12/25/07 Christmas Day

Hello Family,
Today has been an exciting day. Elder Long(Shane),Elder Beesly, Elder De Korte and I all woke up at 6:00 am and went into one of our neighboring rooms and opened presents. We all took turns on opening them and sang songs, it was a blast. Thank you so much for my gift, it was exciting to open it and I had been looking forward to it all week long. After doing the morning Christmas thing we went to eat breakfast at 7:30. There was a devotional after breakfast, so we went straight to room 1M (The main room), to get good seats, little did we know, the meeting would not start until ten and they would not open the doors until 9:45. So our district waited on the hard steps for about 3 hours, it seemed like it would last forever.
Elder L. Tom Perry spoke today on how he celebrated Christmas in the military. It was great but the thing that really stuck out to me is how he described that the church is like a triangle. It has 3 disinct points. One; Scriptures and how they back up the principles that we teach. Two;The Prophet and his current revelations given to missionaries and Three; Preach My Gospel. Then he bore his testimony on how inspired P.M.G. is. They had many versions of PMG but they kept sending them back until they got it down into its basic principles. The talk was great! He is truly a man of god. O and by the way waiting paid off, we sat in the first rows.
I hope that you all had a Merry Christmas. I wish that I could have been there, but I feel that I am truly blessed to be here. The spirit here is remarkable. It seems as if the Spirit is on tap here. So many inspired Men of God teaaching the lessons. The way I feel the Spirit most often is when we sing, infact I feel that I caught on fire the other night. We sang "We will bring the world its trueth." I could only get the first line or so out and what made it even better/worse, as I started to look around, I saw thousands of missionaries all singing with the power of God. So much power and authority all in one room. Then all the Elders sitting around me saw me overcome and they started crying and pretty soon my whole district started crying. It was awesome but that is not my strongest spiritual experience. I have had a testimony of the Book of Mormon my whole life, it was a strong one and a good one but a couple of weeks before I left, I was asked to read in Moroni 10:3-5,Moroni's Promise, so I did and about three days ago the Spirit bore witness to me. I was literally consumed and to make a better point I say again, CONSUMED. I caught on fire with the Spirit. It hit me all at once, my testimony of the Book of Mormon grew. My testimony of Joseph Smith grew. I knew that I have been called of God to teach. I felt as if I were in Heaven. I felt my Savious Love/Fire so powerful and strong. It was awsome. I love this work and I love my Savior. The gospel is perfect and I know that through Jesus Christ, I can be made perfect. I love you all so much and miss you. Sincerely with much love, Elder Wiltbank