Week 15

Dear Mom and Dad,

Hiya! Ah it is great to hear from you haha it has been a pretty crazy week and it feels like I haven't emailed you in a while! It sounds like everything is going great. Thank you so much for the pictures mom! I love being able to see what is going on at home. Brayson looks like a stud in that number 10 jersey haha. I'm glad that Cole had a good game! Sounds like they are doing better. Hopefully everything goes great in the playoffs! And I hope that the hunting season turned out alright haha.I am excited to get your packages mom! And dad I guess for my birthday from Amazon I could definitely use some thermal underwear and maybe an umbrella haha. Maybe even an electric shaver but I don't desperately need that so yeah haha. I sent you all a personal letter back home last Monday so you should get it sometime this week. I hope you all like them:) And I expect a letter back from all of you!! haha. And Make sure to send it to the mission home, not Shrewsbury haha. I am certainly going to miss celebrating Thanksgiving haha that was always one of my favorite holidays. Just eat until I can't breathe and then have another entire Banana Cream Pie haha those were some good times.

Dad I am soooo happy that you are happy. I wish I could have been there to see it all! And I wish I could just give you and everyone else a big bear hug about all these great things haha. I hope everything keeps going great!

Well I am in Stockport now! Transfers went well even though they were Kind of crazy haha we made it and survived;) I am with Elder B. He is also a District Leader and He is from Northern Cali in a little town North of Sacramento. He has been out for almost 11 months and he seems like an amazing missionary and I am super excited to serve with him! Stockport is so much bigger then Shrewsbury haha. Walking in towne center reminds me a little bit of like Washington DC. There are so many people and it is a bit dangerous with all the hood rats but it's all good haha. We live in a nice little place kind of on the outside of town.

Oh my goodness haha so we got here on Saturday night and we had no idea where we were or where the chapel was. We got a text saying that we had Ward Council at 7:45 in the morning so we got up pretty early on Sunday. We knew what bus to take but we didn't know exactly how long or far the walk would be to get to the bus stop. Well the walk turned out to be like over a mile! We were fast walking like Champions and we saw the bus come early so we just started sprinting. I Wish you could have seen us in our suitcoats sprinting like 200 yards for that bus haha it must have been hilarious but we made it!

The first night we were in Stockport we went finding and we were were able to find 4 new investigators! We were just talking with everyone and it went so well We also found a new one yesterday as well which was great. We got to have ward council on Sunday morning as well as correlation with our Ward Mission Leader Brother Sam Rushworth. He seems like such a good man and so focused on missionary work. I am so excited to be able to work with him to make the work explode here in Stockport. Elder B. and I are very humbled but grateful to have the opportunity to whitewash this area. We know that anything is possible with the Lord and direction from the Spirit! I guess the work has been going really slow here lately but Elder B. and I are going to turn it around.

I cannot explain to you how much the power of prayer changes my day almost every single day! It is truly remarkable what God can and will do for us if we will just humble ourselves and ask him. I found that I have been relying a bit too much on my own abilities and letting it stress me out. I certainly want to improve my abilities as a missionary in every way that I can but I need to remember that the Spirit is the key.  It doesn't matter how much I know as long as I can teach by and with the Spirit in unity with my companion. I am so grateful to be able to serve with Elder B. He has no fear in talking to people and I love it! I read in Alma 31 about Alma's Prayer of Faith. Alma didn't pray to have his burdens taken away but he prayed that he would have the strength to bare his pains and afflictions with patience. That is so remarkable. If we had our trials taken away we would never grow. I hope I can obtain the Faith of Alma to ask for strength and Patience. I was also reading the story of the Jaredites and how they were tossed about by the seas and winds as they went to the promised land. The wind continuously blew towards the promised land. It wasn't the calm seas that got them there but it was the stormy seas that lead them to where we needed to be. I liken it to our lives.
I wish I could remember every single thing from my studies that I could tell you about but I guess that's what my study journal is for haha. I cherish the study time that we have every day and I have loved studying the Atonement. I love in Mosiah Chapter 4 where it talks about believing in God in verse 9 and then in verse 10 it says something like, If ye believe these things, see that ye do them. Faith leads to action and I know that is what we need to do ourselves is act and that is what we need investigators to do is to act on the Faith that they have. 

There is a story that I would like you to all read. It's titled 'Push-ups For Donuts'. It is a short and simple story but it brought tears to my eyes as it symbolized the Atonement.

I love you all with all of my heart and I hope and pray that you have a tremendous week! I testify that our Savior lives and loves each and every one of us and that He knows as by name and do so in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

xoxoxoox

Love,

Elder Wilcox