Exceedingly Great Blessings

Friends,

I am grateful for the hymns. What wonderful sources of wisdom and hope, of energy and of vigor. When in need, sing a hymn. The song of the heart is ¨ a prayer unto me¨ as the Lord says. Yesterday, I was in sacrament meeting and not quite enjoying the presence of the Spirit as I would have liked to. Some things had happened, and me and my comp were feeling kinda down. But God spoke to us through song. We sang ¨Come, come ye Saints.¨ In spanish there is a line that says ¨y paz será el galardón, oh está todo bien.¨ It´s saying that peace will be the prize, all is well, all is well. Well, I am certain that God speaks to us through many different ways. Including the hymns. I will be eternally grateful to my old piano teachers, such as Margaret Schloss, Jan Judd, and Michelle Bowman, for teaching me a sure-proof method of bringing the spirit. It´s a shame the mission doesn´t allow for time to really play much.

Well, here I am talking about hymns and stuff and not even about the week! I´ll just go quickly through one of the busiest weeks of my mission:

Tuesday: Transfers. Luckily the Ramos Mejía zone all lives pretty close, so we had no problems recieving missionaries new to the zone and shipping them off to their new areas. We also were asked to help the trainers in their new duties and practice with them contacting, especially with the book of mormon. My opinion: have in in your hand! The SWORD OF THE SPIRIT does no good if it´s sheathed up in your backpack.

Wednesday: my first ¨concilio¨. Meeting with the zone leaders. It was fantastic! Talked all about the mission and how to help the missionaries, including ourselves, improve. Talked much about challenges and resources, and how many of our challenges are really resources if we just change our mentality.

Thursday: one somewhat normal day of work. We did weekly planning. yay!

Friday: we had special training with President Robertson. It was great! His wife also rocks. We talked with her about the power of the Spirit in conversión. I love what Elder Bednar says that we are all agents who act,and not objects to be acted upon. We must allow the investigators to ACT, and learn by faith. #inspiredquestions

Saturday: there was a stake service meeting and we painted a school! I saw the bishop from my first area there! His daughter just got called to mexico! So great to see old friends! We also had a baptism!!! Lucas, great guy. We are having a baptism every week in september. I arrived just a few weeks ago and am in no way credited for helping them reach baptism, but some incredible people are in this area!

Sunday: A day of rest. Alma 37:34.

Have a great week!

Elder Wilcox

Lucas has had some great experiences with the scriptures I will write about later
Renzo, he actually is from a recently reactivated family. he was baptized but they lost the records, so he got baptized again. awesome!

Aumentar (Sep 12)

This week was fantastic. I would like to have everyone know that, cuz I ain´t got much time to describe it all!

This week was the sixth (and last) week of the transfer. What wise Presidente Robertson has noticed lately is that generally our numbers drop the sixth week for whatever reason. So we, as companions, work hard at making goals and then plans on the fifth week so the sixth week can shine. We worked our tails off and had a great week together! It was awesome!

We are hard at work thinking and praying for our zone. We believe it really just takes a step of faith, and a little more confidence in the Lord to make miracles happen! I can´t believe that God thinks that his leaders are better, so why don´t we think like that? We are still waiting for the reply to see if Elder Salas (an area 70!!!) might be able to come and talk to us. We think he will also be able to help a lot.

We also did divisions with the assistants this week! They are awesome! I worked with Elder Bullock, from PG, Utah. He is a capo. Probably the best example I have ever seen of actually talking to everybody! He gave me a couple tips here and there to be able to contact better! It was awesome. We were even able to set a couple of baptismal dates! He is inspiring for sure.

Well, like I said. Time is short. The field is white. And the laborers are few. BE A LABORER. I wish we could have better ¨inner-faith¨ relationships. We see people out also preaching of God, and many of their mindset seems to be ¨oh you´re mormon? Well that does put a damper on our relationship.¨ sad.

I love an email and maybe a picture from anyone at all, if anyone was wondering.

Have a fantastic week!

Alma 26:22

Elder Wilcox

also, pictures still are rough coming. I ain´t got no ipad 😁

La Tablada (Sep 5)

Every week I sit down to email and my head is so full of things, it´s quite difficult to condense it all down into a readable email...

La Tablada is such a great area! The pench is very ¨cheto¨, it´s clean and small but perfect for the two of us. ¨Itty bitty living space.¨ This is the zone of Ramos Mejía, a very city-ish zone. Lots of people. In our entire area, there are only TWO dirt roads! So cool! And I am now off the bike and back onto the foot, so am pretty excited about that. My companion is a total capo! Elder Ortolano, he is from Brasil but moved to Canada when he was little, and speaks like a North American. He went to BYU Idaho. We are doing awesome together! We are ready to get cooking in this zone, and help everyone else to do the same! One great challenge is that of President Robertson. ¨A good leader has other people´s confidence. A great leader helps others have confidence in themselves.¨ So we are trying to help the missionaries here see their TRUE potential. I was kinda bummed to be gone for Graciela´s baptism in Marcos Paz, but we had one here too, on saturday!

Her name is Milagros, which being interpreted, is Miracles. She is a 14 year old girl, very very very impressive for her age. We are also preparing her other siblings for baptism as well. I am so glad for this gospel, and how happy it makes other people! We came to fill up the font, but the water, apparently, was getting old in the tank! We couldn´t do anything about it, so we just had the baptism in pretty yellow water. I couldn´t help but congradulate Milagros after. ¨Congrates, urine the church now!¨

Lots of crazy things happened this week. We were out working and were inside one the area´s ¨villa¨s. A villa is very tight nit, condensed neighborhood I guess you could call it, with everything being made out of wood or concrete. We had a man come up to us and ask, ever so politely, for our cellular phone. Granted, he was pointing a gun at us. But he eventually let us go. Poor guy. He needs the dispensation of the fulness of times.

President Uchtdorf said something I love. That the scriptures and words of modern prophets form an ¨effective mirror¨ with which we can compare our lives. It goes well with it´s 80´s pop companion. ¨If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change.¨ Not only would Uchtdorf and Michael Jackson have been great mission comps, but these principles are true. It´s about being humble. Let us not be slothful for the easiness of it (Alma 37:46), truly it is a very straight and plain road (2 Nefi 4:32) that leads to eternal bliss (Alma 37:46).

Love you all! Have a great week.

Elder Wilcox

having trouble with fotos, sorry