By Grapthar's hammer, by the sons of Warband, you shall be avenged!

Hello everybody! It's been quite a week here in El Paso. The work continues to roll forward in this little part of the vineyard.

This week was stake conference and we had a video broadcast from Salt Lake. Is the church starting to do that for all stake conferences? It's been that way for the last two that I've attended. Anyways, President Uchtdorf spoke as well as Elder Cook, Brother Oswald from the Sunday school presidency, and Bishop Edgley from the Presiding Bishopric. It was very cool and spiritually uplifting although a few of our investigators thought it was weird to watch church on TV.

Other big news, the BYU young ambassadors came through town this past week. We were allowed to attend their performance on the condition of having some investigators present (Which we did), and it was INCREDIBLE! I'm still rather baffled at how someone can sing so perfectly while running around and dancing. Our investigators loved it, too.

Tuesday night, we got a call from the institute director here in El Paso telling us that they were going to have a luncheon at the institute for all of the young ambassadors and that we were invited as well. Well we had a district meeting that was going to end at that exact same time so we just moved the district meeting up to the institute building and stayed for a little lunch.

Well when the young ambassadors showed up they started introducing themselves and getting to know us a little and I was talking to one of them who asked where I was from. "San Francisco" I responded, he said "Oh that's cool, we got a guy here who's from a little town called Danville." I look over and it was none other than Josh Bromley! The Auman girls were there too and I think Jordan Bromley might have been there, (He was on the program) but I didn't see him. It was nice to see a familiar face and catch up a little bit on what's going on back home. Josh is a really good guy and I felt guilt pangs while talking to him for having made fun of Show Biz growing up. (But those bright shirts with the star are just so easy!)

Anyways, afterwards they sang to us and a few other people who happened to be at the institute and it was INCREDIBLE! There's no way I can describe the feelings that were invoked by those heavenly voices. They sang some well known semi-hymns (Such as "Come Thou Fount") and then finished off with I am a Child of God.

I had an experience this week where my sports knowledge payed off. We taught a 15 year old young man named Bryan a week ago and when we went to the return appointment we got yelled at by his Dad for knocking on the door too hard. So we were on less than perfect terms with the father when we went back to try to teach Bryan again. The father answered the door and looked like he was about to unload on us but before he could get anything out I commented about his Notre Dame hat. We talked about the Fighting Irish and Charlie Weisz and their current woes for about ten minutes and he really opened up and when we left we were on good terms and he wanted us to come back to teach his son more (About the gospel, that is). What can I say? You knew watching an hour of sportscenter a day had to pay off at some point down the road.

One more experience and then I'm done. Elder Bennion and I were asked to give a training at ZLCM (Zone Leader Council Meeting), which was kinda scary. We give a lot of trainings but it's a little different when you're in front of 16 of the mission's best missionaries, along with the assistants and Mission presidency. We were asked to train on "Getting back to the basics". Well we studied and studied for hours in preparation but nothing really seemed to work out quite right. Finally, the day before I felt inspired to look through my binder of old letters. I found a handout that Dad had sent me a while ago called "Essential Principles for Missionary Work" (or something like that) by Elder M. Russell Ballard. Well it was perfect. It was EXACTLY what we needed and were looking for. My companion presented it "We received this handout from Larry Y. Wilson of the 70" which was pretty funny. (Although technically incorrect) Anyways, the handout is sweeping the mission and the training was met by rave reviews and has become the focus of the mission for this transfer cycle. It just goes to show that seemingly small acts (Like including a handout in a letter to your missionary son) can make rather large differences in the world.

Well anyways, I've written quite a lot and that's about all I have to say for this week. The gospel is true and this is the greatest work to be a part of. Keep writing, I appreciate the letters.

Sincerely,
Elder Ben Wilson