Week 4: What is Español?

Has it already been another week?? Time is crazy here. I loved hearing from you this week, it was awesome.

So much power this week. We watched a devotional from Elder Holland and it was so cool. He talked about pushing ourselves, learning everything there is to learn, stepping up to the plate... He shared a poem that was something like,

"Come to the edge."
"No, we'll fall."
"Come to the edge."
"No, we'll fall!"
"Come to the edge!"
We came to the edge, He pushed us, and we flew.

Pretty cool right? I think it's so important to remember that our human minds are so wrapped up in what they see and what logically makes sense in the physical world, but that they know absolutely nothing about what's really going on. He's got this taken care of, He's got armies of angels and all power and I'm sure if we could see with spiritual eyes we would wonder how we ever thought anything was impossible.  He also knows that change is really really good for us, and we are all convinced that it's really really bad. But as one of the presidency said this week, "we don't learn all God has planned for us if smooth waters is all we seek." He says to follow Him and He will make us fishers of men.

Another cool theme this week was "The Way." 2 Nephi 31 is AMAZING. It tells us exactly how to follow Christ - the gospel of Christ: faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end.  But then it also says none of that does a thing without the Savior Jesus Christ.  Every single one of those things is directly connected to Christ and is meaningless without Him.  And so without the "merits" of Jesus Christ we "have not come this far" nor can we go any further.  I don't know how to explain exactly how it clicked in my mind this week, but I always sort of separated those two things before.  Christ says "I am the Way" and He also says "This is the Way" (His Gospel) but He is the gospel and it completely depends on Him and we need to as well.

And the Prodigal Son.  I just watched the newest mormon message on the "other prodigal son," the older brother who was jealous of the party his father threw.  What a silly thing to be.  Have you ever wondered why Jesus left the ninety and nine to find the one and why the father was SO happy the older son came back? One of our teachers last night kind of put it this way - those who have had the light and walked away from it are walking toward a lot more sorrow for themselves than those who don't know about the truth in the first place, and God knows that.  And that is why He is so concerned about every last one of them and rejoices so much when they come home.  It's important for every person to come to the light of Christ but I think there is a very special relationship between the Father and the son who comes back.  Just think of Alma and what marvelous light he was able to behold.

Anyway, sorry I'm not focusing super wonderfully right now for some reason.  My eyes keep going to this beautiful white wall above my laptop.  I can't believe you got a nice Guatemalan lady (I mean I can because you told me it was going to happen but right).  That is so wonderful, you should keep her there for a year and a half so I can meet her.  We're teaching an adorable Guatemalan investigator right now named Hely.  She's about 55 or something and is the cutest thing I could ever imagine.  We are such good friends and for some reason I can speak Spanish when I talk to her better than with anyone else.  I hope everyone in Tuxtla is just like her.  She also talks a lot so we struggle every time to squeeze some doctrine in but she's so receptive at the same time.  Amazing desires to follow Christ and learn everything about the gospel.  It's kind of like she's teaching us every week and we just smile and try to keep it doctrinally-centered, away from politics, and keep her doing challenges.

Yesterday Hermana Hickman and I spoke only in Spanish allll dayyyy.  Ask me if there is any Spanish left in my brain.  The answer will be at the bottom of this email.  Actually I'll probably forget by then.  No.  There just isn't.  But we're going to keep doing this.  Can you believe I leave for MEXICO in a week and a half? If it's as fast as this week was that means I'm leaving like tomorrow.  Sorry for all my exaggerations with time, but that's what it is.

I love the MTC.  Every place we go to is the perfect school for us right then and we're just supposed to learn.  I always felt that way at BYU and now that I look back my home, high school, EFY's, family reunions, everywhere was the perfect school at that time and now I just get to learn about everything that matters.  Good grief.  There's not even enough time.  I challenge everyone to learn something right now! GO.  And then learn another thing.  And just always do it because that's what we're supposed to do in this life and that's how we keep Satan away.

One last thought for the day.  Moses 1.  Read it and look how extremely sure Moses is about who he is and where he came from and how that helps him have power over the adversary.  My companion and I were talking about that the other day and then we looked up the mormon message of Dieter F.  Uchtdorf's "Your Great Potential" or something like that I can't remember exactly, and talked about the humongous power there is in knowing who you are.  If everyone in this world understood who they were, what potential there was for them, what they were made of, Satan would have NO power on this earth.  So let's keep him weak folks.

(FYI? I love you so much! I'm praying for you and Zary and hope everything goes okay.  Give her lots of kisses today for me and hug each other mucho.  I know God has a plan for her and will be sending her lots of angels throughout her life.  Si se puede! Love you!!)

Hermana Wilson


p.s. Here's a random picture I drew on the whiteboard one morning of the other district in our family.

And then of course we made them pose in exactly the same way.

I love you both so much! I don't have a ton of time today. 11 days til Mexico! Hopefully you're home that morning because I think I get to call home. Wooo!

I feel like there's something I needed to ask but I just sat for like 5 minutes and have no idea. So it'll be good! Thanks for the dear elders! I'll try not to eat mayonnaise.

Hermana Kelsi