This weeks email is in fact not an email. I decided to try something new and make an audio recording instead! Shout out to Dad for being so awesome and making this all work on the blog, I really appreciate it. I hope ya’ll enjoy hearing from me (pun intended)! I love you all! 

Sincerely,
Elder Whitchurch
2 Nephi 1:15

Transcription

All right, so I have like zero time today, and so to make this week’s email a little interesting and a little easier for me, I’m just going to send this audio recording. It’s kind of fun for you guys because you can hear my voice, so that’s awesome. But yeah, I’m doing really well. It’s been a really fun week. There are a few highlights I’ll throw out there. I can’t remember everything that’s happened, but I do remember some of the really awesome stuff.

First of all, I’m going to jump straight to Saturday because that’s the most important thing that happened this week. We have a friend named Jace—he is awesome, the best. He’s a nine-year-old we’ve been teaching. His family are all members, but he hadn’t been baptized yet, so we got to teach him, which was such a gift. He’s such a funny kid. We’ve been teaching him for a while in this area, and finally, on Sunday, we had his baptism. It was amazing. My companion, Elder Allen, baptized him, and Jace’s grandpa confirmed him. It was just beautiful.

As part of that, Jace’s mom asked me to give the talk on baptism, which was really fun. I used a little trick my grandma taught me with a Kit Kat—scribble out the first three letters, and the last three represent the baptismal covenant: keep the commandments, always remember Him, and take His name upon you. I also gave him a WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do”) bracelet as a reminder to endure to the end and keep being like Jesus. It was just an amazing experience to be part of.

Now for a fun side story. We went to the church building about two hours early because it takes forever to fill the font. We got there around 3:30 for a 5:30 baptism. After starting the font, our ward mission leader stayed to watch it while we went to dinner. As we walked outside, there was this bright green McLaren just sitting in the parking lot. We were like, what is going on? It was a beautiful car.

The guy rolled down his window and asked if this was the Sun Valley church. We told him no, it was down the street, and then asked if we could take a picture. He said yes—and even asked if we wanted to sit in it. So we got pictures in this awesome green McLaren. Then another McLaren pulled in—turns out they all had the wrong address. This one was white with really cool details, and the driver even put the roof down for us for pictures. Then a Nissan GTR pulled up, and at that point we were just losing it. It was awesome. We may have been a little late to dinner, but the person feeding us totally understood.

Other than that, it’s been a great week. I honestly forget a lot of what happened, so I’ve been looking at my photos and calendar to help remember. We had some really cool experiences with the youth. We love being in members’ homes and have been doing that consistently. We also love having youth come out with us. We went biking around a neighborhood with a guy named Garrick, who’s heading out on a mission soon—possibly Bolivia, but I could be wrong. Either way, it was really cool.

We also visited with two other youth and their families in one of the wards I cover (I cover two wards, so it can get confusing). The youth are just awesome. It’s been great working with members overall. At one point, I saw a Dinoco sticker from Cars and nearly lost it—that was a funny moment.

Speaking of cars again, we helped someone pick lemons from a tree, and before that we stopped by another member’s house who had a really cool classic Ford Mustang. We even got to sit in that one. She also showed us her massive cat—it weighed like 33 pounds. Then we went and picked lemons—five boxes full, and that was only about half the tree. The member helping us took one box and told us to take the rest, so we ended up with four boxes of lemons and didn’t know what to do with them. We gave one to some sisters in our district and ended up throwing the rest away.

It’s been a pretty chill week otherwise, but we’ve had some great lessons. We’ve been teaching a new member named Jackie who was baptized a few weeks ago—she’s hilarious and gets distracted easily, but we love her. She’s about 12 and just really fun to be around. We also have friends named Jason and Rose.

Rose has been especially amazing. She’s a mom in her 40s, has five kids, and is just loving the gospel. We’ve been teaching her twice a week, and she’s come to church three times already, including conference. She loved it. We recently taught her about the Restoration, and she said she recognized the feeling Joseph Smith had. Later, when we followed up, she told us she had read the scriptures multiple times because she loved them so much. She wasn’t sure when to pray, but she said she loved the feeling she had while reading. My companion asked if maybe that feeling was her confirmation, and she said she thought it was. We were quietly celebrating on the other end of the phone. It was such a cool experience—a real tender mercy to see her recognize God speaking to her.

She’s currently on date for baptism on May 9th, and she’s just ready. We’re really excited to be part of that process.

We don’t have a ton of other people progressing right now, but we’ve been doing a lot of work with members, and they’re amazing out here. Chandler is very member-dense, so there are lots of opportunities to connect.

We also did quite a bit of service this week—probably went a little over our four-hour limit. We helped at a ranch, assisted with moving pods, picked the citrus tree, and did some gardening for a non-member who is related to someone in our ward. We’re planning to reach out and see if she’s interested in learning more.

The Lord really is preparing people and making a path. I know my sisters aren’t fans of cheesy missionary emails, so this is the next best thing—a cheesy missionary audio recording.

But yeah, it’s been an amazing week. I know this work is worth it. It’s tough—I’ve worked for every minute of it—but it’s worth it. I know the gospel is true. It just wouldn’t make sense for it not to be. There’s too much that aligns with how the world works and exists. And what a gift it is to know that our Savior, Jesus Christ, atoned for us.

I love you guys. I’m glad I got to make this recording for you. Hopefully it’s fun to hear my voice. I know I’ve changed a little bit—some things are the same, some aren’t—but I hope you enjoy it. I’ll either send another email next week or be lazy and send another recording.

Love you all. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.