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