How's the weather up there? (‏ (2/16/15

So this week was the week of transfers. Goodbye Elder McDermott,

Hello Elder Liddell. Once again I'm shocked at just how many American companions I've had. Literally not one latino, which is basically unheard of. 

Anyways, you'll all be happy to find out that he's another tall guy! 6'4!

I think President Agazzani just thinks it's funny to see a huge giant walking around with a little short guy like me. I do get to make lots of tall jokes, which is always really fun.

I also had the chance to talk to Elder Arrington and Elder Henrie in the Terminal in Asunciòn during transfers, and I found out some cool stuff.

First of all, Pedro (my convert) now has the priesthood and has blessed the sacrament! SO PROUD, and is still active. My other convert Carlos went to EFY a few weeks ago and is also still active in the church. Made my day. Really it's awesome to see that everything is going well over there in Coronel Oviedo still, and things are doing okay in Paraguarì as well. A fun time for sure. Elder Arrington is super jealous that I'm here. Just look at all these awesome fruits of my labors. Absolutely not wasting my time here. Anyone that says a mission is a waste of time either never went on a mission or broke all of the rules all the time.

Also sorry but I forgot to take a photo withe Elder Liddell. You say his name like Chuck Liddell, but everybody here says it like "leetle" or "little" which they already called ME, which is confusing and only hurts my tender heart a little bit.

Really that's all I have to talk about this week. Summer is hot here, reading all of the standard works is an endurance race that's longer than I had thought, and I found a place that sells Snickers.

Love,

Elder Wilson

Short, but, has an awesome girlfriend. Happy late Valentine's Day, hon.

Also happy 17th Birthday to Ethan. You're so old, dude! One year left muahahaha

$3 Balsamic Vinagre (2/9/15)

Well that's the most emails I've gotten in a long time. Thanks for all the love and support. I guess I'll try to make the emails not send right more often XD. Also the computers we're using today are really slow. This email is probably going to be a bunch of miscellaneous stuff.

So this week is the week of transfers, but they don't happen until Wednesday, so we'll see where that goes when we get there, now won't we.

So this week in Paraguayan news... we had a good week of work. Yep! We worked hard, improved in just about every aspect, and had a good bit of fun. Really we're having a good time, and the ward loves us. Our Branch President is a really cool guy who got baptized 2 years ago and already does more than 200% of the other Paraguayans. His dream is to go to Utah with his family to see temple square. He's a professional photographer and has a lot of really fancy stuff. Really cool guy.Recently we received a notebook from one of the young women with over 150 references in it, including maps and whether or not the people have been through the temple. Man, are they willing to help us out.

Some of the other Elders that we live with also appreciate the finer things in life, as I do, and we try to search for the fanciest stuff they have here, to make Mondays a little more interesting. This week, Snickers, Peanut M&Ms, and bread with Balsamic vinagre. How fun is that? Today Elder Greene (one of the Americans) and I are going halvsies on some Haagen Das. Really the Paraguayan food is alright but sometimes you have to do something weird that none of the missionaries do. Really it's not that expensive to not have to suffer by eating noodles and oil. That stuff destroys your teeth.

I'm really anxious to find out what happens this next transfer, but we'll see! 

Elder Wilson

Dropping like flies (2/2/15)

So today I'm on splits with an Elder named Elder Horton (hears a who) because Elder McDermott is in Asunciòn at a leadership conference. Not a super interesting week, so I'm just going to blabber about odd specifics I'll never think about again after my mission. Probably. 

You know, at the beginning of my mission I thought that splits were a terrible idea. I've had pretty cool companions, and at times it seemed as though splits were just a time for everyone to come in and eat all of my food. But, as missionaries always do, I have grown past that first stage into the true awesomeness of splits. Really every time you have a companion you're with them to learn something, even if it's only for a day.

 I've really been trying to learn as much as I can because Elder McDermott and I recently hit the reset button on our investigators and are essentially dropping everyone to find new people. Now we've really hit a groove where we're teaching really well and I've been trying to help him out [in ensuring real conversion before baptism. I'm 100% certain it's why I'm here with him, and why I was with Elder Henrie, who is known as the "rebel of the mission" he constantly argues with some of the other missionaries about the obsession with numbers. Pretty funny to watch.

That's what you get when you're in the highest baptizing areas in one of the highest baptizing missions in the world. I've never really had issues with the leadership, because really I'm just here to help people get into heaven. McDermott has like a 3 for 19 active to inactive convert ratio. As of today, I'm 6 for 6. 

This week I also had some super fun bible bash sessions with some catholics. Let's just say we bashed pretty hard on the whole mother mary thing. It was hilarious and probably humiliating for the guy, but he was really mean so, maybe he learned something.

I'm probably staying where I am, though. We'll see.

Love,

Elder Wilson

I got this sick custom made scripture case made for my triple.

The guy and all the missionaries say this is the coolest one they've seen. All the others just have like a picture of jesus on the front and baptism stuff on the back. Mine has like Moroni with a backdrop of bricks with real aztec/mayan symbols for the book of mormon, the facsimile of abraham and the mission logo for the pearl of great price, and the first vision overlayed on some 1800s bricks. Pretty tight and super durable

100,000 guaranìes

me chillin' with thiago and mauri who are the converts of Elder Arrington. They come to church and are really cool. Thiago (who is throwing the gangsign) talks really fast and in a super high cartoony voice like ethan when he was little, and Mauri is super smart and really cool.

Hakù Tererèi (1/26/15)

This week was really, really hot. For the first time, we had to take several breaks in the shade just to not get heat stroke or something. Try walking 6 hours in 90 degree weather with what seems like a swimming 200% humidity. Actually it's pretty fun, and everybody always makes fun of my comp for having a bright red burnt sausage nose  because he doesn't use sunblock like I do. This week not much happened, so I'm going to explain some really weird random stuff.

First I'll talk about Goliath. Not the giant that David killed before he became an adulterer, but the pitbull that follows the missionaries (me) around every day! What a sweet guy. From anyone who's known me for longer than a few months, they'll know I'm not really a dog person. It might seem weird to find out that my companion and I hang out with a pitbull all the time, and it waits outside our house until we leave and follows us until we go home. It's a really calm dog, and protects us from other dogs which is cool. I'm just waiting for the day it snaps and eats my face off. Just kidding mom! Really it follows us maybe a few times a week and comes to Branch Night for the English classes and soccer. Totally a cool guy. When it follows us to lessons it always pees in people's houses. I don't really want to tell it to go away so we just sort of go along with it. 

By the way the subject of this email means "it's hot outside" in guaranì. Essentially the equivalent of Hace Calor in spanish, or RRRAAAAGHR in Wookie. Wow I'm a little crazy today. Please forgive me because honestly the sun is frying my brain. Probably. 

We're switching things up a lot, and I can already see the affects on the branches in Paraguay. It's a great place, and we're working hard all the time. Really, really fun.

Love,

Elder Wilson

Will try to send all of the pictures he can

this cool thing I bought for 70 mil guaranìes from an ex missionary in the branch. It's really cool and I'm totally bringing it home.

Goliath

(No Subject)

Another Baptism (in a river)

(but this time we had our ZL do it)

This week we baptized a 10 year old girl named Veronica. For those of you that have been keeping up with my weekly series of masterpiece epistles, this is the second young woman named Veronica I've baptized. Go figure! This time Veronica decided that she wanted our ZL to actually do the baptism, which was already kind of a plan of ours anyway because he's never baptized in a river. That really isn't the point, but it worked out anyway and was a cool experience for him and for Veronica. She's really cool, is in a part member family, and has friends in the church, so she has a support system with the members that will help her stay active. We did this baptism in a beautiful jungle area that had a really cool waterfall. I'll try to send pictures of that as well. 

Other than that, we did not have a sacrament meeting in Guazu Kua this week due to rain. Rain rain rain rain rain. We went there wednesday in the rain with some youth (which was super fun) but all of my paper stuff that wasn't laminated (planner, missionary manual) got destroyed. 

Really I can barely remember this week. I hit 6 months in the mission, and time is flying by. This week was filled with work stuff, I don't know.

Love, 

Elder Wilson

P.S. Chipa is actually super good I was so wrong

One Who Cries Out in the Wilderness‏

BAPTISM

of Simeon Jara Cantero 

(74 Years Old; Yes, I know. Another old guy)

IN A RIVER

So this week was just about the coolest ever.

On Wednesday I woke up at 3 and  walked the full 34 Km to Guazu Kua with Elder Greene (the other American living with us) for the baptism of Hermano Jara. It was worth it in every way imaginable. I got to baptize Hno Jara in a river! The spirit was extremely strong there and it was an experience I'll never forget. We also got some suuuuuper cool photos. I felt like John the Baptist. Super sweet.

After that, the week was pretty par for the course, lots of contacting, working, teaching, and a trip to Asunción for a Zone Conference. I did have to wake up at 3 AM two nights in a row, but it was super awesome so I didn't even really care.

We also had a Primary activity on Saturday that was really really fun because I love kids and they'r'e always super fun to be around. There was a bouncy house, they painted faces, and ate hot dogs. It was pretty cool.

On Sunday, I participated in the sacrament meeting in Guazu Kua as well. It was my first time blessing the Sacrament in Spanish, which went really well. We held it in the small wooden home of a family in the area. This week really I felt like I was back in the 1800s with the early saints. The spirit was with all of us during the meeting and sang with the spirit and talked with the spirit and ah man it was amazing. Everyone told me that it was always so strong there in the meetings but really I can tell you guys now that that's true. They asked me to share my testimony and during it I choked up a bit. Crazy. After that I used the Instant Snow I got in my Christmas package to show the kids what snow was like. They flipped out and had tons of fun with it. None of them had ever seen snow before. They kept laughing and shouting "ah man it's like in Frozen!" It was really touching. There were about 18 people in attendance.

Also fun fact about my area: There is a leper colony in my area! Don't worry- 1, we aren't allowed go there, 2- Leprosy isn't even contagious. The only reason that everyone thinks it is is because under Mosaic law Leprosy was considered unclean, so they put them in colonies. I really want to go there though... shame. I've heard it's gross, but hey, I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ, ya know? He worked with those guys like, 50% of the time! 

I'll make sure to send you guys some pictures too. Cool week.

Love,

Elder Wilson

 leading Hno Jara into the waters of what looks like Willy Wonka's chocolate river, but what is, in fact, river water (not populated with alligators or fat German kids named Augustus.)

 The sacrament table.

The tiny house on the prairie where we have sacrament meeting in Guazu Kua.

 The Guazu Kua Group.

 Santa Wilson giving the children a Snow day in Paraguay.

One of the kids with snow in his hair for the first time in his life (he lives hours from basically any civilization.)

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Jungle‏

People of Earth,

So my new area is even more beautiful and more of a jungle than I had thought last week. I'm going to try and include pictures if I can, because really this place is awesome. I'm glad I picked the most obvious title for my email as well. 

I'm having an awesome time in this area. Paraguarì 1.1 is about ten times larger than Coronel Oviedo 1.3, and requires a lot of walking. We have to get up at 3 am every Sunday to walk/hitchhike out to a group the missionaries recently opened in Wazu Kua. Church starts at 8:00 am. 

Speaking of Hitchhiking- We do it a lot. The nice thing is that 99.9% of the time, the people that pick us up are super nice and accepting and generally great people. The only problem is the 00.1% of the time. I don't want to freak anyone out, but next time you agree to get into someone's car, try to make sure they DON'T have a budweiser in their hands. You learn a lot on your mission. After a while of Señor Borracho telling us that hell doesn't exist while drunk driving, I forced him to stop the car and let us out. It was an interesting experience. 

Really it's a fun place. It's actually really safe (despite what I said in the last paragraph) and everyone is incredibly chill. My new comp and I are getting along really well along with the guys who live with us, and there are some great upsides to this area (like living above the place where we email). Paraguarì wooohooo!!!

Love,

Elder Wilson