Holidays on the Mission Are Amazing!!!

Yup as I said...Holidays on the mission are amazing! Especially in Texas because Holidays=lots and lots of beer which=understanding how people feel about us right off the bat. Even on a normal day we run into so many drunk people that feel terrible and are ready to be brought to repentance, and then there's the people that just yell "Don't you haunt my door again!!!" But we're also in Texas so just naturally they say "Y'all come back now y'hear" - classic. So we're looking forward to a tracting *blitz*tonight, if we're lucky we might even get some extended family all together!!! 
Well, as for this week, we were actually having some success with a couple Book of Mormon throwdown lessons, and we got 7 new investigators!!! I think all the time on the bikes is finally starting to pay off! But as normal, we are still in the Ghettos of the Ghettos in Oak Cliff South, and something that I've been trying to get a photo album of is the car trend down here. Currently, its a classic Lincoln, Ford Crown Vic, or Mercury that has size 26-28 rims on it...and if I had a nickel for every one I've seen down here, I would probably be up to $5 now haha. They are everywhere! And the other day there was a whole car gang that drove through town with probably 20 cars in their fleet just traveling together not even caring for traffic lights or anything else that would stand in their way. The lead car even had a fat copy of the Executive Seal sticker on his hood haha keeping things interesting around here. We were also knocking doors in a...questionable....area the other day and found this house with the worst set up security system of 6 cameras surrounding the house along with a few motion sensors here and there...yeah they didn't answer haha. We also voted the apostate church for the week was called "The Lord's Gym." It was a legit gym that had a picture of Jesus without a shirt and showed him flexing while carrying the cross...yup...that's Texas! 

As for the update on my Investigators...I would just like to add my testimony to that of every otherMissionary's that Sunday is by far the worst day on the mission! You're always waiting for your investigators who COMMITTED to coming, but never show up and just break your heart. And if they show up you just get even more nervous and just hope that a member doesn't start spewing false doctrine at the pulpit or say something really strange. And you can only pray that your investigators don't see when the kids start taking off their clothes in the middle of the Sacrament and just run around screaming....so it's a pretty nerve racking day haha. But the Pinon family is coming along great...if they would just come to church and we almost have the two sons of this mom that was baptized five weeks ago. Her kids, (and keep in mind these kids hang tight to the whole skater stereotype), actually brought their copy of the Book of Mormon to school and started reading it there! The last time we talked to them, Robert started asking us all the questions that his friends were giving him trouble about and seriously asked if we were Christian. We pulled out some scriptures so he could put his friends in their places...I doubt his friends even crack open the Bible. But the problem with those two is that their parents are divorced and they go with their Dad on the weekends and can't make it to church...so in the end we can only pray for a miracle to happen. 

Another thing that was pointed out to me yesterday at church was that I'm the only Blonde in our ward...or in the stake...probably even the first to ever enter the building haha. It's nice to be the diverse person of the group for once in my lifetime! And as for the chiggers...my body has apparently become prey for...bigger game. For those of you who don't know...I hate spiders with all of my soul. Not because I'm covered in spider bites...but we ran into a tarantula the other day. I thought it would be cool to take a picture, so as a cautiously approach it...and this spider that's about the size of my fist, pretty much gives out a battle cry...and straight on charges me! That is the one moment in my life where I could've outran anyone. So from a safe distance, I zoomed in and got a picture, and every time I look at it, the two big glowing eyes are staring me down....ahhhhhh man it gives me the chills!!!! Well its time to go preach the Word of Wisdom and bring the state of Texas to repentance for all the drinking that's going to happen today! Happy Memorial Day!!!

Con Todo (Gracias Aunt Nonnie) Mi Corazon,
Elder Justin Wilson

Week Two On The Battlefront!

Well its been two weeks out here and I feel like a fat kid in a buffet! It is so awesome to finally be out in the field and doing what I've been looking forward to for so long! I've learned in my 14 days that it is by no stretch of the imagination even close too easy and two years still feels like a long time, but I'm loving what I'm doing. First I would like to say thank you so much for the package Mom!!

And Dad, when you told me that the Celtics and the Heat were already knocked out of the playoffs, it was another confirmation that I was doing the right thing haha. Man, in the MTC there was normally one cool thing that would happen in a week, but I have so many fun experiences every day here I don't know which one to choose. Well I figured I would give you a taste of my area and tell you guys a little bit about South Dallas. Like I said before, this area is just infested with apostate churches. (And by the way "apostacy" is probably the most used word in this area. It is applied to missionaries singing apostate music [or music of the world] or talking about apostate movies [movies that normal people would see] and to any other faith that really tries to have a throwdown with us.) Some of the most famous Churches here and ones that you may recognize are the I.B.O.C. church and the Potter's House. These are both Mega-Churches whose building's, parking lot's, and attendance put the Staples Center to shame. It's so crazy to see just how misguided these people are but that's our job out here is to put them on the right path! In the song, "I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go", it says "It may not be at the battle front", but the TDM mission is starting to petition that they should change the line to "It may not be at Dallas." So many people want to fight our religion and bring such contention into our conversations, so we have to cut it short, and just love them for trying (in their eyes) to come closer to Christ. Some places I feel like a King (when people feed us or we go to church!), and some places I feel like the Plague (when we knock on doors and hear the kids or even the parents say "it's the two guys in the white shirts and ties! Go hide!"), and other places people think I'm just looking for a doctrine throwdown. As difficult as our area is (which is VERY) we did start teaching a young Catholic family this last Monday. We had dropped by about four times before trying to set up an appointment and it has always been chaos. In the small apartment they live in, thier two year old son and five year old daughter are always going crazy, the parents are always busy cooking, talking with friends, or doing something else, and evey time we see them, they've been watching Novella's on T.V. Well this past Monday we were finally able to get an appointment with them, and it was like a dream come true. When we knocked on their door, the Husband answered and told us to come in. The whole family was sitting on one couch and everything was quiet and calm. The wife then told the husband to turn the Novella off, and the kids were just sitting there, patiently listening. My first week here, every scheduled appointment we had fell through, but this lesson made it all worth it! It was amazing how different the environment was when we came in! I felt like I was walking in during the middle of the Sacrament! They were my first new investigators and we have really been able to get thier attention with capitalizing on the blessings and promises we have as families. Can't wait to tell you guys how they're doing next E-mail and hopefully we'll be able to get them (Marco & Elizabeth Pinon) to come to church! This week we've started doing more and more biking, and Dad, I remember you saying I'd regret wanting to stay out of the cold, but I think that the Lord just may have misinterpreted that saying haha. "The tropics aren't cold" is what I was thinking of, but He definately sent me somewhere "not cold" haha. I was dying with the heat and humidity the other day and asked Elder Lee how much hotter it was going to get. He just started laughing, pointed to a sign that said it was only 89 degrees, and said it should raise another 30 somewhere in the summer. Well on the bright side...looks like I'll be getting plenty of Vitamin D! Another bonus to my area is that in all of my tracting down in "the ghettos", I got to talk to Shaq, lil' Bow Wow, Ray Allen, Rasheed Wallace, Damien Marley, Lil' Wayne, and Chris Paul. With only two weeks under my belt, I think that by the end of my mission I will have met the look alikes for the rest of the NBA, and every famous rapper that's existed haha. Oh yeah and my new adress (this is coming from my memory so please correct me if I'm wrong Mom) 

Elder Justin Wilson

6363 W Camp Wisdom Ave Apt 215

Dallas, TX

(Forgot Zip Code) :/

But if you would like, you can also adress it to "The Only White Person That Lives In This Apartment Complex" or "The Only White Person That Lives In Oak Cliff Dallas" and it should make its way to me haha. One last thing is that on my second week here, I've already been chiggered. For those who don't know what this means, chiggers are little Red arachnid bugs that are about the size of the "O" on the "In God We Trust" slogan on the Dime. They bite their way into your skin and just live there. So my body is now a home for way too many of these bugs and they itch me to death haha but apparently the solution is rubbing nailpolish remover on them and the fumes will supposedly kill them. My desire to avoid bugs has already failed and as Elder Lee told me, it's just a part of Texas. Well I love it out here and can feel the help of all your prayers! Thank you guys so much! I miss and love you all!!!

Con todos mi Corazon,

 Elder Justin Wilson

The Party Starts In Dallas!!!

Hola Hola Hola!!!

     What is up everyone!?! So I survived my first week in Dallas!! Sorry I'm having to e-mail you from my yahoo account but myldsmail wouldn't let me sign in so I had to find some way to get hold of you guys! And I also just wanted to say it was so awesome to be able to call you guys yesterday and again Happy Mother's Day!!! Man it was so sweet to be able to talk to everyone and made me miss you guys so much!!! But don't worry I'll get right over it and get back to work! So about my first day here...I just remember walking down the terminal thinking "this is it!" and how I was taking the walk I had seen in so much Mormon media haha. When we finally landed in Dallas I remember walking out of the plane and feeling the humidity just hit me. I'm used to the Canyon Country and Provo dry heat where its like 105 outside...but in Texas the heat just comes inside you! It was really cool flying over Dallas and I just remember thinking "the field is white already to harvest!!!" After my first day of getting to know President Durant, we went tracting with some Missionaries in the area and I will never forget Elder Rodriguez and the look on his face when he would turn the lesson time over to me. We were able to run into a family that said we could teach them...well I actually have no idea if that's what they said but they let us come in and teach haha. It turned into a conversation with Elder Rodriguez and the investigators. My role was to look back and forth at each of them as they exchanged words. Then Elder Rodriguez would look at me with a smirk on his face, and I would try my best to take it from there haha. I would gather words here and there, and once I knew that I understood what that word meant they would aready be like a whole paragraph ahead of me. If you were to take MTC Spanish and take it to light-speed...you would hear what is now reffered to as in-field Spanish. The next day we were assigned our companions and areas. So I got to know my comp., Elder Lee (who is not Asian to my suprise) and he's got to be one of the best Bible bashers I know haha. He knows the Bible inside out, which comes in handy for all the Baptists and Lutherans and Evangelists, and Jehova's Witnesses...I could go on and on about all the religions we've encountered. Another thing about Dallas that I heard about but I had to see to know was how many churches there are here! It is absolutely crazy! A good safe estimate is probably about 5 every block. But this past week has been full of tracting, lightning storms, flash floods, Mexican food (finally!), slammed doors, crazy Baptists, marching with a Book of Mormon in our hands, confused Spanish converstations, so everything part of the missionary stereotype. Well I gotta go but I love you and miss you all so much!

Les Quiero Mucho! 

Elder Justin finally in Dallas Wilson!!

Mi Ultima Semana En El CCM

"Hasta Ver! Hasta Ver! Para siempre Dios este con..." In case you are wondering, these are the sounds we will be hearing three days from now! It's so crazy haha I feel like it was just yesterday that we sent off the oldest District singing "God Be With You 'Till We Meet Again" en Espanol! Nine weeks later and it is our turn! By the way...before I start with my updates and such I just wanted to give a huge shout out to Carlie & Porter!! Man I'm proud of you guys but especially Porter. For as long as I've known Carlie she's always had everything figured out and for you to be worthy enough to marry up to her...you must've worked pretty hard on your mish in L.A.!!! So I just hope that I can work as hard as you did and Carlie...still cannot believe that you are married but I love you and congrats!!! 

Well this week has been pretty nerve racking for me as my last week in the MTC! My brain feels like a suitcase that you just keep putting more and more and more stuff into and once you try to zip it up...you realize you've put in a little more than it can handle. No matter how hard I work and study I can't help but be scared out of my mind that I will be in the field teaching REAL progressive investigators by this next Monday!!! I'm way stoked to leave the MTC and will miss all the friends and teachers that I've had here but am so stoked to do some real missionary work and see just how good my Spanish is. I feel pretty comfortable here with a bunch of white people but I'm so scared that once I get out to Tejas I'll forget everything and only be able to muster out a "Hola...estoy bien...." Oh boy its making me want to cry right now haha so I can't wait to get the first few days of humiliation over and then buckle down for some success! 

Speaking of success we had a "Baptism" last week for "Angelica." Even though she was a "role played" investigator, I can see that we learned so much and our teaching really changed ever since we started. For all the prospective missionaries out there, I would just have to tell them to really love the investigator. So many return missonaries had told me that so I would pray for them every now and then and prepare for my lessons so that they would enjoy that, but there is a sincere difference between caring about them and just giving your heart to them. At the beginning we saw the "Preach My Gospel" lessons as a checklist, and to me, the faster we checked all the boxes, the faster the baptisms will come. I just feel like when we all start our missions, we have been caring about ourselves for too long and can't see our investigators perspective, what they understand, and be able to discern thier feelings. When we had "Coaching Missionary Study", I remember Hermana Cooper asking me, "I know you care how your lessons go, but do you really love Angelica..." She totally caught me off guard, and when I thought about it, I didn't have feelings even close to the feelings I should have had. I cared about how the lessons would make me look instead of her growth Spiritually. Once I started praying for her every day, putting her name on the Temple Prayer list, really started asking her questions about her life and not just what she thought about our church, if she followed up on our committments and so forth, the change in our teaching was so tangible. You could literally feel a change in the room and see that the relationship we had before had completely transformed. When we stopped caring about whether she would say yes or no to the baptismal questions, that was when she really grew and eventually accepted our Baptism Invitation. So last week we made a card and the whole works for our "Baptism" haha it was awesome. I'm just so glad that I learned this lesson before I hit the field and would have to say it's even more important than any Spanish I have picked up in these last 9 weeks. Still having kind of a tough time adjusting to the whole missionary schedule and trying to forget the fact that my Lakers are in the playoffs about now and that I have to kick myself out of bed at 6:30 every day, but it's a work in progress. 

Super super super excited to meet President Durant and my new companion and literally get my mission started! I'm also way stoked to ride in one of those giant metal things that have wheels and go really fast! I've forgotten what they're called but I know that I haven't been in one for two months and think it is probably the longest time in my life I have lived without one. I'm also stoked out of my mind for the Texan food!!! The MTC has asked us to not include any "negative" comments specifically about the MTC in our e-mails home, but the scriptures say that liars are "thrust down to hell" so I will just say that I only eat the food they serve here to keep myself alive. I have lost my appetite here at about week two when everything started to taste the same so I am stoked to get my TEXICAN going! Burritos, Tacos, Carne Asada, and STEAK!!! Well again, way stoked but wayyyyy nervous for Dallas and I know for a fact, that I will have some good "greenie" stories for next week. The thought of being in the field for my first few days makes me feel like there will be a huge target painted on my chest but I guess we will have to see how it goes! 

 

Con todos mi corazon y amor,

 

Elder Justin (scared and nervous out of his mente) Wilson

Ocho Semanas Sin Un Carro

Whattup whattup whattup! 

So it turns out that our whole zone's schedule got changed for some reason which makes our P-Days on Thursday and a whole bunch of other stuff, but as far as District 23-B is concerned we only have 11 more days left!!! So the exciting news for the week...Flight Plans!!! I thought it was way funny getting that letter from Hunter about his flight plans home and tonight we'll find out for sure when I'm cruising out del CCM!!! 

We also got to be "Hosts" for the new missionaries this week and it made me think about when I reported. but it was way fun to welcome all the new Elders and Sisters and get them comfortable here. The crazy part was that out of the 400 new missionaries reporting about 130 of them were Sisters! Its crazy to see how much more involved the Sisters are getting in missionary work and is totally awesome to know that they made this choice without even being expected to! So to all the Young Womens leaders out there...way to go!!! 

One of my favorite parts of this week was for sure our Devotional. This last Tuesday we got the opportunity to hear from Elder Russell M. Nelson. So in the 8 weeks I've been here we've heard from a third of the Quorom of the Twelve! The cool part about hearing from him is the fact that he is the Apostle that is the acting President of Missionary Work and instead of using teleprompters or having a written speech, he got up with his scriptures and spoke to us for about 40 minutes or so. Out of all the Apostles we heard from, his talk was definately my favorite because of the message he shared with us about "The Doctrine." I could seriously go on for hours about what he said, but what I figured I would share with you guys is something that became crystal clear for me early on in the MTC when it was a little more cloudy than it should have been in my teenage years. 

I remember one of the first weeks we learned about the "Doctrine Pyramid" and how to explain Doctrine to our Investigators. In Preach My Gospel, President Boyd K. Packer is quoted saying, "Teaching Doctrine changes behavior better than teaching behavior changes behavior." What we learned was that at the foundation of the pyramid was the "Doctrine" or "why" we do what we do. In the middle was the "Principle" or the "what". At the top and smallest part is the "Application" or the "how". As a teenager I have seen the "Application" part take the role in our minds as the "Doctrine", and have seen here that it is crucial that everyone understands the difference.  I remember many times when people would say "Is it true that you guys can't watch R rated movies" or "is it true that you guys can't drink caffeine" or "is it true that you guys can't do anything on Sunday." I would say yes to all those things and when they ask why, we normally give the answer "because our Prophet said so" or "because it's good for us", which is a dead giveaway that most of the youth only see what they "can't do" instead of the blessings of their actions. I know that what I'm saying is probably not super clear so I figured I would put it in an analogy that made it all of the sudden make sense to me. Trying to convert people to the Church is like trying to get someone who has no knowledge about school, to go to school. Too many times we get caught saying, "Well what you are supposed to do is wake up at 7 every morning for 5 days a week at about 9 months out of the year. It normally lasts for about 7 hours a day and on top of that, you get work to do at home once you are finished. We take tests and if you don't do well on them, you have to do everything over again. If you do good on them, it feels awesome and we get to do even more school at a higher level." If that is your pitch and is all that people will know about school, do you think we are going to be able to get them to go? That conversation will turn into an awfully short street contact. If you tell them that it is a way to gain knowledge which will eventually lead to more fully qualifying you for a job which will be a way for you to provide for your family, your crowd will be a little more interested. 

I feel like in our church, we as members talk too much about what we do and feel like we need to more fully understand the "why". I remember seeing everything start to click in our Investigators mind when we were explaining the commandment of "Dia de Reposo" of "Keep the Sabbath Day Holy." If I were to have taught this when I was 15, I would have said it is a day where "we don't do things we would have done any other day to show our respect for the Lord and use it as a day to remember him." When we explained it to our investigator, we started off by talking with her about how busy our lives are and all of the distractions that we have. We shared Heleman 5:30 with her...a verse that explained the still small voice that the Spirit speaks in. She came to the conclusion that her life was, to say the least, a little hectic and it was difficult for her to hear the spirit. Then we followed with explaining the law of Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy and how as we set aside daily activities and distractions, we are given an opportunity to feel the Spirit and have it help us in our lives. So the point that I am trying to get across is that when we share the gospel with others, we need to explain the Doctrine, Principle, and then Application instead of the Application, Principle, and then Doctrine. I feel like this is such an import lesson that became crystal clear to me here and I hope that others will learn from it, especially the youth in preparation for thier missions and opportunities to share what we believe in their constantly social atmosphere. I sure do miss you guys but I'm way stoked to be out here especially at this time where I'm almost leaving out to the field!!! 

 

Les Quiero Mucho!!!

Elder Justin Wilson

 

Dallas or Bust!!!

Semana Siete

Well it's almost here!!! Next week we get our flight plans and will find out when we cruise on out of the MTC!!! This week has been way good, totally crazy but way good. I haven't run into Dylan or Cody yet but I did see Danny and it was so awesome!! I felt like Alma when he ran into the sons of Mosiah and was so pumped to see one of my best friends in the mission field! But yes, our beloved teacher Hermano Miller is gone. We got a new teacher who we thought was wierder than a three dollar bill at first but when we got to know him more we grew to love him and he's such an awesome guy! Since all of our teachers here go to BYU they were all complaining about finals and it made me think about how just a year ago I was cruising down from Provo and getting ready to party it up in Canyon Country! And then that made me think about how I came up to the Spring Sememster (such great memories and so glad you guys got me to do that) and just thought it was crazy that I'm living in the same place but my schedule is pretty different (I could probably count on one hand the number of times I got to bed at 10:30 last year.) 

But about the MTC, the last fireside that we had, me and Elder Johansson got pulled out of the crowd to be Ushers and when the director was giving us instructions he said, "You guys are going to be pretty lucky to get the Usher seats because we have something special planned for tonight." Not thinking anything of it, (because they say that every Sunday), we just went and did as we were told. So as we were going about our "priestly duties" and making sure all the chairs were full, we just saw everyone stand up and I turned around to see Elder M. Russell Ballard come in! It was awesome because our seats were probably the fourth row (out of hundreds!) back so we definitely got hooked up! 

So much has happened in this past week but my favorite part by far was TRC. TRC was something that we started our second week into the MTC and is a program where people that can speak the language that you are learning come in and you simply teach them a lesson. It is normally members that have served a mission and want to brush up on thier Spanish, but it can be anyone. The way it goes is that you normally teach two members 20 minute lessons each and call it a day, but today was the first day where we were going to teach a 40 minute lesson at TRC. For the past 5 weeks we have all had members to teach and what we were going off of was teaching 10 members in the past 5 weeks, so naturally, we prepared a lesson that was formulated to a member. The first out of place thing was that our teacher thought TRC was going to be at 3 and the TRC guy came and grabbed us out of our class at 1:30, which docked a significant amount of time that we were going to use to mold our lesson, so we were going in to teach a 40 minute lesson with just an idea of what we wanted to talk about. Another red flag that popped up was the fact that the door of the room we were supposed to teach was closed (which was odd because every time before, the door is open and you just walk on in.) So we thought nothing of it and knocked on the door and just like normal, a person we didn't know opened it. With no background, we gave our introduction and told him that we wanted to share a message with him about invovling members in missionary work (and remember this was all done in Spanish.) He had a somewhat confused look on his face but said, "sure come on in." So every person we had taught had served a mission so as we were getting to know him we asked him if he served a mission and he answered, "No." I have no idea what prompted this next question but we asked him (Nicholas) if he was a member and he said, "No." Me and Elder J just felt blind sided and were shocked at what was happening but in the back of our minds we thought, "even though he is latino, it's always a member so he's probably just playing off some role." So we got know him a little bit more, found out he was from Buenos Aires, Argentina, was just living in Provo with some of his friends and working, and we then found out that he knew nothing about the church. So Elder J looked at me with "first day in the MTC" wide eyes and I just jumped into the first lesson. It was so crazy how we were able to just bust out the first lesson on the spot, without having prepared anything special, and relating it to him. Some things that we were doing we had never thought to do before and as I look back, I saw just how much the six weeks of training were starting to help us. We still thought that he was a member acting as a nonmember, but we still went through explaining everything to him with the thought that he knew nothing about the Gospel. Even though it was far from perfect, I can't say that I wasn't impressed that we were able to pull it off with the circumstances we were under. 

What normally happens at the end of the first lesson is we challenge people to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true after reading and pondering about it, but we started relating the principles that we taught to some of the problems that he was having in his life and for some reason, I just felt like inviting him to church. So I extended the invitation and after thinking about it for a minute, he went through his work schedule, looked up at us and said that he'd love to come. We thought that there was no way that he would say no, but still acted super excited that he accepted and closed talking about how it would bless his life and had him offer the closing prayer (which surprisingly to us, he needed help with.) So we ended with some friendly conversation, gave an "Hasta Domingo" and we were out. Still totally in shock that we had to teach the first lesson, we went to our class and told our district about how everything happened and a couple minutes later, our teacher came in and asked us if we knew that Nicholas was from Argentina. We told him yes and he said, "well I talked to him after the interview and he said that he came up to Provo with one of his friends from Brazil who got him to come to TRC. He then said that after meeting with you guys he thought that he wanted to go to our church this Sunday." He told us a little bit more background information on Nicholas and said, "Do you guys realize you just taught an investigator?" It was at that moment that I felt better than I can ever remember! I looked back on all of my life experiences and tried to find a moment where I felt close to what I felt that day. Getting into BYU, Jimmer draining threes, family reunions, all of these experiences I was trying to compare to and nothing came close. I wanted so badly to follow up and see if he was really going to come and felt more excitement and joy than I ever had before! I'm trying so hard to explain what I felt, but words just wont do it any justice. We all confirmed that there was a slight possibility that he was a member, but more likely than not, we just taught the first lesson to a real investigator. It was a taste of what it's going to be like in the field and I LOVED it!!! As I looked back and thought about how we were able to do what we had done, I thought about a quote by Elder Bednar where he said, "For some reason, the culture of the church thinks that the spirit works through overwhelming spiritual impressions and gives amazing spiritual experiences. What everyone needs to understand is that when we obey the commandments and the covenants we have made, we will be guided by the spirit to do things and have no idea why we are doing them. Most of the time, we will have no idea that we are working through the spirit." We were definitely guided by the Spirit without having any idea what we were doing, and it was one of the greatest experiences I've had yet!  Well I could talk about so much more but we are only given so much email time. Love you all and I can't wait to share more experiences! 

 

Les Quiero mucho!

Elder Justin Wilson

Semana Seis!!!!!!

First off I would like to say that was awesome getting my "Google Translate" letter from Brett! Before you guys google translate my response, I want mom to try and get it....you guys can test her Espanol haha! Wow this week flew by and I have so much to talk about and so little time...but I wanted to thank you guys so much for my Easter package!! Totally thought the April fools one was for real so I guess you can give Brett and Shane (who I figured were the masterminds) all the credit! I also got the costco envelope stolen out of it from Elder Keck and we had a huge chase about it because he thought pictures of Rachel were in it! As you all know I'm pretty slow, but when it comes down to other dudes interested in my sister, it was like my version of Popeye's Spinach and I just took off! I had never run so fast in my life! But finally, I caught up to him, and was able to successfully get the photo package back to find the St. Patricks picture of Shane haha. 

One of the best parts of the week was when we got to hear from President Packer for our Easter Morning devotional! It was so awesome because I was literally 10 steps away from him and could just feel his power! We were so close that it was a little daunting when he would look out into the crowd and it looks like he makes eye contact with you...just staring into your soul! It was like he showed up, stared everyone down to understand what we all needed, and gave an amazing talk personalized to us! After that talk we had a testimony meeting with our own Zones, en Espanol. It was a little wierd at first but we all got used to it and I was able to get up and share mi testimonio en Espanol...and for those of you who went to my farewell...I didn't have to use a cheat sheet haha. After that meeting I also got the chance to see Karly on our Temple walk and that was way fun!!! Seeing someone from the outside world helped me to know that it still existed. 

Even though we did have a ton of awesome parts of this week, we did have one mega bummer at the end. This last thursday was my teacher Hermano Miller's last day :(. He's leaving to go do what most R.M.s do in the summer after BYU- sell insecticide in St. Louis. He was such an awesome teacher and since we had such a small district, he was like the greatest EFY counselor/older brother that I never had! He had the greatest mission stories and would always make my day so much better! It was absolutely impossible to fall asleep in his class because of how much energy he has! It was like we would feed off of his energy just to make it through the day so I don't know how these next three weeks are going to go, but it made me think of how soon my time in the MTC will be over. I'm really going to miss Hermano Miller not only becaue of how funny and entertaining his classes were, but especially his example. He would leave his Spanish Book of Mormon in class just so that he could read it with us, but during one of our study times, we decided to look through his Book of Mormon just for kicks and giggles. We ended up naming his mission copy "the Golden Plates" because of how marked up they were! It is unbelievable and I know impossible to try and explain in e-mail. To try and get everyone to understand...we ended up wondering if he even served a mission or if he just spend two years in a room marking scriptures. We began to feed off of his study techniques that we would find and spend so much time looking through it, wondering if he had marked it all just for show, or if it had deeper meaning, and if it did, what was it!? We eventually asked him if he would "accidentally" leave them at a girls house, because if any woman were to look through that copy, he wouldn't even have to propose to get her hooked! He changed the way I study my scriptures and made one of my largest desires from the mission to be a deeper understanding of the Book of Mormon. Once I tried to study like he did, I started finding so much that I couldn't believe some of the messages that had gone over my head the hundreds of times I had read these verses before! Its getting to the point where I could write a full fledged dissertation on 1 Nephi 17:11 and its spriritual significance to us! Its amazing to look at just one verse and think, "why is this in the Book of Mormon and how can I relate it to me?" 

And to finish off stories of este semana, I have to talk about the "Battle of the Two Towers." So what happens in the MTC, is much like the Cannon Center, the food got old about a two weeks in and everything started to taste the same. Well the way we would treat this problem at BYU is just go eat somewhere else, but we lack that privelage here in the MTC, so we decided to make our eating experiences a little more entertaining. What they always have in the corner of the MTC, are towers of cereal that are supposed to be sufficient for every meal. To put it in persepctive, one tower equals about 45 boxes of cereal. Now, to keep our meals interesting, we decided to have our zone take down two towers for dinner: Life, and Tooty Frooties. Its kind of sad how long we looked forward to this meal and how much time we spent planning it out, but an additional twist we threw in was an afterburn party of Cranberry and Orange Juice (excuse my description but to make the nature of the beverages understandable, it would be like having an afterburn party with just Pepto Bismol.) So on our P-Day eve, we all marched triumphantly into the cafeteria, grabbed about 7 bowls each person (averaging out to about 105 bowls, because using the same bowl over and over again would just be too convenient.) We took the towers by storm, and conquered life within 5 minutes! We would fill the bowls, eat, stack (to show how much "Life" you dominated) and go back for more! After destroying life, we began on the Tooty Frooties tower. About 7 minutes into that one, the cafetia staff came and told us that we needed to stop eating and leave the cafeteria. We got about 7/9 of the Tooty Frooties tower, but apparently we were going to cost the MTC "too much" for dominating the cereal towers. All that me and the rest of zone 23 have to say is that the battle may be over, but the war has just begun. Even though the massive amounts of cereal have pretty much ruined our digestive tracts, making us take a trip to the baño every five minutes, we will come back with a vengance! Haha love it here and enjoy the opportunities to learn more and more every day! Love you all so much and miss you guys a ton!

Les quiero mucho!

Elder Wilson