Mom and family,

Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! We had a normal day here and ate some chicken and rice as always :) The good news here is that we are not in a trio anymore. Elder Dahlin already recovered from his surgery and we have elder Aguilera back again. I actually didn´t mind being in a trio.  We didn´t really find anybody this week because we were just trying to teach all of our previous investigators which left us hardly any time to find new people. We did do some divisions with some members (one person from the trio went with a member) so when we did that we had a little bit more time to find and visit people. The trio also left us no time to visit the inactive people that we are trying to reactivate but we are going to focus on that this week. We have 2 people picked out that we are going to work with to reactivate this month. And yes the senior missionaries are great! I haven´t really talked to them much yet (they come to our ward, but we don´t have much time to talk in the church) so I am not sure about their responsibilities. I know the sister is a nurse so she will be helping with that. 

We have an investigator that is getting baptized this weekend.  She is an english teacher. Her name is Maria Consuelo and it is cool because she is going to help the new sister senior missionary learn Spanish! This lady is super sweet and we are excited for her to get baptized. 

Thursday I did divisions with the other zone leader here in his area. His area is a lot different because there are a lot of wealthy people there. It is a huge area and even includes a little town that is 40 minutes away in bus. We did a ton of walking. . . a lot of people that weren´t home. After walking like 3 hours in the night without catching anybody home we just went a bought some fast food. I am a big fan of the fast food in the street here even though I have been trying to cut back. They have food that is really cheap and good. With Elder Viza, our zone leader, I tried this food called Rellena for the first time. Rellena is like Cows intestines but it is stuffed with rice a stuff. It actually wasn´t bad at all even though I had heard some pretty bad stories about it! 

On Sunday we actually had a pretty good attendance of investigators. We had 5 people in each area which was a miracle considering that we were 3 people working in 2 areas! We led the whole zone in attendance as a district so I thought that was pretty impressive. We didn´t really find new investigators during the week, so we went out tracting.  My companion doesn't really like tracting, so I have to do all the contacting when we get to that point. We hardly ever have to knock doors, but it was nice because we only had to knock 5 doors before we found a family of 4 that became new investigators. Another Sunday miracle! 

For P-day today we went to Pricemart again. I bought my district donuts there too for the district meeting tomorrow since we led the zone in church attendance! Things are still hard as a district leader.  This week I was studying a lot about charity. In Moroni 7:48 it says that we need to pray to God to be filled with this love for other. In preach my gospel it explains that if we do this and strive to do works of righteousness we will be filled with love for the people. In almost every church article about leadership the principle topic is charity too, so I am trying to follow this counsel a lot. I also like 1 Peter 4:8 which says something like that we will also be protected from sin and temptation when we develop this atribute. 

Well sounds like everyone is doing great! Good luck to Tanner and Mom with that challenge of the book of Mormon. That is a LOT of reading, but I am sure that you can do it! Pres. Prince told us today that we will have between the 15th and 31st of December to do the calls, so be thinking about when you all want to do that. I could do 2 calls of like 30 minutes again if you want. Anyways talk to yall next week! 

love,

Elder Armstrong

Hi mom and family,

Sorry about your hectic morning mom! Don´t worry being a little late to school never hurt anybody too much ;) haha just kidding! That is cool that Tanner can drive now though. He can probably drive himself to school every morning then right? 

Our week went alright. We have been finding 10 new people to teach every week pretty consistently. We just have the goal of 10 every week and we can usually find that many without have to knock doors or anything. We get most of our new investigators off of past investigators (people that were listening to the missionaries before) and references from investigators. The district is doing alright. It is still super hard, but better I guess. The big news of this week is that we are now a trio of missionaries though. Elder Aguilera, the companion of Elder Nail, got sent to a different area. What happened is that Elder Dahlin, our zone leader, got sick and had to get his appendix taken out this week. He is now in the offices recovering from his operation for one or two weeks. While he is in the offices, Elder Aguilera was sent to be the companion of Elder Viza, our other zone leader.  This means that we are now in a trio. It is going to be really different. We are going to have to figure some things out. First of all I have never been in a trio so it is super different trying to plan and teach with 3 people! Also we now have 2 areas to handle instead of just one! We might have to switch back and forth between areas now or something. We are going to try and see if we can go on some splits with members too. If we can get a member to help, one person can go with the member and the other 2 can go in the other area.  

Well other news of the mission: we have new senior missionaries! They arrived here just this last week and they are a cute couple from Tooele Utah. They will be attending our ward here because they live in apartments by us. Our area and ward is Terron Colorado. The majority of the members are the poor, humble colombians, but the ward boundaries also include down at the bottom of the hill where rich people in apartments live. It was cool to have them in the ward. They are named Elder and Sis. Aagard. The Elder speaks spanish but the sister doesn´t speak anything. They called them both up to bear their testimonies this past sunday and sis Aagard had to have everything written down to stumble through it. It reminded me when I was first trying to learn spanish and how I couldn´t say absolutely anything! I could tell the Sister was super nervous, but she got through it and it turned out well. 

Also, that sunday we went to a area training, a broadcast from the area seventies that talked about the importance of the ward council in the missionary work. We were supposed to go all as wards (all the members of the organizations) but it was kinda sad that only 4 people from our ward came.  It was a broadcast, but there was a section where we were supposed to meet together with our ward to talk about the broadcast and our ward council wasn´t even there! We have a good ward, but people just are a little flaky on things sometimes. Hopefully that our ward can get together this week and start doing the meetings. It is the new vision of the area right now that we work more together with our ward and that we start trying to reactivate people too. We are going to start with that this week, visiting the inactives and give them the lessons over again. We have to give them all the commitments over again, but instead of a baptism, the inactives have to accept an interview with the bishop and receive a calling. If they go through all this process and receive a calling they are considered "rescued" members. 

Well hope you guys have a great thanksgiving this weekend! Save some turkey for me! haha I will just be here eating the usual soup, rice, and a piece of meat.. Thanks for sending some packages though mom.Thanks a lot for everything! I will try and send some pictures in this email too. Got to go bye!

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Mom and family,

Thanks so much for your letter mom! That is one of the best letters I have received in the mission and it really motivated and helped me :) I keep on moving forward in the mission. The challenge of district leader hasn`t gotten any easier, but I feel like I am trying hard. For the first time in my life though it isn`t about just doing the best to help myselt, but rather I have to figure out how to help each member of my district. I am just trying to be a super good example in everything. Most of the time if I try to correct people, they just end up getting offended and it backfires on me. Me and Elder Lopez get along alright but we have completely different ideas on the mission work.  I am trying to have a lot of patience because I am realizing just how different the cultures are between Americans and other countries. Both Elder Nail and I are the super different from our companions, but I guess that is part of the mission just learning to love your companions even though there are soo many things that just make me want to freak out! :)

Oh and that sounds so sweet for Christmas! You guys are always so thoughtful and I feel so spoiled because there are so many missionaries that don`t get anything from their families for christmas. A lot of missionaries don`t even get letters from their families every week, believe it or not. I feel so blessed that I always have inspiring letters to read from the family every week and that I have so much support! Another Ipod would be great if you could! I love listening to the classical music so if Grandma could hook me up with some classical music that isn`t on the other ipod and so holiday music would be great too :) but I am just happy for whatever I get, so don`t worry about that too much. 

My week was just normal. We went though the week teaching our lessons and we set one baptismal date, but unfortunately it fell through because the investigator didn`t attend church. Probably the highlight of my week was sunday because I gave a talk in church. I didn`t have too much time at all to prepare (the bishop always asks us to give talks at the last second) but it actually turned out really good I thought. I thought it was for sure the best talk I have given in spanish since I`ve been here! I talked on the members fellowshipping the investigators. I based my talk on one by Elder Ballard named the hand of fellowship (it was in spanish so not actually sure how it is in English). I just talked to the members about how we need to fellowship and greet everyone in our lives. We need to be friends with all our neighbors and all the people that step into the church. Even if they don`t except the gospel that doesn`t mean that we can`t fellowship them and can`t keep on trying. I shared some stories from when I sold pest control and I think the people liked that. I told them all the secrets of selling stuff like the smiling, the eye contact,etc and I told them that we need to be that way with the investigators that step into the church too! 

That is about it for this week, we've got to get out working. Thanks for the lasagna recipe mom, I will have to make that with the investigators if I can find the stuff here. Tell Tanner good job on his eagle, that is super cool for him! Hope the girls are doing great in school and everything too. I will talk to everyone next week! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Mom and family,

Glad that everyone had a good week. I am so excited about Grandma and Grandpa with their mission call! I was hoping that they would get to come to Colombia, but they will do great in Philadelphia too. We are getting 2 senior missionaries this next transfer finally. We haven´t had the senior missionaries for about 3 months now. That is too bad that they won´t be there when I get back, we will have to go visit them! That is great that Tanner got his Eagle too! I didn´t really he had already got all the stuff done for it. Tell him good job!

 Well this week has been one of the hardest weeks of my mission. It is not easy to be a district leader for this district. Elder Darley got transferred and Elder Nail arrived. He is a kid from Dallas Texas and he only has 4 months in the mission! He reminds me of myself when I was just starting the mission, he studies his spanish like crazy. It is amazing that he knows so much spanish.

I learned this week that it is not easy being a district leader! I of course am trying to help my district improve on the obedience and stats, but it is a lot easier said than done. The obedience has been the hardest part! Luckily I have Elder Nail here and he is a super obedient missionary, but the others don`t listen to anything I say!   I am not sure how to help people be obedient when they don`t listen.. I am trying to at least be a good example and be loving about it though! 

Tuesday we had our first district meeting with me running the show! I actually thought it went pretty good and my district seemed to listen to me. In the mission right now we have the goal to "rescue" 4 inactives. We talked about that in our meeting and we have to start finding inactives that we think can be reactivated. We have to teach them all the missionary lessons over again, and they have to attend church twice. They also have to receive a calling and interview by the bishop to be considered "rescued". We went over that in the meeting and we talked about the other goal the mission has to baptize 2 people this month and 5 for December. Elder Lopez and I don`t have much going for us right now, so I felt kinda guilty talking about how we need to meet all these goals when we don`t even have anyone that is preparing for baptism right now.. We have to have a big week this week if we want to hit these goals! Luckily the other 2 missionaries in our district have got some people that are getting ready for baptism. 

That is just about all that happened this week, so just pray that these missionaries in our district will start trying to be more obedient and that we can have some success! I was studying in D&C 121 today and I found some cool verses that I wanted to share. At the end of the chapter it talks about how there are many called but few chosen. It says that many people when they get a little authority they want to exercise unrighteous dominion. The Lord shows us the right way to lead at the end of the chapter. I read it in Spanish, but it says that we need to correct the people at first, but then we need to show that we love them. That is what I am going to try and do as a leader. Sometimes I am afraid to correct people, but I am going to try to listen to the spirit and if he tells me to correct I am going to try and do it with courage but then show love for the person at the same time. Easier said then done, haha but I guess that is the secret right there! 

I got a letter from Grandma and Grandpa Armstrong so tell them thanks for that! I am so excited for them and know they will be great missionaries! Also Mom I was going to ask you, do you think you could send me a lasagna recipe? Some people were asking me to make that and that would be cool to make here :) Got to go but you are all in my prayers.

I will talk to everyone next week! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Elder Armstrong, with his Zone

Glad you could get my letter and glad that everyone had a great halloween! We had a pretty good halloween here too, although it is not anything like the U.S!

This week was good, but we didn´t meet up with our goal of investigators attending church. We only had 2 people that went and the goal was 10 people attending.. Whoops. We need to do something different to get people to come to church. I will hurry and list a couple highlights of my week now:

-Halloween was cool but I miss all the candy from my country! That night we did an activity that turned out great. We went to a member´s house and they invited 4 people that were new investigators for us! Member involvement is always the best way to find great investigators.
On Halloween all of Colombia were going nuts! Everyone is in the streets with costumes and people walk around and spray this silly string stuff at you!

-On Friday we got to do something cool: the transfers are this next week and some new missionaries were arriving to the mission. President Prince has a conference this week, so he had the new missionaries come a couple days early so he could welcome them and interview them. They were just kinda hanging out during the night so we got a call asking if the new missionaries could come teach with us! We are only like 10 minutes away from the offices, so the assistants had us go pick them up to teach with us. It was just so cool to see missionaries that were just arriving with exactly 10 days in the mission! You could see that they were just so excited to serve and that didn´t have any idea of what they were doing, but they were excited to get out there and do whatever the Lord commanded them! We played a little prank on them at first and told them that Nasly, our convert was a Jehovahs witness and would listen to us. She was having them teach her for a second and was being super hard! After we told them we were just joking, and actually had them teach Nasly´s mom which is actually our investigators! They of course thought we would be joking with her too, but they taught her like a real investigator and it was funny, but super cool to see them teach right out of the MTC! When they found out that she was a real investigator they were so proud of themselves for teaching their first real lesson in the field! Elder Jolley in my zone is going to be training one of them, so that is exciting for him. 

-Well I guess the biggest news of this week are the transfers. I didnt get transfered, but I got called as a district leader! Elder Darley, our old district leader, got transferred to another part so now I am the district leader and another missionary from Texas is coming! I am soo soo nervous and have no idea how to be a leader in the mission, but I guess I will just try my best! We are going to miss Elder Darley a lot and it will be weird without him, but that is the mission. We are going to have our first district meeting tomorrow, and I have to direct everything and I am going to have to collect all the numbers every night. I feel like I don´t have the right personality to be a leader in the mission because I don´t know how to motivate people, I don´t know how to make people listen to me to do things. Pray for me a lot in this leadership position,  I want my district to be the best district in the world! 

Well looks like I got to go here. Great to hear about the conference you had with the seventies and everything. I will have to add some spiritual thoughts for the next letter and organize my thoughts a little better for next week. Everyone have a great week! 

-Elder Armstrong

Mom,

Happy Birthday! Sounds like it was so fun with everything that you had going on. . .  I'm glad that you could do some things with the family. Don`t have a lot of time today, we are getting started writing a little late here. Today Elder Darley and I went to Americas, our old area. I replaced him there so we both had a lot of people that we wanted to visit. It is so weird going back to an old area and visiting people. You have the strangest feeling walking down streets that you used to walk every day almost a year ago! I was actually super sad, because I found out that two out of the 3 people we baptized there are inactive now. I don`t know if you remember about Nestor that I baptized there, but he completely hit rock bottom. I talked to the members about him and it is super sad what happened. He was saving up money for his mission and one of the ward members had given him a job. I guess he started having problems with the member that he was working for, because he was wanting to take a lot of breaks. He eventually quit his job with the member and stopped going to church and everything. He started having problems at his foundation with the people too so he moved away from Americas. He blew all the money that he was saving for his mission and even I guess sold all his books and materials that the church had given him at the local pawn shop. It was so so sad for me because he was such a good convert and the ward members had taken him in as family. It is so frustrating to have your converts go inactive like that! Especially Nestor.. We did visit my other convert there, Jonathan, and things went a little better with him. He stopped going to church, but seems like he was just being a little lazy and I think if the missionaries visit him again he will start going to church. I wrote down his number and I am going to have the missionaries there visit him. 

Nasly is doing good. She is super busy, but seems to being doing great still. We are teaching her mom too and she is progressing along too. She doesn`t want to accept a baptismal date, but she likes reading her Book of Mormon and going to church so hopefully we can get her to accept a date this week. 

Nothing much more to report. The work is going a little slow here. I haven`t quite figured out to work well with this companion. We get along great, but we just have different ideas and I`m not sure if we are working as effectively as we could. We have a big week this week to try and find a lot of people and get people to go to church. The goal of the mission is to have 15 new investigators this week and 10 that go to church, so we are going to have to work hard and have some miracles to meet those goals! Thank you so much for the updates with everything. I've got to go here, but love everybody and I will talk to you next week! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

October 20th, 2013

This was a good week in Colombia.  The highlight of this week was our baptism. His name is Cristian and he was baptized this last Saturday. We had barely taught him before this week, but he already had a ton of friends in the church and even went to a church youth convention here with them. When we taught him on Saturday he wasn`t so sure if he would be ready to get baptized, but we asked him if he was willing to work hard to meet his goal of baptism this Saturday, and he said yes. We taught him all of the lessons and luckily he didn`t have problems with the word of wisdom or anything! The thing that was most special for him though, was the baptism interview. Something I have learned in the mission is that people can change their minds and really feel the spirit in the baptismal interview. It is an opportunity for the missionary that is interviewing them to just resolve all of their doubts and ask direct questions. Cristian was a little shaky all week, but after his interview it really solidified the baptism for him and he could recognize that he had received an answer from God that he should get baptized. We had the baptism on Saturday and everything went pretty great. I don`t know if I mentioned that my companion Elder Lopez plays the violin but he does and we played together the piano (electric keyboard) and the violin in the baptism. He taught himself to play the violin. He holds the bow about at the midpoint and says it is to play faster and more accurate! I think the people liked that we could play together.

The other thing that was cool is that we helped out for the primary program here, which they had this past sunday. We rehearsed with the kids a couple of times this week (me on piano and my companion on violin) and  had the program on sunday. It turned out good.  Luckily, no one knows music here so they were able to overlook some mistakes. The coolest part was this little girl that recited all 13 articles of faith in Spanish! Also there were some cool talks by all the little kids. I was really impressed by their testimonies. Of course, I was super jealous the whole time of how good they good speak spanish.. ha.

Today we had our soccer tounament with the mission. Going into the tournament I thought we had one of the worst teams (with 4 americans that don`t know how to play soccer!) but, we actually went into the tournament and surprised everyone! Only about half of the mission actually came to the tournament (there are some places pretty far so only the missionaries within 4 hours of Cali came) but it was nice to meet up with some of my buddies of the mission! We played all morning and won every game. We made it to the championship game and everyone was super excited. We played way hard but it turned out that no one scored a goal in the whole 20 minute game. If there is no goal scored you take turns kicking goal kicks just one person at a time. We were so so even and I kicked a goal in to save us from losing one time (I was super nervous and surpised everyone!).  Unfortunately, we ended up losing in the end :( .  It was so cool to have a tournament with the whole mission though, and we were so close to winning the best soccer team in the whole mission! 

Well there is the highlight of this week. Things are going good here as you can see! Oh I got bit by a dog this week too haha but it is because I like to bug the animals until they get mad. It was just a little bite on the hand though and I am fine! I will talk to everyone next week. Mom happy birthday this week too!

Love,

Elder Armstrong

October 13, 2013

Thanks for the pictures, everyone looks great :) I am writing this email and it is pouring rain and there is a ton of lightning. I had never heard lightning and thunder so strong before I came to Colombia. Sometimes I wonder how it doesn`t hit people! 

This week was nice, but we didn`t get the results that we need to be hitting. We have set some steep goals in the mission and if we are going to hit any of them we`ve got to figure out how to work here better. The mission goal for these last 3 months is 3 baptisms this month, 4 in November, and 5 baptisms in December. It is baptisms by ward which most wards have at least 4 missionaries so it is not quite as hard. In December we are working to set the record for the mission of most baptisms in a month. The previous record is 302 baptisms in a month so we need to be able beat that. In September we had 272 baptisms as a mission and that was the best in about 20 years or so. Now we just need 30 more baptisms! There are seriously so many goals on the mission.  Sometimes I wonder how we can accomplish all this when we barely have any good investigators right now! I know that we will need a miracle and a lot of faith to pull all these goals off. 

Just a few things about the week:

-On Tuesday we went to the Colombian office of foreign affairs to renew the Visa of my companion. We had to sit there all morning but it was fun because we were with other missionaries. We got to go to mcdonalds for lunch and with the money they gave us we all bought 2 big macs, even the sister missionaries that were there! I just thought it was funny taking a tray of like 10 big macs for 6 people and everyone just staring at us! In Colombia Mcdonalds is like gourmet food for them and super expensive so people aren`t really there buying 10 hamburgers off the dollar menu. 

-On Sunday Pres.and Sis. Prince came to our ward. They actually live in our ward boundaries, but this is the first time that they have come to the ward in the 2 months that I have been here. It was cool to see them there and  funny to see them using their iphones and tablets to look up the scriptures when they were the only ones there that had that kind of technology! Our convert Nasly spoke in sacrament and we were all super proud of her for being that brave to speak about 3 weeks after her baptism! She still hasn`t quite learned how to dress to go to church (you should have seen the look on Sis. Prince`s face when she walked up to the pulpit) but she gave a great talk on Conversion. She told everyone how important it is to not just get baptized because you like the missionaries or because there are cool people in the church. I think she was really sincere, and hopefully she will continue towards her own conversion. We are working with Nasly`s mom to try and baptize her, but we ran into a little obstacle. The block of the ward changed to 8:30 until the new year so Nasly`s mom now won`t be able to go to church. She always has to work in her shop in the morning. We had a baptismal date with her and everything, but now we aren`t quite sure what to do. We are going to try and talk to her and see if she can figure something out with the store she has, but it is looking like it will be hard. Pray for that I guess! 

That is about the highlight of the week. Things are going great with Elder Lopez apart from a few different ideas we have on things. 

 Glad you were able to have a missionary opportunity mom, and thanks for the highlight of that talk too. Thanks for the email.   Hope everyone gets going good into school again! Love you bye! 

-Elder Armstrong

October, 7th, 2013


Mom and Family,

Glad you guys had a great conference experience! Unfortunately I had to watch the whole conference in Spanish. Last time they had it available in English so I was hoping it would be the same here. We asked our bishop if we could watch it in English in the office, but they had the internet up only for watching it Spanish and English would have overloaded the connection. I could understand most of the things if I really really focused, but it just wasn`t the same and I couldn`t keep concentrating for so much time. I have progressed a lot in my spanish, but I honestly have a LONG ways to go before I feel completely comfortable with this language. It is still a struggle everyday, so pray that I can somehow get the gift of tongues here!  I think my favorite talk was Pres. Monson when he talked about his wife and everything. I thought it was really amazing about how many missionaries and members there are. Fifteen million members is a lot but, I`m sure there are several million inactive members too. I read the first presidency message in the Ensign this month on our responsibility to rescue, and thought that we could all apply the advice in the message.  I know it is especially hard in Utah to do a lot of missionary work, but how many people can we help strengthen so they don`t go inactive? In Colombia, we definitely don`t have time to work with all of the 200 inactive members in our ward, but I wonder what we could accomplish if all the members were helping these lost members find their way back to the church. 

My new companion is sweet, such a relief! I told you wrong the last week; his name is Elder Lopez from Chile. He has the same time that I have in the mission exactly. He is such a cheerful guy and has been so great to work with. He has a lot of great ideas and is a good teacher too. It is especially good because a lot of our investigators/converts were really sad when Elder Vaca left. The Mosquera family (Luz Marina, Alexandra, and Angie our converts) were especially sad, so luckily Elder Lopez has a personality that they can connect with too. He came from a little town in Colombia that was just getting the church started there. It is cool for him to actually have a bishop and members to work with here! He told me in his last area there were about 7 members and they only had a little room to meet in for their church! I am excited to be here with him and think he will be one of my favorite companions. The only bad thing is, is that now we don`t have a lot to work with since Elder Vaca left. We are trying to help our new converts out more than anything so they feel comfortable and don`t go inactive. We only have one investigator that is really progressing right now and I think he will be good to go for baptism this month. His name is Christian: a 19  year old boy that already has a ton of friends in the church. He works a lot so we taught him for the first time last night and he accepted a baptismal date for the 19th. It is nice have investigators like him that listen and understand and already have a lot of friends in the church! 

Elder Darley also got a new companion and his name is Elder Aguilera (the companion that I thought I was going to get).  The other thing that`s cool about the transfers is that Elder Jolley (one of the kids from my group) got transferred to an area close to us in my zone. We watched the conference together and that was cool to catch up with him after not really seeing each other for a year! 

Thanks for the update with the family. Can`t wait to hear where Grandma and Grandpa get called on their mission. Thanks for the recipes that you sent me too mom. We are going to make brownies for an activity tonight, and I`m going to go to the store right after this to buy some stuff to cook some of the recipes too. Unfortunately, we don`t have a crockpot, and it is kinda hard to get access to an oven too, so I don`t think I will be able to cook the crock pot recipes too often. I am excited to try to cook a few of the things though! Believe it or not, I have been making some spinach smoothies. I can`t make it like you do mom, but It still turns out all right. All the other missionaries don`t like it, but I think it`s because we don`t have access to some of the ingredients here, like frozen orange juice. Anyways, thanks and I will talk to everyone next week! I am going to try and send some pictures too! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Dear Family,

Thanks for the letters and updates here. It has been a hectic day today! As I said in the last letter the transfers were delayed a week so we could try and meet our mission goals of September. The end of this month was full of miracles for the whole mission. The goal as a mission was 4 baptisms per companionship for this month. That is an extremely high number but what resulted of this goal is that the mission achieved the most baptisms in a month in more than 25 years. We hit 272 baptisms in the month. Although that number wasn`t 4 per companionship, it is still a super high number. Just think that there are missions in the world that don`t even get 100 baptisms in a year, and we got almost 3 times that in a month! We are blessed to be in a mission where the people are a lot more open to listen and I know that these Colombians are direct descendants from the people of the Book of Mormon. 

We had quite the miracle here in our area to finish out the month. We didn`t have any people really prepared with a goal to get baptized this weekend, but somehow we came through with baptisms. The Mosquera family that we have been teaching have been getting baptized one by one. The last 2 of their family we were able to baptize this weekend! Luz Marina is the mom of the family that we baptized, and Alexandra is the niece of Luz. We baptized both of them this last weekend. I thought it was a miracle because they were being so flaky. They wouldn`t commit to be baptized and we were about to just stop visiting them. On Friday we visited them and they said they were still thinking about getting baptized. They had had all their interviews and everything, but they just weren`t committing. We were praying super hard for them and it turns out on Saturday afternoon, they finally gave us a solid answer that YES they would get baptized! Lets just say it was pretty hectic and we couldn`t get too many members up to the church, but they got baptized Saturday at 6 in the afternoon! I baptized Alexandra the 13 year old girl and Elder Vaca baptized Luz Marina the mom. It was soo cool to pull those baptisms off.  We finished this transfer with 5 baptisms! Before this transfer I only had 6 baptisms my whole mission! What a miracle that we, and the mission as a whole, could achieve such a feat! I know the Lord blessed us and poured his spirit over these people that we could attain the most baptisms we have had in 25 years! Now we just need to make sure all these people stay active.. 

Anyway, for the transfers, my companion Elder Vaca is heading to Buenaventura. . . my old area! I am super excited for him, and I`m going to send some letters to people with him. My new companion is from Honduras and his name is Elder Alguila (something like that) so pray for me that I can work well with him. 

It sounds like the family is doing great in school and everything.  Glad you got to see the relief society conference. I am looking forward to seeing General Conference this weekend and applying what we learn! Got to go, love you all! 

-Elder Armstrong

Mom,

Congratulations on your big marathon! That is so inspiring to me; you and dad! I hope that someday I can have the discipline to do something like that! It is especially amazing that you kept on going through all the pain and everything too. I would have quit for sure.. But really thanks for all the letters and the article you sent me last week. You probably don`t know it but some of the things you send me, I feel the spirit so strong while I am reading them! The things you and dad say are a lot of times just what I need at the time of reading them and inspire me so much, so thanks! Oh and also I got the package already! It got here super fast and luckily my area is right by the mission offices so I could just go snag it quick. The brownies and cookies were soo soo good. I finished off the last of them today. But of course the best thing was all the letters from the family. It was nice to hear how everyone is doing and all the little letters! Tell everyone thank you soo much for the fishing on the deck gift :) Can`t believe I am already going to hit the year mark this week, it passes fast. I guess the mission is kinda like a marathon in some ways. I definitely has its ups and downs. 

This week was interesting, I will have to think what happened here. On Thursday a missionary arrived that we got to have come with us for a little while. His name is Elder Banks and he is a missionary that went home and is now returning to the mission. He is from Salt Lake, I guess probably not related to the Banks family down in Cedar haha. It is nice to see a missionary come back though. I think a lot of times people think that if a missionary comes home they are going to go downhill, but he came back and it is cool to see him finish out something. 

This weekend was Colombia`s equivilant of Valentine`s day, so we did some gift exchanges with a family of our investigators. Sunday night we went over to their house and had the little celebration. It was funny because they gave us all like these huge gifts and us 4 missionaries only gave like the little stuffed animals and things that were like jokes compared to their gifts! We had set a minimum price of stuff and all the missionaries spent about what was the minimum price and this family spent about three times what the minimum price was! They gave me this huge stuffed animal basket with candy inside. Now I have this big stuffed animal with a heart on it to sleep with! This holiday is pretty big in colombia and the streets are just lined with all these people selling these valentine gift baskets! 

The transfers were supposed to be this week, but now they are delayed until the next one. In our mission we are having the september goal to be 4 baptisms each companionship. Don`t think we will finish with 4 baptisms this month, but I guess I have got to have faith. Since Nasly, we don`t really have anyone that is prepared for baptism now. We have been trying to find people, but it is so hard to find people that are going to progress. We are so lucky to have a great bishop here in Terron. This bishop is so willing to work with us and help us in every way possible! 

Well didn`t bring my journal today to figure out what to write, so sorry for my just kind of rambling thoughts. Today we went to the Zoo here in Cali again, so that is always fun :) I have had a lot of challenges with this companion that I am with, so pray for me that I can continue to work well with him. Thanks again for the package you sent me and all the letters from everyone. I will try to organize my thoughts a little better for next week. Love you all!

-Elder Armstrong

Hi family,

Thanks for all the letters and prayers! Things are going good and normal in the mission again so we are grateful for that. I will go ahead to try and summarize the week here, although this letter might be a little shorter:

Tuesday:We had the zone leaders come and teach with us. Everything went well and it is always fun to learn from the leaders. We had Elder Hutchingson from Orem come with us and he is a great guy. Later in the night we had a family night with some members and investigators and I was up to teach the lesson of the night. We had been working on this little game to teach the plan of salvation so I taught that. It was something that my old companion Elder Novoa taught me but I had never taught it so it was a little nerve wracking. We ended up missing some parts of this interactive lesson and messing up, but everyone thought it was funny! 

Wednesday: We taught this lady that Elder Darley (the other Elder in my house from Logan) and I found when we did divisions. It was funny because this lady didn`t want anything to do with us and she kept on saying that she would never listen to us at first. In this lesson she told us that when Elder Darley and I were talking to her she had felt something that made her want to listen to us. I know that the spirit must have been touching her a little and hopefully she will start listening more even though she still says she would never be baptized! We also contacted another lady that said she was Catholic and would never change religions in the night. One thing that takes a while to learn in the mission is that there is no need usually to ask permission to share something with people. A lot of people will not want to listen to missionaries by instinct, but as you start teaching and testifying people often change. We started teaching this Catholic lady and by the time we started testifying of the restoration she was a lot more willing to listen and even wanted to come to church with us! Well she didn`t end up coming to church and we still have to follow up with these ladies, but it was just 2 cool experiences of finding people that don`t happen every day!  

Weekend: On Saturday we had the baptism of Nasly! She wanted to have the baptism at 3 in the afternoon which was kinda a bummer because not many members could come. The baptism was good though, just basically her family and the missionaries. The missionaries from the other ward came too and helped us do a special musical number. They sang "if you could hie to kolob" some verses in english and some in spanish while I played the piano. It turned out alright even though there are some latinos that couldn`t carry a tune if it had a handle on it! Elder Vaca did the baptism and I did the comfirmation on Sunday. 

Sunday:We have a frustrating sunday to start. We only had 3 people come to church with us and several people that said they were coming didn`t show up. I taught the class to the investigators all by myself so that was challenging. It is always hard with investigators because they don`t really comment anything. I felt like I was just talking and talking so I had us break into groups and study some scriptures on obedience. The other frustrating thing is that we went to visit Nasly later in the night and caught her drinking coffee! haha guess we have to go over some things with her again. We chewed her out a little for it and I think she felt kinda bad, but not sure why she was drinking coffee the day after her baptism! The night turned out a lot better and we had some good lessons. 

There is my week! Oh and to answer your questions mom: Yes we have lunch appointments every day. In Colombia Lunch is the biggest meal of the day! The members are really good most of the time. We have had some service opportunities, although that is something we need to work on. We helped this later haul a cart of juice down this huge flight of stairs and ended up contacting her! That is something we need to work on. This week I have been trying to improve my charity for people and really pray that I can have love for people. I know that as I pray to develop charity and look for people to serve I can improve in that like you said mom. Got to go love ya all!

Elder Armstrong

Pic 1. Terron Colorado! (They have it spelled wrong on purpose..)

Pic 2. Us on a little roller coater simulation ride! 

Pic 3. Our district eating some dominos pizza today! 

Hi family,

This week was the best week I think since I`ve been here in Terron Colorado. We taught 15 lessons with members this week so that felt great! Thank you so much for all the prayers, especially for the family of Elder Encarnación. We had a conference with Elder Waddell of the quorum of 70 this week.  He told us something really cool. He said that he had been informed just that same morning (on Friday) that the first presidency with the apostoles and some of the members of the 70, had a special session in the temple where they prayed for the missionaries around the world, and especially that they would be protected. I thought that was really cool and it happened right during the conference that we had too. The conference was mostly about the retencion of converts. Elder Waddell reminded us that we are not in the mission to baptize people, but rather convert them. We think about baptisms a lot but the biggest problem of this mission is people getting baptized and then going inactive. He said we are one of the top baptizing missions in the world, but what we need to work on now is getting people to stay active and work towards going to the temple. He especially stressed that we need to have a ward council every week (so the members can help the people stay active.) and that we need to teach all of the lessons over again after the people have been baptized. That is definitely something that we can improve on because I don`t think I`ve really been teaching the lessons after the baptism throughout my mission. 

During the conference I was able to meet up with Elder Pancheri and Elder Jolley from my group so that was cool to see some friends. I also talked to Elder Payne the other day. He was with Elder Encarnacion when he was shot and he witnessed the whole thing. He said that it was really crazy and they all thought that there was a gunman in the house! Luckily he seemed to be over the trauma of the experience and I think he is all right now. 

We have some great investigators right now, but we have been struggling to find people apart from the really good investigators that we have. We have 1 baptism that will happen this next weeked so we are really excited for that. She is actually a girl named Nasly and she lives in the house below us so we pretty much see her all the time. She has a some good friends in the church so I think she will be ready to get baptized and stay active. 

This Sunday I got to talk at church again. It is only the 2nd time I have had to give a talk in the mission, but it is still really hard. Luckily, this time I could actually talk without having to read everything from a paper so that was nice to be able to express myself a little. I just talked on what we learned from the conference that we had; mostly about becoming converted. I think all the people could understand me alright, but I think my talk was pretty boring because everyone seemed falling asleep and noone said anything to me after the talk! haha guess I need to give more talks so I can get better!

 

That was cool to see and hear about dads bike race! It reminded me of what President Prince shared with us about his marathon racing. He taught us that then when we tell ourselves that yes or yes (si o si) we are going to accomplish something and then we accomplish it, something in the universe changes! That is crazy to me to be on a bike for 10 hours, but I can imagine that would be an amazing life accomplishment to finish a race like that! I can`t imagine running a marathon either, so good luck with that mom. I didn`t wish grandpa happy birthday, but give him a big hug for me and tell him sorry for not sending anything or doing anything! Anyways thanks for the letter, I`m going to try and send some pictures here so I better go. Love you all! 

-Elder Armstrong

August 30, 2013

Hi family,

I am glad that everyone had a good time at the family reunion! Thanks for all the pictures, It made me miss everyone.  I am trying everyday to develop my attributes of Christ and I know that Charity is probably the most important. I have realized more and more over this past week that everyone has different attributes, but that the mission is the time to improve on the attributes that maybe aren`t as good. 

Yeah I think the strikes are still going on but luckily it isn`t affecting me at all in this area. We have a mission conference this week and we all fasted the past weekend that the strikes will end so that all the missionaries will be able to attend the conference. I think they have calmed down, but not sure exactly. I know that there are some missionaries that can`t even go out and teach because of the strikes. 

I like my new area a lot actually! We had another baptism this week and we have been getting at least 7 investigators coming to church with us every week. I like how the food and everything is a lot cheaper here in Cali too. In cali things are all close together so we can just walk everywhere. The only downside so far is just some little problems that we have been having in a district and in companionships. This is the first time I think that I have really had problems in the district and with companions. Luckily, we have been able to get most of our problems settled out, but I just pray that we can keep our district free of problems. I know Satan is trying to destroy this mission in any way he can right now! 

On Saturday we had our 2nd baptism here! She was the mom of one of the other members here. It was a baptism that just kinda fell into our hands. We hadn`t visited her since I had been here so we went to visit her on Tuesday and asked her why she hadn`t been baptized. She said "well I don`t know, but the other missionaries told me that I am going to get baptizedthis Saturday!" I guess the last missionaries had set a baptismal date for her and we didn`t even know about it. She didn`t really have too much of a testimony of the book of Mormon and Prophets but she said she wants to know the things for herself. All of her family are members so luckily she has a lot of family support. She got baptized this Saturday and our district leader Elder Darley, baptized her. I was kinda stressed about the baptism because we showed up to the church and it turns out the other missionaries were getting ready to do an activity! Luckily we arranged things with them that we could do the first half of the program in the chapel and after we finished the program in the baptismal room. Of course it was supposed to start at 6:30 but Carmen, the person getting baptized didn`t even show up until 7. I asked them why they showed up late and she said "when people say 6:30 in Colombia, it means 7" haha! 

Of course the most shocking thing of the week happened on Saturday. We were all getting ready for bed when we get an urgent call from our zone leaders. They had all four of us gather and told us what was going on. At first we couldn`t believe it, we thought it was a joke, but then the truth slowly sunk in. Elder Encarnación, our brother in the mission field had been shot and killed. I know that most of you have already heard this news, and if it wasn`t spreading so quickly I probably wouldn`t tell anyone about this. Elder Encarnación, was one of the first friends I found out here in the mission field. He was in my first zone and Elder Santizo (my trainer) was also his trainer so you could say that we were brothers. He was one of the maybe 5 black missionaries in our mission, and had recently hit the year mark of his mission. He was from the Dominican Republic. He was such a cool and funny kid, a great missionary, and we had talked to him just 2 days before he passed away. Elder Darley, our district leader was his companion, so I think it was super hard for him. From what we know, he wasn`t directly shot but it was a stray bullet that was shot in the area. He was hit by the bullet while he was eating lunch with other missionaries which I think included Elder Payne an Elder from my group. I never imagined that something like this would happen in my mission, but I know that nothing is going to stop the work of the Lord. President Prince has been getting calls from general authorities including Elder Christofferson, and I know that this is hard for all of our mission. I don`t tell you all this to scare you, but I guess he was needed to be a missionary in another place. Please keep his family in your prayers because this has to be hard for his family especially. 

Well I have to go here in a sec, but please don`t panic over this news!! Got to go, love everybody! 

-Elder Armstrong

1-Our baptism is the girl with the red hair! 

2-Me with some big boots that our neighbors have! 

3-Sharing the cookies we made on sunday with everybody! 

4-The American food that I bought from Pricemart. Costco Colombia Style! 

August 26th, 2013

 This week was really good. We had a baptism (my first one in about 4 months..) and 9 investigators come to church with us. Here are the highlights from our week:

Tuesday: We had a zone conference and it was really cool because it was in my old area in Cali. The conference really was focused on love and charity for the investigators. Everything that we do should be based on the love that we have for the people.  After the conference we went and visited a couple people from my old area and that was super neat to see some old members and investigators from there. When I first arrived in that area I replaced an elder named Elder Darley and it turns out that I am with him now in Terron my new area! We had a lot of mutual investigators that we wanted to visit in Las Americas so we went together to visit some people after the conference. Super Cool :) 

Wednesday:We had a 2 hour meeting with the bishop and talked about all the members and problems. Of course there are a lot of problems but the bishop seems super willing to help so I think that is something that a lot of wards in Colombia don`t even have. We have a huge members list with about half of them marked less active or inactive.

Weekend:  We had the baptism of our investigator Angie. She is a 16 year old girl and is part of a big family that we are teaching. She is the second of the family to get baptized and we are working to baptize all of the family one by one. One thing that they teach us is that it is always better to work with part member families and try and get baptisms from that. In our zone conference they shared with us a family of like 10 people that all ended up getting baptized and it started with the baptism of their 15 year old son. 

On Saturday we had the baptism of Angie and 3 other people from other missionaries. The missionaries from the other area ended up being super disorganized with things and we ended up starting ONE HOUR later than the scheduled time at 7 p.m.  I was getting a little sick of playing prelude music on the electric piano there for that whole time! In Colombia things  usually end up starting late, but one hour was just ridiculous. The program was pretty good though. We practiced a little music number that morning and performed it in the baptisms with the 8 missionaries. I guess now that I am not with Elder Novoa (my old companion that was known as the best piano player in the mission) I will have a lot more opportunities to play piano. 

Sunday:We had the confirmation of Angie and I had the opportunity to do it! It was my first confirmation I have ever done and a little hard in Spanish still, but I think I did all right. I was pretty scared at first! After church we had an activity with the family that lives below our house and made chocolate chip cookies! I had the recipe from mom and these people have an oven so we took advantage of that and made some cookies! It was a little hard because they don`t really have like measuring cups and stuff here but we figured it out. They turned out alright, but defintitely not as good as mom or hermana Prince (wife of our mission pres.) makes them! I will have to send some pictures of us making the cookies. 

 My comp. is Elder Vaca from Ecuador. He has 7 months in the mission and is a funny guy and always pretty animated. He has a lot less experience than Elder Novoa my last companion, but we are going to try and work together and hopefully I can share what I have learned from my companions in our area here. 

Love,

Elder Armstrong