Easter!

Easter was pretty lame for us haha. We did have to baptism of a little kid though, Victor, so that was fun. He doesn't count as a convert though because his family are less active members and hes only 8 but still it was fun to teach him. My comp forgot a white tie when he did it though haha.

Also, A member made me a cake for my birthday and then shoved it in my face:)

The week went super well though. We do have quite a few investigators that are progressing super well and going to church. We are hoping to be able to get more of them in church this coming week though. A lot of them left on vacation this week. Juan is doing super well too. He seriously is super super smart. Its so fun to teach him because he understands everything so well.This week was super awesome though because we had an investigator that we called and he was reading the Book of Mormon. He told us that he had dropped the drugs and was ready to be baptized. He's a blessing from the heavens. He put his own baptismal date actually!. His name is Pancho or Francisco and hes going to get baptized on the 6th of May! He went to church and now is doing super well. He simply got to the point where he was ready for a permanent solution to his problems and told us to call him. Its super awesome.

Hope that you all had a good week though! Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

This week was super good. We were able to find a family of three that are super awesome. They are in laws of an active family who is super good. The dad of the family died almost a year ago and always said that the day that he overcame his smoking addiction that he would get baptized. He always said that he wanted to have his kids be baptized as well. They are all super sick and we are just going to have to help them do it. We are super excited about them though and hope to be able to get them baptized super soon. Other than that, we got rained on pretty hard Friday which kind of sucked. But yeah it was a pretty average week. I don't know if there is a whole lot more to say about it. Juan is doing well, but he had a problem with the word of wisdom so he can't get baptized yet and his date fell through. He's still super good though and is progressing a ton. Other than that, not much happened. Hope you all have a good week and remember the real reason that we are going to celebrate Easter!

Elder Parker

Happy Conference Sunday!

Hi everyone. How are you all doing? I watched all of the sessions of conference and it was super great. I love conference now, which is something that I couldn't say before the mission haha. But now yeah its my favorite. I don't really remember which talk was my favorite but yeah I did like that one to the investigators a lot and there was one that was super good by President Eyring in Priesthood I think that was also super awesome even though I don't remember what he said haha.

     The work this week was tough but good. Juan is doing super well. He does have a baptismal date for the 15th of April but its not super solid I would say. Hes a super smart guy so he thinks a lot about everything we say and sometimes confuses himself and has a lot of doubts. We will see though and keep working hard with him. Elder Baquerizo and I get along super well yeah. He is super relaxed but is a machine. His parents are mission presidents in Colombia right now so he has a ton of experience with the mission but is still way fun and everything. My companion actually speaks English almost fluently haha but we still do talk in Spanish all the time. Hes super sick though. Monica and Sebastian were active up until a few years ago bu then they stopped going to church. I don't know how it happened. They might have been confirmed but they weren't put in the records of the church so they have to do it again. But they are doing okay. They are both pretty young, like 20 and 16 so its hard to get them to take things seriously, like the 70 said in the conference yesterday. Being ZL is a lot of work but its super fun and busy. I feel like what I do has a lot more importance for the work which is cool. I like it over all.

    

Andalien

So this first week was pretty nuts. I basically didn't work in my sector for like 3 days straight right at the beginning of the week because we had a Zone conference right away, a training for some of the missionaries and after the mission council. So that was pretty crazy. At the end of all of that I was super sick of sitting down and wanted to do anything else. But yeah this sector is super awesome. Its actually super close to my old sector kind of. Like 15 minutes in bus. Honestly I feel kind of useless because this ward works super well and I don't feel like it would fall apart without us. This is one of the biggest wards in the mission with like 150 people every week as an average and everything here like works.It's kind of nice. I'm with Elder Baquerizo from Ecuador. Hes just really relaxed and laid back with everything, but he does his job really well. I feel like I'm going to be able to learn a lot from him. my companion is kind of new to the area though. He has one cambio there so we are kind of getting to know the people and the sector at the same time haha. We should have a super good cambio as well.He is going to complete a year in the mission this week too so I think that we are going to have to find a way to celebrate. I already feel like I have learned a ton about organization and planning and managing people in just this one week that I have been Zone leader. Its super fun.  There are 18 other missionaries in the zone.We have 10 companionships in the zone and like half are sisters actually haha so it should be fun. Something interesting though is that we have like sister assistants to the president and the assistants of the president in our zone and they are just ridiculously good so we don't have to worry too much about them.

We have a few people here that are good investigators. We have a few people with the potential to be baptized so that is going to be awesome. One of them is Juan. Hes super smart and knows the bible super well but he likes the church a ton and has gone twice now. We are going to try and put him with a baptismal date this week. Other ones are Monica and Sebastian that were baptized actually but never confirmed so they have to do it again. Its kind of an awkward subject to bring up so we are looking for the right moment to break the news to them.

But yeah things are super great here. Hope you all have a good week!

Elder Parker

 The new zone leaders

 The Andalien zone

 Leadership Council

On to Andalien!

So this week was super good and we were able to find a few really good investigators but in the end I found out that I am leaving and going to another sector called Andalien. Im going to be a zone leader and Im already sick of hearing people Joke around about it actually. Ill be with and Elder From Ecuador that I dont know really well but it should be pretty fun.

We also had a conference with one of the 70 this week that was super awesome. he talked a ton about the Love that we have for the people that we serve and for everything about the mission. Elder Texeira is super cool. He talked about how if we love more towards the people, the language, the sector or whatever that we are going to be more willing and anxious to serve them and take the gospel to them so that they have better lives. I know that is true. All this week we have been asking in Prayer to love more and I really was able to see a difference in the attitude that I had towards the people and the attidtude that they had towards us. It was super awesome and I want to invite all of you to try and do the same. Ask for more love and for oportunities to serve others and I promise that you will be able to feel more of the saviors love for each one of you. Hope you all have a good week!

Jake

The sexy 6!

This week I passed 18 months in the mission and officially started my "Sexy 6" month mark. Its where I have to get somewhat into shape again, so that should be kind of difficult. And yeah the mission has passed by super fast. I'm not ready for it to end. Its been the best. But its a good thing I don't have to talk about it yet. This week was pretty good though. I think that the highlight was probably yesterday in church a guy showed up by himself. He had told us like 3 weeks ago that he was going to go in the street when we passed him but that isn't too uncommon so we didn't really believe him. He was also drunk in the moment so there was even less of a reason to believe him. His name is Gabriel and yesterday he showed up to church, really drunk, but he showed up. On top of that, last week we had stake conference so this week was testimony meeting. Gabriel was the first one to stand up and bear his testimony when the bishop turned the time over hahaha. It was pretty dang funny but you know what, his testimony wasn't too bad. He told us that he was a member though and committed himself to go next week too. Haha we hadn't even invited him but he is reactivating himself! That was pretty funny and cool. We also had a super good activity where we watched ·The Testaments". Like half the ward showed up and like half of those people were crying at the end of it. Its a super great movie. I invite you all to watch it. But yeah this week was pretty good. Hope it went well for all of you guys as well. Have a good one!

Elder Parker

weekly email

So this week was pretty normal. Elba is just right there still. Not saying no but not saying yes either. Its frustrating. Manuel kind of disappeared a lot like all of our other investigators but we are still pretty sure that if we can get him to commit a little more then he could definitely be baptized. We did have the opportunity a few times during the week to teach groups of teenagers and kids and it was actually pretty awesome because they are way more receptive than any of the people who we teach normally. So yeah we are just hoping that we can find some of them again and leave them a real commitment to find a really good investigator.

The highlight of the week though was definitely Thursday this week when me and my companion got sick from fried fish that we ate and were up all night suffering. My companion asked for blessing and in the middle of the blessing I had to cut it short to run to the bathroom and throw up haha. It was awesome. Friday, we stayed in the house for the majority of the day but we left to go to a ward family night and found one of the groups of teenagers and invited them. We ended up having 8 investigators in that Family night and it was awesome. 

Besides that, we still have a bunch of people that are just alright that still wont commit to be baptized so we are just focused on finding new ones. But that really isnt working to well either haha. But hope that you all have a good week! 

Elder Parker