Two For One - emails from June 12th & 19th

June 12^, 2017

My week was pretty good. It’s been pretty hard to get people to come to Church, so it’s been a little tough. But we are still happy and excited. This city is so pretty, there are a lot of hills and we are walking straight up sometimes, it’s super gnarly. I don’t know how people built these streets or the houses it’s so crazy, but so very cool. We have such a great view of the whole valley.

It has been so freakin’ HOT! It’s been in like the 40 Celsius and that’s really hot (104° F for us Americanos). So that’s not fun. And our ward is really dead. They don’t help us really at all and they don’t really have trust in us. I think there were some dead missionaries here that did some stupid things so now we get to deal with that and we are trying to figure out how to build that trust with them.  The bishop is cool, he is super young or at least he looks young. He reminds me of Sheldon but a little different. He likes us and is trying to help us but like I said, it’s been tough. It doesn’t mean we can’t have success, we just have to work a lot harder. We had Elder Pine of the 70 come and talk to us and he was super cool.  My Spanish is really improving I can pretty much understand everything that is said now, and that is really awesome.

June 19, 2017

Okay so last went pretty well, but this week has been pretty hard. Our area is super dead, and it has been discouraging.  And to make it all so much better, my companion had to have surgery on his nose to make it easier for him to breathe. Now he can’t work for a week at least. We really haven’t had any progressing investigators this whole change and it makes me feel like I’m not being a very productive missionary. Right now I don’t know how to change these things or how I can work differently for the Lord to see results.  I love this work and when we get someone that really is interested in the Gospel there is nothing like it. I can’t explain the joy and love I feel for these people coming unto Christ. The hardest thing is finding these people that are ready to hear it and accept it. I am going to have a lot of time on my hands this week so I think I’m really going to study the things that I need to work on as a missionary. Our purpose is to bring others unto Christ and baptize them, not for numbers but for people’s salvation. We can’t enter into the Kingdom of God without baptism, so that’s one thing I will be focusing on this week.

Even though it’s been really hard lately, it just means were going to see some miracle happen soon. I know with all my heart this Gospel is true, I know I am called to serve these people and to bring them unto Christ and I know it’s not going always going to be easy, so I’m going to do my best to show them how much our Heavenly Father loves them by being the best example I can be.

For our P-Day we went to a trampoline place today for like an hour and that was really fun. We went for a district activity and it was awesome, but it was super-hot. It’s been insanely hot here. It’s not even the hottest it will get yet. We shall see how that goes.

Love you,

Elder Wilcox 

Pictures from Mitras, early June 2017

Hey that's Elder Wilcox's MTC Companion!  

A Trip to the Temple - June 7, 2017

Email June 7, 2017

Okay, so this past week (May 29^th – June 7^th) was pretty cool. We got to change our P-day which made the week feel so long so that kinda sucked lol.  But on the bright side, it’s been like 10,000,000,000 degrees here and it’s been sooo sick! and so sweaty and awesome and fun! That was a little sarcasm in case you couldn’t tell there but it actually has been a good week. We have found a couple new people to teach who are super cool. One of the people is from a part member family, her uncles and aunts and her grandpa are members but her parents aren’t. She is super interested and likes what we have to teach. She also went to church, not this past Sunday but the one before, and we visited after.  She asked about the priesthood, so we taught her about that and she was just really awesome. She had really good questions and it was a really powerful lesson. We felt the Spirit really strong and I feel like we explained everything very well.

 Another cool thing is we went to the temple today (June 7^th), it was so beautiful. The layout of the temple is like almost exactly like the Newport Beach temple, which actually kinda made me home sick for a sec, but then I was like nah. 

After that we went to the church for our zone activity. We LARPED (live action role played?) and then we had a water balloon war. It was also a thousand million degrees so it was good to get a little wet. lol I got sunburnt again but that’s my life so it’s cool (uh NO it wasn’t cool, I can’t really show the picture he sent but it was AWFUL). We had divisions this week again. My companion, Elder Elizondo, is a district leader so he goes on splits or divisions with our district and I went with one of the zone leaders because they are in our district. It was cool, their area is so huge. They have bikes but they don’t have gears and it is super hilly here so it was so hard to pedal. The other Elders have some cool people in their ward. Our ward is struggling honestly, they don’t want to work with us and we are working really hard to gain their trust, but it has been hard.   

Still I like this area. I do feel like more like Mexico than Nuevo Laredo, but it’s still really Americanized. I don’t know how to describe it, it just feels like I’m in a weird part of the US most times but there are times where it really feels like Mexico too.

Working with Elder Elizondo again feels like we never really were a part. ha-ha he is cool. Although our Mission Prez told us after this change one of us is for sure leaving, but we don’t know who. Elder Elizondo actually might have to get surgery on his nose.  I don’t think he will go home though.

You asked me where we email from, so we are in an internet café that used to be a home.  It is set up with cement partitions between computers so we have privacy.  ha-ha everything is cement here in Mexico. It’s set up kind of like cubicles. No one can really see unless they look around the sides.

My mission is going really well. It’s hard sometimes but I think I have grown a little. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned up to this point is that the Gospel is very personal. If we don’t convert ourselves to the Gospel first as missionaries, there is no way we can teach other people to live it. And we need to convert ourselves to the Gospel not the people in the church, because if someone we don’t like does something and we don’t have a testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ then we will just leave the church. That’s something I’ve seen here and I’m sure it’s the same at home. When we have faith in Jesus Christ and we really learn for ourselves what the Atonement means for us, in our own lives, then we literally can do anything. Anything in the world is possible, and that’s not an exaggeration. It will be hard sometimes and it will take some work on our part but through Christ it is possible, anything is possible.  

Love you all,

Elder Wilcox

Pictures from Cerro de las Mitras May 2017

With Elder Elizondo again! 

A new area - Mitras Zone

Emails from May 15th and May 29th 

I got changed in early May, I left for Monterrey at 6ish on the evening of May 14^th and then spent the night at the Mission Home in Monterrey.  I am back with Elder Elizondo my trainer ha-ha. it’s kinda weird but they say it happens sometimes. Not sure why but God does so that’s all that matters. I’m stoked to be able to see more of this mission but I didn’t want to leave some of the people in Nuevo Laredo! Everyone in that ward is super nice and super cool but I know that the Lord needs me somewhere else and that the people in my new area can really be affected by me and my companion. As I packed everything the morning that I left I realized how much random crap I have so I’m going try and get rid of some stuff down here in the Mitras Zone. We are right at the base of the Cerro de las Mitras.  We are about 45 minutes from Monterrey.  I love my new area! We are literally on the side of a mountain and it’s so pretty! We can see the whole valley from our area, the view is so rad.

hahahahahah  It’s like going from South Central LA to downtown HB, it seems a lot safer. I haven’t heard any gunfire yet, but we will see. 

The hills suck but I’m getting used to them and walking is different but its fine. It’s been pretty hot, but then it just randomly rains.  Like one night it rained so hard it was crazy, for like 40 minutes, and then just stopped.

Finding new people is super hard. People like to talk to us but they never come to church. The ward is not super helpful here, which is the most important part. It’s tough because they say they will come out with us and then cancel at the last minute.

So those Rockport shoes that we bought ended up stretching out and being too big for me and giving be blisters. lol so I had to buy some good shoes to walk in again here cause I had to leave my bike in Nuevo Laredo. We went to the huge mall that is kinda near us and that was cool. It’s really expensive there. Like everything is normal price like in America but obviously, we are paying in pesos. My shoes were like 1500 pesos. 

Our P-Day activity is still playing soccer and hanging out with our district and some other missionaries of our zone. We still have a lunch with members every day and it’s always lunch. That’s just the way it is here. I think the Stake Presidents and the Mission President decided on lunch.

Not much else to tell!

I love you! 

Elder Wilcox