We have made contact with Elder Wilkinson's {Dave's Trainer} Mom and she has sent us some quotes from her son's e-mails. It is obvious from Dave's letters that he loves his trainer, but it is "doubly" nice when your trainer loves you. I will put some of Nate Wilkinson's quotes on the blog for you all to read. This is so fun to follow his mission, and letters like this weeks letter make the time go by so fast. When he is so busy doing what he is suppose to he does not have time to write much I think that is o.k.
Here are some quotes from Nate Wilkinson:
September 9, 2013
“This week has been pretty awesome. I´m officially training..................Élder Smiley!!!!!!!!! He´s the best! I love him to death! I got no time because we´re going to see a lighthouse by the ocean, but I just wanted to say that he´s incredible and that we´re having a blast and that we have a fecha for this weekend named Andrés, and we just need to get his Mom´s permission to baptize him and he´s good to go.”
September 16, 2013
“This week was incredible! We had a bunch of miracles and I´m loving being with Elder Smiley. He´s super obedient, works his butt off, and has a blast. What more can you ask for? We´re both here to baptize and that is always the best thing you can have in a companionship. I´m going to attach some pictures from Andres´ baptism this Saturday, it was the best! We had a double baptism cause we baptized Andres and the other Elders baptized Alvaro! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo! What a great way to start off Elder Smiley and Elder Ward´s missions.
I love being a missionary. We´re having a blast and baptizing, that´s it. It´s game time. We´re doing everything we possibly can to get people baptismal dates and get them to church. We had a neat experience on Sunday night. We´d set a goal to get 3 baptismal dates this week and as of Sunday at like 5 o´clock, we didn´t have any. We were a little frustrated about that but we said, "Let´s go out and find, and get 1." We went to a really great finding park and started talking to people on benches and teaching them. Exactly 90 minutes later we had set 3 baptismal dates with people we met there in the park. The Lord is preparing people to accept the Gospel and be baptized. It was neat and taught me a lot about faith. If we hadn´t had the faith that we could do it, the Lord wouldn´t have put those prepared people in our path. It was really neat and so we met our goal of 3 baptismal dates.
September 24, 2013
“We did a lot of finding and we saw a bunch of miracles. Right now we have 3 people that we are preparing to be baptized on October 12. It´s super neat and I love being a missionary. We´ve been seeing a lot of miracles as we show our faith by talking with everyone, looking through members on the fringes of activity, and following the Spirit.
October 1, 2013
We saw a miracle by putting into practice the planning instruction given in zone conference. Whenever we had time without a set visit, or a visit fell through, we would open up our weekly planning page in our agenda and begin to pass by people who lived near. We went in order of the planning steps, fechas, investigators, conversos recientes, menos activos, members and then futuros. As we walked from piso to piso we followed the Spirit contacting at least 3 people between each pass-by. The miracles that
we´ve been seeing are huge. Our contacts are more efficient, almost every time we pass by a
less-active´s piso, there is nonmember friends visiting who we set up a return visit to cook brownies with haha. It´s been the most effective finding method I´ve ever seen. Last week we found 7 investigators who were in the houses of menos activos or conversos recientes that we passed by. You´ll never waste time by visiting fringe members.
Elder Smiley is by far the most fun companion I´ve ever had. He´s crazy! He´s an incredible missionary though, he really gets missionary work. He´s teaching me a ton every day and between the two of us I think our effectiveness as the Lord´s representatives is being augmented greatly. I love Elder Smiley and he´s a perfect companion. The first thing I taught him to say was, "My companion, Elder Wilkinson, is guapo."
October 7, 2013
“Conference was incredible wasn’t it?!? It’s a great opportunity to lift our faith and receive revelation from the Spirit, I love it. My question for general conference was, “How can I baptize 25 people in 25 weeks?” I felt two strong impressions from the Spirit. First, I will improve my teaching to be more persuasive. Second, I will “keep moving forward” and strive to become a more effective missionary and emulate the example of Jesus Christ. I loved general conference, it was a spiritual, uplifting experience for me. It has brought a greater level of spirituality to our companionship and Elder Smiley is shining with the Spirit. Elder Smiley is doing great, he is so focused on his purpose and loves the work. He’s learned much about fighting through disappointment and staying positive. I consider him one of my best friends and I’m honored to be able to serve by his side. My companion is a great man.
Another neat miracle was something that came because Elder Smiley had an inspired thought. He said, “We should go wait at the church at 10:00 on Sunday morning in case someone forgets that it’s conference.” It was a great idea!!! We went to the church and waited there and at about 10:15 a guy walked in the door. He introduced himself and said he was interested in learning about the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the Melkezidek Priesthood hahahah it was crazy! We started to teach him and we asked him how he found the church. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded in half pass-along card with nothing written on it, just the name of the church. He said that he’d used the card. I asked him how he’d found the church and he said, “We’re not in New York, it wasn’t hard to find.” Hahaha I was dying it was super great!”
I love Elder Wilkinson for loving my boy. He comes home in April and we are set to go up to his homecoming! "My companion is a great man." What more could I ask for in a trainer for Dave, and my prayers have been answered because I was praying that he could keep Elder Wilkinson for another 6 weeks as his companion, and that is the way things will continue for another 6 weeks. We have put up a map of Spain in our dining room, and we will identify each town that Dave is in and as we pray we pray for Dave to do well, but we also pray for the people of that town to be receptive to the gospel. Maybe our prayers are being answered there as well, Dave seems to think the people of Bilbao are ready for the gospel. 2 Baptisms in 6 weeks and another slotted for Saturday.
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