Week 29: Transfers Today/...Again: Double P-day & Announcement - August 29, 2018

This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago when the Young Elders participated in cleaning the Ensign Peak trailhead. Elder Wright said that the other two elders in the picture are Elder Harris and Elder Waechtler.

Elder Wright had P-day on both Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Read his emails below to find out why.

From Tuesday:
Week 29: Transfers Today
Hello friends! So, there isn't much to talk about other than the fact that transfers are today! I got a moving notice, which is still nothing new, but there is one little piece of information that I have that I would like to tell you all, but I can't as of now. I will, however be able to tell you next p-day, which may be sooner, since transfers and all that stuff. All I can say is be ready for my next email.
Before I go, I just want you all to know that it was my Mom's birthday last Friday so make sure to wish her a happy late birthday! I feel like this email is fairly small, so make sure to email me with questions so that I can answer them!
Till next week,
Elder Wright

From Wednesday
Week 29: ...Again: Double P-day & Announcement
Remember how I said that my p-day might change? Well, my p-day is now on Wednesday. That means I have two p-days in a row! Hooray! Well, sort of. Honestly, having two p-days isn't that exciting since my new companion, Elder Crittenden, still has to do all his p-day stuff, so it's not exactly a completely free day. As for the announcement, it is this: I am now a district leader, which is pretty interesting. I wasn't able to tell you guys at the time due to transfers not happening yet, but now I can, so yeah, I'm a district leader now. What does this mean? It means that I am now in charge of myself and three other elders in Data Services. I will also be getting a phone, but that isn't that big of a deal. I have been a little bit bothered by the fact that some of the other elders, mainly the other district leaders, have congratulated me on this, when in reality I didn't do anything to receive this calling. That receiving callings like this are not an achievement, they are a calling, meaning that it's not worth celebrating or saying "good job" about it. Oh well, I know that everything will go well. My district doesn't seem like they're that difficult to take care of, so I'm sure everything will be fine.
Let me know if any of you have any questions. I recently was able to answer a question from a member of my home ward, and I thought it was pretty cool, so let me know if there is anything you are wondering about.
Till next week,
Elder Wright

Mom here again. Nick is a man of few words. I was able to find out some more info while we were able to chat yesterday and today. I thought I would share a little bit.
He got to go to the temple last week, so no service project. He usually does temple work for names that the temple provides, but he is going to start doing some of our family names. In fact, he did baptisms and confirmations for ancestors last week.
On Monday nights they either have District Meeting or Book of Mormon class with President Fenn. He says that President Fenn doesn't usually stay on topic, since he really loves the Book of Mormon, so he has a tendency to start talking about other chapters. He is able to teach any part of the Book of Mormon with the spirit and make it great. All of the young Elders in his mission are required to go, but some of the Senior missionaries go too.
He had dinner with a senior couple, Elder and Sister McKnight on Sunday.
He said that he could tell us pretty much everything that usually happens in Help Services and Digital Imaging Processing, if it weren't for the fact that it's "pretty boring." But Data Services has some pretty confidential stuff that he can't share. He feels like the Lord and the mission president have a lot of trust in the Young Elders. About a year ago, they didn't have access to all of these things. They mostly did account recovery stuff, and when they weren't doing that, they were making hats! "Our mission is growing really fast, and it's fun to be a part of it."

Thanks again to all of you for your, love, support and prayers!

Here's another picture of Elder Wright with the other missionaries

Week 28: Insert Witty Title Here - August 21, 2018

Hello family and friends. If you were to judge by the title of this email, you would think that not much has happened. You would be correct. Honestly, things have been kind of the same here. Working on cases, receiving training, having classes, all that stuff. The only thing that I think really stuck out was the service project we did last Thursday, in which we cleaned up the head of the Ensign Peak trail, which was pretty fun. I mainly trimmed the plants that were getting in the way of the path, and in the end, I feel like things looked a lot better all around. I'm glad that we were able to have that service project, mainly because we haven't had one in a few weeks do to various youth groups taking them all. Hopefully their will be more service projects in the future. Other than that, I don't have much else to say. Have a great week, and remember to do some family history work, because there is always something on your tree that you can work on.

Till next week,

Elder Wright

Mom: I thought it would be nice to include a little bit of history about Ensign Peak. 

"Soon after entering the valley, President Young pointed at Ensign Peak and said, “I want to go there.” He suggested that the peak "was a proper place to raise an ensign to the nations," and so it was named Ensign Peak. [6] On July 26, 1847, a party consisting of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards, Ezra T. Benson, George A. Smith, Wilford Woodruff, Albert Carrington, William Clayton, Lorenzo Dow Young, and perhaps Parley P. Pratt climbed to the top of the hill. Of the event, Wilford Woodruff recorded that the group “went North of the camp about five miles and we all went onto the top of a high peak in the edge of the mountain which we considered a good place to raise an ensign upon which we named Ensign Peak or Hill. I was the first person that ascended this hill. Brother Young was very weary in climbing the peak, he being feeble.” [7] While on the Peak, the group surveyed the valley below with Heber Kimball’s telescope to confirm their earlier judgment of the valley. “They appeared delighted with the view of the surrounding country,” said one of the settlers who heard the explorers’ report later in the day. [8] From this experience, the group gained the perspective necessary to begin planning the settlement. At this time, President Young apparently also determined the location of the temple, which he announced two days later, on July 28, by planting his walking stick at the site selected for the temple and saying, "Here we will build the temple of our God." [9] https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/salt-lake-city/3-ensign-peak-historical-preview

He also wrote to me and said, "There isn't much I can tell you about this zone (meaning the work he is doing), since there is so much sensitive info about other patrons here, not to mention some of the things that we can do in FamilySearch with the tools we have." I thought that was really interesting!

Week 27: Bees Game - August 14, 2018

 Elder Wright said, "I promise I was super happy at the game, even though it looks like I'm not. I was just focused on eating my ice cream cone!"

Hello once again to the people who reads this email. So as you can tell from the title, my mission went to a Salt Lake City Bees Game (that's baseball, by the way). It was pretty fun since we got all be together and watch a sports game, and I hope we get to do it again next year. Let me know if you want any more details on it. The only thing that I can think of that was really interesting about the game was that the Bees lost 4-3, and that one elder from our mission, Elder Buttars, showed up on the jumbotron at one point during the "Dance Cam" section, so that was pretty cool.

The only other thing that I feel like I should talk about today is the fact that two days ago was my six month mark for being out here, and tomorrow will be my ten month mark for my mission as a whole. It's a bit strange to think that I've been serving for almost a year now, but I'm so glad that I have been and I will continue to do so to the best of my ability. Have a great week and remember to do some family research!

Till next week,

Elder Wright

Here are some other pictures I was able to save from the mission parent's facebook page

Week 26: Stuff and Things - August 7, 2018

Hello my fellow youth, remember how I told you I might have a different p-day? Well, this is it! Tuesday is now my p-day, so that is pretty cool, I guess. So not that much is different here. I know I say that a lot, but honestly I am blanking on anything that is any different than last week. The only thing that I can think of is the fact that I have been improving in my zone, so that's neat. Other than that, there isn't much that has happened within the last week. I do remember one thing that I forgot to write about last week. So, my companion and I are assigned to serve at St. Joseph's, which is a senior care center, and their was this one guy that we had to bring the sacrament to in the rehab center. The only catch was that his room was under quarantine, so we had to put on yellow gowns and gloves before we could go in, and then afterwards we had to through the cup for the water part of the sacrament into a bio-hazard bag rather than the tray. It was a pretty neat experience and I'm surprised that I forgot to tell you all about it. As for things to come, the only things that I know of that's coming up is the mission conference and the Bees game that we are going to on Saturday. For the mission conference, I have know clue what is going to be said, other than being told that we need to clean up our rooms because only three apartment were ranked as Celestial when they were inspected. As for the Bees game, that is the nice little activity that they have planned for us, and I'm a bit excited. I'm not much for sports, but I do actually enjoy watching baseball games when I'm at the stadium, because the atmosphere is fun and baseball is actually easy to understand. Well, hope you all have a great week, and make sure to email me if you have any questions. Honestly, I wish you would so that I know that you guys are actually reading this. Oh well, have a wonderful week and remember to serve those around you.

Till Then,

Elder Wright

Week 25: Same District, Same Comp, Different Apartment

Hooray, I'm emailing on the day you are expecting me to email! So, as I told you all last week, transfers were coming up, and now they have come and past. If you read the title of the email, you will probably understand what happened to me. Yep, I'm still in Data Services with Elder Petersen, but I'm now in a different apartment. In fact, I'm in a two-man apartment, so that's pretty neat. Other than that, not much else has changed. I'm still learning how to do stuff in Data Services, but one thing that is kind of interesting was that we had a pizza party in Data Services on Monday! We got the pizza party because we had the goal for all of us to get our ambassadors, which means we pretty much helped each other find names on our family tree to take to the temple. It was pretty cool to do, since I got to do a little bit of actual family history work for my companion. I would recommend doing a little bit of family history work sometime, since you might actually learn something about your family and realize how big of an impact they might have had in your life. Have a great week!

Till then,

Elder Wright

Week 24: Pioneer Day Celebration - July 25, 2018

Hello everyone! So, yesterday was Pioneer Day, and since I'm in Utah, that means that we had a huge celebration. I get that it's a big deal here because it's part of their heritage, but they kind of treat it like it's even bigger than the 4th of July. I don't really get why, but what ever, we got a day off, which is all I really care about. The main activity we had that day was a hike at Ensign Peak, which was pretty fun to do. Even though we have workout days that we have to participate in three days a week, was still pretty hard getting up there, even though the trail itself wasn't that difficult. I guess I should lay off the candy for a bit. One thing I should mention is that there woas a family or two who had set up a snow cone stand at the head of the trail, which was a really smart decision on there part, since it was a bit hot outside. I did make sure to buy one, and when they asked where I was from, I told them Chandler, which they said that they loved! I wish I could have talked to them more, but we didn't have much time, since we had more to do that day. We hiked all the way, and I got to say, if you haven't hiked Ensign Peak yet, you should if you are ever in Salt Lake City. The view is amazing!! I can understand why they used that point as the main spot to lay out the city. After that, we hiked down to our mission president's house, where we had a nice brisket lunch. When it was time to go though, we had a bit of a hard time getting back because a small brush fire had broken out near where our mission president's neighborhood, so they closed off the main road out of there. In the end, we all walked home baring a couple of the elders that would have had a hard time walking. By the time we started heading down, the cloud of smoke that we could see had thinned out a bit, and when we got a good enough of a view to see where the smoke was coming from, the fire was already put out. So don't worry, we were never in danger. After we got back to the apartments, we rested for a bit and then went to the stake center where we watched the first part of The Work and the Glory. It was pretty good, and I hope that I get to see the rest sometime. The only other notable thing that happened this week was the fact that we have new young elders in our mission! My companion and I are currently hosting two of them, and they seem pretty nice. They are still learning the schedule, but they'll get a hang of it eventually. Other than that, I hope you all have a great week and remember to have fun!

Till next week,

Elder Wright

PS: Transfers is on Tuesday, so be prepared to maybe not have me email next Wednesday.

From Mom: Pictures from lunch, I think. I'm adding these in January 2019 because we just got these pics from the mission facebook page. I do know it's from some mission meal in the summer of 2018

Week 23: Just Another Week in the Mission - July 18, 2018

Elder Wright didn't send any pictures this week, but he did send a cute video. So I took this screen shot. He was so happy with all of the other Elders!

Hey guys, I told you I would be emailing on the right day for once! Their isn't much going on here in the mission, so I don't have much to talk about. The only things that I can think of talking about would be some of the things that happened in the last 24 hours. First of all, my companion gave a Book of Mormon to someone! We were at Smiths, and while we were waiting for the other two elders in our district to finish checking out, we met with this nice lady that I'm fairly sure was homeless. She told us that she used to be in the church a while back, but then she moved to another part of Utah, which caused her to go inactive because she didn't like the place and she didn't do much there. Now she has recently changed her mind and decided to go back to church! She told us that she repented of the things of her pass and said that each day she was going to read three pages of her bible each day. My companion, Elder Petersen, asked her if she had a Book of Mormon, and she said no, so he gave her one! She was so happy and thanked us both, and I was so happy to see this lady being so joyful for the gospel! It just goes to show you that we should feel the same way when it comes to the scriptures. The other thing that happened recently was that one of Family Search's servers went down last night, which means that most of our zone spent the entire time taking calls from people asking why Family Search was down. It was hilarious at first, but by the end I was bored because I can't take calls yet, but I got to work on some family history work, so it's all worked out. I honestly don't mind these uneventful weeks on the mission because it makes them seem like they're going by faster! I just hope it continues to be like this. Have a wonderful week!

Till then,

Elder Wright