November 24

 the Ocampo Quintero family.

the family, my companion and I, the mission leader, and a recent convert from the ward. The recent convert is the one in yellow and he's awesome. He's deaf but I've been learning a lot of Spanish sign language and I can easily communicate with him. The ward mission leader got married the day before.

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So if you all remember last week I asked for your prayers so that Milton Ocampo and Andrea Quintero could get married before Milton had to move. After I left the computers that day we went to visit them and turns out that he didn't have to move until late December. But thenon Saturday we went to visit them and he said he had to go on Sunday, yesterday. In Colombia marriages are a super huge, complicated process, but thanks to a huge miracle that is hard to explain we had all the necessary papers. There's a priest who works in the notary office who trusts us to do weddings. So when Milton told us he couldn't get married because he had to move, we went to grab the papers in our house and about on hour later we married them right there in their house. They bought a cheap ring in a store and we called a couple witnesses, it turned out super awesome. And now they're married. And that's how we do things in the Colombia Barranquilla mission. We taught their last lesson to them all as a family yesterday and I felt like crying, but the good news is that Milton is going to a village where the church has a branch close by and the rest of the family will be here for a while. So thanks a ton for your constant prayers in their behalf.

Santos and Ana Dilia were all good to get baptized this Saturday but they didn't go to church yesterday. We'll be passing by to see what happened and if there's a possibility of them getting baptized this week or in the next couple weeks if not.

Esilda was also going to get baptized this week but she has cancer and she has to go to Barranquilla this weekend for a medical visit, so I guess it'll be next week. I have learned a ton of pacience during my mission. At first I would be super frustrated by these things but now I'm super calm. I guess it all comes down to learning to trust in God. I have seen so many times in my life and in my mission how God brings things about in His own way, so you just have to obey the commandments and trust (D&C 123:17)

Interesting comment of the week is that Lexi Garrett gets home from her mission this week. It's super strange since I went to the MTC the very same day that she did. That's the benefit of being a man: your mission lasts longer.

Well I love you all and hope you have a great week. I should have a super busy week with exchanges with the assistants, zone conference, revision of all the houses in the zone with the senior couple in the mission, and other fun things waiting.

Elder Wilson

November 17

This week was pretty good because we really didn't have anything to do other than dedicate ourselves to proselyting. The area I'm in is really great. In my last area in Barranquilla, it was super hard to get someone to listen to the message, even members sometimes were too busy. But here it's awesome, in 2 hours we can have 3 or even 4 lessons if we work really hard. I love to teach fast, efficient lessons so I have been having a great time here. There are a lot of people getting ready to get baptized soon, and I expect that in November and December we should have between 4-7 baptisms. 

We are teaching a family Ocampo Quintero. The mom Andrea, the dad is Milton, and we teach one of their sons named Anderson. They have more children but they don't live there since they are from separate spouses. They are awesome. Andrea is super ready to get baptized and Milton is quickly getting ready. Anderson is also excited but progresses a little more slowly. We are praying for a miracle but we don't know what we really want to happen. The problem is that Milton lost his job this last week and they offered him one in Medellin, another city. He's planning on going this week without his family until they can go join him in a couple weeks. But they need to get married. We have all the papers they need but we need the 100,000 pesos. So the situation's a little complicated, we don't know what has to happen, but God does so we'll see what He decides to do.

Another family we are teaching is Santos and Ana Dilia. They are awesome.  They always go to church and Santos has overcome a drinking addiction he had. They are going to get married November 29th (pray for that as well) and baptized shortly thereafter. 

Another lady is named Esilda. She also has to get married (see a pattern) but is ready to do it. She has the money, desperately wants to get married so she can get baptized, but has to wait for some medical tests to get finished before her baptism. Well really she doesn't have to but she wants to.

Other than that there are a couple of youth we're teaching who want to get baptized, but I think for now that'll do on the descriptions. My companion here is awesome. He's been in the mission for like 18, 19 months now and works really hard and is a great zone leader. Of all the leaders in the mission he's been a leader for the longest. I'm super lucky to learn from him. For his birthday today we had a zone activity where we watched Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs 2, ate hamburgers and hotdogs (Colombian ones - not so good) and played soccer. We ended it up with a surprize water balloon ambush by my companion and I. Super fun.

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

Elder Wilson

November 10

 a pic with my lunch from Pedro Ascencia last week

 Elder Richardson and I with the Bishop's family and a couple less active sisters we teach

 the awesome bus I took to get to Valledupar

Caribbean. I will come back some day to enter those waters.

Wow this week has been a huge asventure. I'll give you a play by play. Monday night they called me about transfers, turns out I left Alfonso López and got send to the farthest part of the mission that white people can go to, Valledupar. My companion is Elder Abad from Argentina, he's awesome but for time I'll have to give more details next week.

Tuesday - I went to the terminal in Soledad (a suburb of Barranquilla) to get the bus for the 6 hour bus ride. While on the bus I had an awesome experience. I felt strongly that I had to go to the front of the bus and start contacting everyone. So I went there and in front of everyone explained that I'm a missionary and everything, invited them all to hear the message, took down their info, etc. I was nervous but I said a prayer and felt like Paul while I shared my testimony with them all. I got to Valledupar at like 7 at night, but since I'm now zone leader and new miassionaries got in late, we had to be in the terminal until 11:30 waiting. We slept with 6 missionaries in our house for a night, until they could get to their houses, and we all pulled matresses onto the roof of our house. It was awesome to sleep under the stars and it was super cold, since Valledupar is a valley in the Sierra Nevadas. But don't think that it's not blazing hot during the day. It's just like Barranquilla. Hot and muggy. 

Wednesday - worked normally, there is a great family we're teaching here who wants to get baptized but needs to get married. They are just waiting for their papers. The Ocampo Quintero.

Thursday - Got back on a bus to go back to Barranquilla for leadership council. Slept the night with President Searle and his wife in their penthouse in a huge tower. I was taken aback by how awesome thier house was - heated water in the shower, oven, toaster, microwave, clothes dryer, piano, air conditioning (I got to sleep with a blanket for the first time since Bogota), etc. Ate dinner with pte. Searle and another pair of zone leaders who were there with us. 

Friday - Leadership conference. All the zone leaders, the assistants, and the sister training leaders get together and discuss problems the mission's having and what can be done to solve it. a super experience. Then we went out to visit with an assistant in their area, and at like9 PM my companion and I, the other zone leaders that were there, the assistants, and pte and his wife all had a super dinner in presidents house.

Saturday - bus back home.

Sunday - 9 investigators in church, 7 progressing

Monday - normal.

This week has been crazy but also really awesome. I've learned a ton and I know that I've got to learn. My address is the same as before to send me stuff, but if you want to look up my house on Google Earth, I live in the Calle 28B con 5B in Valledupar. By a small field.

Well I love you all and hope you're doing great

Elder Wilson

November 3

 Yalissa's baptism

part of the zone after the movie

Well the obvious highlight of my week was Yalissa's baptism on Saturday. It all turned out great. She got to the church an hour late though and wasn't answering our phone calls so we were super nervous but in the end it all turned out fine. It was great, after the baptism she had a time to share her testimony, and then her evangelical grandmother also shared her testimony haha. Her grandmom is super evengelical and has the tradition of everyone yelling amen and stuff like that in church, so I think when she didn't hear anyone saying that stuff she started to try and get us all more excited, it was way funny. After her testimony, she said "who lives?!" and the member of the bishopric who conducted the meeting kind of muttered God lives and she sat down. But really she shared a great testimony, Yalissa too. Yalissa invited some college friends to the baptism and they went, and we saw that one of them was crying. We'll be working to get in contact with her to teach her too.

Today we went to lunch with Pedro Ascencio, a convert from Ciudadela. It was great, he told me that he and his wife are planning on going to the temple to get sealed in March. My zone leaders gave me permission to go and we went for a quick lunch before a zone activity in Ciudadela. It was great to see him. I'd send a pic but this computer doesn't read SD cards so I can't until next week. But I do have some pics from other missionaries that I'll send.

Sorry for the short letter, don't have much time because we got back late from watching How to Train a Dragon 2 as a zone. Tonight they tell us what'll happen tomorrow for transfers, I really think I'm going to go from some things that president Searle was asking me.

Love,

Elder Wilson

October 27

district activity, we went to a museum

This week we had a great stake conference that was half by the stake presidency and half by Elder Nash and Elder Pino from the 1st quorum of the 70, sister Wixon, and Elder Holland. They talked a lot about tithing since the area really has a hard time paying their tithig. There were a few great stories told, like one by Elder Holland. He talked about a family in Mongolia who heard from the missionaries forever ago. They didn't know how to read English, and back then the Book of Mormon wasn't translated yet into Mongol. So The missionaries talked about Jesus Christ, adn since they had a different religion, they didn't have a testimony of our Savior. The missionaries translated by hand one verse form the Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 11:10, and the family read it and prayed and got their testimony. They were baptized a little after and spent years faithfully in the church even until the Book of Mormon was published in Mongol. I really liked that story because it talked about the power that prayer and the holy ghost have, combined with the Book of Mormon, to strengthen people´s faith in our savior and in the restored gospel.

Elder Nash also told a great story about one time when he went fishing and his dad told him that when the bobber moved, he had to yank on the pole to get the hook in the fish's mouth. He did so and yanked so hard that the fish flew out of the water and landed on the ground behind him. He talked about how sometimes, we may feel as out of context as that fish must have felt in that moment, and the importance of staying in places where we can be strengthened so that that won't happen to us spiritually.

In awesome news Yalissa Rodriguez finally decided to get baptized, and the date is this Saturday, November 1st, at 2PM. I would really be grateful for your prayers this week so that she can arrive fine to her baptism and her confirmation, to make that covenent with God.

In other news, I was finally able to run a 5K this week after a few weeks of working up to it, I'm proud of it because in the mission I can't really push myself that hard to run in case I get too tired to work well the rest of the day. So I did a 5K without pushing myself too hard. Before the mission I pushed myself harder to just run a half mile. I have a friend who wants me to run a half marathon when I'm back, we'll see about that...

Well I love you all and hope you enjoyed your trip to DISNEYLAND without me... no but really I'm not that bitter about it.

Love,

Elder Wilson

October 20

Well this week we couldn´t go to the beach because we were trying to go as a zone and president Searle didn´t give us permission to all go. I might try again for a couple weeks off because we can go, just the problem was trying to go as a zone.

This week we had interviews with president Searle, always an excellent experience. By some of the questions he was asking, I think I should be getting transferred in November but I´m not sure. Last night we had a fireside for the ward here and President came and spoke with his wife. It was really great. I lot of members went and President really motivated them to keep participating in missionary work. We are going to do a lot of follow-up with some of the things he said to make sure it brings fruits. 

Sometimes I don´t know what to say in my letters because each week is basically the same as the last. But I´ll share a couple great experiences and a couple funny ones. Funny first. On Sunday we went to pass by some guy who promised us that he would go to church with us. When we got there, we saw that he was super drunk. It wasn´t the first time we had seen him like that; in fact we made him promise that he wouldn´t drink that morning. So I just really quickly told him that he couldn´t go with us that day because it isn´t good to go to church drunk. He got super mad at me and started yelling at us about how Jesus came to save sinners and not just perfect people, including he told me that he liked my companion better than me, and a ton of stuff like that. Encounters with drunk people are always kind of funny, but also I felt really sad that he was so much a slave of his addiction that he coudln´t go one morning without drinking to go to church.

Yesterday we had two new people at church, Juan Montero and Edgardo Estrada. When we found Edgardo for the first time, he was just talking to us about how churches these days are all just a business, and that all they care about is making people pay "tithing", which for the people here means give the preacher money for him to keep himself, not use for the church like with real tithing. So anyways, yesterday was a bishopric "special sacrament meeting" and the whole bishopric talked about tithes and offerings, and the importance of always paying them. I was dying the whole time because I could see that Edgardo was just thinking once again a church begging for money haha. So we´ll have to fix that all up this week. The area here is really concerned because a lot of people don´t pay tithing and don´t fast or give offerings, so they added a requirement for baptism that we have to teach a special lesson about tithing and also to less-actives. It really is a special commandment that brings a lot of blessings, and I am glad for the opportunity that I have had to pay tithing.

The good experience for this week was yesterday after church we went out with a recent convert to bring the sacrament to a few people. One was a lady in the ward who is really awesome. When we contact in her block everyone says that they have been to the church before since she has brought them. Now she has problems with her nerves and has a lot of panic attacks. We gave her a blessing. The convert is just a priest and put his hands on her head to give the blessing too and I had to explain that he couldn´t yet haha. But then we went to the hospital where the convert´s mom is sick and we blessed her there. I loved that experience to serve and I felt gratitude for the priesthood.

Well I hope you all enjoyed Disneyland, I´m just a little jealous about it.

Love,

Elder Wilson

October 6

This week was obviously awesome because of general conference. I loved to hear the words of the apostles and prophet, as well as the other general authorities who spoke. What I want to share about the conference isn't so much what I learned, because I know you all watched it too, but what I felt. First off, I felt very strongly the Spirit which testified to me that Thomas S Monson is God's chosen prophet and that the church is true. Second, I felt gratitude for the atonement and for the opportunity that I heave to be a missionary in His name. I felt love for the people and a huge desire to become better as a missionary. I felt that I need to be a little more diligent and always strive to keep strengthening my testimony, because a testimony isn´t something you have or don't have but something you always strengthen, like charity or virtue or whatever christlike attrubute. And I felt rejuvenated to keep working again in this work.

I saw just about everyone from Ciudadela in the conference, since it's in this same stake. It was great to see Eva Ruiz and Pedro Ascencio, 2 converts from there. Eva is awesome. She told me about how she is the second counselor in the relief society, and sometimes she gives classes. She feels glad for the opportunity to serve and learn, but also humbled because she doesn't know much about the church and she can hardly read. She is getting ready to go to the temple to do her own work and work for her ancestors this december. She has since shared the gospel with a few youth who work in her pizzeria, who also got baptized and were with her at conference.

Pedro is also doing great. He was there with his wife, who he has plans to get sealed to soon, and his brother, his brother's wife, and his brother's daughter, all of whom I taught too and who have since gotten baptized. Pedro is the Elder's quorum president there and is of course super happy in the church. I was almost crying when I saw them all there. I didn't see Pedro at first but he came up to me and gave me a huge hug and dragged me over to his family and told me how they're doing. It was great. Plus of course all the converts and less active members I taught a lot while I was there. Now I just have to plead with President Searle to be able to go eat lunch with them on P-day sometime.

Well I love you all and hope you are doing great. I keep you in my prayers.

Elder Wilson