March 17-April 7 Letters from Elder LeGrande

March 17

Hey family, 

I hope you have had a good week, mine hasn't been too bad. Me and elder B will able to get two new investigators this week which was pretty awesome. J is getting baptized on Saturday, so that will be sweet. The weather still hasn't gotten warm here, it snowed four inches last night. Luckily cars were only grounded until about 1230 today. This weekend its finally supposed to get warm, so I'm very anxious for that. We had stake conference on Saturday and Sunday. The adult session on Saturday was pretty cool. All the stake conferences around the world are all about missionary work. They had the L’s (the head senior couple from our mission) speaks as well as some kids preparing to go on missions. Sunday was good as well, it was a little bit different because it was all recorded from SLC but elder Perry spoke and some other 70 and they all talked about missionary work so it was good to here :) I sent you all letters today, so I hope you get them soon :) Transfers are next week, this has felt like a really long transfer. I doubt me or elder B will get moved though because we just shot gunned the area. So I just read that A is in the hospital huh? Good thing she got a blessing from dad. That’s pretty sweet that aunt spring called you to give that. I’m sure she will be better in know time, but I will definitely pray for her. So what’s been new with you guys this week? I just realized that the girls are probably close to fourth quarter right? That’s pretty crazy how fast that seems to have gone for them. That’s pretty sweet that copper hills won state in Drill again, hopefully they can pull another state championship in something else. I was just remembering how my class one state in three different things which was pretty sweet. I agree with Dad when he reminded me that a year ago we went to Hawaii! That’s pretty crazy that was a year ago. In a couple months I will have been graduated for a year! That doesn’t even sound right to me. Time seems to have gone so fast since then. Anyways me and Elder B are instructing at zone training tomorrow. I seem to instruct every zone training haha, oh well I don’t even care anymore. But anyways I hope you all have a great week, I’m looking forward to getting that letter and the visa card. I love ya guys very much, have a great week!

Love Wes

March 31,

Hey guys!

It is 64 degrees here in Baltimore today and I'm super stoked for the warm weather! Sorry to here about the snow, knowing Utah it’s probably melted by now and its 70 degrees haha. This last week was an interesting week. We were out of miles to use for the month and so me and Elder Benard walked almost everywhere this last week. I would be surprised if we hit 50 miles of walking this week. My shoes are getting absolutely wasted and will It also poured rain for like the last 3 days and so we were wet for like 3 days straight and it was pretty miserable. This next week is supposed to be really nice and warm so I’m much stoked for that. For transfers this week my new zone leader over here in Baltimore is elder Tilly who was my last companion and my district leader was my last zone leader in Woodstock which was kind of annoying because I wanted a break from both of them haha but oh well. I’m glad me and Elder Benard are companions because I look around the missionaries in the Baltimore zone and am glad that I have elder Benard haha. So one of our super awesome investigators named Aoifa who is recently married to an awesome member decided she wanted to be baptized in May! She would be baptized sooner but she works everyday in Johns Hopkins and is super busy and hard to find time to meet with her. But anyway to answer your question about the letter from Cancun, I never received it I’m sorry to say. Dad it sounds like you had a pretty good weekend with Jess. There are some pretty interesting teams in the final four I must say. If Kentucky ends up wining it all I think I will be sick haha. Greg Koplin is going to Hawaii huh
? That’s pretty dang sweet! It sounds like a lot of my friends are finally going to go on missions this summer so I’m excited for them. Anyways that’s all I have for this week. I hope everything is going well for you guys and you have an enjoyable week! :) I love you guys!

Love Wes

 Hey family!

I got all of your letters a couple of days ago! It was really good to here from all of you. Saturday was awesome with Jason’s baptism. He was baptized by our ward mission leader and everything went really well. He gave a super awesome testimony afterwards. He will be someone who will stay active in the church for the rest of his life. We also helped a member move right after the baptism that was living with another active older family named the Walks. The Walks are pretty awesome , they have us over for dinner all the time and they live in a really nice area called Owings mills which is where two Ravens players live. And actually both of the Ravens players are LDS there names are JJ unga and Cody Larson. They both live in Utah right now for the off season but come back here in April, so hopefully we can hang out with them when they come back. But anyways sister walks gave us like 100 dollars worth of food! So it was pretty awesome because me and elder Benard are both really low on money and on car miles. It has been a hard month for those things, so I’m ready for April to hit. So me and Elder Benard are both staying in Jones Falls which we both expected because we shot gunned the area. I’m glad to be with elder Benard still but I’m not really sure how glad I am about staying the area haha but oh well. Yesterday our zone and some other surrounding missionaries went and toured the Baltimore Orioles Field. It was only six dollars too so it was a really good deal. But the tour guide was a lady who was pretty cool and a huge orioles fan. We got to go all in the suites, press rooms, dugouts, and the clubhouse and even on the field! It was way sweet, I have a ton of pictures I took which I am sending to you. It was a really sweet preparation day. The reason why I didn’t email you guys yesterday is because the myldsmail site was acting weird and wouldn’t let us do anything on it so that’s why I didn’t get to talk to you yesterday! I hope you all had a good week and did some fun things. Its snowing again today and the weather is just turning into a bad joke, I have a feeling its going to go from winter to summer and we are going to miss all of spring haha. Oh yea and me and elder Benard had one of those bad eating experiences that you here missionaries talk about haha. We had some native Indians from India had us over and they cooked us some really genuine Indian and Tibetan food and it was so awful haha. Me and elder Benard both felt so bad sick afterwards haha. We probably sat in the car for about 20 minute’s just feeling like we were going to throw up. Oh ya and on Sunday Elder Benard got his patriarchal blessing and the patriarch got permission from the area seventy for me to be there and listen which was way tight! Hahira but anyways that’s about all the interesting stuff that happened this week! I love you guys very much and be safe!

Love was

 April 7

Hey family!

Awesome email you guys sent me this week! :) I too enjoyed conference very much and had many talks that I enjoyed, but for some reason president Monson's talk in the Sunday morning session keeps sticking out in my head and he talked about loving everyone we come in contact with and helping people who are having a hard time and that feel like everything is hopeless. He also mentioned the story of the lady who made the man go around her property and how much she regretted it and wanted to apologize to the man who had long since moved out. Last night before I went to bed I thought of a ton of times that I was mean or rude to people (most of them were either you or Sarah and lynz) and how much I wish I could take back so many things I said and did. I’m going to try and apply it more as a missionary too, especially when it comes to other missionaries who drive me nuts and tick me off haha. Anyways conference was great, Saturday we watched it with J and on Sunday we went over the W's and watched it at there nice house and they fed us a huge lunch. But anyways in response to your questions, we apparently got a new mail man a few weeks ago who wont deliver mail unless our names are on the mail box. Even though ours says LDS missionaries. We put our actual names on it though a few days ago. After you called the post office I received some of your old letters you sent haha, but never have I got the one you sent from Cancun but oh well. The April fools joke mom pulled on Dad I thought was hilarious though haha. If I was Dad I would have just turned off my phone haha. Elder B thought it was funny too. I sent that package like 3 days ago, so you should get it today with those shirts and pants in it. I sent it in a 12 dollar flat rate box like you said.
Oh yea the videos you sent me on my camera won’t work :/ So you will just have to tell me what the videos were like. And in response the preach my gospel question, which I’m glad you asked because it means you were paying attention haha. We use preach my gospel not just in discussions but basically live our missionary lives. All the ways it says to do stuff in preach my gospel is exactly how we do it. The lessons in it, as it says aren’t rote presentation. They are always tenured to the people we are teaching and t here needs. Most of the formal discussions we teach are taught directly out of the church pamphlets which align with exactly preach my gospel talks about in the restoration, plan of salvation etc. Btw tomorrow we have to teach president and sister R directly for zone training! Its kind of nerve wracking but me and elder B isn’t worried at all. I also went exchanges this week with elder Tilley haha (my last companion) it was pretty weird to be with him again for a day especially because instead of being in the middle of nowhere in Virginia we were in the hood of Baltimore haha. Anyways I hope you liked this email and I answered all of your questions. Thanks for the sports score Dad, sounds like you had fun watching the best two years. I’m sure some of it is very accurate but at the same time I bet it is a lot different from the missionary work we do now. I hope you all have a great week and tell Sarah and lynz to stay out of trouble haha. Btw Brandi said she is going to text you and see how you are doing haha. I still write her every week and she says she is waiting for me haha. I hope to hear from you guys soon and look forward to your package and letters! Love ya! :)

Love Wes

 April 14

Hey Family!

It sounds like you all had a pretty good week. Mine was pretty good as well. The weather has been super nice like you mentioned. I’m so glad its finally starting to warm up, except it was 80 degrees on Saturday and our AC unit in our apartment is broken so there coming by to fix it hopefully today or tomorrow. Honestly this week was pretty typical and I can’t really think of anything that would be worth sharing with you guys. I guess of Friday night we met a sweet less active member for the first time who wants to come back to church and have us come over and work on his back yard with him, so that was cool. He also wants to come play basketball with us on Tuesday nights. Our Basketball nights are turning out to be really sweet. We have like 4 less active members and a couple non members coming to play every week. We also invited him to a member barbecue which was on Saturday up in the country in the other elders in our wards area. It was fun we had some good smoked meat and got to introduce some less active members and play football with them and with J our recent convert. Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you about Tuesday. On Tuesday we had to teach (role play) with president and sister R in companionships for zone training. Me and elder B did so good though haha. President R is doing this for everyone in the mission and he said to our zone that me and elder B were the best companionship so far teaches that he had seen in the whole mission. After we did role plays we did personal interviews with President R. He said that me and elder B again were the best teaching companionship he had seen in the mission so far. I think he was really frustrated by all the role plays that happened, because honestly most of them were pretty terrible. I'm glad that President R likes me so much. These next couple months are going to be very interesting. A lot of the mission leadership is going home this summer and a ton of new missionaries will be coming in, so I will be one the older and more experienced missionaries in the mission which will be kind of weird. Anyways so that’s how my week went. I’m excited to get the package and letter from you guys. Tricia also said she went one from her and from grandma and j, which will be nice :) I hope you guys have and awesome week! I’m going to play basketball with my zone at the stake center which should be fun. I love you guys! :) Be safe and have a good week :)

Love Wes