Monday, January 29, 2018

JANUARY 24, 2018

Hey y'all, 

Hope everyone is doing great! Things here in Mandeville are going well, and the work is moving forward. This week has been crazy busy with a general authority visiting the mission, but it was super great!

First and foremost, Alvin made it to church!! With his 9 year old son Christian. And loved it! His son is a total stud too. We all sat together in the front of the chapel and all of the talks were right on point. The speakers talked about having a fresh start and gaining a new life in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Also, Alvin was killing it in Elder's Quorum when we were discussing the story of Lehi/Nephi and the plates, because he loves Nephi. He probably knows the story better than most people haha it is awesome!! He was giving me a run for my money for sure ;) After church we went to find Christian and he comes running down the hallway telling us he gave the closing prayer in Primary. He was way excited to tell us too. It was awesome! LET's GOO!!

Miracle: This week I got to go on exchanges with Elder Bagley up in Covington and we had a blast on bikes tracting in the cold! Apparently it has been setting some records for coldness down here in Louisiana the last few weeks and so that has been unreal. Regardless we made some memories and found some solid people to teach. It was also the same day that the roads shut down for the first half of the day due to "black ice" and of course no one knows what to do down here if it gets cold haha. We found this great trailer park and these 2 different people invited us in to get warm and we shared the whole message :) We then felt like we needed to hit 2 more and one ended up being a crazy Hispanic guy bless his heart and a golden family!! They invited us in and we shared the message as well, and they told us how they have been looking for a church. (thinking about a church that I will remain nameless, but we were both like no not that one haha....not again.) It was way cool. On our way back that night the sun was down and my toes were freezing buckets off haha so I felt prompted either by my toes hurting or the spirit, one of the two, to just stop and hit this house. Let's just say that might have been one of my best door approaches yet LOL :) We got inside and started talking to this way nice lady, and she even gave us some hand warmers/little cuties to stuff in our socks. It was way awesome, and definitely a close 2nd to the Peach Cobbler door approach :)

So we have been "teaching" this guy named Connor that is in the process of getting his Master's degree in Theology and so you can just imagine the conversations we have haha, but it has been great. This week we taught him all about the Book of Mormon since he thought that Joseph Smith had written his account, etc. And he agreed to read the first 5 chapters if we read these 2 pages of stuff he gave us. Well, it ended up being total anti that was completely false, but made for a fun companionship study haha. Anyways, this week he invited us over to a church function over at his place with a bunch of friends from his church coming over. What did we do? Well, after reading the story of Abinadi in Mosiah 11-17 we were totally pumped to go over there! I may or may not have been picturing myself in the scene of Abinadi and the counsel except with Connor and his church friends haha. Just kidding it really ended up being a great experience. They were asking us tons of questions about why we were out on missions, and we were able to bear our testimonies about it. It was way cool actually, and just hoping that an Alma was sitting in the room somewhere :)

Funny quotes from week: "So Bradford do you remember what enduring to the end is?"- Me
"Yeah that is not swearing right?"-Bradford. Haha. Another guy we were teaching after standing up from sitting on the couch, "Man I just felt the spirit, it almost knocked me out." Hehe.

Zone Conference was way good with Elder Costa of the seventy. He talked a lot about focusing on the present and living in the moment. Sometimes we find ourselves looking too far ahead, and forgetting to love the present that we are currently living. He also shared an inspired question, "How many times do you exercise your faith every week?" Hopefully everyday, because with faith anything is possible. Mark 9:23
Well, I will leave it at that. I love y'all, and thank you so much for your support. Stay blessed
Love, 
Elder Wilson