None Of This "Hasta Que La Muerte Lo Separe..." Garbage....But For "Tiempo Y Toda La Eternidad"

No les voy a mentir...this past week was one of those weeks that every missionary just dreams about. It's sadly a rare occasion, something that should happen way more often, but it brings more joy, happiness and satisfaction than any other event that you can witness as a missionary.

This past week I was able to see my best friend Jason Walker get sealed for time and all eternity in the Dallas Temple. It was the first sealing I have ever seen and it was almost indescribable, the spirit that was felt there, but even more so, the significance of what was actually taking place. What I saw there wasn't just the fire of a new testimony or the hope of a better start; what miraculous spirit I have normally witnessed at Baptisms, wasn't only present that day, but magnified beyond anything else. What I saw was the start of a Family; a couple promising each other and God that they were in it for the long run. They were not going to give up. And as Elder Holland put it, they made the most sacred promise to "a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating [their] love of the Lord. [They knew they couldn't] quit and [couldn't] go back. After an encounter with the living Son of the living God, nothing is ever again to be as it was before. The Crucifixion, Atonement, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ mark the beginning of a Christian life, not the end of it." They showed their Faith in Christ, his Atonement, and the Restoration of his Gospel by taking advantage of all of the blessings that our Heavenly Father has to offer and by taking the steps and making the covenants necessary to receive them. It was such an amazing experience to see someone that I love so much with a rekindled testimony continue to live the Gospel and to be a part of such an event. I will truly never forget it.

But as happy as I was to see Jason receive all the blessings of the Temple, it made me sad to think about all of those who I know that are missing out on such life changing experiences. Some have made it part of the way and fallen off into "strange paths", and others have just rejected the idea. But again, with the same thoughts as Elder Holland, "To those who were once with us but have retreated, preferring to pick and choose a few cultural hors d’oeuvres from the smorgasbord of the Restoration and leave the rest of the feast, I say that I fear you face a lot of long nights and empty nets." So it is quite a work we have to undertake. Not only do we have to bring the Gospel to those that don't have it, but we've got to bring it back to those who once had it, but somehow lost it. To say it simply, "We [must] magnify our office unto the Lord, taking upon us the responsibility, answering the sins of the people upon our own heads if we [do] not teach them the word of God with all diligence; wherefore, by laboring with our might their blood might not come upon our garments; otherwise their blood would come upon our garments, and we would not be found spotless at the last day."

But on an even brighter note, after seeing the Sealing of the new happily married Walker couple, we went back into the temple to go through an endowment session. On our way there we ran into another family that I had taught more than a year ago back in Oak Cliff...THE RAMOS Familia!!!! I was shocked to see them there and just had this Deja Vu moment where I remembered seeing their baptism my second transfer out in the mission. Then we had the big area change where Oak Cliff went from North, Central and South to Oak Cliff East and West. So we took charge of teaching the new members of the Ramos Family and taught all the new member discussions while they were passing through what seemed like endless trials. Be it problems with work, family...or whatever it may be, that they never seemed to stop. I even remember back when they accidentally locked their baby in their car with the keys and we had to end up breaking the window the get her out, which added another burden to the heap of financial problems they were already in. But I still vividly remember bringing whatever creative lessons that Elder Rodriguez and I could come up with, and in return, Nadia Ramos would cook the best food ever! The best Salvadoranian cook I've ever known in my life, hands down. She can cook tres lecces along with your carne y pollo asado like none other. It even went back to before Elder Stead and I were companions and we went on an exchange during his birthday. We ate at their house, and while Elder Stead was just being Elder Stead, forgot to cancel the other 3 dinner appointments he forgot that he had set up. It was good times. But the added joy I felt to see that they had lived worthy to all the commitments we had left them and continued to surpass whatever trial came their way even to their sealing...it was again an indescribable moment.

That day at the temple I saw someone from every area that I had served in (except for Garland), and to see the faithfulness of these members, old or new...priceless. So go ahead and try that one on for size MasterCard.  

And I'd like to make a special shout out to my Mamma!!!!! & Hermano!!!!!! Happy one-day late birthday!!!!! I'm sorry my package probably hasn't made it by now and since y’all are...again...on vacation somewhere, I don't know when you'll get it but we had a super crazy week so it got sent a little late. And Brett's last birthday that I remember falling on thanksgiving was spent at the Ludlows while we watched BYU defeat the Spawn of Satan (er...I mean the Utah Utes) on their projector. Haha it was quite the game, but after having not seen a full game for forever, any game is a good game by now. And as another Birthday Present for you Mom...I gave a talk yesterday which went way awesome. Of course I wasn't able to say half the things I wanted to but I thought it still went great. When President Austin found out that I was speaking he decided to make it out to sacrament which put the pressure on, and right when I finished and sat down, he looked at me and said with that thick East Texas accent..."Boy...is that the best you can do???" Haha gotta love the guy. We talked about Stake Conference and how it's all going to be about missionary work and he talked about getting President Durrant to let me finish my mission out here....another one of the crazy mission rumors...but Feliz Cumpleanos from the bottom of my heart haha.

This past week was super super crazy.  We were doing exchanges left and right working in Sulphur Springs, Paris, and Mount Pleasant Texas. This upcoming week we're looking forward to trying to make it out to DeQueens, Arkansas and help out the Idabel Elders, but being the largest stake in the mission....(almost double the size of the next largest) meant a lot of driving and time out of our area, so it definitely needs a little bit more attention this week, which is going to be tough since we have another training scheduled out in Dallas this Wednesday, but what more can I say about Gilmer. We livin tha dream!!! We've got a few more baptisms coming on up in the first week of December and all I've gotta say is that we've seen almost nothing but miracles with our teaching pool. The past few weeks have been a little tough with people moving around and what not, being occupied with all sorts of random holiday stuff. I still think it would be easier to work in a country that didn't celebrate so many holidays, but then again what ward parties would we bring our investigators to haha.

Also please keep these names in your prayers because they either hated the church before we taught them or were brought up atheist and have made such awesome progress and are just on the threshold of getting baptized, so as Elder S. Gifford Neilson said..."Pray for your missionaries and the people they're teaching by name! (Exclamation Point!!)

Lynette Harroff

Samantha Harroff

Connor Myers

Sarah Henson

Dewayne Smith

Some other news that just about made me cry....

I don't know if y’all remember the Riveroll Family that I taught out in Greenville right before I left there when Carlos and Brittany had gotten baptized? ALL the members are fully active!!!!!! I could just go on all day about how big of a deal this is, but their Dad has started going to church because he has noticed the difference in his family and wants to be a part of it, and now has a baptismal date for the beginning of December...so looks like I'm going to have to hit up Greenville again!!!

Well as y’all know...life is just too good to be true down in the South! Just living the dream baby!!! Livin the dream!!!

LeS qUiErO mUcHiSiMo!!!!! Que disfruten su pavo esta semana!!!

Elder Wilson

Did YOUR Mission President Dunk On Michael Jordan????? Yeah....Thats What I Thought.....

So the statement above in the title should answer one of the most Frequently Asked Questions at any Zone Conference...."President!!! Can you tell us about the time that you dunked on Jordan???" And every time it is met with the same response by President Durrant saying "That never happened and there is no video proof." And then everyone will start to jeer him on and he'll just grin until he puts his foot down and we have to move to another subject.

But one of our last trainings, we ended up putting him on the spot again. When he asked what we wanted to talk about--we were back to the Michael Jordan subject. Then he hit us with a powerful message where he talked about the hype that was in the NBA when he played and introduced the new "Jordan" shoes. He laughed as he told us about how the NBA charged him 10,000 dollars a game since he wore shoes that crossed the NBA dress-code and how it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to him as they're still the number one selling shoe and he hasn't played for the last 15 years or so. Then he dropped a statement that really hit me when he said, "But there isn't a thing Michael Jordan has that I want." Then he talked about how he doesn't have the blessings of the Priesthood in his life. If he did, he would have been able to bless his family so much, and maybe he wouldn't have divorced his wife. He owns an NBA team, but you can buy a ticket anytime to get the same pleasure out of the sport...and then I thought about how painful it would be to have to watch every game of the Charlotte Bobcats. Sure he's got some beautiful children, but they're not preparing to make covenants with the Lord or start and continue the ultimate blessing of eternal families. He doesn't get the opportunity to serve as a Mission President and hasn't had the blessing to serve a mission. Then President ended it with a slammer by stating, "....and I dunked on Michael Jordan." The whole room erupted and we all came to the conclusion that it is not possible to have a better Mission President because...simply....yours didn't dunk on Michael Jordan.

Well...moving on....

For the past while out here in East Texas, Elder Trias and I have turned somewhat into the 'Rabid Stray/Pest Control'. This means that we have fought off or captured all the stray cats and dogs that have come in our path out here, and all I've gotta say is there's tons of them. As time has gone on in the mission, we have come to the resolution that we're ultimately tired of running from these dogs and decided that we need to up the ante and put a little more excitement into the already adventurous tracting-turned-into-Swamp-Diving days. So we keep ourselves armed with all sorts of random weapons we find,

backpack slung onto one shoulder just in case we need to swing it at our Canine foes, and of course the leathermans that we always carry. There was one street that we tracted that normally had at least 5 big dogs from Pit Bulls to Labs to Mugs to Boxers and all that jazz. So as we walked down the street, tired of trying to avoid them, we just started walking confidently, unloosing the backpacks to ready the blow and taking out the knives we had on hand. They saw the stride in our step as we came closer to their hood, they looked at us and just scattered. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but was kind of

surprised at their reaction as we were getting ready for a throw down...that is until I looked back at Elder Trias and saw him toss a broken beer bottle to the side of the road. Welcome to Texas. Home of some of the most random, but effective weapons.

We also found a pretty sketchy area out here where the real hillbillies live, along with some more Mexicans! As we were knocking in that area, we found a cat that just kept following us wherever we'd go. When we returned to our car, so did the cat, and before we closed the door he ended up jumping on in. So for a while we were a Missionary Trio and took him everywhere with us just for more spiritual power and testimony! After all, doesn't it talk in the Bible

about the power of two or three witnesses???

This past week we also got to see what I would like to call the "Redneck Driving Range." In the modernly accepted culture, Golf is a sport of great interest and can be used for fun, competition, an excuse to drink, an excuse to drive a mini car anywhere you want on a grass field, or a common meeting spot for business transactions. The game, involving directing the ball where you want it to go, is much harder than one would generally think and is practiced on an open field generally known as a 'Driving Range' where you can hit as many

balls as you want with whatever club you please while directing it toward one or more holes. As we had the opportunity to visit a family that we did service for, they began to show us what all Texans love to show anyone, their guns and animal trophies. As we took the tour of their 200+ acres, the Mom showed us the spot where she had shot her award winning buck; a normal old rusty chair with a block of wood you can rest your rifle on. The chair faced toward a clearing in the trees and drop down a hill where there was a perfectly cleared green about 300 yards from where we stood and a deer feeder placed straight in the middle. So animals would just come and go as they pleased while you

could walk out the back door, and like Mrs. Andrews did in her Pajamas, and shoot any animal you'd like, making the perfect Redneck Driving Range.

Well, like normal I'm running out of time....but to end with the words that so unexpectedly came from President Austin as we were watching members drive out after the last meeting of the day..."Just smile and wave boys. Just smile and wave..."

Les Quiero!!!!

Elder Wilson