Week 5

September 23, 2008
Hey all,

Having lots of fun here, most of the time anyways. Jokes just fly left and right whenever someone feels down. Anyways, my P-day is Tuesday. This is the only day I will ever be able to read e-mail and mail and receive packages. Speaking about packages, I NEED THERMALS! It is only September and it is stinking cold! I can see snow on the mountains already! Mail? Physical mail is fun to have, but e-mail is fine.

By the way, there is a CD you guys should buy there. It is called The Garden. It is basically a musical about the Atonement. Awesome music. It is not a stage production, just sung. Highly reccommend it. It is very good.

Met my favorite investigators so far yesterday. Brandi Shilling is the one we are teaching, but I have just become close friends with Garth, the husband. He is an inactive. Who knew that Dungeons and Dragons could make us connect that quickly? Once that was brought up (somehow, I really forget how it did) it was an immediate friendship. He wished I could come and play with his friends every Friday. It was just really funny how quickly it happened.

Gave a talk on Sunday on.....missionary work! Wow! Who would've guessed! We were giving it in a 31-45 age Singles Ward that has 4 relief societies and 2 elders quorums. Its goal is depletion. Anyways, I gave the first talk and had everyone laughing with some of my quick thinking. I created the entire talk by following the Spirit. I just wrote down bullets in my little black book of talks and let the Spirit take over. Everyone said I gave one of the best talks they ever heard. Some said they felt the Spirit during mine stronger than during the talk the Seventy who was there gave. Overall, the whole lot of us got 400+ members there fired up about missionary work. The Spirit was strong, very strong. We could barely get out of the building. Amazing!

Something cool I just learned is Elder Perry's revelation about the missions of the world. He said that the Eye of the Lord is set on the Valley. The Salt Lake Valley. MY MISSION!!! I was blown away when I heard that. Statistics on the valley show that 1/3 of the people here are members. 1/5 of the members are active. Those numbers are not good in the heart of the church. Once we start getting 20 teaching appointments a week, then this mission alone will get more missionaries. The goal is to get a companionship per ward. Our small area alone has 12 wards. INSANE!

One thing that has me down though. Whenever I try to teach the lessons, my mind goes blank. I know everything, it just goes completely blank. I have no clue why, it just does! I try my hardest to study the lessons, then when we get there and it is my turn to teach, I was ready and had all I felt I should say, then I open my mouth and it all just whites out. Am I nervous? NO! Am I scared? NO! Do I know these things? YES! So I really do not know what it happening. The only part that I can do and really get across is my testimony. When I do, oh boy does the Spirit flood the room. Talks I can do, testimonies I can do, teaching, for some reason I cannot do. I was great at the MTC, but the field? Nope. Was I teaching with the Spirit in the MTC? Yes. Am I doing this in the field? Yes. My mind just goes blank. It disappoints me greatly.

I am getting a lot of advice for acting out here. They say to NOT take acting classes. They took them and it made it harder to get parts because they were using these certain methods. They said also to go into Film Studies and do something like lighting or some other production tool. I said writing. In response to that, they said that good writers are needed since the film industry is getting real bad. So basically, lots of people are excited to hear my stories about the musicals and how I came about with my focus on acting.

Food out here is great. We didn't have a dinner appointment one night and we were just tracting around. Came to this one door, the Bears, and just started talking. They asked us if we had a dinner appointment. We said no. They said, be back in 3 hours. So we were! They had canned at least 30 jars of tomatoes while preparing this. Sirloin steaks, corn on the cob, watermelon, garlic bread, salad, plus desert! In three hours! We said they didn't have to spend that much money. Their response....oh, this is all food storage. They apparently buy half a cow, freeze it, and store it. Everything else was freshly picked from the garden and homemade. 3 hours to do all that! It was amazing!

So uhh...there I one thing I don't like about being in the mission. It is something called lightning storms. Yeah, you guessed it. We were biking right in the middle of one. Here are these bolts of lighting, touching the ground mind you, and here we are, the tallest things in these bare streets, no trees around! I was highly inclined to seek shelter! Elder Peters just kept biking along. I yelled at him that he was nuts! Which he IS! The scariest moment I ever had!

Anyways....what is happening there? How is golf going? Is Ace still sleeping wherever he lays down? Am I getting those thermals that I really need (I'm not kidding)? I have an inquiring mind!

Love all,
Elder Waller

Austin's Address is
Elder Austin Daniel Waller
Utah Salt Lake City South Mission
8060 South 615 East
Sandy, Utah 84070

Austin's e-mail is adwaller@myldsmail.net