How The Good Always Seems To Have An Ending...

Well, four transfers and just about 6 months of trials, blessings and all sorts of awesome, scary, and amazing experiences...and it's time to leave Oak Cliff. I'm really going to miss this place, but even more so, all the amazing people I was able to meet and spend time with. But I'm determined to do like other missionaries in times before...I'm going to come and serve here again sometime or another!!! But as for now, I'm just packing all my stuff to get ready to leave on out to Greenville Texas. I've never heard of the place but it's apparently an hour and a half north east of downtown Dallas bridging the...farmland folk haha. But hey, what better place to be for the release of Taylor swift's new album than in the middle of farmtowm!  As bummed as I am to leave Oak Cliff with all the city life, ghettos, and Hispanics, I'm looking forward to a new area, companion and a whole new experience! But speaking of a new companion makes me think about how much I'm going to miss training Elder Martinez! 

One of my favorite experiences was a couple weeks ago when we were riding our bikes at night to an appointment and stumbled upon a group of about 15 bikers with the lights, vests and all that gear and good stuff. We thought it would be awesome to just merge in with them...so if you happened to be driving through Oak Cliff that night, you would've seen a bike convoy with the tight shorts, vests, racer bikes...and then a two dudes wearing white shirts and ties taking up the rear. Everyone kept looking back at us, but the fact that we had the lights and everything and just happened to show up in the rear gave them a confused look on their faces...but they kept going on feeling a little weird as to how we just happened to show up. In that moment I saw a golden teaching opportunity and decided to tell the shy Elder Martinez to go up and contact the people in the ahead of us while we were riding. So after a couple of minutes and a lot of persuasion, Elder Martinez finally made his way up to the man biking ahead of us, and after riding right next to him for a minute or so, he just looked over at him and nervously asked, "So....have you heard of the Book Of Mormon?" I just about crashed I was laughing so hard haha oh classic mission stories. Well as far as cool events that happened this past week...I was able to teach Shakira (no joke), Elder Martinez's bike broke...again haha and he said "All I need is a rubber band, paperclip, and a toothpick." So we pulled a MacGyver and made it home safely! But I'm not going to lie, one of the best parts of these past couple weeks was when I saw 11 out of the 12 converts that we have at church on the same day! One of our converts was about to be confirmed that day, but her baby started crying and she had the "I don't know what to do" look on her face, until another one of our converts came up to take care of the baby, calming it down and allowing Hermana Martinez to recieve the Holy Ghost. Converts helping out converts...it really just doesn't get much better than that! I feel so blessed out here and am so excited to see what's around the corner in Greenville Texas! I love you all and que les vaya bien!

Elder Justin Wilson