weekly email

This week was super busy and we had a ton to do with meetings and stuff but it was really fun. We are still working with Pancho and Juan. They are both going to get baptized this Saturday we hope. We also had the wife of the stake president invite a neighbor girl to church this week and she actually went. We are going to have a family night with her today and we are hoping that she is super good! Her name is Romina and she is studying Anthropology. I kind of forgot what that is but Im pretty sure that its something like Archaeology so we are going to talk about the Book of Mormon with her and hope that it stirrs a little bit more interest into her. Here is the photo of Me and My companion with Juan and a member lady at the temple from when we went two weeks ago! Have a good week!

weekly email

Hey everyone hows it going? So I'm writing today because we had a whole bunch of stuff to do during the first part of the week. But things here are going well. We still have Juan and Pancho progressing towards baptism but their baptismal dates had to be moved to the 13th instead of the 6th. But they are still doing well. We went with Juan last week to the temple construction site which was super good. I was going to send a picture but forgot the thing I need to send it. After the conference last week with Elder Nelson, Juan was super impacted with how normally Elder Nelson talked about how there are people on the other side of the veil who are helping with the construction of that building and so we decided to take him there. He liked it a lot. Now he has a bunch of super good questions that are like way deep doctrine and stuff so every time that we go to teach him we all get to learn a little bit. Its been super cool to teach him. He understands everything super well. He for 40 years was studying with the Jehovah's witnesses but never got baptized because he saw that there were some flaws in what they said. But now he is going to do it with us after only like 3 or 4 months. We are super excited for him. But yeah other than that we are doing super well here. Hope you all have a good week! Love you!

Elder Russell M Nelson!

So this week was super good. The highlight of the week was definitely the visit of Elder Nelson to our mission and to the stake where I am. We had a meeting with him and with the other mission as well and it was super awesome. That guy understands things and does basically whatever he wants haha. In the stake meeting on Sunday, he told all of the primary kids to stand up and sing I am a child of God to him and his wife. She is also super awesome. He talked a ton about the book of Mormon and the importance that it has in our lives. We had 4 investigators there in the reunion so hopefully they were able to feel the spirit. I got to shake elder nelsons hand too in the meeting with the mission. It was pretty neat.

The other highlight of the week was Wednesday. We had the national census and there is a law that you cant leave your house until they pass by and do the survey thing. So me and my companion prepared ourselves and we bought things to make brownies and cakes and stuff. It was nice. But that's all for this week. Hope you all have a good one!

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