Texas!!

Hi y'all!

As you can tell from my salutation I am hard at work learning the native language here in the Lone Star State. It is beautiful country. The clouds here are the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life. We went out to see a potential investigator out in the boonies (though to be honest we are kind of already in the boonies here in Liberty) the other day, and never managed to find her, but I was thankful to have an opportunity to see the dense forests, murky swamps, and golden fields here in the backwoods of East Texas.

The joke of the Texas Houston East Mission is that it is T.H.E. Mission. I know--pretty funny right? Being here has been wonderful. The MTC was getting to be a little like a prison, so I am glad to be out in the field finally. The first investigator that I got to teach was a lady named Anna who suffered a heart attack a few years back and is a little bit crazy. She was super nice but really hard to teach. Everything she said prompted a different approach so that by the end of that lesson we had no idea what we wanted to teach her the next lesson. I walked out of the lesson thinking, "That investigator is long shot." Well, Anna attended TWO sessions of Conference this weekend and has progressed so far that I consider it nothing short of a miracle.

I think as church members we forget how much Jesus Christ's gospel can change people's lives. I have seen it again and again in just one week. Here we deal mostly with poor downtrodden directionless folks, and it is incredible what a little bit of light can do in their lives.

One of my favorite parts of missionary work is just meeting all of these strange interesting people. I am in a trio, and one of my companions, Elder Kalilimoku (who also happens to be from Oregon) is really good at remember the rule to "Talk to everyone". I also get to practice my spanish with random hombres on the street--although it often comes out slowly as I know have it confused with Portuguese ("muito--muito--muito--MUY bien...disculpe")

This week has been full of miracles, and as Elder Henrie has said, its been probably the busiest week he's had since he's been out.

Thank you so much for all your love and everything you've done for me. Being away from those you love seems to be the most effective way of learning to appreciate them.

I really loved all your letters! Especially Rachel's--haha. Justin, your's was uncanny in that the shark motif was already a running joke in my MTC district. Do you have some sort of surveillance equipment to keep track of me? As a note, its "Tuburao" in portuguese.

Thanks again to Bro Minor, as always! He knows how to put even the best families to shame in the field of faithful correspondence.

com amor,

Elder Wilder

Sorry all, I forgot to include this on yesterday's email. Here is my address which you can use to send me letters and packages and what have you!

Elder Luke Wilder

528A Oklahoma St

Liberty, TX 77575

USA

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Luke