Haircut time!

August 11th, 2014

Family!! 

Well you will be happy to know that we pulled off a miracle and baptized 4 people this week! Thank you so much for your prayers and everything because I know without them these people wouldn´t have gotten baptized. Starting off the week Estella did not want to get baptized at all. She was saying that she had a lot of doubts and she still couldn´t believe in the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith. We were super frustrated because she had already told us that she felt it was true and now she seemed to just be pulling out excuses. What´s worse is that the kids couldn´t get baptized either because the new rule of the area is that we can´t baptize kids without their parents. Her Daughter Darcy was about in tears when we told her that she couldn´t get baptized unless her mom got baptized too. We were super frustrated on Monday, but all we could do was say some prayers and try to get her excited again. Luckily we got some answers to our prayers. The Relief Society sisters called us Tuesday morning and asked if they could visit some investigators with us (which never happens) so we said yes and told them that we needed a lot of help with Estella. They went and visited her while we went to another appointment and we were just crossing our fingers that they could get her excited again. We called them later and to our surprise they said the visit went super well and that she was excited to get baptized again. We called her and sure enough it was true! The Relief Society gave us our miracle this week and from there we fellowshipped her even more and she got baptized with her family on Saturday! The other miracle is that her son Mario kept on telling us that he didn´t want to get baptized yet but we just kinda assumed the baptized and acted like he was joking around (even though he didn´t want to get baptized yet). We took him to get his baptismal interview and luckily that got him excited about the baptism. We definitely can´t take all the credit for these baptisms because we got a lot of help from a bunch of different people this week :) 

We are also going to have another baptism this week. One of the other families that is super special for us is the Quiñones family. We baptized their son a month ago and now the mom and the dad are going to get married and the dad baptized! The wife, Amanda, was an inactive member and we are super excited that the family was reactived and now her husband Mauricio has accepted the gospel. They are going to get married this Friday and Saturday will be the baptism. To raise the money we sold some lunches 2 weeks ago so hopefully we can collect all the money from the missionaries tomorrow in our zone meeting. 

Other than that not too much is going on. We have been playing soccer every monday and Wednesday and I am starting to get a little better. I usually get in 2 or 3 goals each time we play so I am pretty excited about that. We need to start finding some new people to teach but right now we are hoping we can baptize Daniel (the other son of Estella), Oscar (another investigator that has been to church 1 time) and Sebastian (A kid that has been to church 2 times but says he has trouble believing in God) So if you can keep them in your prayers that would be great! 

Thanks so much for the updates. Looks like summer is about over so enjoy the last days of summer. Sounds like Addison is coming home soon right? You´ll have to tell her I said hi! Thanks for all the prayers and letters and have a great week. I will send some pictures of the baptism her in a second. 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

August 2nd, 2014

Hi family,

Sorry again that I couldn´t write last week. I was trying to copy and paste something and it deleted everything! This week I will try to be more careful :) 

So this week was good again. Every week this transfer we have had good weeks but we know we can keep on improving and hopefully have great weeks! This week we are expecting 4 baptisms, but we won´t be able to do it without your prayers because these investigators have had a lot of opposition and are a little bit shaky sometimes. The first baptisms I had here in Pasto were María Edilma and Estiven and now these baptisms that are coming up is the other son of María and the sister of María and her 2 children. They have already been to church 4 times but there have been some complicated things that have happened to them. It is so hard in Colombia for the people and sometimes I wonder what we can do to help people with so many problems. A lot of times I feel like Grandma and Grandpa Armstrong how they say there are so many problems in their branch as well. Our convert Maria has gone through a ton of things ever since she got baptized and it seems that things are getting a little worse. First, she didn´t have money to buy food for her family so the ward helped her out with that a little bit back. Second, her husband left her with all her kids and isn´t helping them at all. One time he came back to their house while we were there and her 19 year old kid (the one that is going to get baptized this sat.) started to get mad because he wasn´t helping them with anything. When the husband left her son left running out of the house and started trying to fight the husband. Eventually the husband chucked a boulder at the son and they ended up getting in this big rock fight and pretty much the whole neighborhood was out wondering what was going on. Luckily Maria broke up the fight and no one really got hurt, but it was pretty crazy! Now the problem with them is that Maria is leaving the house all day long and doesn´t leave her kids with anyone. We don´t really know what Maria is doing; maybe looking for a job or something like she says, but the kids are alone pretty much all day or they go over to the aunt´s house (the one that is getting baptized with her family this Sat.) and the aunt is starting to get pretty mad. They had a problem the other day and the other family says that Maria came to the house drunk and starting hitting the kids. We don´t really know what the truth is because Maria tells us one thing and then her sister tells us another. We have commented to the bishop and the bishop is going to interview her this week and maybe get child support involved depending on what happens. With all these problems we are going to need a lot of prayers so that these people can get baptized and hopefully resolve their problems at the same time. The sister of Maria is named Estella and her 2 kids that are getting baptized are named Mario and Darcy. The other son of Maria that will get baptized is named Miguel. We need all you prayers for them this week! 

This week we also had interviews with Pres. Pricoli for the first time. They were good, but also super different from pres. Prince´s interviews. The thing that I missed was sister Prince´s banana bread that she always made for us during interviews, but guess we will have to get used to not having banana bread now. Pres. Pricoli´s vision is that we can all be celestial missionaries so we are now focusing a lot more on christlike attributes and be more worthy to receive direction from the spirit. We have to pick an attribute to study each week so this week our zone studied the humility. It will be good to develop these attributes and I invite you all to also study the attributes like it shows us in Preach my Gospel. 

Thanks for all the updates and pictures! Sounds like you guys had a great time at the family reunion and at the lake. That was crazy with the storms at the Lake! Glad everyone made it out alive though. Miss the family, but hopefully I will finally be able to go to a family reunion next year! 

Got to go so everyone have a great week this week. Love you! 

-Elder Armstrong

Oh and random thought, I asked Sister Pricoli when my release date was and she told me October 7th!! She told me it´s not a for sure thing and could change, but right now that is when I will finish because that is when the next transfer ends. Start buying the food for the parties when I get back!! and don´t worry I will keep on working til the last day in the mission :)

Happy Birthday Elder Armstrong July 20th, 2014

July 20th, 2014

Hi mom and family,

Thanks for the birthday package!! It got to Pasto on the 17th but I Didn´t get it until Friday because it was with the zone leaders. We were all super excited to get a package and I opened it here with my district :) the 2 things I was most excited about were the Preach my Gospel flags and the missionary scripture book. I have started marking all the scriptures in preach my gospel and it is amazing how I still haven´t studied a lot of things and I´m already almost finishing the mission. My goal is to try and study all of preach my gospel (including the scriptures) by the end of my mission. The book you sent me my old companion elder Laws had the same book so I thought that is a cool little book to study too.

Of course I was super excited about all the little church pictures and stuff to give out too. I am going to try and make a gift for all my converts before I leave the mission, so those little pictures and cards will be great to give out. THANK YOU!!

That is crazy that Carlee already got home from her mission! It is crazy how fast the time passes. I still feel like I have a ton of time to go, but I know it is going to pass super fast too. 

This week was a good week again so thanks for the prayers again! We had 7 people at church again and have a couple great families that will get baptized soon. One family has been super special and we had some cool experiences with them this week. It is a sister that is inactive but wants to have her son baptized in the church. We went and contacted them about 2 weeks ago and she said she has been inactive pretty much since she got baptized, but that she wants to return to the church and have her son baptized. Her son is 8 years old and he is super excited to get baptized! At first she didn´t want us to talk to her husband because he is a "jehovahs witness" but we invited to listen during the first lesson and he excepted the invitation to read and pray. Ever since then it has been smooth sailing. The husband started reading and praying and tells us almost every lesson that he feels super peaceful when we go to teach them. A once Jehovahs witness accepted the invitation to get married to his wife and after that to get baptized. We had a super spiritual lesson and one of the counselor´s in the ward helped us out a lot. We have a super good counselor here and he shared his experiences about marriage how he basically sacrificed everything to get married with his wife here in Pasto. He is from Cali and had a good job and life there. After his mission he met his future wife at a church activity and decided to move to Pasto because he wanted to marry her. He moved to Pasto without a job and even had to beg for his food sometimes, but he promised this guy that if he got married then he would find work and would receive a ton of blessings in his life. After sharing his experience, the counselor asked Mauricio (the jehovahs witness) if he would get married and he and his wife were both crying and saying how they wanted to change their lives and get married! It was a neat experience and I have no doubt that they are going to receive lot of blessings. They are going to get married and then Mauricio will get baptized after. The best experiences in the mission are to see families become converted because the gospel is all about converting families right?! 

Well that is the experience that I wanted to share and thanks again for the birthday wishes! I had a good birthday and my district bought me a surprise cake! They also followed the Latin tradition and smashed an egg on my head and poured flour on me, but guess I have to enjoy that with my last months in Colombia. I haven´t gotten a release date yet, and I´m sure I won´t get one until a week or two before the end of my mission. I know some missionaries with less than a month that still haven´t gotten their release date, so I am not expecting anything too soon. 

Love ya all and have a great week!! 

-Elder Armstrong