Tiempo Para Gozar La Virgin De Guadalupe De Los

What a week! So we started it off by picking up Elder Downer and we dove straight into the work! We seriously didn't even have time to set up new plans or to try and get something else going because we are already super super busy...so I just told Elder Downer that he'll catch on to everything here in Hunt County sometime. We did have a Zone Conference to get all 30 missionaries in the Dallas/Richardson/Hunt area all stoked and ready to go on our baptismal goal for the year. As of this week, we only have 57 baptisms to go and 90 some baptismal dates mission-wide! And we're looking to contribute at least four if not even more haha super super exciting! We also talked about how even though being on a mission may be a sacrifice, we are expecting miracles and have made our own personal sacrifices to show the Lord that we truly are in it. Elder Downer and I decided to only listen to Mo Tab, Hymns, and Christmas Music (which killer for me...being away from music I normally listen to is tough enough but this is really putting me on the edge of musical patience), fasting every Sunday, and then also cutting some hours off of our Preparation Day so that we can get straight to work. It puts things in a different light, and gives us another opportunity to see miracles put in our path! 

We set two more dates this past week and also got to start teaching Sam Elliot. And he speaks Spanish. So that was a money find haha...so I figured I could add him to my collection of teachee's along with Dirk Nowitski and Kenny Chesney. But this past week we had just about the creepiest brush with the Catholics ever! So for those of you who have any toleration for the Catholics and their Idol worship and would like to keep the little bit of patience that you have...I would encourage you to skip this part. So this last wednesday we were out knocking some doors about an hour after the sun went down, so while it was reasonably dark, and while we were walking, we heard the sound of a drum off in the distance. We thought it may be someone just practicing in a garage band or something like that, but as we kept walking down this street, the sound got louder and louder and louder. We were in a pretty sketchy part of Greenville (I thought that this Godforsaken town was just full of farm people, but it has ghettos that, again, rival Oak Cliff and as far as I know, has a more storied, dangerous history in these past few months than the Cliff), but hey, you go to the poor because the poor are the humble and the humble are the ones who will accept our message. But as we were walking down there, the streetlights seemed to get dimmer and dimmer, and then we started to see the silhouettes, of what looked exactly like zombies...just slowly stumbling down the street in a uniformed line. It pretty much stopped us dead in our tracks and we were just about convinced that the Apocalypse had started, but all of the sudden a van came flying by us and it stopped leaving a bunch of Mexicans piling out. It felt super weird there as we saw tons of those silhouettes doing whatever tribal thing they were doing...so we got a way bad vibe and just jetted on out. 

The next day, we knocked into Mexican lady who ended up inviting us to...yes...La Baile De La Virgin De Guadalupe. (Or the Dance of the Virgin of Guadalupe or "Virgin Mary".) So then she explained the whole significance behind glorifying the Virgin Mary from December First until December 23 and some idea about how that was when she started giving birth or something like that and something about the using of the drums, costumes, and the dance or "march". All I have to say is...after talking to what seems like thousands of Catholics......HOW IS SHE NOT AN IDOL?!?! They always use the term, "we don't worship her, we only respect her just like you respect the President." Well all I have to say is you won't ever see me praying, dancing, or decking my house with statues of any president,

especially the big "O". It's really sad how Jesus Christ gets the same amount of recognition with Catholics as David Archuletta does with the Mormons. It was easily the experience where I felt the farthest away from the states and I could just go on forever about how Catholicism is just fueling the world's "ripening for destruction" (fully supported by President Joseph Fielding Smith [see any document he has written that relates to the Catholic church.]) But enough about them and their Christmas...things are going just fantastic here and we're looking way forward to the wave of baptisms we're expecting!!! I love and miss yall ton's and I'm still waiting to hear where Karly got her call too!!!?!!

Elder Justin Wilson