Day 514

Dear Family,

Well everybody another year has come and gone.  i hope we all can look back and say that it was a good year and that we were able to accomplish our goals that we had set when we began this year.  As i have reviewed my year here in the mission i feel that i have learned a lot.  i have had many experiences that i will never be able to forget.  

As i was able to talk with the family this Christmas i felt different then i had other times.  I felt a love for my savior that was different than i had felt before.  i tried expressing how i felt but it was hard to explain.  i hope you understood what i was trying to help you understand.  Christ is the savior of the world and he loves us so much.  even when we aren't perfect and we make mistakes, like in the story of the prodigal son, he is waiting with his arms open and we just have run to him. i know i have made many mistakes in my life and he has forgiven me.  i have felt that burden relieved from my back.  and with my burden being lightened it is a lot easier to be happy as i walk around and i can have a smile on my face.  you can all do it too!! you just have to want to change and decide to leave it behind and then ask for forgiveness.  and if you do it with real intent having faith in christ he will give it unto you.

With this new year we have that will start tomorrow, i invite you all to set goals.  i know not to long ago i wrote a letter about setting goals so i wont say a lot about how but just invite everybody set not only temporal goals but also spiritual goals.  after you have set those goals type them up on a sheet of paper and put them up everywhere you will see them.  for example: (the office, your room, bathroom mirror, your iphone to do list haha, etc.) 

To finish i would like to share a cool experience from this week.  we were walking an alleyway looking for people to teach and we came out of the alleyway on a little street and right when we came out we saw 3 guys trying to push a car up a hill.  im not sure why but right away i dropped the backpack and said can we help and started pushing.  i had no idea what they were trying to do until a little bit later when we started pushing it back down the hill and he started trying to put it in gear.  i realized that probably the battery had died and the were trying to push start it.  after asking a few questions the told me that it was a diesel motor not a gas motor.  i knew they were never going to start it  like this so i starting thinking who do we know that has a car with cables to help us jump-start it.  the first name that came to mind...President Calderón...haha i called him up and asked hesitantly "hey president, just a quick question...what are you doing right now" he said "nothing really just leaving the office to the house" i then asked "would mind stopping by our area to help us jump-start our friends car?" "Elder where are you at? im on my way"  so as you can all imagine president showed up, we helped them out, then asked if we could visit him sometime, and of course after such a big help he said we were more than welcome to stop by and visit.  i know that in the future he will be able to accept the gospel and be baptized.

P.S. Today my companion is starting to train his replacement (Elder Dominguez from Argentina) as the new records secretary which will be my new companion.  He is a really good soccer player and i know we will get along well :) i will send pictures next week.

Love,

     Elder Wilkinson