Today is... tuesday.

Alright, here's a quote from when we taught Henrietta this last week. She is so awesome!!!!! She resolves her own concerns, using bible scriptures. haha. She's on track to be baptized this saturday. That's going to be fun. :) And also, spiritual!

We were teaching her the plan of salvation, and talking about the pre-mortal life:

Henrietta: "Whaaat?! is that doctrine?"

Us: "Yeah."

Henrietta: "Oh wait, is that what it's talking about in Jeremiah 1:5?"

Us: "Well, yes actually." [ Who reads and memorizes Jeremiah 1:5?! ]

Henrietta: "Oh wow, that makes more sense!"

In a different lesson:

Us: "Have you ever heard of tithing?"

Henrietta: "Oh yes, it talks about it in Malachi 3:10, which says bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

Us: 8^O

People sometimes tell us we don't believe in the Bible.  I just have to laugh on the inside when they say that.

We're teaching another lady named Susan.  She believes all conspiracy theories.  We're having a harder time helping her believe the gospel, but she really likes the Book of Mormon.  She was fascinated by Gadianton and Akish.   She relates everything back to the latest conspiracy. ["Wow!  Secret combinations!  That's exactly what we have today!  Have you heard about..."] Among which are the Fed, the Government, [I think that the Fed is the same thing as the Gov't, but I might be wrong...] the Illuminati, the Chinese, the Russians, the Rockefeller Family, Banks, Pharmaceutical Companies, the FBI, cattle-stealing government agents, Big Businesses, etc.  But not Cigarette Companies.  Cigarettes are very American, so they're okay to smoke! Because obviously that makes complete sense.

Are you excited for May 2nd????

I hope that all is going well back home, don't forget to say hi to the person sitting by themselves at lunch or at work!

I love you!

Elder Wilson

 We took Henrietta to temple square!! She is so awesome!!

 Look at the awesome omelet I made!!! 

Plus a really really comfy sweater that some really nice members gave to me.

 It has been randomly raining... A LOT. So right now our house consists of a bunch of coats hanging up to dry. It's kind of annoying when it's early in the morning and you forget they're there hanging up so you walk into them all trying to find the lights.

I'M GOING TO MISS THIS GUY SO MUCH! Brother VanDyk.

Hey!

Happy [belated] Easter!

I hope that everyone's was awesome and that you remembered the true meaning of Easter, not the typical tradition of hunting for plastic, colored eggs in the grass. Although that definitely is fun! I am so glad that I am able to be a missionary right now, through Easter, and being able to testify to people that I KNOW that the Atonement is real, and that I KNOW that Jesus Christ suffered, died, and was resurrected for US. Because He loves us. I KNOW that. I'm so glad that I have that knowledge.

As far as this week goes, it went pretty well!! Not a whole lot happened though. We met with Henrietta, and she is doing really well. She came to church, and loved it! She has a 1 year old daughter who is seriously the cutest thing I've ever seen haha. I don't think it's possible to get mad at her. Well we were sitting in the pews in church, and all of a sudden we look down... and she isn't there anymore! All we saw was the toes of her feet as she was crawling up under the pews to the back of the chapel. she got all the way to the back, and of course Henrietta was laughing so hard and trying to keep quiet, but I'm sure she was embarrassed too because this was only her second time being there at church. So anyways, Elder Durfee gets up to go get her from the back of the church, and I turn around and he shrugs his shoulders at me like "I don't know what to do!" So then I turn around trying my best not to laugh because right after he did that, he reached down and picked Adeline up and held her out in front of him as if she had a poopy diaper and he had this really awkard looking expression on his face hahahhaha. He didn't want to break mission rules for not being able to hold children! (Missionary handbook p.35) But he didn't know what else to do in the situation because a lot of people were already looking at him by that point hahahaha. It was really really funny and I'm still cracking up, even typing this up right now.

We're also meeting with Jim Romero. he's doing awesome as well. Not quite sure if that was correct grammar or not... sorry dad. We have been meeting with him daily and either reading out of the scriptures with him or reading talks from the Ensign or other talks from prophets and apostles recently. He really seems to enjoy that. And he is getting so much closer to God it's incredible. It's almost like the Spirit is touching him! It's almost like what we're talking about is true! It's almost like this whole CHURCH is true!
...

So yeah. I'll send the talk that we read with him. It's about Grace. It was pretty awesome. I love brad wilcox. He is an awesome speaker.

Want more funny things that happened this week? Of course you do.

Jim Romero: "I don't know... I was just thinking again the other day.."

E. Durfee: "Don't ever stop thinking. Because if you do, you'll die."
later on, after the lesson.. E. Durfee "You know, that's the problem with this world. people just stop thinking."

Then as we were walking down the street we saw these middle school aged girls walking together in front of us, and we were about to stop and talk to them when we heard

Girl 1 "I'm not loud!"

Girl 2 "You're VERY f****ing loud!!" RIGHT as we were next to them about to talk to them. She turned BRIGHT red, covered her face, and kept repeating "Oh my gosh I am SOO sorry!!!"

E. Wilson "Good, you should be!"

Man. Fun times on the mission. I promise that they were much funnier in real life if you're sitting there in your chair thinking man, that really wasn't too funny..

Take care! I love ya!
Elder Wilson

Sorry it's super old, but here's the picture of David Archuletta coming to our district meeting!

Okay, I'm repenting!

Okay so I was going to put this part towards the end BUT I realized that most of you will just read the first part and then skip to the end of my letter. haha. so EASTER is coming up. And that means that it's Christ's resurrection. Or at least the day that we celebrate it on. So look at this video from mormon.org. And put some headphones in so that you don't get distracted by anything around you, because it's powerful.

wasn't that so awesome!?!?!? (Watch it if you haven't....)

Sorry for such a short email last week! I will try to make it longer this week. But in case you're mad at me, here's some awesome quotes that Elder Durfee and I experienced this last week:

-"If life was easy, what's the point of heaven?" --Daniel, one of the recent converts in the area.

-"Do you mind if I call you guys the God squad?" --random kid on the street.

-"Americans are weird. They put lettuce and hamburger in their tacos."  --Elder Durfee

-Elder Wilson at Walmart:

"Hey, look Elder Durfee, Mexican cheese!"

"That's not Mexican cheese."

"Yes it is, it says so right on the package."

"No, that's false advertising." [walks to the Hispanic aisle] "THIS is Mexican cheese."

-Elder Wilson in our apartment,

"Hey, Elder can you heat up my pizza?"

[walks to the microwave, opens it, and finds that the glass turntable isn't there, and is buried at the bottom of a pile of dishes in the sink.] 

"No, that's not an option."

[Hands Elder Wilson his cold piece of pizza and walks away.]

-Elder Wilson to a smoker:

"Are you trying to quit smoking?"

"No"

"Why not?"

"Because I embrace it."

[puzzled look] "What do you mean 'embrace it'"?

"I like it."  [takes a slow puff]

"Even though it's bad for your health?"

"Says who?"

"Oh, I thought that was common knowledge..."

[Awkward Silence]

"Well, we offer a free public service to help you quit."

"No thanks."

"Okay... Well have a great day!"

Being with Elder Durfee never has it's dry moments. hahahaha.

So first off, I want to say that zone conference rocked! It was so spiritual. I learned a lot from it! I love the Spirit that comes when so many missionaries meet together. I loved the part towards the end as well, with the last week of the Savior's life. "Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit." Can you imagine the reunion between the Father and the Son? I loved that question that our mission president asked all of us. Then with the painting of Christ meeting Mary. That was a really strong Spirit that was there. I love this time of year, with Easter coming up. It helps us just focus on the work and what we need to do as missionaries! Look up that painting. It's called "Why weepest thou?" by Simon Dewey. LOOK IT UP!

The work is going well. Right now Henrietta is working towards baptism and is looking great!! She is so awesome. She had some awesome questions and was actually willing to get the answer. From reading the scriptures. (A lot of time people just ask us questions to question our beliefs or to try and trap us in our words or whatever it is.) But she was legitimately wanting to know the answers to things! Some of them were:

"There weren't any prophets after Christ."

"Christ told the Apostles he was going to give them the Spirit, so prophets weren't necessary."

"God hasn't appeared to anyone in history before"

"God doesn't have a body of flesh and bones"

"The curtain in the temple rent meant that there were no more prophets needed after the law of Moses"

"God appeared here again?? [in awe] "That is so amazing! What evidence do you have of this?" 

Okay so looking over these, it really sounds like she was trying to "bash" but honestly she wasn't. And was satisfied when we showed her the answer in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I love using the scriptures to resolve people's concerns!!

The 5th ward set up a lesson with us and their non member friend Sam! But we need to talk to his parents to get permission for baptism. So that's why he's not on date yet. He said he wanted to be baptized though so that should be good. We have another appointment with him tomorrow evening.

Jim fell off because of the word of wisdom, but we will get him back. He felt the spirit really strongly when we read him some talks out of the general conference that happened last October. he has been struggling with some depression, so we read Jeffrey R Holland's talk Like a Broken Vessel and the one from President Monson "I Will Not Fail Thee, nor Forsake Thee."

so awesome. He is really progressing well.

Alright. So this email is a lot longer. I hope that I have redeemed myself from last week!! Except I forgot my camera. So I will try and go home to get my camera and get back in time to email them home from last week. If not, then I guess you'll have to wait until NEXT WEEK! haha. Anyways, I love ya guys!

-Elder Wilson

GENERAL CONFERENCE WAS SO AWESOME

Okay, who watched general conference...????? If you didn't, seriously go look it up online right now and watch it!!! There were so many awesome quotes. my favorite talks were Elder Holland's, Elder Rasband's, Elder Eyring, Elder Scott, Elder Oaks, Elder Uchtdorf, Elder Aidukaitis, Elder Christofferson's, and President Monson's. okay so that's the majority of them. But still, they were so freaking good!!!

I wish that I could write things up on here but we have to go now. :( I'll type it up next week! Remind me though!

Oh yeah, another thing that happened this week. So we were visiting Elder Chandler's district meeting. And we were just sitting there.... and uh.. David Archuleta walked in. hahaha. Elder Chandler was like "Hey brother archuleta" and at the same time another missionary was like "Oh, hey David!" When I put two and two together, I knew it was him haha. It makes sense, because I missed him in the MTC by 3 weeks. 

Love you!
Elder Wilson

wow impatient missionaries... see ya. sorry.

It's a boy... it's a girl... it's a... zebra..?

Transfers happened this week. Well actually they're happening tomorrow. And I'm staying in the area! Elder Iwertz is leaving. He's going over to Midvale, in one of my old areas. That should be good. (The one where all the delgado's, and kody, and aubrianna, and mikayla and everyone were baptized). I'll be getting Elder Durfee!! Do you remember him? He's the one who trained Elder Lamb, the one that my sister Sydnee taught. And he's super crazy so it should be fun and interesting! haha. Crazy in a good way. But he speaks spanish, so that's why it's called a zebra companionship. One english speaking zone leader and one spanish speaking one. I think so that we can go on exchanges with (and it be more effective) the elders in the area. but yeah things should pick up really quickly, I'm excited for it. So as far as the address goes, it will be the same!

We went to the temple this week! As a mission. We went to the jordan river temple. That was pretty awesome. The Spirit is so strong inside of the temple. Prayers get answered 100 times easier, and you can just sit there and ponder about things and get answers or learn things that way. I love it. The Gospel definitely is true! and so is this Church!

We found a new investigator this last week. On saturday night. His name is Jim. He is so awesome!!! His son who lives with him is a recent convert to the Church. He got baptized in February to the young single adult ward. And now he's being a missionary! He told us to visit with his dad. And so we did. he was really down in the pits, and feeling really depressed. We shared a few scriptures with him, and talked abuot the gospel with him for about an hour. At the end of it he was crying a little bit (he's a pretty rough looking 55 year old man, so it was cool to see that) and knew that this was the time for him to change his life. He accepted the invitation to be baptized on april 26th! That will be awesome. His son is a great support for him. We met with him yesterday, and he was totally 180 degrees different! He was happy, and really excited to read the Book of Mormon and just to soak everything in. I was sad that we could only stay an hour with him. 

Other than that, we gave a talk in sacrament meeting! That went really really well. I think a lot of things clicked with the ward so things should pick up there pretty soon. I'm excited! haha. I love this work and never want to stop doing it. I don't think I ever will, either. =)

Love you!

Elder Wilson