This post is from Travis's Mom.

Yesterday, Monday, October 29th was Travis' day #1 travel day!      He arrived at the Colorado Springs airport around 12 noon-ish and flew to Dallas, Texas, arriving there at 4:20pm.   He boarded another flight there at 7:50pm heading for Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Day #2 - He arrived in Buenos Aires, at 7:35 am.   He will then board a bus for a 13 hour ride to Bahia Blanca. (arriving there Tuesday night)   Thats a lot of traveling!!!

We got to talk to him several times during the day, and it was so GREAT!  He is very excited to get there, but nervous about the language.  He said he has been practicing his "airport" spanish words for the Buenos Aires airport.   He will miss Kansas and the people there.

We were able to track his flight and watch where he was.  

                                                He made it to Buenos Aires!!

Now we wait to hear from him or his Mission President that he made it to Bahia Blanca.

Hola!

Hey so i think i have the phone numbers to call still. I don't think I'll be able to go on the computer on Monday  since we have to be at the mission office at 10.30 in the morning. So I'll probably just call. I have to be at the airport at 1.30pm I think. I'll have many opportunities to call throughout the day though. I'm not sure of the actual traveling routes. But from what I've heard from other people it goes like this:

Colorado Springs (30min?) ----> Denver ----> Texas (or Salt Lake) ------> Buenos Aires (14 hours) -----> Bus to Bahia Blanca (13 Hours)

So its going to be a crazy day! So I guess I'll talk to you guys on Monday! Since I probably wont be emailing again here in Colorado.

I'm super stoked! It's going to be a long journey, but it's been long awaited!


Elder Wheelwright

P.s. I hope you liked the birthday pics haha.

Helllo family! :)

I got a ton of packages and cards this week! It was awesome! The vans that you sent me were the right ones! Thanks! It's so nice to have regular shoes again..haha. I have like a ton of food/junk right now. And I'm leaving super soon, so I either have to eat it all WAY fast haha (which I don't really want to do) or I have to leave most of it here.. LAME! I don't think I'll have enough room or weight in my suitcase for them. Oh yeah speaking of leaving so sooon.....

 I LEAVE ON MONDAY!!!! :) :) :) :) :) YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Argentina here I come! haha

 I'm super excited! President Anderson told my yesterday during interviews. I had to act surprised since I already knew...haha. I think I pulled it off really good. He didn't suspect a thing!   (Rick had called Salt Lake last Monday to check on the status of his visa.  They told him they had it - so Rick wrote Travis a letter telling him the good news) 
But yeah, I'm leaving Kansas on Sunday and then staying in Colorado springs and then yeah! It's so crazy!!! I'm going to miss this mission so much. I've learned so much here! The friends and people I have met are so awesome, I'm really going to miss them. Part of me wants to stay here, but the other half of me is so stoked haha. Spanish 1000% percent of them time!! Gahhhh! I'm so excited + scared! It's going to be an interesting experience. I have to start packing now...bleh. That's the worst part haha.
So my birthday yesterday was kinda lame. Haha We had meetings and interviews in Garden City. So all day was spent sitting in a chair! I didn't get to take pictures or even make a cake. I'm probably going to do that today though!! Thanks again for everything you guys sent me! It's so awesome! I also got a card from grandma! It was awesome haha. "to our favorite elder" haha! sweet! After interviews, my district did go out to dinner though. So that's cool. It ended up making me sick in the middle of the night last night though...haha. So that kinda was lame!
I have so much going through my mind right now, I can't think of what I want to write! haha I hate this!
This week has been kind of lame. We haven't been finding any success. Well, we have had some success I guess. All of the investigators we have right now are kind of sketchy. Nothing real solid, but we are trying to work really hard with them. The investigator that ran away, probably isn't going to get baptized. It turns out that he really never had a a testimony :( .

 I really can't think of anything else right now though! So this is going to have to be it I guess.   Dads fish looks insanely big and nasty..haha Miracle looks so skinny too! Are you guys not feeding her? hahaha The pics are just random stuff. The one with all the tractors is at a members house. They have a ton of vintage tractors that they restore. So it was pretty cool stuff. Well I love you guys! Have an awesome weeeeek! oh! so I'll be sending home a box or two of stuff that 'Im not taking with me. So look out for that! It will include my journal too! It's all filled up! 6 months worth!!  oh also thanks for the ipod! it's sweet! This one will work just fine! Bye! :)

Elder Wheelwright

Hello family!
This week has been interesting! There is a dentist here in the ward that does work on missionaries for free. So we signed up for appointments to get our teeth clean and checked and all that fun stuff. I ended up having 4 (cuatro!) cavities!!! What the heck!? I brush my teeth and floss several times a day! I was so bummed. The dentist is a lame place. Gah. So that same day I got 2 cavities filled! Ouch! Something went wrong with the numbing and I was only numb in one place. So it hurt SUPER bad. haha. I just took it like a champ though.. This dental office is pretty cool because they use like this super updated current technology. It was cool. Probably about as cool as a dentist office can get..which isn't that cool to be honest haha. I have to go back soon to get my other 2 cavities filled. Right when I got my fillings, we went straight to work. I was super numb. I looked and sounded dumb. I wanted to just go back home and lay on the couch until I could properly talk haha. Nope, didn't happen. I didn't say much that day. It was embarrassing! Eating for the next few days was difficult. I like lived off of spaghettio's haha. My jaw was way sore. But I'm doing amazing now I guess. Back to normal for me. Hmm..
Saturday was a super rough day. Like way hard. We had an baptismal interview set up for our investigator who was supposed to get baptized Sunday. Our district leader is serving in Liberal, Kansas (which is an hour away) and he has to conduct the interview. Okay, so let me back up. We stopped by our investigators house earlier in the day before the interview to make sure that everything was okay and good to go. We got to talk to him and for some reason he seemed super sketched out. We asked him if everything was okay and he said yeah. He was acting completely different than how he was the previous day. Something was up.. The previous day, we went through the practice interview with him. That was cool. I got to do it, but we only had the questions in Spanish  So I had to translate them to English. It was cool that I could actually do it haha. Anyways, back to it. So we told him that we would be back soon to pick him up. Right after that we went to the library and made up the baptismal program and we called up people to give talks and stuff like that. Everything was set. We went back to get him a little before the interview. We knocked on the door..no answer. My heart starting beating super fast.. Finally his brother answered and said he just left to go on a walk with his brother. Hmm... Strange. Elder Wilde and I started getting worried.. We needed to find this kid ASAP. Our district leader was about 10 min. away too. It was crunch time. So we said a quick prayer on the side of the road so that we could find our investigator. We went frantically looking down the streets for him. Nothing. So we went and got the car to look for him some more. We couldn't find him. Our investigator ran away. :( When the district leader got here, we went over to the investigator's house and we waited for him. I asked his mom where he was and she said he was at the store and that he would be home any time. Well we waited there in the front yard for about an hour and 20 minutes.. in the pouring rain...underneath a tree. He never showed up. His dad at one point came out and told us that he has been acting weird around the family recently and that he thinks we're pushing him to do something that he doesn't want to do. He basically told us to back off and to give him some space. I've never got the vibes that he feels pushed..? It was odd. And this all happened with our district leader right there with us. It sucked and it was super embarrassing. We apologized to him, they drove out an hour for nothing. Elder Wilde and I just went home really really depressed and confused. We still don't know what happened. We haven't talked to him since. So yeah the baptism didn't happen. :( It's really hard working super hard with somebody and then nothing ever happens with them. It just makes you want to stop working because you don't see any results. This weekend was definitely a learning experience for me. I'm still bummed out about it. That was pretty much everything that happened this week.
 My birthday is coming up in a week! Dang. I'm old! Also I'm coming up on my 6th month mark too. Time flies! Have a great week everyone :) I miss you all!


Elder Wheelwright

ps  Haha that is a sweet picture of Dylan. It made me laugh. People probably looked at me weird at the library... Yay for Nikki and Scott! That's way awesome! Congrats! :)

Hola family! 
This week has been awesome as ever! The baptism that we were supposed to have this week didn't happen.. :(    We went to visit our investigator on Thursday and he said he was going to Colorado to visit his grandpa on a last minute thing. So there was nothing we really could have done there. Bummer. So this Sunday is when it should be happening. He is way solid and I have no doubt that it will happen! Yay! :) 
So yesterday was Columbus day. Aka not p-day and we don't get mail. Haha. Who even celebrates Columbus day anyways? He didn't even discover America first. The Jaredites did. But how come they don't get a holiday? Anyways..haha. Christopher Columbus prevented me from getting mail yesterday. Grrr... 
Yesterday we went tracting in old mexico. And I found a $20 bill on the ground, it was sweet. I'm saving all of the money I find on the ground and putting it into a little bag. So far i have like $24?   It's pretty crazy..haha.   We didn't really have any success while tracting. We did get to practice our spanish though.. so that's always good! When we were walking around the trailers, like a million dogs came our of no where and they were going to like jump us haha. They like made a circle. And then they they started attacking us haha. It was so crazy. One of them bit Elder Wilde's shoes and then a huge dog tried to bite my butt..no joke haha. It was an intense situation. So we just hurried and got out of there. haha. Looking back it's way funny just to think about how it all went down. Also when we were walking, I found a full can of beer, so I started kicking it around... a bad decision haha. It hit a rock and then exploded everywhere, including on me. So I smelled like beer for a little bit haha.   Probably not the best thing to smell like as a missionary... Old Mexico was really fun, even though we didn't see any success from it. 
Conference was way awesome. The announcement about the mission age is crazy! There are definitely going to be a lot more sisters coming out. Which is awesome! We watched a little bit of the press conference after and they said that they talked about changing the duration too, but decided against it for now. Crazy Stuff. We were the only ones watching conference in the church building for the Saturday sessions. So we put the projector on the ceiling and we watched it on the benches in a comfortable position...haha. I actually can stay awake during conference! Watching conference as a missionary is so different, because you feel like all of the messages are directed at you and the work. You feel a lot more connected to it.  It's sweet. 

 Here is a section from an email what my friend in Mexico sent me regarding my visa and me:

"Well keep it strong bro, keep working hard and don't sweat the visa. There's definitely a reason why you are where you are at. If the Lord wanted you in your country already, trust me, a small piece of paper couldn't hold him back from that. You are in Kansas and Colorado for divine reason, make sure you find out why that is before its too late."

Dang. It's awesome. It has really helped me out. Along with everyone else's words too of course haha. I think that is all for this week. It's starting to get cold here! It was 44 degrees a couple of days ago! Brrr.. I got out my jacket finally, it's pretty warm. Well I love all of you guys! Thanks for the emails and all of the support, I really appreciate it!

Elder Wheelwright

Family!
 This week was really awesome. A lot happened! At the beginning of the week, it was just alright. We were just doing what we regularly do. Nothing special. Wednesday/Thursday we were going on exchanges in a different city called Hugoton. It's this even smaller city than Ulysses. But this place was like way nice and seemed rich haha. They had speakers on the main street playing music all the way through the town. Crazyyy. It was really boring there and honestly not much work to do. So we went back to Liberal to finish our exchanges. For the first part, I was with Elder Warr, who is also a Visa waiter for Argentina. He has been out for 7 1/2 months total..and is still here. It was really cool being with someone who is in the same boat as me haha. Then for the 2nd half I went with the district leader. On this one ITL (Street contact) that we did, we shared the first lesson with them and then then the first vision. After we share the first vison, we usually asked them how they felt during it. So I did this. And they responded: "to be honest I felt nothing.". DANG! This is the first time that that has happened to me.. I didn't know what to do for a second haha. It was funny. So I just told them to pray about it.

On the way home that night, we found a turtle in the road. Skippy! so we picked it up and brought it back home! (Well, to the other Elder's apartment haha) technically pets are illegal..dang. So yeah, it was an evil turtle. It's eyes were red.. But it started freaking on out me. When I was holding it in the car he came out of his shell and was like swimming in the air! His sharp claws were digging into my skin haha. I tried moving my hands where I was holding the shell, but he could reach me anywhere.. :/  Noo. haha The person I was on exchanges with was just laughing at me. Then the dumb turtle starting peeing on me and all over my pants! :/ And maybe poop too, i'm not sure haha. It was just really gross. The person I was with was like, throw it into the pond! (this pond he was referring to was a street gutter full of water..) I wasn't about to do that. That would be mean. So we stopped on the side of the road and I let him out in the grass in this park. Gooodbye Donnnnny! Haha yeah, we named him donny, from the Ninja turtles.

Saturday was an epic day. We had this service called the Numana project. I think I talked about this a little bit earlier, but we were being some of the volunteers in charge. We got to wear these green staff shirts haha. It was awesome. So before the event started, we had to be there early to set up all of the stations/get the food ready in bins. Then we had a meeting with this speaker from Columbia. It was a really awesome speech. She had a continuous slide show of pictures from her orphanage. She told us how poor the kids are down there. It was really sad. So I was stoked to be helping at this event, so that the kids can eat! Everybody loves food haha. So the event itself was putting some rice, soy, beans, and wheat + a vitamin packet in a bag and then sealing it and them boxing all of them up. Each bag will feed 6 people. On saturday, we filled our goal of 20,000 bags! It was so awesome. There were a ton of people there too helping out. It was a really good experience. The BEST service by far on my mission.

 Literally right after the numana project was our baptism for Damien! It was crazy... we had to go home and get changed super fast and then run over to the church. The baptism itself was really great. The spirit was there totally. There was quite a turnout too. We did the confirmation the same day too, so I got to participate in that as well. That was an awesome experience too. Saturday was just a REALLY awesome day. Sunday morning our
investigator (that likes to sleep in and then misses church) was waiting on his porch for us!! AWESOME! That means next week we will be having another baptism after conference! :) This guy is so solid! Then our recent convert Damien, went up and bore the most sincerest testimony ever. It was so great :) . This guy is so strong in his beliefs. He has so much faith in the gospel. He definitely is an example to me. It was the highlight of the sacrament meeting! Everyone was talking about it.
 Yes, so today we got transfer calls and.... i'm staying! Yesss! haha I was so nervous last night. I'm glad i'll get to be around for another transfer here. There is still so much potential. And I would never want to miss our investigator's baptism!
For conference, we are going to the chapel to watch it with our investigators. Nathan... man haha. It sounds like it was fun, but you got owned! haha Maybe take it a little easier. You need to be non-broken for the upcoming snowboard season! Stay focused man! haha  Congrats nikki and scott, thats so epic! I'm stoked for you guys.

 You can start sending letters to my Ulysses address again! So feel free to post that up again! Well I think that's it! I love you guys! Have an awesome week!

Elder Wheelwright