Here are the letters from Brian for the past 5 weeks.  Sorry we got behind in the posts. 

April 9^th

I got moved to Kearns.  I love my new stake.  We had 2 baptisms and this month we should have 4 or 5 more.  We are in one of the highest baptizing stakes in the valley.  Last year they baptized 48.

My new companion is Elder Grimley.  He is from Oklahoma.  We get along so great.  We have a Subaru Impreza and once again I get to drive.  We have fewer miles than my last area so now we ride bikes half the time.  Which is fine with me it’s sunny here and I get one stake.  We cover the Salt Lake Jordan Stake.  Technically we live in Taylorsville but we are in the Kearns zone.  It will be a good transfer in this zone.

Also I like this stake; it is weird going from 19 wards to 5.  We had 2 baptisms this past weekend. And hopefully we will have 2 more next weekend.  It will be a good week!  I love the sun right now it is making it nice to ride my bike.  I will take pics of my apartment this week and send them to you.

Oh yeah and we are white washing our stake.  That means both old missionaries left and 2 new ones come in.  It was a change in preparation to open our new mission. 

Well I don't have much to tell you other than that and that the church is true.  I love the mission and love sharing the gospel. 

April 16^th

This week has been great, long and kind of stressful.  The Bishops in this stake like to take over missionary responsibilities and it gets tough but I am working on patience with them, until they get it down and don't have to overdo their jobs.  We had 2 baptisms set up for this weekend and one of them got bronchitis and had to move her date back a week and the other hasn't fully quit smoking yet :(

I am excited for the next 2 weekends though; they will be good and have a baptism or 3.  So I have been riding my bike a lot.  I love it when it is sunny but the past 2 or 3 days it has been rain, and not Seattle rain more like Salty rain that leaves white residue on stuff.  So we have been driving.  I was going to email pics of my new apartment but I forgot my camera at home.

Right now we are at the Riverton family history center emailing before we go to Air Born.  Like a trampoline place with basketball hoops in it like slam ball and they also have dodge ball I guess I have never been there.  It is around the corner from Ashley furniture though.  I will steer clear of there.  

My area is doing great.  We have some good investigators, I will write you a letter home about each one this week but if you want to keep them in your prayers theirs names are Jessie, Cheryl, Gilbert, Zoey, Harry, Courtney, Michael S, Michael, Zach, Maylynn and Sorria.

Oh yeah Sorria is Buddhist, just like Lori! I am excited to see her progress in the gospel.

April 23^rd

This week was packed.  Our investigators are doing well; the baptism we had set up for this past weekend got pushed to next weekend.  Next weekend we will have 3 baptisms!  I am so excited. 

So one of our investigators, Cheryl, is such a cool lady.  Satan is doing everything he can to keep pushing her baptism back and discourage her.  She has gotten bronchitis and then also got knee surgery and now finally 3 weeks later she is going to be baptized this weekend.  She is getting evicted though because she has 4 cats instead of the 3 limit.  We never even saw the cats though until after she told us she had them.  She wants to get baptized before she moves though so we are going to do that this weekend.

Another one of our investigators is named Michael.  He is in his 60's and knows the church is true.  He just has to get married before he can be baptized.  He has a hard time believing in commandments other than the 10 commandments though.  He wants to see them in the bible.  The other day during our lesson it was great though.  We were talking about the word of wisdom and he wanted to know why he needed to stop drinking.  I showed him in Leviticus about it and before he read it as soon as he saw it he goes "Awwww" ha-ha he knew he was wrong and that he needs to stop now and that he needs to stop smoking as well.  He is one of my favorite investigators though right now and will be baptized in June hopefully.

I had a good week though we taught 17 lessons with a member.  We should have some good baptisms coming up in the next couple of weeks though. 

April 30^th

This week was great!! We hit almost all of our goals.  And we exceeded the standard of excellence.  We almost jumped for joy yesterday we were so proud of ourselves.  We had 3 baptisms!  They were great and went so smoothly.  It was nice and so exciting to see them be able to receive the blessings that can be brought to them through the Gospel.  I want to see them go through the temple so badly in a year and be sealed together as a family.  That will be my most treasured accomplishment while I am on my mission if I can see that happen.

Cheryl got baptized this past weekend and it was so exciting to see her enter the waters of baptism.  She was so excited and wasn’t letting anything stop her.  Then we had Jesse get baptized and he was so happy also he is one who has gone through many sets of missionaries and wants to be sealed together as a family one day.  We also had Courtney’s baptism and she was great too.  She is 9 and it was a challenge teaching her but we put our minds together and taught her with the spirit every day for like 2.5 weeks and we finally got her to learn everything and some extra.  It was a great day.

Saturday night we counted numbers and we were so happy that we had had 19 lessons.  We knew we needed at least 3 more on Sunday to meet our goal.  We did everything we could.  We found a priest to drive us around for an hour and a half and we stopped by a few potentials and some investigators and found 3 lessons and we even got a phone call with a referral and we got to go stop by and teach.  We had 21 lessons this week. 

Also this week I found out how much I love the lifesavers gummies and skittles riddles. hint hint :)

This is something I heard this week that I loved.  "Church is like a health club.  Where skinny people go to stay skinny and fat people go once.  If you don't keep going it doesn't do you any good."  I thought that was funny but really true. 

I love you guys.

May 7^th

This week was great! :)  It wasn’t as productive as last week but it
was good.  No one was baptized.  But we found a few new people who
will be baptized this month hopefully! :)

Nothing exciting really happened this week.

I am doing great! It’s nice weather all week! In the 70's.  It’s perfect
except dry heat no moisture in the air. It’s alright though.

I get to call you this week! Happy Mother’s Day soon!

Love Elder Willis