August 18

Well this week was transfers and they made me leave Baranoa. Even though it was really hard there, I loved the work there more than any other area in my mission and I was super sad to go. I made really good friends with the branch president while I was there, and the morning of transfers he came to our house, gave me a picture mirage (I think that`s how you say it) of me and him and his family, and then went with us to Barranquilla. It was a super sad moment for me. 

The good news is that I have already seen 2 people from Baranoa in my new area, because I`m now in the area where Sundays we meet in the stake center of the stake El Carmen. The ward is called Alfonso Lopez and we are the only missionaries in the ward, my companion and I. My companion is named Elder Richardson and he`s great. He`s from Washington. He just got out of training, but his trainer was also from the USA and they always spoke English, so he really doesn`t know Spanish yet, poor guy. So we are working on his Spanish. I always speak to him in Spanish.

It`s super weird and cool for me to be here, since it`s my third area in this stake. Ciudadela was also here. In fact, on Sunday there was a stake choir meeting and I saw 9 people from Ciudadela and 2 from Baranoa. In October I will have passed 1 year in this stake. It`s funny because if you look at my mission it`s big and there are lots of areas, but I have just been in a super tiny part of it all this time.

There are a lot of great people here in Alfonso Lopez. There is a 19 year old person named Yalissa who has been listening to the missionaries for about 3 months now. She always goes to Institute and goes to church every week. But she hasn`t accepted a baptismal date yet because she just isn`t sure yet that it`s the right thing to do. But when I met her a really felt that with just a tiny bit of patience she can develop the faith to get baptized.

There are also a couple youth (siblings) named Jesus and Stefani. They are also great, they have been going to church for a long time, but their parents won`t let them get baptized yet. Plus they sometimes tell them things that make them doubt their testimony. The other day Jesus said "once I prayed and I knew without doubt it was the right thing to do but then they talked to me about it and now I`m confused." So we are going to help them develop their testimony again. We talked to their mom yesterday and she`s a great person, just that in her church she has to go through a huge process of more than a year to get baptized, so she doesn`t see how they can do it after just a couple months. But we are going to work hard with the ward youth leaders to help their parents.

Wow I feel weird in a ward with a chapel, in Barranquilla again where all the streets are paved, and there`s a bishop and the missionaries don`t have to do everything anymore. My last sunday in Baranoa the president asked me like 2 minutes before the meeting to give a talk about tithing, and it went great. That will never happen here.

Well I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Elder Wilson