"For a Mother, It's Hard"

The following are Carter's mom's comments, followed by Carter's weekly email:

"Just wanted to share Carter’s latest email with you. This one REALLY got me crying!! Might even be my favorite mission email of Carter’s yet! See, THIS is why missions are so great for anyone who can go. It turns our goofy high school teenagers into these amazingly focused & spiritually grounded people who we then stand back in amazement wondering where they put the batteries & how do I get mine!

We learn from their examples in big & small ways over & over again. Even just this past week with Clark home, I found myself a little surprised (and very proud) as I took note of some of his insights & actions. This mission & time of service transformation is nothing short of a miracle to me. While also obtainable for each of us, without the mission structure, few of us would be able to come close to the levels of personal growth each brings home.

With Carter, he reminds me just how much I love that like our spirits, our testimonies can continually grow & different insights are always before us. Each time we might reach a new level of understanding within the gospel, it only opens our spirit to the next level now within our reach. Our knowledge then increases as does our desire. Of course none of this growth is ever possible without our Heavenly Father!

I am continually surprised by the growing weight of wickedness we are all feeling. Our only rescue now comes from our personal relationship with Heavenly Father. How very blessed we are to have a missionary right now who is out there standing strong with his brothers & sisters representing us! How grateful we are as a family that the work being done by Carter increases the righteousness of the world instead of taking away from it.
The gospel is true. We as members are extremely blessed far beyond our potential for understanding. The realization & fulfillment of our lives & covenants made, now lays squarely at our feet. It is our agency, our choices which determines where we stand. Now it is ours to be accountable for our actions or lack thereof. I choose to stand with Christ. -B"



"...So this week we went to Guayaquil for the Leadership Council Meeting! It was really awesome because President focused on the Atonement of Christ. He sent us all a Talk by President Uchtdorf which was really amazing and then in the meeting he showed us a bunch of pictures of Christ and asked for comments about them. One of them was Jesus on the Cross and Mary was fainted on the ground. When I looked at that I thought of myself and the difficulties that I may face as a missionary. And how hard it must have been for Jesus to have his own Mother watch Him die. It reminded me of a Gospel choir song we sang my Senior year, "Take my Mother Home". It made me think of how much Mary must have been suffering as well. For a mother it´s hard to even let a child go play at a friend´s house, let alone die on a Cross. As men, well at least for me, I never want to let my Mom see me suffer because I know how much pain it brings to her. Trust me I already know that because she saw me suffer 3 years of Chemotherapy. It impacted me pretty deeply and it helped me to have a deeper love for Christ. So ya. Christ is an incredible example of someone who finishes what He´s called to do, no matter the circumstances.

The other great thing about this week is that I had the opportunity to prepare and pass the Sacrament. While we were preparing "I Believe in Christ" was playing and it was just a super powerful moment for me.

Christ really is the center of everything in this world and the world to come. This is His Church and through and only through Him we can be saved. I know it´s true with all my heart and I testify of it daily! He lives!..."

Love, Elder Wilcox. :)

Unplanned Baptisms

     Well this week we had 6 unplanned baptisms!! :D 5 of them were planned for next week and one of them wasn't planned at all!! :D oh my goodness it was incredible. We went to a river and it was just super spiritual and amazing and I loved it and A TON of people went!! There were like 30 people there. Like whoa.
     Also on Friday the Assistants came to do an activity in the church where they showed the movie "Meet the Mormons" and it was INCREDIBLE!!!!!! I absolutely LOVED it!!! If you haven´t seen it yet go watch it!! As soon as I get home I´m gonna buy it and watch it 80 twenty times. I´m not sure what I mean by that but it´s gonna happen! :)

One Year!

     Well this week is the famous one year mark and it´s super weird! Like I don´t know anything and it´s already been a year! Like it feels like I left Santa Rosa like 2 months ago! Time is going fast and it´s kinda really weird!
     This week was another week of lots of working and looking for more people! We haven´t found much but we are taking good care of the people that we do have. Our amazing little family of 5 is progressing immensely and one of them already wants to go on a mission! Ah! :D He´s super cool. :)
The baptism went well. I had to do it twice because her feet came out of the water xD But it was a great experience because it´s a baptism! :)

Let's Get Married!

My week was pretty normal except for one day in particular... I think it was Tuesday but I went on splits with another one of the office missionaries and we went to his sector to go find new people to teach. We're going around just talking with whoever and we find this girl and she's about 20 years old and we start talking. Long story short, she asks me if I know how to cook (they get really distracted while we talk) and I said that I love to then she said, "Bueno, casémenos!" which means, Let's get married!" I had no idea what to say so we just said, uh... here's a pamphlet, go to church, bye! We basically ran away. Oh my gosh it was scary! So there's my interesting story for the week

It's a Boy!

     Well as you know my P-Day wasn't Saturday because I got transferred to the wonderful land of Naranjal!!! :D It's about two hours out of Guayaquil and it's a little town that has a little bit of everything to offer. My companion is Elder Cordero and he is from Bolivia and we get along great. He's my Step-Son! (Missionaries have a sort of lingo describing missionaries that are brand new or relatively new in the mission field. A "step son" is someone who was trained for one transfer previous by another missionary, then given another companion for their second transfer. A transfer is a period of 6 weeks.) Yep! I'm gonna finish training a new missionary! :D But this kid is super smart and he already knows like everything that there is to know. Like sometimes it feels like he's training me XD
     We're working with a family of 4 right now (Grandma, Daughter, and 2 grandkids.) and they are GOLDEN!!!! Their baptismal date right now is for Aug 15 but we're totally gonna move it up because they already have a few church attendances. :)
We had a baptism on Saturday who was Katty A. and she was SOOOO excited to get baptized! Like it seemed like she lived just for that moment in her life!

Corriendo por todos lados

     This week was super crazy!! So Monday was full of getting everything ready. Then a couple of the new missionaries came that night but their plane got delayed so I was in the airport with President and his wife for like 2 hours which was actually fun! The next I spent like $25 in taxi fare.... It was a lot! I went to the airport in the morning to do transfers for the Galapagos then I went to the temple to get a room ready for suitcases, then I went to the office, then I went to the airport again to get new missionaries, then to the stake center in Centenario, then back to the airport to pick up the new assistant who got transferred from the Galapagos! And then back to the stake center! Hahah It was a grand day. Then Thursday morning I went with President in his car to Machala!! It was awesome because it's like road trips with the fam. And President is just like a normal person and he kept cracking hilarious jokes xD Friday we came back to Guayaquil in his car as well and I asked him about a bunch of medical stuff and he explained a lot and it felt like to me that he answered a prayer that I didn't realize that I had about being a Pediatric Oncologist or not. Well the answer is definitely yes!!! I'm so doing it! President basically counseled me to do it so it's my future! No matter how long it takes I will become one!! Ya! MURICA!!!!! Haha speaking of America! We sang the Star-Spangled Banner in our Zone meeting this morning as the opening hymn! It was awesome! Also I found out yesterday that Boyd K. Packer died!! D: That's two apostles in my mission now! :( wah! I don't want him to go but he's gotta go teach the gospel to the lost spirits in the spirit world. He's gonna save so many souls there.

"The Right Place, at the Right Time"

This week was a great week of "Right place at the right time" One event in particular was when I was with Elder Haslam. We were running short on time and he just kept feeling that we had to go visit this guy in his ward who has cancer. Immediately I started feeling the need and desire to visit him too. We got there and his wife answered the door and her face completely lit up! "Elders," she said, "I've been praying that you'd come" WOW!!!! What an incredible blessing and opportunity it was for us to get there at the time that we were needed and to do what God needed us to do. We gave him a blessing and had to leave. But wow. It was truly incredible and humbling. I love being a missionary!!!

Here's my letter to President! Carter included his letter in Spanish again... Here's the translation:
     "As always I'm very happy to be here in the mission and for the opportunity to help the missionaries and my investigators. I love sharing the gospel and being an instrument in the hands of the Lord. Something specific this week was absolutely incredible!

     I was with Elder Haslam and we didn't have much time, but he felt very strongly that we needed to visit a member in the ward that is having a lot of difficulties with cancer. I immediately felt the same way. I knew that we had to go to their home. First we bought them some juice and cookies, and when we arrived, his wife came to the door and she just lit up. 'Elders', she said, 'I have been praying that you would come.' Wow!! How marvellous it was to see that God put us there in the exact moment to help and minister to his children."