Leaving Ecuador & Coming Home

Week 97 Ecuador

Hey family,

Just sending out a quick letter here on President Riggins laptop, ha. Everything is goin great, here with the guys all together again hanging out. We have some meetings today, final dinner with president, and then we head to the airport. I feel happy. Lots of laughing and telling stories. 

Love you and see you soon.

Elder Wilson

Week 96 Ecuador

Voice recording  “The Finale”  7/25/16

Hello to all of you beautiful people in Utah, where I will, believe it or not be, in 1 week. The week has cruised on by and shot me head first into this final week of my mission. President Riggins even gave me a hard time about dying in a meeting we had as a zone, saying that he would be honored if I gave the closing prayer, as it would be my last…terrible. 

Honestly, I still don’t know what to think about coming home, so I try not to think about it to much. It’s hard believing this will all end. I almost feel like I wish I could be an apostle and have my next mission booked in three weeks from now, but I guess in some terms I will in going to college, working, whatever we can pick up. 

The week has been good though, we’re staying focused in the work. Elder Coton is teaching piano classes while I go to the branch council meetings, getting some investigators interested, getting some priesthood volunteering to go out and work with us, doing some visits. It’s pretty tough though still. The branches are a little bit…I can’t say weak, they’re about as big as a ward, it’s just leadership. The leaders here serve their hearts out for 3, 4, 5 years, then they just die. They don’t want a calling, they don’t nothing, it’s kind of sad. 

Outside of the branch, we also took a 24 hour road trip to do inspections on the sectors in El Triunfo and La Troncal staying to work a day. In La Troncal they only have three missionaries right now, and are organizing one big sector. They have a new branch president there, so we got to meet with him to kind of get him clued in on what we’re doing as missionaries. The weather there is beautiful though. I imagine it’s what Tiffie lived in her mission for two years, just cloudy, cool, little bit of a breeze. That’s what I imagine anyway. It even rained a little bit in the morning. Me and E. Coton took a morning jog in the rain, very invigorating. 

As a zone we have seen some highs and lows, but honestly we’ve accomplished a great deal in these past two months; more than they’ve accomplished in a long time, and I’m very grateful for that. Though strangely as things are looking I will be the last ever zone leader of El Triunfo due to the decreasing number of missionaries that are coming to the mission field right now, and a lack of prepared leaders here in the mission ready to step up. What were eleven zones will be dissolved into eight, affecting some of my old sectors, Quevado is going to be put into one zone where as it was two, Babahoyo is going to combine with another zone, and Duran South is going to get a little bigger as Triunfo and Troncal combine and Naranjito will adjoin with Milagro. Almost all of my past zones where I served are just going to get crunched together, but that’s ok. That’s the vision that Pres. Riggins has to work best.

So the week goes on. We met with a crazy mission leader in El Trunfo who tells stories of his conversion and years in the church like an old war veteran. Interviewed a sweet old man who is half blind, who honestly for two years now I’ve read the sacrifice that God requires of us is a broken heart and a contrite spirit, but the spirit taught me what that really means as I talked with this man and he was so repentant and humble and just wanted to do good, was so sorry for what he’d done wrong in his life. Wow, that interview hit me. Sometimes you have some good ones. He was baptized Saturday as well as our investigator Byron. I can’t send pictures, because my camera chip has a virus. Hopefully we’ll be able to save the pictures that are on there when I get home. We can figure it out. 

We did a way awesome activity this week on Friday night. It was inspired by some sisters in one of my one zones. They came up with it, and I took the idea. It was a desert party. We planned it with a couple weeks in advance, and asked all the organizations to prepare some treats, cake, brownies, jello, fruit salads, all kinds of just stuff. We brought together about 80 people and at least 18 of those were investigators, and the other half were probably less actives. It was so awesome. The whole branch was so impressed at how well it turned out, and me too. It was all improvised, we did not know exactly what we were doing, but we bought a big bag of candy, and we were doing scripture questions and tossing them out to the people that could answer right. We shared a lesson based on John 7:17 about those who live the gospel will  know that it is of God. That it is his doctrine, and his gospel. We said you have to try it to know if it’s good or not, and so that was kind of the idea of eating the cakes and seeing if it was sweet, if it was good. So we ate lots of cake, and awarded the winner. We had a contest who had the best cake, and our less active that we are rescuing, we awarded her with a Bonbon. It’s a big chocolate treat thing. It’s pretty sweet. So, that honestly wrapped up what will honestly be my last activity that I will ever organize in the mission, and my last baptism. 

You know for as simple as our lives are here as missionaries. How we live, what we do every day, sometimes it can be frustration, or boring, or who knows what, but I have really tried to love the things that God loves, do his will, like Jesus Christ did. I think that’s what makes it so hard for missionaries to leave the mission. At some point along the way were not doing it because its our duty to God anymore, we’re actually doing it because we love it. 

This is my final mission voice recording. I hope it gets to you all well. I hope I get to you all well…ha! We’re going to enjoy this last week. We’re going to work hard, and I am going to hold my head high, and see you all in the airport. I want you all to know that I fully expect you to call me Elder Wilson until I’m released by President Wadman…ha. No, it will all be great, so have a great week, all of you take care. I love you, and see you soon. 

Week 95 Ecuador

Super excited...Elder Wilson is 15 days from Utah!!! :):):)

Week 94 Ecuador

Family,

Sorry I didn`t write hardly today, I will admit I spent my Day searching out Waterfalls and eating smoked meat in Bucay .. sadly for the last time. Bye to my all time favorite place in Ecuador. I have pics but they don`t want to send for some reason. Later I suppose all things will be revealed!

Take care and have a superb week .. try not to get too excited over the fact that I am 3 weeks away from Utah. Love you all. 

President Uceda (area 70) said something to this effect once, ¨Focus. Learn your duty from God. How do you know your duty? Ask him. He will show you. Then you should be sure to do all that he asked you to. That is a life with purpose...¨ 

So, don`t worry, I will stay anxiously engaged in my duty to God here. It wouldn`t make much sense to be here and dream of home  :) 

Week 93 Ecuador

50 plus Utah State quarters...is that a Trunky thing? haha

My right thigh where the exercise band snapped and cut me. Ouch!

Baptisms from last week

Good Sea-food. I'm going to have to get me a good restaurant when I get home.

Me in 'my office'

So the voice recording didn`t work-out.. way lame, too many virus`s on the computers down here.

So I started by singing God Bless America for like 37 seconds! ..with lots of American Pride and my companion expected nothing less.

..then I went on to say how we have found 2 great families this week that I hope to be able to baptize the end of the month.

..then I talked about how my P90X band snapped on me and totally smacked my leg pretty hard, left me sore for a bit. now what do I do!? I`mma come back with zero muscles  :(

..then I talked about me locking us out of the house Sunday night at 9 o'clock and we had to go ´make some friends´ asking around for an extension ladder. We made it in the house by 9:30 curfew, whew. 

..then one of our awesome investigators is going to Cuenca for 1 month to take care of his mom. Dangit, he`s gone.

We have leadership conferences and exchanges with the other Elders this week and we`re happy! 

..not much happening for the 4th, go find me a good lunch. Sad when you live 1.5 hours from the rest of your Zone! Oh well, no pity on me. 

Take care, love you all

Week 92 Ecuador

6/27/16 Voice Recording

Hi family, good morning. It’s Monday morning; I hope you’re all doing excellent. Since a week ago when I dropped E. Coleman off, it’s been a super long week. We’ve been battling out the salvation of our zone, doing all we can do to secure the goal we made. In May we set a goal to save/rescue 25 souls that includes baptisms, rescues, all that. We are super happy to announce that we did better than that, we got 26! We had a family fall through because they couldn’t get married, and then we just dug and dug. I know that God guided us to people who were ready. They had attendances in church but for some reason or another they hadn’t been progressing. We went and taught them by the spirit, and wow they came through. We had 8 baptisms this week as a zone. It was really nice. We baptized 3. One of our guys didn’t pass his baptismal interview, bummer. When your 70 years old you’ve got a lot of sins to clear up I guess…bad habits. We definitely saw little miracles occurring daily as we pieced together the goal as a zone. Definitely happy that the month is over though, because I am tired. I feel super grateful that God really forced us to look back and search for people that otherwise may have been forgotten, and not given the attention they needed, and they wouldn’t have been baptized. I know that God directs his work, that the Holy Ghost does speak to us. He spoke to all of us in a meeting, when we came up with these people. 

The baptismal service on our part was powerful. I got to baptize the three people, they asked me to. Me and E. Cotton, he plays the piano super well; he played and I sang I Believe in Christ in Spanish. Then we had some powerful testimonies of the members. One especially by Bro. Espinosa is his name. This guy’s crazy. I see a lot of stuff down here, and sometimes I wish I wouldn’t. When he was 17, this is like 25 years ago, he had a third degree burn down the back of his leg. Since they don’t have medical insurance, and don’t have money to pay for the operation, he has lived with those burn scars, and it’s like an open wound still. He showed us, and oh it made me cringe. He limps around and everything, but he works and maintains his family the best he can. I think it’s a Miracle that this thing hasn’t been infected, that he hasn’t lost his leg. They invited us over to eat, and we ate lunch with them. You guys have got to understand, they live in a house of cana (sugarcane), and plastered up on the walls so the rain and the sun and everything doesn't come through the cracks, they have glued on the walls pages of Liahonas. Talks, and talks, and photos…that’s their wallpaper, Liahona pages. It’s just shocking. He about made me cry. In his testimony, he looked at me, and he was crying, and he said “Thank you for sharing our poorness, humility, and struggles”. Then he paused and said, “An American from Utah in my home. An Elder from Zion”. I wish I could have done something to help this man. Sometimes I feel so helpless. I have the priesthood power of God, I’m worthy to use it, and I exercise it every day, but then in so many situations people want to get baptized, and oh your not married, I can’t help you. Or you have a third degree burn on you, I don’t know how to help you. It’s just sometimes I feel powerless. It’s interesting, but I know that God can direct us, and he will direct us how we should do his work. This mans gratitude touched my heart, and I will never forget him, or his wife, 

Anyways, other than that we’ll go on to some positive notes. I was doing P90x, and I was doing some pull ups with the bands, and I almost pulled the wardrobe down on top of me. Well, I got out of the way quick enough, and no harm done. E. Cotton, he’s a great workout partner too.  We get things going.

Well, it looks like this is going to turn out as a short voice recording this week. A returned missionary invited me to write out a piece of my testimony, and so one evening I sat down and wrote a short testimony. I guess I can end with that for you guys. I based it off of a scripture D&C 68: 4-6. I love it. I know that I am a Child of God. I am the son of Allen and Cammie. We are sealed as a family for all eternity. I have been taught and made sacred covenants with God since 8 years old, as I seek to do and be what my Father has called me to do. I know Jesus is my Savior, and has redeemed me from the person I do not wish to be. I know He and the Holy Ghost and one with the Father, as can I be, if I like them, seek to save and strengthen my brothers. I have been led to many of my chosen brothers in Ecuador. I know that this is the mission where I was called by a prophet of God and need to be. With my brothers we have loved one another and the Lord for his mercies. I truly needed them as much as they needed me. I love righteousness, and I pray every day to cringe at the sight of sin. Life is filled with trials, triumphs and joy. Our covenants will guide and protect us and blessings will abound as we endure faithful. Until that day when the Holy Spirit of Promise testifies of these truths and we are welcomed to a heavenly home, with our families to reign in love and righteousness forever, just as Christ does, for he is the way. I leave that with you all, with a lot of my love. Wishing you all a wonderful week. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.