood Rd Ste 310
Charleston, WV 25314

counting down! blech

We had interviews with our Mission President this week. They were great! I absolutely love being able to talk with President Pitt,
 and just letting him know in person how everything is going. We had a great district meeting as well, that was all about the Christ-like attributes. We were committed to pick one, and work on it extensively over the next week. I chose humility, because it's one that I guess I've always struggled with. We were also encouraged to look at an activity in Preach My Gospel about what we want to be like when we get finished with our mission, and I wrote everything on paper and ultimately decided that it'll all begin with me being humble enough to make the changes in my life that I will need to make to be the kind of person that I want to be. It'll be along road, and will take a little longer than two months, but here we go!

Elder Weitz and I are continuing to be work horses, even though we both go home in October. We still for some reason have this strange pattern of finding people to teach, and then they just fall off the face of the planet. We keep trying people, especially the one's that really do want us to come and visit, but people are just never home anymore! It probably doesnt help that it's the summer, and we serve in a place where people are either super-duper poor and non-commital, but are always home, or super-duper well-off and commital, but never home cause theyre always on vacation. But it's all about that final principal of the Gospel! Enduring to the End! I was listening to a talk by Jeffrey R Holland from October '11 where he really tells teenagers to get active and clean and ready for their missions. In there he said one sentence where he said time is running out. It really hit, cause I think that I definitely realized that time is running out on my mission, and that I feel that I've been a little passive. Gotta make these last couple months worth it and work the work.

Not a whole lot else going on. Just hot weather, and tracting in the hollers. Sure do love yall!

Also, sending some pictures of my comp and I at EFY with some of the councilors that we knew! And a street sign that has my first name on it, kind of. It's spelled wrong, but it's the closest that I'll ever get.