Daniel spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday with many family and friends present. For readability his address has been modified slightly. Here is the audio in Ogg Vorbis (13.3MB) and MP3 (14.8MB) formats. Thank you for that musical number, that was wonderful. Well, I’m excited to be here. It’s great to see everyone that came out. [...]

Elder Daniel Willoughby, son of Richard and Jill Willoughby, has returned home after successfully serving in the Mongolia Ulaanbaatar and Washington Kennewich Missions. He will speak December 26 at 3:20 pm. in the Kaysville 14th Ward, 9 W 550 S., Kaysville. A week by week account of Daniel’s mission is here.

My guest writer is Susan Mathews Hardy, the mother of Elder Nathan Hardy, one of Daniel’s missionary companions. Susan wrote a letter to Daniel’s mission president, timed so that Daniel will receive it from President Greer on the night before Daniel returns home. Thanksgiving Morning November 25, 2010 Dear President Greer, I know you will [...]

It was really fun to see Bayarsaihan. We ate some buuz and played with sheep ankle bones. I was happy to be able to still speak Mongolian well. Some of the time I couldn’t understand her, but she could understand all the things I said. With that to start off the week it was great. We [...]

Mongolian Found! I was happy to receive a call on Thanksgiving day from Bayarsaihan. She is a native Mongolian that met her husband at BYU Hawaii and moved to Vancouver several years ago. I knew that she lived here, but despite all my efforts to contact her, I was never successful. She was told by [...]

The baptism of Roberta was great. The Spirit was strong and everything went very well. Roberta has such a sweet spirit and the ward has done great things in making her feel welcome. My new companion’s name is Elder Mendoza. He is from Sandy, Utah and is lots of fun. Elder Hardy was able to [...]

What a great week. We finalized Roberta’s (by filling out her baptism record we found out how to really spell her name) plans for her baptism this weekend. She is no doubt the most excited person to be baptized that I have ever taught. To tell us the result of her interview she decided to [...]

We had a fun trip last week to Multnomah Falls. It is a big water fall and water certainly falls there. We hiked to the top and looked over the gorge. My companion and I ran down in half the time it took to get up. My legs were sore till about Saturday from that [...]

We went to the Halloween trunk or treat. Raberta came and showed off her costume. I decided to turn my suit jacket inside out. It definitely is awesome. Yes, there are dragons on my bright gold yellow inside of suit. It is my favorite. We’ve been working with Raberta more and more and she is [...]

Thanks for all the great emails. I am glad that everything is working out good. We had a great week again. It always gets better and better. Raberta (the 73 year old investigator) came to church again. She is not shy at all and has lots of energy. She loves Relief Society and calls them [...]

Elder Powell and I have been doing great. We have continued to work to find those prepared for the message we have.

With every forward effort there is opposition.

General Conference was great! I really enjoyed everything that was taught. It felt like they gave all the members encouragement and I could feel the love that they have for us.

We continue to work hard and the area is doing very well. We found several new people to teach and a few investigators we’ve been teaching came to church for the first time.

So after talking to President, I decided to accept his invitation to extend my mission for 30 days.

Stephanie and Crystal were baptized. The Spirit was really strong and was a great experience for them.

This week went great. We got things all lined up for Friday where we have our two baptisms.

We had yet again another great week. This time its full of exciting things such as baptism! We had one investigator pass an interview and another having her interview this Friday. They should be baptized next weekend.

This week was just as great as last. We were extremely busy and were doing all we could to teach, find, and help people come to church.

This week was a dream come true and it continues to be that way. We had two days in a row that we were so busy we had just enough time to grab a snack for lunch between appointments. I like to have lunch as a back up plan anyway.

All the mission leaders met this week for a four day training for missionaries. It has a lot to do with how to follow the Spirit, teaching skills in general, and the importance of certain commitments.

This week we were able to teach 19 lessons to investigators. Only a couple were repeat lessons, which 12 of those lessons we had a church member come with us to the lesson.

This week went very well. We had some of the best work I’ve had since coming to this mission. The Lord really blessed us and we were grateful.

With the push to have effective plans for each hour and increased desire to find people to teach I expect great things to happen. The Lord has blessed us already.

My bike had an interesting experience. The back tire’s bearings fell out making it out of commission. That is okay because today is the best day to fix it. It’ll be good to go soon. We decided to ride some scooters around while it wasn’t working.

Elder Draper and I worked on a fence while I was on an exchange with him. It was fun to get back into fencing. We got the hang of it and got a lot of work done.

She talked about a very tall, sail looking building in Mongolia that had a poor foundation and couldn’t be used (all the missionaries there called it the “taco building”). She went right along with the theme of the dance festival of “Firm Foundation.”

This was an eventful week. Not quite as much happened this week. We had our last Zone Conference with President Belnap and the spirit there was wonderful. The new President is coming and will be here by the beginning of July.

We had a busy week knocking on doors and hearing lots of anti-Mormon claims, having an offer for help if we ever think we are in a cult, and another yelling at us to leave him alone.

There was a lot of changes this week. It took about ten minutes to drive to my new area, so it’s close to where I still was. It is a great area and my new companion is Elder Derges.

This letter is to confirm that your mission assignment has been changed from the Mongolia Ulaanbatar Mission to the Washington Kennewick Mission.

The hike we went on was way fun! It was called Horsetail Falls, which had three separate major falls. The biggest one was right next to the road where you parked. Next, was the one where you could walk behind and next to and the last one we went to was the triple falls.

We had a great work week, finished off with two investigators coming to church. One stayed for the full three hours and she had a lesson on the Priesthood in Relief Society. Probably the best place for her to hear about it.

This is the movie that Daniel sent with his last email. I think he wanted to demonstrate that it is wet in Washington.

This week was great! We meet some new people that expressed interest in the church. This photograph seemed to apply to missionary work somehow so we took it.

It was a great week for us. The phone call was fun too, to tell some of my cool stories that I hadn’t yet. We did a lot of biking and walking, teaching lessons etc. We also got general conference in the mail so I’ve been reading that.

This week we had similar success in finding people to teach. We worked really hard and it was worth it. We plan on doing the same thing this week.

This has been a good week for us. I got my new companion, Elder Harris, on Wednesday and we went straight to work. He is from Springville, Utah and has been out on his mission about the same amount of time as me.

It is crazy to hear what is happening in Mongolia. I think I’ll finish my mission here in Washington, but I am grateful that I was able to serve there for a year.

This week was another adventure. As soon as I think I am comfortable with an area something seems to happen. I got a call on Tuesday midday saying I’d be transferred to Vancouver Washington. So on Wednesday morning (the next day) I was transferred.

We all really enjoyed watching conference. It was great to be able to feel the spirit during it as well. Seemed to me they talked a lot about families, especially about parents and children.

We found another family that recently moved in. They were really receptive and open minded during the lesson. They especially liked how we focus on youth and taking care of their needs.

The biggest change in culture would be simply how big everyone’s house is, paved streets everywhere, landscape, Walmart, etc. The food is all different, everything is different and very modern.