Hello everybody! I can barely remember what I wrote last week so I'll probably repeat some stuff starting with: I'm here in El Paso! We're in charge of two wards. One is English and the other is Spanish. We had two food appointments with English families and one appointment with a Spanish family. The food was delicious in all three homes and I was SUPER stuffed by the end of the day. Speaking of which I'm in full car and I can already feel myself getting fatter.
This morning we played a little bit of tennis and a little bit of basketball as well. There aren't any real tennis players in the zone so I took the crown and then of course basketball was basketball.
By the way Matute is not a Polynesian name although it does kind of sound like that. Elder Matute, my companion, was born in Honduras and grew up in Florida and he says that the name is eventually from Spain. He speaks perfect Spanish and English and is an all-around stud. He's widely known as one of the best teachers in the mission and one of the easiest people to get along with.
El Paso is way different than Tucson. I forgot how NICE the people are around here. Even the white people! I think the Mexicans rub off on them and they're just nicer.
Oh by the way, my address is:
1215 Country Club rd. #7
Santa Teresa, NM, 88008
Oh yeah, you'll notice that we live in New Mexico. About 50 yards from the border between the two states and our area is half-Texas, half-New Mexico.
Tonight I get to go on exchanges to Chaparral! I miss that area so much and it's going to be cool to be able to see my converts again! And to see the golf course that I built in the yard! One of the greatest things I learned in that area is how to enjoy anything. To turn lemons into lemonade as they say. At one point I decided "I can't stop the dust storms from coming, so I'm going to love them." And I found a way to do it! You go knock doors during the dust storms and when people answer you say "It's crazy out here could you let us in for a minute?!?" and then teach an awesome lesson in their house. I can't explain how but a part of me really misses rabid dogs running everywhere and dust storms and not having anything nearby and being able to name every piece of vegetation in the town. So needless to say, I'm excited to go back.
But sorry, you probably want to hear more about where I am now. Well you've got two extremes. There's west side El Paso and Santa Teresa which are quite wealthy and, not surprisingly, don't have much work in them, and then there's Sunland park which is dirt poor and dirty and is full of investigators and lots of work.
I gave a talk in sacrament meeting in the Spanish ward. It went well. I shamelessly recycled all of the good jokes I have ever told in any talk. The ward especially liked the story of when Mom forgot to tell me that I was going to give a talk and ran a piece of paper to me at the last minute that said "Ben, you're giving a talk today, here it is."
I focused my remarks on the miracle of The Restoration and how it's spreading throughout the world. I don't quite know why but when people hear "There were 250,000 convert baptisms in the world last year!" They tend to get really excited about missionary work. I guess it feels good to feel like you're winning. (And we ARE winning!)
Well folks I was going to share one more experience but as soon as I started typing it down it felt too sacred to share. But when I get back from my mission ask me about Hermana Acosta and her sister.
Thank you all so much for the pictures and emails, I really appreciate it. It really is hard when you don't feel like you're getting any support from home (Something I've never gone through but have seen a lot with other missioanries) and so I truly am grateful for the time and effort that all of you put into writing me.
The work is going well here. It's good to be back in El Paso. Take care all!
Love,
Elder Ben Wilson
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