Just Another Week

Well for this week I would also appreciate it if you guys kept it for our family. Getting all the letters and news from you guys, I just can't really believe how badly things are going. It really is shocking just how everything seems to be going just as south as possible. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean for our family, maybe that we should look outside of Los Angeles (which would absolutely kill me) or maybe we're just getting hit with all this stuff to prepare for something bigger and better, but then again I feel like I'm just stealing the blessings for our family. We did have a baptism this last Saturday which I know you guys would've gotten a kick out of seeing it. His name was Adib Guadalupe Jacobo Hernandez ...which makes it just about as Mexican as you can get. I felt like I was quoting the Nacho Libre"...from the Sisters...ladys...mountains...of guadalupe..."during the baptismal prayer which I had to keep myself from laughing, but what was more on my mind was how I was going to dunk and lift all 250 pounds of this 6 foot 3 inch dude. Well through some miracle and another testimony that there is a God, I was able to successfully baptize him and embrace him as my brother that speaks zero english and that I've been super close with for all my time out here in Oak Cliff. It was way awesome and really touched me when he got up to bear his testimony after the baptism and he said "Elder Wilson, I'm never going to forget you and how much you've helped me." Man that got me to the core and just like it says in the beginning of Preach My Gospel, there is no work more satisfying than this. (Another bonus is that President Durrant came to the baptismal service.) It sure was an amazing opportunity and we have 2 more baptisms this coming Saturday, possibly one more on the 8th of September, and 2 more for sure on the 15. It is so crazy how much success we are finding here, even on the bikes and everything. 

In my doctor's appointment this past week....it went well, but not as smoothly as we would've liked. I did get the updated prescription and I sent that in the mail, and he did say everything looks great and like the medication is working just fine. But since the DMV problem was in California, he wouldn't touch the paper and said that my California doctor would have to take care of it. He said that he would send a report to Dr. Lekkala and that she could take it from there and he said he would be happy to sign anything if I was applying for a Texas license,  but not a California one. And to answer your question Dad...I believe he is Dr. Lekkala's distant cousin, back in the tribes of India. But I sent the paperwork and the prescription back home with pretty much the same description on how everything went, but I don't know if you guys want to continue to go through all the trouble of the DMV work since it might get all worked out when the transfer ends. 

Another amazing experience we had this last week was when we knocked on the last door for the day, and saw a woman with a brand new baby answer. After congratulating her on that new baby of her's, we asked her if we could share a message with her and she welcomed us on in. After teaching the restoration to her and earning a certain level of trust from her, she told us about how her baby was born with a heart problem and we were able to tell her about the priesthood power and the blessings we were able to give. So after knowing this woman for a total of about 10 minutes, she trusted us with the opportunity to bless her brand new, 10 day old baby. As we anointed and blessed the baby...we both talked after about how miraculous it was to bless someone who just came from the presence of God. It sure is an amazing work to be a part of, and I hope that Rachel is getting prepped and everything ready to start school! Super stoked for her and I want you guys to know that I pray for you every day. As bad as things are now...I am eager to see what they'll look like in the future. And you guys can also do whatever you want with the pictures and everything. love you all! Hope you had a great birthday shane! Thanks for sending the pics Mom! Sure love you guys!

Elder Wilson

Weeks Seem To Be Getting Crazier and Crazier!!!

Well first off I'd like to start out with a shout out for the almost nine year olds! Hope you enjoy your birthday shaners and get my package on time! This week has been full of the good, the bad, and the ugly, but I figured I'd start out by explaining the joy of the rain we've had this week. With all respect to my companion, I really could not believe this plan that he had formed for us as a district to get to this past Zone Conference. It invovled us spending the night at East's apartment and waking up at 4 in the morning to get to the ever so effective Dallas Area Rapid Transit train station, which would end up taking us to Richardson where we had the meeting starting at 12. Well, while we were on exchanges, he had someone drive them to the East apartment and forgot to bring thier bikes, which left us walking to the Dart station at...4 in the morning. That night was crazy with thunder that kept waking all of us up as it shook the apartment and would set off about 15 or so car alarms. Well once 4 came...we dragged ourselves out of bed and got in our suits just in time to see that it was pouring harder than ever to help us meet a flash flood on our walk to the DART station. While we were on exchanges and everyone without rain jackets neccesary to battle this weather, we all trudged through the pelting rain at 4 in our suits for 45 minutes until we got to the station haha. But as the saying goes, "Nothing beats walking around in a flash flood for 2 and a half miles at 4 in the morning in suits in the heart of south Dallas haha." We were all just soaked to the bone as we got on the freezing cold train haha but we most definately got a missionary experience medal! 

Another crazy expereince was when we had my most effective Bible bash yet. Well it started out just like any other normal day where as we were riding our bikes, we heard "Hey Mormons!" We turned around and saw a guy motioning for us to come and talk to him in this parking lot and we decided to go and see what he might need. So as we started talking to him, he started out with the, "I totally respect you guys for what you do, and I don't want to be racist or anything (still have no idea why he said that), but I've got a few questions." So he started questioning a bunch of beliefs that we have and we naturally gave him answers backed up with scriptural evidence. Then he gave us more doubts that we would answer and he would always refer to this little book that he had, and after answering a bunch of questions that he couldn't defend, he said, "Is it alright if we go over to my car so that I can get my book and that we and we can keep going from there?" We figured it would be alright since we had already effectively answered all of his questions that he was trying to battle with us, so we went to his car and he pulled out his laminated Anti-Mormon pamphlet, and everything that he had no debate on before, he threw down and the reasons why what we believed was false. He really started ramming on the Bible, even though we had backed up so many of our beliefs to the words of the Bible, he just wouldn't accept it and would say, "Well you need to give me something more than that." He would deny everything we said, until he finally said, "If you can prove to me that God and Jesus Christ are two seperate people with bodies, then I will believe that Joseph Smith saw the two of them." We had already explained and given him sufficient scriptures for that and it made me so clearly think of the statement from Korihor the Anti-Christ in Alma 30:43, "If thou wilt show unto me a sign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea show unot me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words." I knew through the spirit that he had already determined his heart to be hardend beyond acceptance of this truth, and I simply told him that whatever we say, he Is just looking to destroy or deny it. I then bore the most powerful testimony on my mission. It was an experience like never before, and instead of feeling like I was speaking, I felt like my body was just a vessel to deliver the words and testimony of someone else. I will never forget the feeling where I KNEW, and there was absolutely zero doubt about the truthfulness of my words. It was like I wasn't speaking, but my mouth was delivering something while my mind confirmed with a feeling I'd never felt before that whatever I was being directed to say is true. It made me think of the words of Elder Russell M. Nelson in the MTC, "Pure testimony is iirrefutable, It is undenyable, It is powerful." He kept trying to cut me off, but it kept going until it was guided to close. I knew something hit him, and hard, because after that he thew down every false conception his mind could concieve about the church, even speaking of doctrines as sacred as Exaltation. I simply said, "As Jesus said to the Pharasiees, why would we teach you of Celestial things if you cannot even believe temporal things." Then Elder Rodriguez said, "Our purpose is to call Repentance, therefore we invite you to repent. You have a nice day sir." As we left, my mind flooded with all sorts of other things that we could have said or scriptures that would have proved him wrong, but it was that moment that I knew that the spirit had ben working with us. We treated him like Jesus did the Jews in John chapter 8, and that was a testimony that what we did was right. It was an amazing expereince, but is sad to show how the world truly is ripening for destruction. 

On a happy note, we have 3 baptisms this saturday with some solid members to keep the world and work going haha. Love and miss you all! Wish I had more time to tell you about all these amazing stories!

Love

Elder Justin Wilson

Lesson Record!

Whats up family! First off...when did you get an iPad Mom?!?! That's crazy haha I guess things definately do change while you're gone but I hope you're enjoying your new toy. 

Well I was a little bummed when I heard about the DMV thing but I guess we'll just keep moving on, and even though bikes seem to be slowing things down a bit, we just broke Elder Rodriguez's record of 26 lessons by teaching 27 this week! It's way awesome seeing things just take off as we decide to teach at the first contact! We ended the week with another record for me of 11 new investigators! I'm way stoked because things are going fantastic with our 3 planned baptisms for the 25 of August and we're also excited to see how things are going to go with President's new battle plan of having the Oak Cliff Spanish mission work with mainly inactives and part member families instead of tracting...which...pretty much anything beats out tracting. It was so awesome to be able to talk to you guys and catch up with everything back home. So, my question for Rachel...how was the date with "the Hair"...and where was Natalie during that call? I missed hearing from her but I guess she's a busy high schooler now haha. This past week has been way awesome because I'm getting to the point where I start to feel like I'm actually in Mexico! More often than not I'm the only white guy in our group of Mexicans that we're teaching or going teaching with. A good amount of them don't speak a lick of English so it's a good test for my Spanish and it feels so awesome being able to understand all the jokes and take part in conversations that I thought were just a bunch of jibberish a couple months ago. But that's life here in Oak Cliff, just kicking it with my brothas from Mexico and staying safe from all of the drug trouble that's going on down here. And a message for you Dad, I remember when you were explaining what teaching the Hispanic population would be like, and all I have to say is you've been right on the dot. In your words, "All you have to do is recite the first vision and they'll say, 'Hey! That happened to my Uncle like a week ago! Where can I get baptized?!'" So in at least two of this weeks lessons, our investigators have told us that they had a dream where, in their words, "I saw a pillar of light, brighter than the sun, decending directly over my head...and then I saw my Lord and God." For some of them it happened a couple years ago and for others it was a couple days ago, but once I heard those words and translated them to English in my head, I pretty much heard your summary of my mission. 

We did have a pretty cool expereince where we prayed and were very specific about the details of what we wanted to find. We wanted to be able to get in a door and teach a lesson before we called it a night, and then Elder Rodriguez looked at me and just told me to lead the way. So we walked around this neighborhood and I was trying to feel something special or some direction when I looked at every house, but nothing was really coming to me. So I felt like we had gone far enough, and I decided to just knock a random one that looked good...and we got nothing. So we prayed again and Elder Rodriguez led us to another door, and again, we got nothing. By this time he just wanted to knock down the row, door by door on another street, but I kept remembing this one house that we had passed about 10 minutes earlier, and I felt not much when we passed it, something small enough that didn't make me stop because I expected to feel something more, but for some reason I remembered just that one. So I told him about the house I kept remembering and we decided to go knock it. So once we made contact with the resident, we found out that it was an old lady who had been sick for a good amount of time, and not only did we get to teach her about the Restoration (which she had a dream of), but we were also able to give her a blessing. What a blessing it was to find someone so accepting and to be able to teach her in absolute silence, giving the spirit that much more of an opportunity to be present. Well in all, this has been a pretty solid week, even though we heard "long preaching" yesterday that almost had the result of Acts 20:7-9, but the work goes on. I miss you all and hope that things are going well and that you all are getting just as excited as I am about the Laker's "BIG 4!!!" Keep up all that you guys do to help the missionary work and I'm way stoked to hear that you're getting super involved Mom! 

Love,

Elder Justin Wilson

Complete Chaos

Wow this past week has been absolutely crazy. So with this whole dividing the Oak Cliff part of the mission to East and West basically led to me and Elder Rodriguez being "doubled into" the central apartment and working from scratch with a whole new system of investigators, old investigator transfers from East to West, and getting to know the area...while on Bicycles. 

This past week has been absolutely insane...but the good news is that we had 3 baptisms this past Saturday! It was amazing to have my first out in the mission, and a little nerve racking, but still a fantastic experience. It's been so neat to see the Gomez kids go from no knowledge about the church to their baptism...and even though they were about 15 minutes late...with members waiting and me just about ready to lock myself away in fear that they’d miss it...they finally came and it was amazing to make it the whole way! 

We also were able to get Juan Jr. baptized after months and months of waiting for his Dad to give him the O.K. but it was finally done! The most nerve racking experience though was the confirmation. As investigators, the confirmations are supposed to be held on Sundays during the sacrament meeting in front of the whole congregation. Once I got up there and saw everybody, I totally thought I was going to mess up or get stuck or something! But it was super neat how you are inspired when you use the priesthood...but when you're directed to say what you don't know in a language you can't speak and it ends up working itself out...that is proof that there is a God. 

But overall everything went down very well and it has been quite the week. And on the bike...all I have to say is that in the moment...riding...in 112 degrees...of humidity...kinda  makes you hate Texas...but biking makes for much better stories than driving ever will

. This past week when we were riding to a lesson, it was like my tubes just gave up and decided that they didn't want to ride anymore. And then my bike gave up and didn't want to be a bike anymore and the back tire just...I don't really know how to say it...but it just fell off. Well gotta go given the small amount of email time but I hope everything is going well! Miss all of you!

Elder Justin Wilson