Elder J Wesley Wilcox: 20 April 2015 Letter

Week 12!

I have officially finished my first transfer in the field and tomorrow is cambios. Transfers. We won't know if my companion or I will being leaving until this afternoon but it is very probable that we will both stay. Small evaluation after my first transfer - The mission is hard and different. It is a whole new world that I have never encountered. I think it would still be that way even if I was speaking English. The whole Peru factor is a whole different thing. But, I have also learned so much, I have come closer to my Father in heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ. I have gained whole trust in Them and love for all They do. I know why I am here and what I need to do. As I near the 3 month mark I think I still have plenty of time. And I do. Another 20 months or so after that is a lot of time. But in mission time, it really isn't much. I have so many goals I want to achieve and seeing how not even close I am is really startling. I realize that my time here is short. I need to give it my all every second.

Ok. For my conference talk of the week I want to go over the talk by Elder Nielson of the Seventy. Elder Nielson talked about his sister who left the church. He talked about how we need to go after that lost sheep and leave the 99 behind. But even then, we can only do so much. I have really seen that here in my mission. So many people have wandered off and we may want them to come back, for example, within the month, or next week. That, very often, is not possible. Yes there are miracles, and yes they happen a lot and people may have the faith that a miracle will happen but it is all in the Lord's time. And that is an especially hard thing to deal with. But, like the father of the prodigal son, we need so sit back and wait and love. After a long enough time, that love will move the person to come back just like the prodigal son did return. And his father was right there, waiting with open arms, all the time knowing that his son would return. I know we all have someone like that in our lives. Someone very special to me from the CCM has a brother who left the church a couple of years ago. This brother came home from work one day and told his mom he had just finished withdrawing his records from the church. As my friend here in the CCM told me this story, I could see the horrible pain and sorrow in his eyes. I don't know what I would do if one of my family members left the church, left all the blessings we have and the love we have from our Father in heaven. I immediately wrote him a letter during the session about all of that.

It made me think of my family members that aren't members on my mom's side of the family. I love them so much and want to be with them forever. I know that isn't possible if we all aren't an eternal family through this Gospel and through the temple. So for that reason, I always felt impatient with them and truly didn't understand why they wouldn't just all get baptized the next week. The talk really touched me and made me realize that we need to love them and wait. I don't know if they will feel that love to the point that they start investigating the church. But I do know that they know we love them and that is all we can and should do. This talk really gives a hope that is so amazingly powerful. Once again, with that eternal perspective, we can really appreciate the priceless value of our families.

OK. This week was super fun. Monday was Elder Bischoff's last p-day 'cause he is going home today!! Crazy. It also happened to be his birthday so we threw a party with pizza, cake, and a piñata. It was the best. We also played soccer and American football. It was a fun day. The rest of the week was fun too because we were preparing for our mission night, which we have once a month. This time it was a talent show and we invited almost all of Zarate (district) to come. Friday night we had a great turnout and our little sketch about a day in the life of a missionary was a riot if I do say so myself. The ward all had their own things planned too and it was super fun and we had a bunch of investigators and less-actives show up. Oh and we had our first 6 weeks training and I got to see everyone from my group including Elder Wilson and Elder Manzanera. It was fun to catch up with them and hear all the stories from Elder Wilson about the mudslide/flood. He was there to see/run from all of it. It was a fun week and also very successful missionary-wise.

As always thank you for all the prayers. Love you all.

Elder Wilcox