Letter #79 from Australia

January 22, 2017

Dear Friends and Family,

          This week has been an extremely hard one for me due to some personal trials and challenges that I have been facing. Satan lately has gone NUTS and has been working his hardest to get me feeling down about a lot of things, including myself and some of my weaknesses, and he has won some days, but others he has failed in his attempts! The reason why I am sharing some of these personal things with all of you is because of what I am starting to learn from them. The power of personal communication with our Father in Heaven, or more commonly referred to as "Praying". Heavenly Father does hear our prayers, he truly does. Now that doesn't mean that as soon as you ask Him for something, He gives it to you immediately. Yes, that is the case some times, but overall, He wants to see how bad you desire what you asked Him for. I know that there might be some of you out there who are going through a lot of worse trials and challenges than I am, but I just want you to know that our loving Father, is just a prayer away! I don't ask for much from all of you, but as my support team, so to speak, and my friends and family, I would just please ask you to keep me in your prayers. I know that all of you already pray for me and for the missionaries, but please send some prayers my way, if you can. The biggest thing that I need right now is peace and strength. So if you can all please do that for me, I would really appreciate it. I love you all so much! 

          Now onto some more lighter things and some miracles! Friday morning we wake up to find a text for the Church's headquarters. It was a referral from LDS.org and the gentleman's name was Dale. In the text, it briefly mentioned how Dale had gone online and chatted with a church representative about his desire to learn more about the church. So we made it a priority to make contact with him that same day! So Friday afternoon we made our way to Dale's address. When we got there and knocked on his door, he opened it up right away and the look on his face said it all. He said, "Please come in, I didn't expect you guys to get here this soon! I just asked for you last night." Well long story short, he is a GOLDEN INVESTIGATOR who has been so prepared by the hand of God. We taught him about the Restoration and then he committed himself to be baptized! In the middle of the lesson he told us that this is exactly what he wants and needs in his life and that he would like to take that next step. We invited him to be baptized on the 4th of February, yes that is in 2 weeks, and he said yes!! Saturday night we had a baptism in the ward of Oliver Fuentes, a child of record, and so we invited Dale to come to it. He came early to the baptism and we taught him another lesson, he stayed for the baptism and loved every minute of it! He read all of 1 Nephi between our visits on Friday and Saturday and he has told us time and time again that he knows the Book of Mormon is true and that he loves it so much! He came to church on Sunday and loved it all! He has some solid fellow shippers and everything is looking so great for him! He even wanted to meet this morning here at the library for another lesson, so we just finished teaching him not too long ago! 

          The Lord is blessing us so much and it is so humbling to be able to meet people like Dale! We are so happy for Dale and so grateful towards our Father in Heaven for this HUGE tender mercy! I love this work so much! It truly is the work of the Lord. Like I said earlier, Oliver Fuentes was baptized on Saturday after he turned 8 last Tuesday. He is the son of a less active family that we have been working with and helping to come back to church. The family has been coming to church now for the past 3 months and they are preparing themselves to be sealed as a family in April! Oliver asked me to baptize him and it was such an amazing experience! Being able to have experiences and miracles like these make up for all of the rejections and hardships that we face as missionaries! I love this work, I love my Savior Jesus Christ, I love my Father in Heaven and I love all of you! Have a great week and keep up the great things that all of you are engaged in! 

Elder Wheeler

The Fuentes family on the day of Oliver's baptism! Such a great day! 

Bowling last Pday was super fun!

Stacked some bowling balls on top of each other! hah
(Bryce liked to do this before his mission whenever we 
went bowling.  I guess he still has the touch.)