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