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