In which Covey becomes a trainer, baptizes a 10-year-old, and gets well-cooked

This week we had a really good baptism. we baptized this one kid named Agustin Gonzales. He is 10 years old, and here is why his baptism is so awesome. His family (all the people in the picture) are members of the church, and were way active, they were all leaders and awesme membersof the ward. But about 4 years ago, something happened, and the entire extended family went inactive. While we were teaching agustin, one by one we got the whole familyinvolved. Through him and his baptism, the whole family has now re-activated in the ward. It is really exciting for the ward.

I am really nerveous! tomarrow are transferers,and I am assigned to be a trainer!! My companion is leaving, and I am going to train my "oro" here in areoparque. It is going to be a really great experience, and I know i will learn a ton! ha I feel like i am still just a "oro" (oro means gold, and thats what they call new missionaries here. I think they are called greenies or something up there), and now i get the chance to train, its a lot of responsibility, and i really am really excited to train him. More updates on that next week!

Its sad that my compañero Elder Banegasleaves though, he is really good and we worked together really well and had lots of baptisms here in areoparque (which is an area a little infamous for not baptising at all). with him, my spanish and ability to teach increased a lot, and we had a lot of fun and spiritual experiences. 

oh, we talked to cristina this week ( the one who i explained in the last letter home), and it looks like she wont get baptised at this time,  but we still have lots of faith in her. What happened is that she met some apostate mormon, and heard all sorts of lies, which gave her some doubts. But we are just working with her to develop her testimony in the Book of Mormon. If soemone believes in the book of mormon, any doubt they might have can be resolved.

I love the bookof mormon. One of the biggest blessings of being a missionary is that we have the chance to be able to relly study and memorize that book. Every page has awesome scripture, and it has every thing that mankind needs to know to be happy in this life and forever. I love it. 

Gotta go! I am getting well-cooked down here :) Its weird to think that you are all freezing in the winter! I love the misson. 

Elder Wilson

one temple trip, one baptism, and one non-baptism

This was a really great week for us! It started out with us being able to go into montevideo and be able to go to a session in the Temple! It felt so good, I love being in that sacred building, and being able to perform the sacred ordanances of the temple. It is such a strong spiritual blessing to be able to go, and I was able to recieve strong personal revelation, and also be able to be able to recieve revalation for my companionship and the people in my area that I am teaching. It was nice to be able to be in the temple and reflect over what I have done on my mission so far, what I have done well, and what i can do better. I really have a really strong testimony of Temples, and miss being able to go multiple times every week before the mission, but I am here to do ordanances for the living, not the dead!

After the session in the temple we had a really good zone conference with president da silva, it was a really really good zone conference. we read over the creation of the world in the book of Moses, and applied the principles to what we are doing as missionaries, and in the misson Montevideo Uruguay. One thing that we talked about was the order and organization of everything... literally everything that God does. And if we in our lives, or misiones, want to enjoy the guidance of the spirit, we have to have things in order, and do things the way that the lord wants us to. 

This week we had the baptism of Laura, the 18 year old daughter of Zily who got baptized a couple weeks ago. Laura is an increadibly awesome woman, but her biggest challange is that she is the most shy person i have literally ever met. I honestly think that The whole 3 weeks that we have been teaching her she only said Sí to agree to keep the commitments. In the baptismal service, i think she almost died of emberasment because there were lots of members (for this reason I dont have a picture of her, she wouldnt let us take one with her). But at the moment of her baptism, the spirit decended so strongly, more stongly that I have ever felt it in one of my converts baptisms, and I felt the strongest impression that she is going to be a really really big help to the church. For a moment both me and my companion got the same picture in our minds of her dressed in white going into the temple to recieve her endowments. it was a really special moment, all the members were crying. 

The other baptism that we had planned this week had a slightly different ending. Her name is Cristina, a señora of about 45 years, who was an absolutely golden investigator. She read the Book of Mormon like a profet, she went to church activities, she had one foot in the water, but on the day of her interview I called her to set the time, and the first thing she said was ¨no me voy a bautizarme¨ and hung up. Oh, at that moment I fealt really bad and devistated. After that phone call we wernt able to find her for 3 days to see what happened, but yesterday we made contact! And set up a charla with her for later this week. Im really anxious to see her, and see what happened. But we have lots of faith in her, she is soooo good. It is so interesting to see all of the tricks that satan plays on the people who are about to get baptized! Please pray for her. 

well, time to go! I love everyone.

chau

Elder Wilson

Areoparque

This week was really good, I am really growing to love the area Areoparque more and more. We have been working really hard here and are seeing lots of sucess. Remember how I said that when I arrived here a few weeks ago the Ward here was not really working well with the Misionaries? Well, we have been working really hard to work well with the members and leaders and gañar the confianza uhh confidance of the ward. We have seen a lot of progress. Now we are having almost every single lesson with a member and are progreassing a lot with that, which is leading us to get more and more good investigators through the members. I really have no problem clapping houses, its fun to do, but it is so painfully ineffecive to find new investigators! 

I love being able to spend all my heart might mind and strength in the lord here in my mission. I know that after the mission life is going to get really really busy and quick, and I wont be able to spend so much time specifically on the Lord. And the scary part is that my mission is flying by so quick! I feel like I just got here in Uruguay a couple weeks ago, but its already been almost 6 monthes since I gave my farewell talk and hopped on the plane! But i love my mission. If anyone is reading this who is deciding wether or not to serve a mission, Do It! it is the best thing you will ever do.

The mission is the best marriage prep, father prep, work prep, school prep, leadership prep, deciple prep, cooking prep, budgeting prep... well just life prep class anyone could ever take.But those are selfish reasons to go.  the best part about being able to serve a mission is that you get to help out the Lord in his ¨work and glory.. to bring to pass the imortality and eternal life of man¨, and when you do that you get to see a little bit of what he means about the pure love of christ. I dunno, the best part of the mission is the love. 

Anyways... Im reading the Old Testiment right now, and am learning a lot of  good things, but it really is a BIG test of faith to belive some of the things that it says. I would recommend a study of the Book of Mormon before the OT :)

I love everyone. Thanks for your prayres. 

Elder Wilson

ants and white pants

zuly and bryan, with the bishop doing the baptism. The rest of the kids are children/grandchildren of Zuli and friends of Bryan.

another Uruguayan sky. sorry, but when I dont have any good pictures I just put the ones I have takin of the sky. Its hard to take pictures here, because I dont take my camera out.

This week went really good. We had the baptisms of Zuly and Bryan. Zuly is a 47 year old woman who we fould just knocking doors. Her Husband died just 2 years ago, and it was/is really hard for the family. She progressed really fast to her baptism, now we are teaching her 18 year old daughter Laura. Laura is a really good investigator, but she is reaaaallly shy. I think that the only words we have ever heard her say are yes when she commits to live the commandments. 

Bryan, the other baptism, is a 14 year old boy, who his friends brought to the church, we taught him, and he got baptized. It is really good for the ward, because they are in desperate and constand serch for priesthood holders. He is a really good kid, and it is good for him to have the help of the Holy Ghost because his house has a really hard environment. It was kind of funny, but we had to almost literally drag him out of the bathroom and into the baptism because he was WAY emberassed to be seen wearing funny looking white clothes in front of his friends. But he is a really good kid. 

I have a personal goal to never get my white pants wet on my mission. I dont want to have to perform a single baptismal ordanance, but rather have members of the ward perform the ordanance. This will help the inviestigators feel more loved in the ward, and also will help animate the members of the Ward to use their priesthood, and develop their testimonies, and also it helps the members have more trust in the missionaries. This week the bishop did the baptisms. 

Also, I am really really really happy because I saw in the weekly newsletter that the people I had been teaching forever in Rocha got baptized 3 day after I left! It feels really good to be able to look back and see how peoples lives have changed. 

Our goal is to have every single lession with a member, and so far we have seen lots of good results from our work. it takes a lot of faith, coordination, diligence and hard work to work well with the members, but the results are really good. I fermly believe that Bryan and Zuly got baptized because they had had a member in every lesson with them. 

I am getting really good at cooking too. 

One fun fact about Uruguay is that they do their ants Jungle style, or in other words, they have huge lines of millions of ants eating everything in their way. I will try to get a picture, they pass through (literally) our house usually every wednesday. 

I love the mission. I miss you all... I cant remember exactly when Thanksgiving is, but if its this week, Happy Thankgiving!!!

Elder Wilson