The Awesome Adventures of Elder Wheeler

Feliz Lunes from the tropical Land of the Republica Dominicana!  This Week was the last week of the transfer, and as such, I had already begun packing over the last week in anticipation for leaving my area and going somewhere else. On Tuesday, we had interviews with President, and as a preparation I made my mother’s Chicken Fiesta Salsa for my district and zone! They loved it. I had a hard time controlling my companion and all the Elders during the meeting. It was like a box of one dozen starving crazed weasels... Not really, but they did devour all of the salsa with the chips. I also was asked to write down the recipe for a couple of them so they could make it themselves later. It was interesting taking a recipe and translating it from English to Spanish. Really it’s not hard. Anyway, throughout this week we did a lot of teaching members and less active members. We are working with a few families on preparing to enter into the temple and make the necessary covenants for e...

Feliz Lunes from the Tropical land of the Repubilca Dominicana! This week, I had the opportunity to go to zone conference! This transfer’s zone conference was super inspiring and helpful on how we can better our missionary service. We talked a lot of really making sure our investigators recognized and felt the Spirit as we taught. The President also strictly told us that if at any moment we don’t feel the spirit as we are about to teach a lesson, we are forbidden to teach. ( See D&C 42:14 ). We were also taught that we must only teach by the way of the Spirit, because that’s the only true way people will experience conversion! Also, Elder Portillo and I were able to be witnesses to the marriage of a part member family we have been teaching for quite some time. Rafael, the husband, has had a tough past with many problems with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. However, over the last year, the Lord has been working through his servants the missionaries to teach him and help him ...

Feliz Lunes from the tropical Land of the Republica Dominicana! There’s been lots of work that needs to be done in our area this week and we’ve been very hard at work. On Tuesday, visited our young man Brian, who we have been teaching for only about 3 or 4 weeks. We actually finished all he needed to be taught to prepare him for baptism this past week! Brian is an awesome kid who’s very intelligent! With our help we downloaded the gospel library on his phone and he’s been taking advantage of this cool library to listen to the scriptures while reading. On Friday, when we had his interview, Elder Dayton, our zone leader, was super surprised on how much of the gospel Brian knew and understood. For a 12-year-old, he has a lot of enthusiasm for the gospel and we are now preparing him to receive the Aaronic Priesthood.  We have also been working on Hermano Rafael, who we’ve been helping prepare for his marriage tomorrow morning and his Baptism on Saturday! The Family Is super ex...

Republika Dominicana, the gospel frontier.  These are the voyages of the Missionary Elder Wheeler. His two-year mission, to find new investigators and baptize converts. To discover new foods, and to boldly cook what he has never cooked before! Captains Log #22 Star date 01.08.18: Feliz Lunes from the tropical land of the Republica Dominicana! This week we have had a very fun week!  Starting last Tuesday, my companion Elder Portillo, and I had a very awesome day when we made the appointment to marry the family of one of our investigators!!!!!  YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!  This Family, is the same one who had recently lost their newborn daughter to the ways of this world... death... if you didn’t already know. Over the course of this last week, this family´s faith has increased so much, it’s a miracle!  We also had the opportunity to talk with more people this week and we have found a few more investigators with great potential, who are prepared to make ...

[Mom’s note:  Since Rhys chatted via video with the family on Christmas, he did not write a letter last week.  He was able to clarify some details for us, however.  People in the Dominican Republic generally get married in a church, the problem is that church weddings are not recognized by the government and so they cannot be baptized until they are legally married.  Many times, this is just a matter of filling out the paperwork and paying a rather large sum of money.  Some difficulties arise because of Birth Certificate issues, especially if they were born in Haiti (this is fairly common). He would also like to let everyone know if you’d like to send him a care package, he’d love things like Peanut Butter, easily prepared convenience foods (don’t count on him having a microwave), snacks like trail mix or jerky, etc.  The US address where boxes can be sent can be found on the left sidebar of the main page of this blog.  The USPS “If it fits – it ...