Feb 24

well not a lot happened this week for me to be able to write about. My companion got sick and we had to spend 2 days in the house. It´s kind of funny because after 2 days I already went crazy but this week is Carnaval and then I will have to spend 4 days without leaving for anything at all. Actually I don´t know when will be Pday next week to write again.

Transfers are also this week so maybe I´ll avoid the entire Carnaval situation. I really think that my companion or I will leave because of some things that the President of the mission told me. I really admire my companion for a lot of things even though we haven´t had the best transfer. I have definitely learned a lot from him. 

I learned an important lesson this week. I was thinking about how sometimes there is so much pressure in the mission to do everything so well that sometimes we as missionaries forget that all of us are doing our best and that we are all disciples of jesus  Christ. We often lose pacience with our companion, the mission leaders, those we lead, etc. But I realized the importance of just helping everyone along. Every one is here from their own free will, so I can´t demand things from the other missionaries. I can´t even really get frustrated when my companion is always mad at me or anything because I also have my own issues to work on. So I liked that realization that has helped me.

Well since we had 12 baptisms this week as a district we earned a district Pday and a MOVIE!!!!!! Literally there is nothing better in the mission than watching a movie. We are going to watch Despicable Me 2. I loved the first one. I won´t be taking pictures of anything this week since there has been a lot of robbing here for carnaval and I don´t like to bring my camera anywhere, so sorry. I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Elder Wilson

Feb 17

its really awesome here because they give you gloves to eat the chicken. And they love fried chicken here. They call it gringo chicken

 Yandry

 Yandry and another investigator from the other elders in the ward. Zombie style

Well this week was really awesome. We had 2 baptisms, one of Yandry and oneof Pedro. In Colombia if a word starts with Y you say it like J in english, so Yandry is like Jandri or something like that.

Well the problem is that this weekwas pretty typical, so I will write a little less and send some extra pictures.

First off Pedros baptism was awesome. With him it was kind of a battle to get him ready since he just wanted to learn and learn and learn all kinds of things that arent necessary for a conversion. But luckily he read the book of mormon (and Doctrine and Covenants) the whole time and when he finally prayed to ask God if its all true he felt the answer. I love the power of the book of mormon in conversion. I am also so glad that God blessed me to help Pedro get baptized since his wife is a member and he will get the priesthood and get sealed to her.

A ton of youth from the ward attended Yandrys baptism. It was awesome to see all that support. Also attended a young woman who hasnt been baptized because her parents wont let her but has always been coming to church. She started to cry at the bapism because she wants to get baptized so bad. So my companion and I have felt like we need to start to really work with her and her parents. Riht now she wont tell us where she lives because I thinkshe is afriad of what her parents will say if we talk with them about baptism. So we are going to teach her the lessons and let the Spirit help her get over her fear.

With everyone getting ready for Carnaval it has been getting hard to find new investigators. And with 2 baptisms this week we dont have very many investigators left. so we are going to use our faith and work really hard to find more people because we need to teach more people! but it will work out well in the end, it always does. In my mission my area has always had big problems like noone progressing or difficulty in finding new people to teach, but the Lord always blesses us with baptisms. 

Love, Elder wilson

Feb 10

the zone activity

 We had a zone activity where we painted t-shirts. It was actually really fun. My shirt says Nombe which is a hilarious Colombian coastal slang for no hombre, or no man. they say it a lot. The exclamation marks are because colombia deserves exclamation marks. The weird face thing on the left is a traditional carnaval mask called the marimonda.

 Here is another family night. You can expect that we will play this game when I get back. The lady is Margoris, an investigator. She is really excited about getting baptized but she has to get married first. But she is actually working towards doing it, so I know she will succeed

This week was yet another difficult one. We have been working to find new investigators but we still haven´t found a whole lot. But either way we should have two bapisms this week!

The first one is a man named Pedro Ascencio. He was a reference from a family in the church. He is the one that works in a prison and found the book of Mormon on the floor and everything. His conversion has been awesome to watch. He started out learning just because he loves to learn about gospel topics and such. But every time we met we talked about the importance of gaining a real testimony by acting upon what we learn. He completed all the commandments before he asked God if it´s all true. But he finally got around to doing the question and now he´s going to get bapized. You can all pray that he will be able to recognize the answer to his prayers a little better.

The other baptism is Yandry Perez. I don´t remember if I have talked about her but basically I´ve been teaching her since I got to Ciudadela. She has always been good at  keeping the commitments and now she´s finally ready. She is very excited to do it this week but we need a miracle so that her mom will sign her permission form. The mom likes the church and everything but says that Yandry needs to improve her conduct around the house first. I guess she gets mad sometimes. The problem is that the mom never talks to us because she is always super busy. So you can pray for her too.

Stake conference was this week and it was really great. I always love the church meetings because as a missionary it is an awesome feeling to see so much of the church in one place. It gives me hope that the temple here will come sooner than expected. It has been a very long wait and we are still not prepared. First we need to help the members to do missionary work and find more people to work in the temple. So you can all pray for that, too. Really there are lots of things we can all pray for haha.

We have interviews scheduled this week with the mission president, and I´m planning on taking advantage of that fact to get advice on how I can better work with my companion. I try hard but its been a great time to learn about the Savior and develop the attributes of Preach my gospel chapter 6.

Love you all,

Elder Wilson

February 3

 I was bored so I got creative with my jeans

 my companion and I

 another one of my companion and I, but less reverent

biggest loser - My jeans. I found a scale this week and weighed myself. In the last year and a half or so I´ve lost 110 pounds. I weigh about 50 pounds less than I did when I left Utah for the mission.

Well this week was a difficult one. We have been having a hard time finding new investigators who will progress. But we are in the plans for a great ward activity where we hope that the members will bring a lot of friends. We are going to do like a treasure hunt and a relay race at the same time. I think we can have a great turnout since my companion is really creative and actually thought of something fun we can do. Some of the other ward activities we have done are a movie night and a fireside with the mission president, so I´m excited to do a good one.

My companion and I are getting along a little better. It has been awesome to see how the Lord can bless me with the attributes I need like pacience and love to be able to get along. He is a very different kind of person than I am but we get along alright. We still need to figure out a better way to come to decisions since I just go along with what he says and we are having a hard time in the area. But he´s a great missionary and I have learned a lot from him about how to have fun in the mission.

I had this awesome moment this week when I just realizd how awesomely tropical this place really is. We were walking in the sidewalk next to a highway and I heard some birds and I looked into the trees and saw a ton of wild parrots. I literally had never really even thought about the idea that parrots live in the wild since everyone has them just as pets. But now I have a firm testimony in that they live in the wild. I also saw the other month a wild iguana almost get hit by a bus and that was the first time i had seen one of those. they are HUGE. I want to go to Valledupar where they eat them. I hear they taste gross but I want to try it.

I had an evn better experience in Sacrament meeting yesterday. I was a little stressed out about my companion and when the testimony meeting started I just felt so calm and I felt the relief I needed. This church is was true. The testimonies were awesome and the Spirit was super strong even though next to the chapel they were bumping ridiculous music that was totally disruptive.

We have been working with a less active member named Rolando and he is a great example. Its really expensive and difficult to get married here. You need like 50 dollars and you have to go to a notary and pull out your records and its hard. When to talk your records out you have a month to get married or they go bad. Rolando doesnt have any money at all but so still pulled the records out. Sorry I know its complicatesd and I didnt explain it well but basically Rolando has been a great example of faith. We are working with a lot of people who need to get married but none of them have taken action like Rolando.

Well I love you all. I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl and that everything is going well. Feel free to email me pictures if something interesting happens.

Elder Wilson

Jan 20

Well this week I had to say goodbye to Elder Franco and now I´m with elder Villarreal from Panama. He´s a great missionary who already has 18 months of experience. I was a little disappointed because I wanted to train but oh well, I know that with Elder Villarreal we will have a lot of sucess here. It will be a little interesting becuase he already told me that since he has more experience we are always just going to do what he says but I decided I´m just going to let him do his thing and try to learn from all the strengths he has. 

Brooke and Sam, that was great to hear that your child will be a girl, that is awesome! Also I hope that all the rest of you had a good time celebrating all the birthdays. I´m super happy to hear that you bought an elliptical machine. I lost 60 pounds on one of those before the mission.

Im super happy that I´m still here in Ciudadela. The ward is awesome and the members love us as missionaries so much. We have really been improving on the way that we work with members and have been having good results. The members all know who the investigators are and they go out of their way to say hi in church and sometimes even to visit their houses. There is a rule from the first presidency that the missionaries stay in an area more or less for 6-8 months. I would love to stay for that long here. But I´m also upset that I got sent here so early in the mission, since now every other ward I have will be a little more challenging.

Well not a lot happened this week what with my last companion going home and my new companion getting to know the area, but we have a lot of people progressing and I think we will be having a lot of baptisms in the near future. I love you all and I hope you are all doing great!

Elder Wilson

Jan 13

 Eva at her baptism

A lunch some members gave us to say goodbye to my companion. Also right now we are headed over to Evas pizza store for one last pizza she wanted to give him. With the holidays and my companion leaving, I think Ive gained some of the weight I lost.

This week was really great. There were a lot of really small moments in which I was able to feel a lot of The Lords love and my own, for the people and for this work. One of them was of course Eva Ruiz at her baptism. After the service she shared her testimony and it was awesome. She talked about how much she loved us and was grateful that we had helped her to find the answers she was looking for in her life. It was a great experience and helped me feel even more grateful for the trust that the Lord gave me when he called me to this work.

Something funny happened which was that I accidentally said in a letter to the mission president that my mom died a few weeks ago. I was talking about Maria and that I understand her situation because I lived the same a few YEARS ago. So I got surprised when I got a phone call from the mission president asking me about my moms death a few weeks ago. But in the end we just laughed about it. I really love President Searle. Hes been great for the mission. He shows missionaries how to trust in each other and how to love. Also he raised the monthly typical number of baptisms from about 80 to over 100. Its awesome. Plus as an area the instruction we are living in the mission is to spend more time with the members, but we are still baptising more.

Elder Franco goes tomorrow. Transfers are on Wednesday. Im excited to  see what happens but Im sure I stay here in Ciudadela. I hope so. I love this ward a lot. The members love the missionaries and we are making a lot of progress.

We have been teaching an investigator named Perdo this week. His story is awesome, like it belongs in the Liahona or something. He works in a prison and was praying one night to receive guidance. A while before that his girlfriend, now wife, talked to him about the Book of Mormon, and he was praying to know if he should read it or not. So he was praying and walking in the deserted part of the prison when he saw the book on the ground covered in poop. He picked it up and cleaned it off, and now hes going to be baptized the 16th of February.

Love you all,

Elder Wilson

Jan 6

This week was awesome. First off, we had 9 investigators come to church which for me is unheard of and a huge miracle. I felt so glad to be able to see all those people right where they needed to be. Equally awesome was that we saw 4 less active members that we´ve been working with come to church. I love seeing them come becuase I know some of the challenges that they are going through and I love being able to see them turn to the gospel for help. We are teaching an investigator named Maria that I just realized I wrote about last week. She´s the one where her husband died super recently. It has been great to see her feel some of the peace that comes from the gospel. She still hasn´t accepted a baptismal date but she has come a few times to church and I´m sure that the Spirit will keep working with her until she does.

Eva Ruiz is all set for her baptism this Sunday. She is the owner of a pizza store and sometimes when we visit her we have to go to the business and she gives us a free pizza. She told us once that she feels horrible because of the Sabbath Day. She makes the most money on that day and she can come to church each week but she can´t close her store Sundays. We talked to the mission president and he said it was all okay. But it was cool to see that she herself wanted to find out how she can best keep that commandment. The relief society president said that she participates well in the ward classes and that she is rock solid. But still please pray for her.

I was able to see a lot of hte tender mercies of the Lord thjis week. First off, one night we were visiting a member in their house to share a message. The area presidency tells us that we naad to visit the members very often to share a message and leave come commitment. Well anyways after the lesson the member just mentioned that everyone hopes that the missionaries will pass by their house and share a quick message. Just that simple phrase made me feel so happy and blessed to be able to participate in this work.

Second, we had the best turn out ever I think as a ward this week. Usually there are like 140 people, but this week there were 197. I think it might be because of the new year but either way 197 people were able to take the sacrament and renew their covenants with the Lord. I´m praying that all those people will keep coming to church and keep feeling the Spirit´s joy. It was so full in the chapel that we ran out of chairs.

My companion only has one week left but he keeps on being very diligent and hard working. I´ve been able to learn a lot from him and I´m super glad for his example. I love you all and I hope you have a great new year!