Twin Falls VIP Tour, Cantrell Baptism and Thanks to Elder Grant

On the way to Twin Falls




Baptized and confirmed by Steve McKelson

Wow! A TON has happened this week. Ok, the temple trip was amazing. Our mission president personally paid for buses to bring the entire mission down to Twin Falls. We 1st got there and had lunch and met in a chapel for transfer calls. He literally just read them aloud and went down the list. I loved it. It took like 15 min and they were done. Turns out, Elder Grant is leaving me to be a district leader over in Weiser (pronounced Weezer like the band). Elder Woodside will be coming here to Middleton. Woods and Woodside...that will be a blast tracting. haha. I'm excited though. Since the entire mission was there, I got to meet him immediately after calls. He seems like a hard worker. He's been out 18 months so he knows what he's doin...unlike me. haha. (Brad and I got to IM for over an hour and he said that Elder Woodside is from Taylor, AZ. He said that almost 30% of his mission is made up of Arizona missionaries. BRAD: "they moved all the sisters to Twin Falls to work the open house. Plus our mission just took the Burley/Rupert area. With our size and everything, we are supposed to have 200 missionaries. We have about 170. So we are spread WAY thin. Its all good though", so he won't be going back) So after calls, we had a meeting where Temple President Rex Jarred, General Authorities Elder Marvin Arnold and Elder Walker talked to us. They were amazing and had a lot of really cool stuff to say. Then we went on the tour. WOW! This temple is completely amazing. We
split up into about 5 groups. My tour was unique because my tour guide was President Jarred. So he told us some really cool behind the scenes stuff. Like where the wood came from and what the architects were thinking and inspired by and where stuff came from. Amazing stuff. That trip was unforgettable. Then on Saturday we had our second baptism, Arleen Cantrell. Her husband decided to wait a little for his, but were still working with him. They are amazing people. I love them so much. They were both Jehovah's Witnesses for about 50 years and were offended by that church. They're so unbelievably nice. The baptism was great. Elder Grant and Elder Lehman wrote a song just for the occasion. It was beautiful. (From Brad IM: ME: Dad said to make sure and encourage your ward members to fellowship the Cantrell's. He said to make sure you do the new member lessons. He had a few JW's join in Mexico, but once they joined, their old JW friends blasted them with anti stuff and they eventually went back to their old church. We will keep praying for them. BRAD: Ya, we are. Arleen is way talkative and has already been going to gospel doctrine and stuff and has tons of friends. Old JW friends are the reason Jim postponed his baptism. One of his friends did just that. It shook his testimony, but I think watching Arleen get baptized really helped strengthen it. At the baptism he came up to me and said, "don't give up on me Elder Woods. I'm real close. Maybe a few weeks" It was amazing. I almost cried. haha) Afterward we had a nice reception at the Tanners. I made some awesome rice krispy treats while Elder Grant made some sweet lemon cookies. Just yesterday the Tanners and the Drapers threw us a "Elder Grant going away" party. It was alot of fun. The work is great. We've been packing and getting ready for Elder Grants exodus and Elder Woodside's arrival. Thanks so much for all the support. I love ya all. -Elder Woods



These are the connections that Sister Waltman and Brad talked about. In Brad's words "Crazy".