Family and Friends,

This week was so good. I had several neat experiences being a missionary and I am so thankful God has put me in the position to serve him. People who contemplate going on a mission I just want to show them the blessings. But it is an experience that can only be described through personal experience. I would just like to say that this experience has already been a spiritual experience that trumps all others. We had our transfer calls this week. I will be staying in the Weston Ward with Elder Lamm. This is where I belong. And when I leave I will be super sad, but I am going to let God guide. I love it here.

So Manuel is progressing rapidly. Elder Lamm and I go over to his home for lessons and we are edified by his faith just as much or more than he is learning and accepting God's message. We taught him the Plan of Salvation. He listened and really had a lot of questions pertaining to the plan. After the lesson we talked to him about being baptized on Christmas Eve. He then asked, "Do you think I am ready?" Look as a missionary you want to get baptisms so any missionary would just go on and say YES YES YES. The spirit told me not to just go out and say yes like that. I recently had been studying about yielding to the spirit. So I was able to slow down and think about what I was going to say. The spirit allowed me to tell him, "Yes, I can feel your spirit and your attitude of missionary work and God wants you to be baptized on the 24th." This is not something I would've said without a prompting. Manuel went on to tell us it is weird that we said Christmas Eve. He told us that is when he would want to be baptized if he was baptized. He told us he would give us an answer this week. Which is great. Elder Lamm and I had a strong impression to ask him to be baptized on the 24th and it turned out to be the spirit prompting us to do that because the spirit knew what Manuel wanted.

Brett and Alejandra are doing great! We have really been working with them on marriage and things of that sort. It has been going good, but they definitely need prayers. I love this family.

I went on exchanges this week with Elder Jeong. He is one of the Stockton Zone Leaders. We had a great time. Haha. That night we had a double dinner. And it was a ton of food. We went to Denny's and then down to an appointment in south Stockton. This was great. It turned out we got to give a lesson to Samuel after dinner. Samuel and his family are interesting. It was a good lesson. The kids were really loud, but the spirit was there. We took pictures so I will send those soon.

Spiritual thought for the week. I have been studying in Jesus the Christ a lot recently. Something that really stuck out to me was Jesus' divine purpose. In the pre-existance God presented a plan. Satan volunteered for the main role and told Heavenly Father he would change the plan a little bit and then the glory would be his. After Jesus heard this he told our Father in Heaven that he would be our Savior, Submit to the Fathers will, and give the glory to our Father. This was a supreme example of humility and love. I would invite all to go read the pre-existance in Jesus the Christ. It really gave me a new perspective on Jusus' role in our life.

I hope the Fam has a great Thanksgiving. I will be missing all of you.

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Love,

Elder Willden

With Samuel's family.