Hermana Wilson Meets Virginia!

Holy Moly, this has been the longest week of my life!! 

Virginia is beautiful, but the work is really difficult here. I'm now in Culpeper Virginia which is like almost as far North in my mission that I can go. I miss Mexico and my MTC district a lot! Although, the missionaries in this area have been great so far! My new companion's name is Emily Ahlstrom and she's from Seattle.  She's pretty fantastic!

I've learned something, though.  Having a companion is like having a built in best friend, but you know from the beginning that not too long down the road they're gonna be taken away from you and you have to start all over again! Es no bueno, but it's helping me to learn to rely more on the Lord than the people around me.  

The people of Virginia are WONDERFUL.  The ward here has like the nicest people ever here! They're fantastic,and I'm really excited to be hear for the next couple of months. (I'm pretty sure I'll be in this area until January, but I'm not positive.  I guess anything can happen,right?)

We have lots of investigators, but communicating with them has been hard.  The hispanics really like to hear the messages we share because they have a lot of love for God and for Christ, but not many of them are actually interested in making and keeping commitments so it makes the whole baptizing thing a little difficult. 

We have a couple of little kids that really want to get baptized, but they are 8 and 11 so we're really counting on their parents giving them permission! They're great! 

Spanish is so hard!! I think it's coming along better than I think it is, but I'm definitely struggling.  For the most part, I can understand what's going on in lessons and follow the conversation, but my companion hasn't really given me much of a chance to say much so I don't feel like my ability to speak in spanish is getting a ton better.  I don't think she does it intentionally,but I feel like she gets frustrated when I can't speak very quickly and not everything I say is in perfect Spanish.  Oh well, this was only week 1.  We've got lots of time to practice.

Funny story for the week: 

On Saturday we were out knocking on doors and we walked up to a family of Hispanics that were all outside together.  Before we even told them who we were or that we wanted to share a message about Jesus Christ with them, they pulled up chairs for us and handed us sodas and a plate full of food.  I don't think we'd even told them that we were missionaries or our names or anything! Hispanics seriously are the nicest people!! We sat there and had a solid gospel discussion with them (and by that I mean that Hermana Ahlstrom talked with them and I listened).  We were there for like an hour and a half and have a return appointment to visit with them again this week! Anyway, I guess I just never realized how friendly they were until now.  It just amazes me that they didn't even know who we were and they were handing us platefuls of food! haha good times :) 

This week has been really hard, but I know that it will get better! Being a missionary is difficult, but it's also way rewarding! 

Much love to everyone!! 

Love, 

Hermana Wilson

P.S. PLEASE WRITE ME!! I don't think I can even express how much I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to get letters from people!! 

My address here is: 

310 I Duke St

Culpeper, VA 22701

(That's I like the letter I. or as in I want letters) :) 

LOVE YOU! 

Hermana Wilson's Last Week in the CCM

HOLLA Y´ALL! 

So this is a super random time to email, but they gave me a little time to email tonight because I leave the CCM at an inhumane hour on Monday morning! EEK! 

So just a couple of fun things from this week...

-We are singing Come Thou Fount in Sacrament Meeting tomorrow as a district IN SPANISH. what?

-Neil L. Andersen came to visit us today! He talked about applying and teaching the atonement and it was fantastic! All the missionaries here got to shake his hand. Legit, eh?

-Tomorrow I am playing the piano for our Sunday Devotional, so no big deal or anything, but I am playing in front of, you know, like 500 missionaries. Maybe I should have been a little more conservative about my abilities to play. AWKS. 

-My stuff is all packed up and ready to go to Virginia. WEIRD. 

-I got a Children´s songbook in Español and I´m stoked about it! 

Also, some of you may remember that I started a starburst wrapper chain to build while I´m gone, but then sacrificed it for a greater good. Pictures attached of the creation for my maestro favorito, Hermano Silva! He´s pretty much the best! And he´s sassy to top it all off! :) #districtteamwork 

(sorry the pictures are sideways, I can´t rotate them on these computers) 

LOVE YOU ALL!! 

Hermana Wilson 

Hermana Wilson and Leaving Mexico Soon!

Oh my gosh y´all. My time at the MTC is almost over!! I leave the CCM at liiiiike 3 a.m. on Monday. WHAT? I definitely don´t know enough Spanish to be venturing into the real world of being a missionary.  So stay tuned for the funny stories that will inevitably follow my departure from the safe haven of the MTC.  Because I´m sure there will be plenty of them!! 

Also, this email is going to be kind of short because I want to send pictures also. (Which I can only send like 2 at a time so sorry if you all get a billion emails from me) :)  A couple of highlights from the week. 

-As a district we´ve started to be one another´s investigators.  Hermana Hansen and I are paired up with Elders Olsen and Keyes (they´re our favorites). Anyway, we´ve had a couple of good lessons, but mostly we all just laugh at the stupid things we say in our broken Spanish.  It´s definitely an adventure. I can´t remember if I told you this is my last email, but their investigator names are Alejandro and Fernando (Fernando is Alejandro´s grandmother.  Yes, you read that right.)  In our lesson the other day we had been teaching them about the tree of life and Fernando goes "Tiene ver el Evangelio Arbol?" Translated means "Have you seen the Gospel Tree?" (AKA the tree of life). Anyway, the funny part is the fact that I said yes because clearly I like to answer questions in Spanish before I even know what is being asked.  So that was an adventure.  Also, Fernando told us that "she" didn´t want to get baptized because her skin shrivels up when she gets wet. 

-I spoke in church on Sunday about Teaching By the Spirit.  Everyone in the Branch told me that I did a great job. But I´m not sure how great it actually was because we´ve definitely been there the longest, which means that if the newbies are anything like I was when I first got here, they didn´t even understand any of it. So that was AWKS.

-One of the new girls in our Zone told me that she wanted to grow up to be just like me because apparently I have the coolest life. For the win! 

-We´ve been running every day. That´s a weird thing.  Never thought those words would come out of my mouth. But Lo and Behold, it is the truth I speaketh unto thee. 

-Hermana Hansen and I became investigators for Olsen and Keyes and that´s almost more fun than teaching them.  We are twins names Castidad (that´s me) and Francesca (that´s Hermana Hansen).  We´re 20 and we like to party.  She´s going to school to become a Dental Assistant and I am going to school to be a Marine Biologist.  She gets annoyed with me because I apparently like to flood our house to practice being in water all the time.  So that´s been a pretty fun adventure so far! The funniest part of that lesson was Keyes trying to teach about who the Spirit was.  Instead of telling us that He was part of the Godhead ("trinidad") he said "El Espíritu es parte de cabeza de Dios" (translated means "He is part of the head of God.") Good one, Keyes. 

-We watched an AMAZING devotional by Elder Holland and it made me so much more pumped to get to Virginia!! 

-Hermana Hansen and Hermana Turner are hilarious! I´m gonna miss them a lot when I don´t get to spend every minute of every day with them!

-Oh! And we got to go to the temple today! (well, the visitors´ center because the temple is closed) It is beautiful! and the visitors´ center there is honestly the most beautiful one I´ve ever been in! It was fantastic! I loved it! 

Let the picture sending begin :) 

I LOVE YOU ALL!! 

Okay, that´s all I think.

Hermana Wilson and Scar Tissue

First off, let´s start with a word to the wise:

When you have sick scar tissue (like the kind from Mud Volleyball injuries), it is best not to play volleyball, dive for the ball, and split it open again. :) But, on the bright side, I have a companion that loves to doctor up the injured. I´m confident to say that I am in good hands! Thou shalt fret not. 

Second, can we take a moment to ponder on the phenomenon that I am only 3 days away from being a month done with my mission? As of this friday, I will be down to 17 months. And I leave the MTC in 13 days. what? Time is a weird thing. 

MTC life is weird, y´all.  Nothing much changes in my life from day to day.  I realized recently that I don´t talk in "I" anymore, it´s always "we".  Having a companion does weird things to one´s brain.  Also, Spanish is ruining my life.  I Spanglish everything soooo sorry. :)

The elders in our district are seriously the funniest! Our teachers have decided to change things up for us these last two weeks and we´ve now started teaching each other.  We make up investigator stories and then we alternate being the investigators and the missionaries.  This week Hermana Hansen and I are the missionaries so we teach like 8 lessons, but next week we´ll be the investigator so I think we only teach 2 lessons (to the investigators we´ve been teaching all along).  Yesterday we taught Elder Keyes and Elder Olsen.  Elder Keyes pretended to be a teenager that lived with his grandma that was interested in the church because his friends are members....so Olsen played the grandma.  It was hilarious and I´m really excited that we get to teach them because they´re our favorite companionship in the district. 

The longer I´m here, the more I notice my patience being tested. Especially when the boys stop acting like missionaries and start acting like 18-year-olds.  Then, it just makes me feel old, so that´s weird.... 

General Conference was amazing!!! I definitely wanna just soak it all up again and again! I hope everyone had a chance to watch it, and follow up on President Monson´s invitation to study them more! I personally love that Elder Bednar spoke specifically to nonmembers, that was excellent! 

Being a missionary has changed my life! I miss my friends and my family like you wouldn´t believe, but I wouldn´t change this experience for the world! This gospel changes people and when we act on the invitations from the scriptures and from our prophet and apostles we will naturally come closer to Christ, feel the love that he has for us, and want to share that love with everyone we come in contact with! The gospel is SO COOL.  Live it fully because it will bless you forever! 

I´m out of time, but I love you all! Peace out :)

-Hermana Wilson 

P.S. read Alma 17:13 :) scriptures are cool

Hermana Wilson is Halfway through the MTC!

Hello Everyone! Life is loco here at the MTC.  It is so wonderful to be spiritually uplifted all throughout the week! I feel like I never have anything super exciting to say, but I´ll share some of my highlights from the week :) 

First of all, my companion finds it highly entertaining to take pictures of me when I fall asleep.... the one she got of me last week was when I fell asleep reading scriptures...it´s quite picturesque actually. haha 

Tuesday Devotionals are pretty much the best!! They´re almost always in Provo but broadcast to other MTCs around the world so we always get to watch it.  Last week´s was M. Russell Ballard and it was amazing! He talked a lot about how to become great missionaries and the importance of setting goals in missionary work and throughout our lives.  He also said a sentence that was word-for-word what something in my Patriarchal Blessing says so that was like the coolest thing ever. 

On Wednesday, we got a new investigator named Julio (who is really our other teacher pretending to be an investigator) and Hermana Hansen and I taught for the first time without scripting anything that we wanted to say, and it went surprisingly well! It was hard to form coherent thoughts, but we learned how to rely a little more on the spirit to bring what we know to our remembrance.  It was such a cool experience! Our lessons with Julio are only 15 minutes so sometimes we have a hard time teaching him everything he wants to learn.  Oh, Hermanas Turner and Hansen and I decided to all switch nametags the other days to see if our teachers really know us, but then we got a new teacher and felt bad so we switched back and maybe we´ll try it again soon. :) 

Thursday, we had a special devotional with 2 Seventies that came to Mexico to speak to us. Pretty much everyone that ever comes to speak to us just talks about Missionary Work but I am constantly learning from the things that they share with us! They challenged us to read the missionary chapters in Alma (17-42) and I´ve noticed already how much studying them has helped me in being on a mission! After the Devo, we went back to the normal schedule of studying all day and teaching our "investigators".  My memory drives my companion up the wall because I memorize things like it´s nothing, but our teacher told us that her pronunciation is better so if we keep working together that we´d both be "Mexicanas" in no time. hahaha. Thursday afternoon we started doing this thing called TRC where we teach students from other districts.  They make up investigator stories and then we go in completely blind, learn about their lives, and then teach them whatever part of the lessons that they need to hear.  It was incredible to see how strong the spirit can be even in a situation where we have nothing else to go on except the investigator stories and the broken spanish that we know.  It was probably my favorite thing that we´ve done so far--and the best lesson that Hermana Hansen and I have ever given! 

On Friday we taught Julio again and he really likes to throw us curveball questions when we teach him.  So we went in with an idea of what we wanted his lesson to focus on, but then we hardly even got to us because he asked a bunch of questions that we had no idea how to answer, so that was a little awkward, but it ended up being a pretty decent lesson anyway.  I´ve learned that it´s way better to go in with a couple of ideas about what to teach and end up changing everything than to ever give an investigator a lesson that they don´t really need.  We also did TRC again and I love it! It´s a lot less scary knowing that I´m teaching people that have been here for the same amount of time as me--I feel a lot less intimidated that way!  Also, when I play the investigator I like to use my real name and it freaks people out because it´s weird (thanks mom and dad) :)

Hermana Hansen has also taken up teaching me how to play tennis.  I can´t believe I never did before! She tells me I´m really good for never having played before but she´s probably lying to me to make me feel better about my life. haha. Oh, and we finally feel like we´re bonding with the elders in our district...they all told us their celebrity crushes so I guess that means we´re friends! They´re pretty great. We also had some pretty crazy power outage stuff here from a thunderstorm so instead of being able to use our computers for spanish like we usually do we just hung out in our classroom and played Mafia.

Saturday Hermana Hansen and Hermana Turner and I decided to have a day where we only spoke to each other in español! It was crazyyyy hard, but we all did it and I was thoroughly impressed at how much spanish I actually know!! We´re gonna try to do that more often too so that we get better at it! We taught Ramiro for the first time since Monday when he told Hermana Hansen and I how bad we were at teaching so that was scary.  We both thought it went better but he didn´t so we have no idea what to do about teaching him.  We get the feeling that he doesn´t actually want to be here when he teaches us so it makes it hard for us to want to teach him.  Hopefully that´ll get better through the next couple of weeks! 

Sunday, I bore my testimony in spanish in sacrament meeting and it was terrifying! I got up there and forgot like everything I wanted to say, but I did it! And now that I´ve crossed that fence, I´m feeling a little more confident in speaking spanish, YAY!

Nothing too exciting happened yesterday.  I had a really hard day but Hermano Juarez took the time out of his free time to help Hermana Hansen and I a lot.  He´s seriously like one of the happiest people ever! We love him :)

Notes for the book:

1. First emotional breakdown: Sept. 20

2. I started a starburst chain that I´m gonna build throughout my mission and see how long I can get it.

3.  I´ve been practicing my nonexistent artistic skills while I take notes during devotionals and whatnot. Lemme tell ya, I am drawing some pretty killer stick figures. 

That´s all.  This one is really long! Sorry! 

LOVE YOU ALL!
-Hermana Wilson  

Hermana Wilson Pops some Popcorn

Hello Friends! 

This week was crazy because we always have so much going on! Our lives are literally planned out for us like to the minute.  I love being a missionary and I love being here and it has reminded me of how much I love this gospel, but it has also been so hard to be so far away from everyone.  I feel so disconnected here because I only get to hear from everyone once a week!

My companion is seriously the best.  I love her and I´m so glad that she´s stuck with me until we leave here!! Last week on P-day we attempted to make popcorn with hair dryers because apparently the CCM doesn´t believe in microwaves. To our dismay, it did NOT work.  It got super hot but no popping occurred. bummer.  Don´t worry though, we found one  a couple of days later and enjoyed the sweet remembrance of American food! ;) 

The fact that we are all still learning the basics of Spanish and teach investigators in Español has made for some pretty good stories so far! Also, when the new missionaries came in last Wednesday I felt so accomplished with my life that we weren´t the newest missionaries on the block anymore!! And now, we are going to get even more tomorrow and it´s just weird how slowly time seems to go by but still so fast! I wish I could even explain it because I feel like I´ve been here forever sometimes and then other times I feel like I just got here! 

After all the days of sitting around eating this food, I watched my fellow missionaries get sick from it one by one.  They say it happens to everyone here. I was so confident that it was never going to hit me and it was my goal to be the walking miracle that came from the CCM.  I was wrong.  Oh well, I guess we better just focus on the fact that I´ve been eating, right! :) 

We taught our investigator Genaro a total of 5 lessons.  Then we found out that he was becoming our new teacher! So now we spend every afternoon with him, and his real name is Hermano Medina.  Now we have 2 investigators (they are both fake investigator stories and our two teachers pretend to be them).  It´s kind of confusing and I´m not sure that I like Hermano Medina´s teaching.  He´s only been teaching us for a couple of days and maybe it´ll get better, but I just don´t like the way that he teaches so far.  I guess we´ll see how that goes!

Hermana Hansen and I taught our 6th lesson yesterday to Genaro AKA Hermano Medina AKA now he´s Ramiro.  Anyway, we both thought the lesson went fairly well and then afterward he just reamed into us about how bad it was.  He told us that our spanish was surprisingly really great, but that the lesson was awful, YAY! I definitely left in tears and it was the worst! But that´s what the MTC is all about right? If I were going to be a perfect missionary and speak in perfect Spanish then I would have no need to be here.  I just have to remind myself to be patient and work as hard as I can.  

Sundays are the best! This week I got to play the piano in church and for the first time I actually felt like everything was normal.  Everything on Sundays except for Sacrament Meeting is in English so I actually feel like I can understand things!  However, I have to admit.  I´ve been feeling pretty accomplished with the amount of Spanish I can understand.  It´s still ridiculously hard and I will be far from fluent in six weeks, but it blows my mind at how much spanish they can teach us in such a short amount of time!! 

Hermana Hansen and Hermana Turner are seriously the best!! I have grown to love them so much in the short amount of time we´ve known one another! Hermana Turner lives in our casa and shares a room with us, but her compánion is Hermana Rowley.  It´s crazy to me how the gospel brings people together the way it does.  I also think that the Lord has a funny way of preparing people for challenges.  Let´s just say that if I get a companion in the field like Hermana Rowley it will be a patience testing, faith building, humbling experience if I´ve ever had one! I am, however, slowly.......SLOWLY......learning to love her.  

Read the scriptures and pray a lot!! God listens to you and He is there! 

Also, read Alma 26 because it´s awesome.  

LOVE YOU ALL!

-Hermana Wilson

Hermana Wilson's First P-Day

Hey Everyone! Much love from Mexico! 

This first week in the CCM has seriously been one of the hardest and most rewarding things that I´ve ever done in my whole entire life! 

So the first few days here didn´t even feel real! Like it was the strangest feeling, I can´t even describe it. I think one of the weirdest things about this whole experience is that I can´t just call or text or snapchat my friends every time something happens because I´m so used to that convenience.  I´ve discovered that I´m getting better at journaling about things though because I have to take the time to write it down so I can tell you all about it when I actually do this :)

Wednesday--Traveling to the CCM was one of the longest days ever!! I was one of 2 missionaries that flew out of Albuquerque, and then we had a layover in Houston.  (I definitely thought of you Catherine!)  The clouds flying into Houston were the fluffiest biggest clouds I think I´ve ever seen and it was so fun to fly right through them!  Then as we waited in the airport for the other missionaries that were flying from Houston to Mexico City we started to get quite the party going! It was so fun to play the Spot The Missionary Game because nobody had name tags yet but it was SO obvious when we´d see someone that was headed out on a mission.  Landing in Mexico was the worst! No plan landing has ever made me feel so sick before but I think that a lot of it was nerves! Then we landed and had this super long bus ride in crazy Mexico City traffic to get to the CCM. P.S. if you thought graffiti was hard to read in English, then you´re in for a real treat when you see Español graffiti :) 

After we finally got settled in at the CCM we got our companions assigned and all of the materials we need to learn Spanish and went to our casas.  My companion is Hermana Hansen and she´s the best! (and don´t worry, I totally warned her beforehand that I talk in my sleep)

Thursday-- We got to meet our District and our Branch President and our teacher.  Our branch president is Presidente Rodriguez and our teacher is Hermano Martinez.  They´re both fantastic!! Although, we just found out that we get a new teacher this week because Hermano Martinez only gets the newbies.  After we talked to our Branch President a little he told us that every week every missionary prepares a talk and that we don´t know who speaks until he announces our names in Sacrament Meeting (so that´s muy terrifying). Also, he asked our district to prepare a special musical number for one of the last weeks we´re here.  I´ll get to play the piano and everyone else will sing, and I´m STOKED.  Now we just have to pick a hymn for everyone to learn en español and practice :) 

Friday--We taught our first legit lesson!! Seriously, they aren´t kidding when they say they throw you right in.  No wonder they learn spanish in six weeks here.  They don´t have a choice!! Our investigator´s name is Genaro.  We taught him a little bit about the Restoration, how the gospel blesses families, and prayer.  We had half an hour to teach him and we went through everything we had in like 10 minutes.  So I panicked and decided to read him something from Preach My Gospel.  BAD IDEA.  So I picked a paragraph that I thought looked good and started reading, and then a couple sentences in, with my little understanding and broken spanish I could tell that it wasn´t something I was supposed to read to him, it was supposed to help the missionaries.  DUH.  So I ended up reading him some paragraph about how missionaries should teach their investigators that they can pray from their hearts and boy did I feel stupid! Oh well, first lesson....CHECK. Also, Hermano Martinez promised us today that if we read the scriptures in Spanish then we would definitely be fluent. HOW COOL.

Saturday-- Saturdays don´t actually feel like Saturdays around here because you just have classes and study like any other day, so my week is ALL screwed up. I woke up feeling like junk and all congested so that was fun, except not. Anyway, we taught Genaro the rest of the first lesson today and took like 40 minutes.  The spirit was incredible in that room!! Hermana Hansen and I didn´t have all the words that we wanted, but it was amazing that even though we were struggling with the language the spirit made up the difference. 

Sunday--I seriously felt like I was hit by a bus.  I was so sick.  I learned that Sundays are kind of fun though! Everything is in English except for Sacrament Meeting (that´s todos en español).  We had relief society and a devotional and on Sundaynights we watch church videos.  It´s different movies every week and then they always put together a little slide show for all the missionaries that are leaving and I already started feeling anxiety for when we leave! Haha that´s probably no bueno.  I love our district so much! We have 4 hermanas and 8 elders and it is so fun! The elders all just graduated high school in May so that´s a little weird, but they´re wonderful! They´re all super super sweet.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks I´ll have time to email some pictures of all of us! 

Monday--Hermana Hansen made me go to the doctor because I sounded like I was dying.  Apparently I have some kind of cold-like virus. YAY. However, I´m just gonna count my blessings with that one because most of the elders y hermanas that get sick here get sick because of the food (it´s kind of.....sketch.)  I think at least 3 of the missionaries in our district have already been sick from it.  I´m probably the least at risk though because I don´t eat very much and I´m like never hungry so estabien. Anyway, we taught Genaro the Plan of Salvation and we realized that our Spanish is finally starting to come together a little! We can understand more of what he says and we are better and putting our sentences together on the spot.  It´s still terrifying every time we start to teach him but we always feel much better after we come out.  We finished off last night with a Mexican Fiesta because it was Mexico´s Independence Day.  They had a group of dancers come in and perform for us and then they finished their performance by singing the As Sisters In Zion/Army of Helaman medley in spanish and it was like the coolest thing ever!! Then we all sang the Mexico National Anthem and it was so fun!

Tuesday-- I straightened my hair for the first time it´s been cut and we´ve taken a few pictures.  P-day has been so nice! I´ve been waiting for it! Everyone says that after your first Sunday and first P-day that everything flies by!  

Okay, I´m out of time! I love you all!! 

Hermana Wilson 

P.S. If any of you love me, you will send me chocolate to Virginia to be waiting for me when I arrive next month.  Mexico is depriving me :) 

P.P.S. This place has some cool history so hopefully next week I´ll be able to write a little about that! 

#StayThug :) 

MUCH LOVE!!