May 11
It was wonderful seeing all of you yesterday!! When i logged off i realized I didn't really ask you all the questions or talk to each of you individually as I had planned on, but I guess that is kind of hard to do on a 3 way skype call. You all looked great though. I really look forward to us all being together in one place someday. thinking about it now I realize that might be quite awhile before that happens.
   Sorry if I seemed slightly frustrated when talking about missionary work. This last week has been quite abit rougher than usual. We didn't find 1 new Investigator so I am guessing that might have shown a little bit during the skype call. I really do love this work and you would not find me anywhere else besides the VRM. It is simply hard when you know with all your heart that there is a clear path for everyone that will provide the most happiness one can experience and you do all you can to get people there but they turn away.
   The Book of Mormon is Scripture it gives so much insight into how we can better apply the gospel in our lives. There are prophets in this earth and there really is a church that is hand made by God. I love this Gospel and I love all of you.
-Elder Wagner

This week we were in charge of the young mens for mutual. We played missionary Jeopardy and the team that one got to pie us in the face as a reward. It was pretty fun

May 18
Hey Folks! I am getting Transferred!!! I am really good at predicting transfers. I was really sure I was leaving and I got the call 2 nights ago. I know two things about where I am going. First off I will be training for the first time. I am really looking forward to it. I hear it is hard, but you learn a lot so sounds like something I would like. Secondly since my companion is new and I am being transferred that means we are shotgunning an area. This will be my third time shotgunning haha. It is always fun to do because it usually means once again two things. First the work in that area could use some improvement. Second there are no false traditions of any fore fathers. Meaning We don't judge our area right off the bat because a companion who has been there longer, limits the ideas we can try based off of his preconceptions.
   In conclusion I am very excited. I will miss this ward a lot, I met and worked with a lot of great people. One of which I didn't tell you about. The sisters in the ward reactivated this young family who sons had not been baptized. The oldest decided to first and then the other two followed about 2 months later. I got to know them pretty well. Sometimes we would play a quick games of pig with them at the church if we happened to be there and we were waiting for someone to show up. I also got to interview all three of them for baptism individually which was really special. Yesterday the reactivated mother texted me and said "Thank you for the example you have provided from my boys, my oldest now wants to serve a mission because of you." It is  moments like that which really make me grateful to have played a simple role in someone else's progression. I will miss the Manchester Ward but I look forward to a new adventure.
    Now the real question is if I am on bike or not. My bike got stolen quite a while ago haha. So hopefully there is one there.
    Stay strong and Morm on!
Love Elder Wagner

May 26,
This has probably been the most interesting week of my whole mission. First off, I am serving in the most coveted area in the whole entire mission. The Chippenham YSA ward. I can't even begin to describe how awesome it is... let me try though haha.
   Technically we cover three stakes all based around Richmond. We spend most of our time however in about a 4 mile radius around the city center. There are quite a few universities in that area and all we do is walk around and talk to people who look our age.That is literally it. We either teach them right then and there, or we set an appointment to teach them at the local downtown branch. It works amazingly well. All of the YSA's in our ward live relatively close so we just bring them to the church as well and wham, instant fellow shipper, Instant church tour, and since they are young studious and open minded  helping them progress is pretty simple, instant investigating investigator. If they don't want to read pray or come to church find we will someone that will.
   The best part is everyone here has a friend and if they feel uncomfortable meeting with us alone they bring their friend to join in. Yesterday we invited 2 people to come to FHE and they each brought a friend who we will now be teaching within 2 days. Incredible. I Could go on about how awesome this place is but I will spare you.
   My new companion is Elder N From Tricities Washington. He is amazing, awkward weird, and diligent all at the same time. He got baptized late April of last year! His testimony is incredible. to describe kind of who he is combine Elder Calhoun from the best 2 years and Buddy from Elf and you Have Elder N. I am not kidding. It is Uncanny. My whole mission on average I wrote in my journal about 3 times week if even. Now it is everyday. There are to many things that he says or does in a day that I don't want to forget. To cap it off I guarantee he is the most Christ like individual in the whole mission If I was a betting man I throw in quite a few shiney pennies in on that wager.
   We came in here with literally no Investigators, 0. It has been 1 week and we have a teaching pool. I am so happy to be here and to be with Elder N and as he would say "we bring the Everlasting gospel.

Love Elder Wagner
1.) 3 Generations Elder J My trainer, Me And Elder N

Cool thing happened this week

Thank you Mom for being willing to go out with the missionaries. That has been a particular struggle in this area for me. We don't really have any sign up or assigned splits so whenever we set up an appointment me and my companion basically call every single person in the Ward roster and out of the 10 that pick up we can usually get one person to go out with us. However, after all that hard work (it takes about 45mins to call everyone) we show up to the lesson and no one is there even though we confirmed 4 hours before. At that point I get pretty drained haha. Thankfully though the members that do come out with us are willing to tract or contact potentials/less actives during that time so it is not completely ineffective.

   Plus I really do have a strong testimony on what an impact it has on members simply going out with missionaries. Most particularly with me, but also others as well. If any man or women wants to prepare to be in the presence of Heavenly Father again going out with the missionaries regularly is a fantastic start haha. Never will you be around any other person so focused and committed to following Christs example and self improvement than the missionaries. It is almost contagious especially when you do have the opportunity to help them teach. 

   I shared a story with my mission president the other week in an email that I don't believe I shared with you. If I have my apologies. But here it is “Cool thing happened this week. We took a member out with us that we never had been out with to a lesson this week. The member was a great help during the lesson and thanked us for inviting her along. Not an hour later she texts us and tells us she has a friend that wants to take the lessons. Excited and curious we ask her a ton of questions about this guy. Come to find out that this member was driving back from the lesson and saw a man walking on the side of the road. She felt impressed to go and pick him up and so she did. She drove him home and the guy began asking her what can of person would pick up random strangers and she said well what would Jesus do? He asked her what church she goes to and one thing lead to another and we are planning on meeting him this week!

Bringing members is important to help us and the Investigators but I also think it is easy to forget what kind of impact simply going out with the missionaries can have on members. It makes them more aware of what we do and more willing to follow the promptings that everyone receives to do missionary work. As servants we have an impact that is seen and unseen. I am grateful though that we got to see this one.”

   Reminded me a little bit about when we gave some guy a ride to phoenix on the way home from church. Anyway this week has been great. Especially because they announced that we will finally be receiving  ipads some time in June!!!!! Whoohoo! I don't have much details besides that but I am sure they will give us more so that I can inform you. 

   I look forward to SEEING you guys on Sunday!!!!! Love Elder Wagner

1.) I don't really know what to say other than we had a littlebit of time before Stake Conference started haha

   I know I don't often write to much about the people we are working with because most of the time I don't want to go into detail about people who will probably drop us in 2 to 3 weeks. However Most everyone that I have taken the time to write about in my journal have been baptzied since. So there are 2 new people who are beyond solid right now who I have very high hopes for. One of them is  F. She is what we would call a real investigator, because she is actually investigating! If people would simply do the things we ask them to the way we asked them to do it a lot more people would make covenants with God. F does everything. She is a teacher so we took the advantage of that and have been giving her very detailed home work assignments incorporating prayer in and sciptures. She loves it! She does have some concerns though, but that is okay so long as she involves Heavenly father in the process and asks her questions with no ill will she will feel the spirit move more in her life. We met her tracting and at first she almost closed the door on us but after a little bit of persistence we were able to teach her and she has been progressing ever since.

   The second persons name is J. He is a 30 year old Family man who has to use a wheelchair due to a childhood accident. We were out with Brother B (a convert of about 10 years)  contacting potentials and we felt impressed to stop by his house. When j opened the door he looked at us and then looked at Brother B and said "Hey  B ! how are you doing?? how long has it been? 20 years or so?" Brother B recognized him as well. Apparently Brother B had been J youth minister at a baptist church when J was 10 years old!! After talking a bit we were able to share the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Brother B was able to teach him a little differently than he did 20 years ago. It was an awesome lesson and we all walked away commenting on how great of an experience it was and will continue to be as we help him progress. 

   It has been a fun week and I look forward to seeing you all very soon

 Love 

Elder Wagner

3/30/15

Hello Family! 

     This week was slightly rougher than usual. We did a lot of finding but not to much teaching. We met some really cool people though. I met a guy named M who lived right off of North Phoenix Road. We are going to do some service for him and teach his family later this week so that will be fun.

   We definitely followed the spirit this week when it came to visiting Part member families. We saw a name on the ward roster that we had not seen before. So we decide to go visit them and they let us in. The husband says "that it's interesting that you guys came by today because last night I had a dream about missionaries and woke up wondering where you guys have been." It turns out they have not had missionaries stop by for 3 years. Another one was basically the same situation. Except we noticed that there was only one name down for this family and it was a women. So we said to ourselves " we are going  over there and there is going to be a man living with her who is not a member who wants to know more about the gospel." We ring the door bell and lo and behold a man opens the door and says that he IS a member and let us right on in. We were slightly confused, because that is not what we planned on and his name was not in the roster. Come to find out it was the laddies father who is active in the swift creek ward. Him and his family came over to his daughters house to have a rare dinner with the family. She seemed stand offish but willing to have us in. Her husband just as we planned is not a member and is willing to have us come over again. Her Dad really wanted us to work with her and him so that he was the only way we got in there. I know for a fact that we would not have been able to get in at any other time. its awesome when the lord leads you to the right place at the right time. 

    -Love Elder Wagner

4/06/15

Hey Family!! 

   Yes Elder B is getting transferred. I will really miss that guy. It took a while for us to get on the same tracks but he is an awesome person and a great missionary. I learned a ton from him about being a genuine person and how to communicate to others in a way that helps them feel loved. See I try to be genuine but sometimes I come off as short and not very loving. Mostly because the moment someone tells me there name I forget it and even upon asking for their name twice more I still struggle to remember. I think I am going to be an early victim of *alztimers. I hardley ever forget the first letter of someones name, which can come in handy when even my companion has forgotten their name i can help them remember what it was by shooting out a ton of names that start with that letter. Devon! Darrius! Drake! Drew! You get the point. 

   General Conference was awesome. By far my favorite talk was by Elder Anderson. the one with the analogy of Music and Dancing. I think a lot of members get caught up in the dancing but there is no music playing for them so it does not turn out the way they expect. I definetly need to apply this to myself. Ironically it really is not to hard to forget what my purpose is and the WHY on the mission. We get trapped in just doing the routines without thinking about the reason we get up at 6:30am amongst other things. Joseph smith said something along the lines of "Teach correct principles and people will be able to govern themselves." Something like that.. haha. Anyway this transfer has been a great learning experience for me all of which are have been noted in my journal which I try so hard to write in. Thus far I have been pretty consistent.

   I love you all and am gratefull for your prayers and love. -Elder Wagner

   

Alma 17:1-2

 So R's baptism. It was great I got to go up to it with one of my favorite companions Elder Y. We were the ones who originally found and started teaching him. It was also good to see a bunch of familiar faces at the baptism, but most of all it was good to see Reginald again. In Alma 17:1-2 it talks about how awesome it is to reunite with old friends, but it is even better when your old friends are still in the gospel or have found it while you were separated. That was most definitely the case on Saturday. We got the baptism right the first time fortunately and we had a nice big hug afterword. When we were changing in the bathroom I asked him what got him to this point and he said "the missionaries and the members supported and kept on encouraging me and God helped me make the step and I thank him for it." 

   To tell you the truth I was not sure if he would ever do it, but he did. We just always need to be there to help and invite others who we may not be to sure about, because we all have unlimited potential. If someone has confidence in us the lord does and I have confidence in him so I need to have the hope that people can and will make changes to their lives if I do my part. 

   Other than that Me and Elder B went to a baptist church the other night. It was interesting, a couple of folks tried to "save us" but when we told them that we had faith in Christ as our Savior and that through him we can go to heaven they almost seemed disappointed haha. All they hear about us is that we worship Joseph Smith and do good things just so that we can "earn" our way to heaven. So false. Anywho It was overall a good experience. They were generally friendly and welcoming. 

   That's about it for this week as far as out of the norm things, I love you all! Stay strong and carry on -Elder Wagner

This week was an exciting one. We found a whole slew of gods elect. Probably the most we have found in a week since I was in Lakeridge second ward. Things are starting to happen here and its great. Speaking of Lakeridge second ward, I got a call form them the other night. Slightly confused I asked what was up. R the Ghanaian who I taught for almost 5 months has finally decided to be baptized and he wants me to do it! So this Weekend ( If I can find a ride) I will be going up to put him under. He has been ready this whole time he just had some road blocks in his mind that he could not get over. He will make an interesting member. He has got some unique ideas that he loves to share during gospel principles that make people kind of nervous haha but that's what makes church interesting!! That is kind of the reason that I liked Farmville so much. There was never a dull moment. 

   That phone call was the answer to so many prayers. I love R so much. I remember on the 4th of July we just went on a walk through the neighborhood with him for about 30min, to watch the Fireworks that people were setting off. We talked about his family, some of his goals and his struggles. He was well aware of our purpose ( we had made it known to him many times ) but just for a moment we enjoyed each others company. I don't know why I love that memory so much but I hold it very dear to my heart.

   I always learn something different form each of my companions And with Elder B I have learned how to really listen to people and what they are saying. He is very good at noticing  important details when people speak to him that I  tend to miss. We are getting along really well. I have also learned how to pick and choose my battles. In the past if I had a disagreement with someone I would stop at nothing to let them know that they are wrong. No matter how insignificant the disagreement was. For example me and Kyle would have heated debates on simple things like the definition of words haha.

Now however if it is something of no consequence I just drop it, or I try to really listen to what they are saying and I usually find that we are both on the same page but don't realize it. 

   The mission is great. I am doing the work and loving it as well (there is a difference). I am grateful to have such a happy family at home and that though there are things that come up. Everything is okay. Continue to pray and read the scriptures daily love -Elder Wagner

Catch up!

February 24

 I had the wonderful opportunity this week to baptize someone for the first time and the funny part is that I really had no role in this woman's conversion. One of the great blessing of being District leader is that you get to interview those are ready to be baptized. It is so wonderful to hear there strong testimonies and since I do it so often it continually reminds me that people are always prepared to hear the gospel. I had the chance to interview a sister by the name of O . At first she was a little nervous, so I tried to help her feel comfortable and after that happened she just opened right on up. It was extremely uplifting for both of us to talk about the gospel and her progression in it. Anyway she left feeling very happy. 2 days later I get a call from the sisters who have been teaching her that the person who she had originally planned on baptizing her could not make it so instead she requested that I do it. I said I would be honored too. However I have never baptized anyone before so this would be a first for both of us.The Sister let me know a little before hand that Sister O has a fear of water so they did not fill up the font as much as they usually would. I thought there was nothing wrong with that so I did not think to much about it. Fast forward to the baptism. We both walk in at the same time and the water goes a little above my knees and I thought to myself "oh boy.." Sooo it turns out that the third time really is the charm if you catch my drift. Hopefully it was not to traumatic for her haha. Afterwords she did say that it was still very powerful and that she felt the spirit. 

   That's the story for the week. I am staying here in Manchester with Elder B so don't be afraid to send anything over here ;) I love you all stay strong and carry on Elder Wagner 

March 2, 2015

 There are so many good restaurants in Virginia it is ridiculous. We went to this place called Don Pepe's for lunch. It's basically a better version of Si casa Flores. Anyway we stuffed ourselves and then my body reverted back to the good old days where we would have a good Mexican lunch and then come home and fall asleep to the fishing channel, waking up 3 hours later well rested and ready to begin something else. Though I didn't do any of those things my body reacted like it  Not happy haha. It reminded me of all those Saturday lunches though which was pleasant.

   As far as the week goes it has been the usual. Me and Elder B are getting along really well. It took us a while to figure each other out, but those companionship's always turn out to be the best. We had a pretty funny story this week. The conclusion of it is that I was left stranded in the middle of the country at night beside an unknown road, completely by myself for about 6 mins. Which for someone who has never left a person leave his side for the last year it was quite bizarre. 

 This is what happened. We go to contact an investigator with a priest at about 8:30 at night. She was not home so we go to hop back in the car. Elder B takes shotgun and J gets in the drivers seat and I attempt to get in the back but the door is not opening. I try again and it still is not opening. The car begins to pull away. Thinking they are joking I walk to the end of the street where they are going to pull out. They get on the main road and I wait for them to slow down and pick me up when they reach me. Trying to be funny I act like a hitch hiker trying to wave a car down. I was then shocked when I received the same treatment that most hitch hikers do when the car wizzed by me at full speed without hesitation! For about 30 seconds I don't even know what to do. I check for the phone and thank God for it being there. I then begin to call the priest multiple times and he does not pick up. Half laughing and half annoyed I send him a simple message saying "your missing something."

   After waiting for a couple of mins I finally receive a call from the priests phone and here my lovely companions soft sarcastic voice say "Elder Wagner. Where are you?" haha. They drove back and got me and it all worked out, but it was a very weird six minutes for me that I have no intent on experiencing for a while. 

   Later when we were talking about it I asked why they did not pick up the phone. They said they thought I was trying be smart and get them to involve me their deep conversation they were having by calling. When they checked their messages they asked "what do you mean we are missing something?" When I did not respond they looked at the backseat to find me missing. I won't forget that story anytime soon. 

  I love you all and am so happy to see a happy healthy baby. Whenever I look a the pictures of her I can't stop smiling :). I look forward to seeing her practically 1 year old self! -Elder Wagner

   

March 9,2015

The Suprise Birthday party was awesome. I noticed the decorations when I walked in, but did not think anything about it. Then she kind of gave me a knowing look and said that we are having lemon cake to which I became a little suspicious. Then she told me to uncover the main dish. When I saw it I almost started tearing up. Not because I was excited to eat it or anything (though I was excited for that ). But for the first time in a long time it I could really feel true genuine love from someone else. I felt someone actually cared about me as a person for who I am  and not as another missionary who is trying to get them to do something that they don't want to do. As missionaries it seems that we just surround ourselves with a lot of people who would rather not be around us or some that are simply because they have to. Companions ward members investigators etc. So it was one of the few moments where I felt truly appreciated. It really meant a lot to me so thank you. That was probably the best gift I have ever received :)  

   I feel like every week is the same so i don't really know what to write you haha. We found some investigators we lost some. However me and Elder B have noticed a common trend amongst almost all the investigators we have found in the last couple weeks. Many have lost someone dear to them. Grandma's, Grandpa's, children, siblings and spouses. A lot of the times we run around with a blindfold on. The blind fold is the distractions in life. We get so well rehearsed in our daily activites that we don't look where we are going. It turns into habit rather than conscious decision making. Then something bad happens and the Blindfold is ripped off our faces and we see everything. The good the bad, and yet just because you can see does not mean you know which way to go yet. These are the kind of people we have been working with and it has been a blessing to see such humble and open learners. Some are still looking at the negative things, but at least their eyes are open.

   In other news we got into a royal bash with a fellow christian :) It started off nice and friendly but when he started saying that we worshiped Joseph Smith and that we have to earn our way into heaven things got a little heated. This kind of discussion took place for a while and then he said " Oh and you guys believe that everyone is a child of God.." To which I  replied with a hint of surprise in my voice said "you don't??" He said "Nope!" At that point I just walked off, my companion quickly followed. Experiences like that really get me riled up so I try really hard not to get involved. Occasionally I get roped in though. Good thing I can change my ways through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Oh sorry never mind once saved always saved! regardless if I don't even TRY to keep the contract that I made with God. Okay I am done ranting. 

   I love you guys with all my heart and because I do I am going to DO everything in my power so that others can feel that same love within in their own family and have that for eternity. Christ has given us a gift and a great measure of whether or not we appreciate that gift depends upon our actions. Yes we will slip up, but that is what enduring to the end means. Try your best and God will make up the rest. Love Elder Wagner