December 1

Things are going great here in Valledupar. This week was really awesome. Zone conference was marvellous. To answer your question Dad my companion and I gave a short 60 minute training in zone conference but just to our zone, and in conjunction with the stake president here in Valledupar, Pte. Varón. He´s an excellent stake president and he works with us a lot. President Searle talked a lot about repentance, which was awesome since we have some missionaries who need a little repentance. After the zone conference there was a line of missionaries waiting to talk with Pte. Searle and repent, it was happy to see that they were repenting but sad to know they had to do it.

He also talked a lot about how if we strengthen the church through visiting converts and less actives, help with home teaching programs, and work closely with ward counsel, we will have a lot of baptisms (Alma 4:4).  That has been a huge change since I got to the mission.  When I got here, just the lazy missionaries would visit the converts or less actives. They wanted us to do just 8 visits to converts and less actives. Now it's horrible to not visit them. The goal is at least 20 visits to less actives and recent converts.

That's what goes really well in my area. The missionaries here have always been zone leaders, so there have been a lot of baptisms and a lot of success. So we visit a lot. Last week we were able to teach more than 40 lessons, and we missed an entire day for zone conference and a meeting with the mission and stake presidents. I was super glad last week when we did exchanges with a companionship who isn't working very hard. I wanted to be an example in my area, but I was a little nervous because from so many exchanges that we do I didn't know my way around very well. But that day God blessed me and we were able to teach 10 lessons in the afternoon. the missionary told me that he had never worked so hard in his mission. God really helps us to be good examples.

The challenge of our area is probably working with the ward. In the stake, there are 5 wards. only 1 of them is actually qualified to be a ward; the rest all deserve branch status from their numbers. Including any day the area can decide that it's not a stake anymore but a district. So really the leaders are overburdened and it's hard for them to support us. But we are working with the stake president to solve it.

Thanks for sending me pictures of my niece Claire, she's super cute and will definitely be the first baby I touch for 2 years. 

Love you all,

Elder Wilson