More details: Hermana Castillo

Hello for real this week! Sorry for the lack of information last week, I didn't know anything either. So I am LOVING being a trainer and my companion is the sweetest thing. Super humble and tries really hard. She kind of reminds me of my cousin Sabrina but I don't know why. Probably because she laughs after everything she says. 

Yes I'm still in Tapachula WOO! The whole ward was surprised they changed my companion and not me but I said I informed them I'm not leaving Tapachula ever so there's that. 

This week we started with almost no investigators. Our only real progressing investigators were V., who is progressing beautifully and the family of G., I told you about them the other week. Well, sadly Satan was at work this past work and G. got his "answer" to his prayers in the Bible, which told him to reject anything that wasn't the doctrine of Christ. We tried to really listen to him and understand what was going on in his brain and help him understand that the Book of Mormon does nothing but testify OF CHRIST, and that we also believe in the Bible, but he kept repeating that we believed in Mormon and not the Bible and he couldn't listen to it anymore. Sadly his wife goes along with everything he says and there was nothing more we could do for them. But one day they'll come back on their own as many members told us. Such a beautiful family. 

So we prayed a lot to find new investigators, and had a few contacts from the week before that had some promise, one of which, D., worked in a new snack shop. At first it went well but then we didn't see much progress with her and she kind of closed up. Later we found out it was because the shop was her brother-in-law's and he doesn't like missionaries and she was feeling really nervous that he would come the whole time. But we found her one day when he was out of town and started just chatting and she opened up and told us about her whole life. She is amazing. 24 years old with two kids and had left an abusive husband and is searching for God in her life. She has a lot of wisdom for someone so young who has never had anyone to really guide her in life, and we started talking about the Book of Mormon and the blessings of the gospel and it was amazing how after we listened to her and loved her the words just flowed out. It was like the spirit was talking for us and it testified to her as well. She drank up all our words and said she wanted to prepare herself to be baptized and we started planning how to find time to teach her when her brother-in-law wouldn't get upset about it. I felt the spirit so much in that lesson and I know there is such a bright future for her. I was reading today about how the Lord only requires a broken heart and a contrite spirit and how that really is the difference between the investigators that progress and those who allow whatever hardship, distraction, or excuse to get in the way. Those who have that humble spirit will hunger after the truth and will be ABLE to feel the spirit when we testify. It is so amazing to be part of that experience.

I'M SO HAPPY IT'S RIDICULOUS. I didn't even know you could BE this happy. I once co-wrote a book about How to be Ridiculously Happy (haha) but turns out we missed the real secret. Here's what I learned this week. It's conversion that makes us happy--when we change inside from our carnal state (fallen children of man) to our spiritual (children of God). I'm going to study more about this conversion thing this week, but some scriptures were in Mosiah 5, Mosiah 27 and Alma 18 I think, when it talks about some examples of people who experienced this change. And the result? People are falling all over the floor in pure and utter JOY. 

May you all experience a bit of that this week. Love you!

Hermana Wilson

"Just predicando [preaching]" (left to right: new member; YM president; Jenny; Hermana Hernandez; Hermana Wilson)

Bunches of missionaries about to head to Tuxtla for our new hijas.

I'm going to be a MOTHER!

Yay! And for this reason I am now in Tuxtla down the block from the temple and for this reason there is no real letter today :( Sorry.

If we're confused we had transfers and I am going to train -- they told us last night and we hopped on a bus in the morning with a ton of other missionaries and traveled all day. We're about to go in to find out who our little victims are, or hijas as all the missionaries say. So don't worry I’m still righteous and I will let you know more next week about the new adventures in Tapachula with Wilson Team Round 3. I love you all, hope all is well!! 

Hermana Wilson :)

Spanish notes:

[hija = “daughter”]

[“And for this reason” is how one might say “so” or “therefore” if one is thinking in Spanish and translating into English. :) ]

Yay Flowers!

Well hello! What a week! We're seeing tons of miracles and opportunities right and left and it's a beautiful thing. I do believe the baptism drought is over! 

This week we received some random references, one from a former investigator who "didn't know anyone" because everyone was Catholic, but when we asked if anyone had passed away recently he pointed us a few houses down and we visited them the next morning to see if we could help with anything. The woman whose mother had passed away said, "seriously?" and put us to work arranging millions of flowers and replacing the dead ones with fresh and we had so much fun talking with her and working with flowers. I'm in love with flowers. I decided when I get home I'm going to forget studying and instead lock myself in a greenhouse and live among them forever. 

So anyway, we're visiting them every now and again. We also received a reference from a member who had a neighbor who'd been arguing doctrine with her and she said she'd send the missionaries. Turns out he'd been baptized years ago, or rather tricked into being baptized as they hadn't informed him what was going on til he was in the water, but is looking for a good church for his grandchildren who live with him. Well he argued doctrine at us for almost 2 hours without breathing, so the next time, we brought our best weapon: Former-70 member/stake president/temple president etc. Hermano Arrevillaga who has the power to blow up your mind with one sentence in his mild deep voice. All this man's confidence disappeared as he was taught and he really humbled himself, saying "I didn't know that before...oh..." It was amazing, the difference. We invited him and his wife and the niños to come to church and he said he'd try it one time but if he didn't get an answer that was it. Oh brother. Well, they had a wonderful time, the members adopted them and the kids loved primary and that night when we visited the 7-year-old girl, D., responded to the question "where do you want to go?" with a shy "al Mormón." Our hearts melted and basically right there was his answer, received through the little girl who was actually listening to the spirit and recognized something in this church. And now they're really listening and learning. Such a beautiful family. 

Well I'm afraid this was a short one and I've run out of time. We're going to go explore the ruins of Izapa again. But I love you all and am happier than ever and pray this week is a beautiful one for everyone! Adios!

BAPTISM

The word we've all been waiting for! That's right, it was a miracle week and a baptism we didn't know would happen did and we saw all sorts of miracles! 

Ricardo is the friend of Jenny who she invited to EFY and to talk with the missionaries, the one who basically memorized the first vision upon hearing it. He's such a good kid and was so ready for baptism but we've been having all sorts of problems with things like his address and where exactly does he live and thinking he was from the area of the zone leaders and them passing the reference back to us and us teaching him until we found out that he was in fact from their area, and now what were we supposed to do because he had a baptism date and all his friends and then his parents telling him not to rush into it and that he should wait a couple of months and then his grandma getting sick and other problems in his life that made it hard to find him and then the longest run-on sentence ever but that's what happened.

Anyway, last Sunday we fasted all day and went to find his parents to talk with them, but they never came home that day and we had to search again later in the week. But the Lord did hear our prayers because Tuesday we were able to talk with his mom and she went from saying that her son needed to calm down and make decisions more slowly to realizing she trusted him and that this was actually a good thing that he was doing. We were able to speak by the spirit and help her to change her heart and agree to support him. Miracle one, down! Then we had to talk with the zone leaders and president to see if we should actually baptize him in our ward or in the other, and President just straight up told us, "Baptize him." Miracle 2! And then there were other rules and details that I won't go into here but that all worked together and fell into place and it was such a blessing week.

We also finally baptized Marcos Fuentes, our next door neighbor (and the brother of Jenny) who has been 8 years old for almost 6 months now and has been begging everyone who would listen to be baptized and doing every possible thing in his power. Poor kid! He asked us and we told him to tell his mom to talk to the bishop. He asked the bishop and he told him to talk to us and his mom. And his mom just always forgot as she juggled all her jobs and single-mother duties. And so poor Marcitos was left to resort to announcing to the world that his baptism was on Saturday numerous times, hoping that it would actually happen and alarming his primary president who hadn't heard of it. So this week we marched over to his sweet mother and told her we were going to baptize Marcos on Saturday and she needed to talk to the bishop, and then we marched to bishop and announced the same and finally his little dream came true. 

The baptism itself was extremely beautiful. All the youth were there since it was directly after our little choir practice, and a bunch of other members and investigators and some inactive youth as well. We all took pictures, laughed, baptized and left in a huge happy herd. 

I got the package this week! Thank you so much! I LOVE the music and my hermana and I become beyond-happy when there are Werther´s in our mouths. Those are heaven. An elder and I baiscally have competitions each month to see who will get the most letters and everyone else sort of just resents a little. "Monson Wilson Wilson Monson Wilson Wilson Wilson Monson." I won. :) Little do they know this is more due to the longwindedness of my family and friends than popularity because each Dear Elder is like 3 or 4 pages long but I wanted to thank you for all the stories, updates and words of encouragement! Keep going, let's win every month! ;)

This week we watched the cartoon of Lehi´s dream and it really made me think. It's interesting to actually watch all the people as they leave the iron rod, get distracted, fall to temptation, etc. and realize that it's the same thing I'm seeing every day with falling investigators and inactive members. But what I LOVE is at the end, all those at the tree say that they have much to do and start going out to seek all the lost people and bring them back. I was also reading in 2 Nephi 9 this week and I love how it talks about how because of "the way" of deliverance, death and hell MUST deliver up their captives. We belong to God and we must return to Him, all of us. The road may be longer and harder for those who have strayed farther, but we have had an INFINITE atonement performed for us, which means it will always reach us and will always bring us and the ones we love back to safety. Well, that's all for this week but I love you all and hope all is beautiful wherever you are! Keep smiling and praying!

Hermana Wilson

 Marcito, Hermana Wilson, Cristián (the Young Men president), Ricardo, Hermana Hernandez

Marcos and Jenny's family

Getting ready for the baptism.

Ups and Downs

So yesterday I was innocently walking right behind my companion in the rain in my wonderful rain shoes that I love and have been so good to me, when these wonderful rain shoes failed me completely, and suddenly my feet were no longer under me but above me, and I crashed on my tailbone. Ow. I lay in pain and pathetic-ness in the mud laughing as my companion freaked out, and once I could get up off we went and now all is well and I no longer walk like an old woman. Woo!

On that note, this week was wonderful! And moist. Those two words pretty much sum it up. Rain rain rain and miracles errday. We lost [one investigator]. After not showing up to his baptism we finally found him at home and he told us he was moving to Tabasco two days later so we planned one last lesson with him and all his friends from the ward and talked to him about continuing in the church and not giving up so he could have his baptism soon. Well, turns out it was all a lie, he didn't move anywhere he just wanted to get rid of us. We thought his story was fishy a few times, especially when he didn't show up to his last lesson, and sure enough there he was the next day and the next still un-moved from his home and hiding whenever he saw us passing. It still makes me laugh a little bit how that man cannot tell the truth to save his life, but we are sad that he wasn't able to come through and change his life like he wanted. We really did grow to love him and want the best for him. One day!

We FOUND V.! She's the sister of an inactive member who was baptized a year or so ago, his name is Y. Every time we've tried to find him, his family pretty much  tells us to get lost, so we were surprised when one day his mother invited us in when it was DUMPING rain on us. She let us hang out in the house until it slowed down, and in the meantime we talked to her about the church anything. She told us about how Y. got baptized without telling them anything and knowing they wanted him to wait and thus they aren't very happy about it, but we made friends with her, and the next time it was dumping she let us in again and sent her daughter out to keep us company. Well she turned out to be a marvelous person who knew Jenny, who was accompanying us that day, and got really excited to see her and opened right up. The next week we went back with Jenny and Sét, another YM from the ward, to visit Y. and V., and it turned out BEAUTIFUL. The spirit was there, she accepted a baptism date, both agreed to come to church the next morning, and their relatives who were visiting with their father muttered in the background the whole time about how we knew nothing about preaching "la palabra de Dios." So that last part wasn't super marvelous, but hopefully one of them got something nice and spiritual from their eavesdropping. 

Rain is so fun. Especially when rain turns into rivers in the street and Jenny loses her sandal and Sét swims after it and nearly gets plastered by a car and we're all laughing our heads off the whole time. Every day at about 5 it starts coming down out of nowhere super hard and quits at about 7 or sometimes never. 

My companion is crazy. She does everything that comes to her brain the minute it does so and sometimes it stresses my poor little conservative self. Like, can we do that? And before I can ask that question out loud, we've already done it and usually something great happens. For example, someone tells us the bishop doesn't show very much love, my companion says let's go teach the bishop about love and suddenly the bishop is taught about love, has poured his soul out to us and trusts us a ton more and everyone's happy and I still have no idea what happened. But I love it and I love how we are seeing things happening! I think that's something I need to learn to do a little more, start acting. Stop thinking so much. But for right now I think I'd better keep thinking so that someone is ;)

I've been studying about humility this week, and how it really is the first step to everything. If we want to change we've got to be humble first or we're not going to get anywhere. I love Alma 5 when Alma is preaching to the people and trying to get them to REMEMBER all the blessings from the Lord and to change their hearts. This is something we've seen here as well. The people who have great desires, questions, and agree with what we teach but don't humble themselves never make it anywhere! They stay rock still. But those who recognize they need to change and that they need their Savior see miracles and come to know him. And I've seen the same with myself. If I want to be the perfect missionary and get caught up in all the rules, being perfect, numbers, etc. I really just stress myself out and run in circles, but when I take time to pray for humility and really recognize that I can't do this alone, that's when I see someone else take over for me and miracles come! I know Jesus Christ loves us and has the power to change us into what we want to be! I love this gospel and I hope everyone has a wonderful week! 

Love you!