!

Well first of all I just wanted to write you guys and not have to make it all formal and share some mission experiences so if you guys want to send it out to family or anyone that really wants to hear from me...go for it. but I'd like to keep it for you guys. And I also wanted to share with you guys some of the amazing success I've been able to find out here and I just want you guys to see it as Alma chapter 26 type of bragging haha. This past week has been absolutely fantastic and its such a bummer that I only have so few minutes to write you guys about it, but once I get to work I forget about all my homesickness and the stuff I miss. Well on transfer weekends...the way it's supposed to go is that you get a call on saturday night if you are getting transfered. Elder Lee said that some have even carried over to Sunday morning, but that's about the farthest. But this past Tuesday, the day of Transfer meeting, our ever so dilligent A.P.s called Elder Lee and forgot to tell him that he's being transfered, so we spent that whole day just packing for him. But the funny part is that I'm being backup trained by Elder Henze who was trained by Elder Lee, and he was also backup trained by Elder Viuroetta who was trained by Elder Lee as well. We all are wondering what is going through President Durrant's head because this is the first time anything like this has happened but no matter. Me and Elder Henze have been clicking so well since day 1! And another thing is that my Spanish has been amazing! For coming up on four months, every Mexican, even the ones we don't know and just randomly contact, always compliment me on my Spanish! 

Elder Henze has 6 months out here but Elder Lee told me that my Spanish was better than his, and I didn't believe it until we started teaching, and then it got to the point where I have to take over most of our lessons and clear up confusion. but it is so awesome because I love being able to get more opportunities to step up and learn more and more and become more fluent in Spanish! I seriously wish you guys could've seen my spanish from day one to where it is now and you would know for sure that the gift of tongues is seriously real! The great part about it is that we can effectively teach and make mistakes here and there, which leads the Hispancs to have respect that we try to learn their language and it always gives us a sense of humility when they correct us and help us learn the language more. This past week I have just loved it out here so much and have grown so tremendously, and this past week, I felt on the spur of the moment that I should set the baptismal dates for the Dirk Nowitski family. They all accepted and were so awesome about it!!! They actually came to church yesterday (which...someone please tell the music lady to never ever choose Hymn 240 where it talks about how humans without agency are like pure animals and beasts.) It was really crazy because the talks were super deep about living worthy to hold the preisthood and not exercising unrighteous dominion...so I was dying the whole time because when members get opportunities to speak they always take it way too far. But after I had set the baptismal dates with Karl, (and yeah...that is quite ironic that's his name) but I started thinking about how we could just baptize him and give him the opportunity to baptize his kids. When I thought about that, my mind just shifted and I thought about how what I was thinking wouldn't give us more numbers (which is what so many missionaries are out here to do...baptize millions), but truly bring this family that much closer to Christ, and helping us more fully complete our purpose. Then I was realizing why I was enjoying what I did so much and was receiving so many blessings this week. The past month was pretty rough and had very little success and every single family, even Angel's, dropped us. But we kept going trying to be as obedient as we could, and now we have seen such success this week where almost a fourth of all the homes we tract let us come in and teach! It is so amazing and we've even had a couple of people that come up to us and ask us to teach them! I really love it here in this area, and it's been pretty wierd this past while because one of my best freinds went home this last week...so a lot of the conversation was about home. (My favorite part was when E' Nestman had a role play with E' Lee on how he was going to loose this girl who he tried to write off, but her Dad ended up writing him back and told him to write her and she's been waiting for him since haha....I was crying the whole time it was hilarious.) It's weird thinking about how everyone changes so much on their mission and how they come back so different. I'm not going to lie that definitely scared me because sure there's some things I could change...maybe I could get up a little earlier and spend less money on frivilous things, but I really want to come back with a stronger testimony and these awesome experiences, but kind of doing what I did before. It's wierd to think about, but this past week and how well me and Elder Henze have been meshing has been such a blessing to get me back in the work! I seriously wish I could send you guys videos of just some of the things that we've done that I look back and think, "we were totally led by the spirit to do that" or where we just made someones day better and we're doing everything that you would expect of a missionary, and loving it!

This past week I met Benjamin Franklin...okay it wan't him but he looked exactly like him, so we really wanted to take a picture with him haha. So we stopped him and ended up talking to him for a while. He was probably the nicest person I have ever met out in the field and It was such a blessing to be able to share how grateful we were to have the gospel in our lives. He was apart of another faith, but respected what we did so much and asked us to leave him with a prayer. He asked if I would offer it and we did one of those prayer circles where, we hold hands, and I don't remember what I said, but he ended up crying at the end of the prayer and asked us for the pass along card with the picture of Jesus on it and said he would always cherish it with tears running down his face. We were also teaching a 19 year old Spanish girl who was very religiously curious, and while I was talking, she stopped me and said something. I thought she didn't understand what I was saying so I worded my question differently and she answered it and we just kept going, After the lesson Elder Lee told me that she said that whenever I talk she just feels really good inside. Well I've had so many awesome experiences that I love sharing with you guys but I have to go now and love and miss you all so much!

Love, 

Elder Wilson

Last Week Of The First Transfer!!!

Hey howdy hey!!! I cannot believe it but in this upcoming week I will be moving on to my second transfer! It is super crazy that this one is almost over and it's definately a bummer because some of my best friends in this District are going to be leaving in this next week but I guess that's how the mission goes. First off I want to say way to go Mom with all of the work that you have put into Youth Conference and I know that everyone appreciates it! This one kid in our Ward was asking me about the Youth Dances and Conferences and stuff and I told him about all the great experiences I had back in the day haha. I can't promise him that his activities will be as cool as ours but at least he's going now! So I know that the Youth will appreciate all that you do to make this an awesome experience! Well this past week we set two baptismal dates! Jacob and Robert are set to be baptized the 7 of July, and they are super ready to go...but the only problem is that they live with their Mom on the Weekdays and some weekends and on some Sundays their Dad picks them up to take them to Arlington...so we're praying for a miracle to get them to church, but other than that they're set to go. This week at our ward I also got to meet this guy straight from Mexico who's name is Jacob and is a total Mexican Cowboy! It is so awesome talking with him about vaquero stuff haha and our collection of boots, horses, and all that jazz. This past week we also got to play some Latino teenagers in basketball with Lessons on the line. If we won, we had the upper hand and got the opportunity to share a message. So even though we wore white shirts, ties, and the name tags, we pretty much slaughtered that game! All I have to say is that the Holy Ghost not only knows how to guide you in life, but also how to pick-and-roll up the baseline haha. We also had a fantastic lesson with our main man Jose who in the end asked us the question "Why are poeple not coming to this church by the thousands?!?" Man it's awesome being out here!!! One other thing that I wanted to talk about today is missionary with our friends, and I don't know if I've mentioned it in the past few e-mails, but tracting is an activity that I have come to find yeilds so little success, probably the least out of any other aspect of searching for investigators. But, like anytime in pretty much every missionaries day, we were out knocking doors and ran into this 18 year old kid named Angel. As we started talking to him about the church, he told us that he had a really close friend that was Mormon and ended up moving to Utah last year. We thought, "awesome! He already has some background on our church." But then he went on to tell us that his friend had given him a Book of Mormon in both Spanish and English and that he had been reading out of them! So we set up a time where we could teach his family, and had an amazing lesson! It's super rare for this to happen, but we were able to totally blow through the whole first lesson ending with an interested family and Angel telling us that he knew that through the power of God, Joseph Smith translated this record. Elder Lee and I were totally blown away at how prepared Angel is and know that the credit is due to his friend, whoever it is, for sharing his testimony and what he valued the most with the people that he valued most. We have an appointment with them this upcoming Tuesday and are super excited to see where it will go from here, but I wanted to invite everyone to help lay the foundation with thier friends. Again, it's something that I'm kicking myself for not doing more often, but I remember hearing a quote early on in my mission saying "Any action on the Lord's errand, is no wasted action." Any step that we take to invite others to the truth will have eternal consequences and will stick with them until they have the opportunity to accept the fullness of the gospel. Well I love and miss you all but I can't wait to share more and more of what it's like to serve the Lord in Dallas Texas! Big shout out to Dad for a Happy Father's Day!!! Love you!

Elder Justin Wilson

This is me explaining the miracle of repentance and forgiveness to the Gorilla from "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," he was weighed down with guilt for the attempted takeover of San Fransisco which cost the lives of many good Northern Californians.

Lightning Storms!!!!

Man e-mail up here is so lame because we have to go to the Library to do it and they only gave me 20 minutes today but I'll try and tell you guys as fast as I can about all the good stuff out here! First off, this last week has been amazing with all the lightning and thunder!!! Last monday night, it was seriously like a movie. We were about to fall asleep and then a flash went off outside our window. So we thought it was maybe someone taking a picture or something and just shook it off. Then it happened again a couple minutes later, but we were too tired to care...so we shook it off again. Then it happened a minute later and we decided to open the blinds and just wait to see what was going on. Then it started to rain and we finally noticed all the lightning! It was one of the most amazing things I've seen in my life. It seriously got to the point where there would be lightning flashes within 5 seconds of each other...and just like in movies...we would hear the rain pattering while the window would light up every  couple of seconds and we would hear the thunder boom off in the distance. It was amazing to fall asleep to and the constant lightning lasted throughout the night so we ended up falling asleep to it. I remember waking up and lightning was still going off, but I went throughout my normal schedule, and after being captivated by all the lightning the night before, I was a little more tired than usual. When it came to personal study time...I just couldn't stop myself and ended up falling asleep (which, Mom, I promise that doesn't happen a lot.) Then, the loudest thunder I had ever heard in my life shook our whole apartment and totally woke me up! I took it as a sign and was a little bit more diligent about my personal study haha. 

Man it is super crazy how much I have learned this week and wish I had enough time to tell you all of it! We have had a pretty crazy week with some serious testimony throwdowns and have been teaching some pretty lost people. One guy that we've been seeing often is a man whose girlfriend broke up with him about 7 months ago and he just can't get over it, and when I say that, I mean he never leaves his house and just pouts all day...for the past 7 months. So everytime we see him, it turns into him explaining to us how sad his life is and we teach him or try to get him amped to set goals or something, but then he talks about his church "Jesucristo Es Mi Refugio" which is the biggest testament to how gullible Latinos are. They just don't understand how this church is literally robbing them with a neon sign that advertises "Salvation and Miracles all day every day" with an Inc. symbol attached to it. He even told us that they have a prophet there because he was able to name some people in the crowd...and that was his miracle. We keep asking him how this church has helped him change his life and he always draws a blank, and after so many visits with him and teaching him about how our messages will change his life for the better, we decided that we needed to take a more bold approach to get him to really understand how pitiful he is making his life. We just testified about how this is the only true church that follows the teachings and doctrine of Christ, and as we were going on about it...we saw it just pierce his very core. He all of the sudden just said "I have to go!" (Which he never leaves his house.) So he had us leave...but it was a testament that every knee will bow and every tounge confess that Jesus is the Christ and that this is his church. 

Well I love and miss you all and can't wait to tell you more next week!!

 Elder Justin Wilson