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