Haircut time!

August 11th, 2014

Family!! 

Well you will be happy to know that we pulled off a miracle and baptized 4 people this week! Thank you so much for your prayers and everything because I know without them these people wouldn´t have gotten baptized. Starting off the week Estella did not want to get baptized at all. She was saying that she had a lot of doubts and she still couldn´t believe in the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith. We were super frustrated because she had already told us that she felt it was true and now she seemed to just be pulling out excuses. What´s worse is that the kids couldn´t get baptized either because the new rule of the area is that we can´t baptize kids without their parents. Her Daughter Darcy was about in tears when we told her that she couldn´t get baptized unless her mom got baptized too. We were super frustrated on Monday, but all we could do was say some prayers and try to get her excited again. Luckily we got some answers to our prayers. The Relief Society sisters called us Tuesday morning and asked if they could visit some investigators with us (which never happens) so we said yes and told them that we needed a lot of help with Estella. They went and visited her while we went to another appointment and we were just crossing our fingers that they could get her excited again. We called them later and to our surprise they said the visit went super well and that she was excited to get baptized again. We called her and sure enough it was true! The Relief Society gave us our miracle this week and from there we fellowshipped her even more and she got baptized with her family on Saturday! The other miracle is that her son Mario kept on telling us that he didn´t want to get baptized yet but we just kinda assumed the baptized and acted like he was joking around (even though he didn´t want to get baptized yet). We took him to get his baptismal interview and luckily that got him excited about the baptism. We definitely can´t take all the credit for these baptisms because we got a lot of help from a bunch of different people this week :) 

We are also going to have another baptism this week. One of the other families that is super special for us is the Quiñones family. We baptized their son a month ago and now the mom and the dad are going to get married and the dad baptized! The wife, Amanda, was an inactive member and we are super excited that the family was reactived and now her husband Mauricio has accepted the gospel. They are going to get married this Friday and Saturday will be the baptism. To raise the money we sold some lunches 2 weeks ago so hopefully we can collect all the money from the missionaries tomorrow in our zone meeting. 

Other than that not too much is going on. We have been playing soccer every monday and Wednesday and I am starting to get a little better. I usually get in 2 or 3 goals each time we play so I am pretty excited about that. We need to start finding some new people to teach but right now we are hoping we can baptize Daniel (the other son of Estella), Oscar (another investigator that has been to church 1 time) and Sebastian (A kid that has been to church 2 times but says he has trouble believing in God) So if you can keep them in your prayers that would be great! 

Thanks so much for the updates. Looks like summer is about over so enjoy the last days of summer. Sounds like Addison is coming home soon right? You´ll have to tell her I said hi! Thanks for all the prayers and letters and have a great week. I will send some pictures of the baptism her in a second. 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

August 2nd, 2014

Hi family,

Sorry again that I couldn´t write last week. I was trying to copy and paste something and it deleted everything! This week I will try to be more careful :) 

So this week was good again. Every week this transfer we have had good weeks but we know we can keep on improving and hopefully have great weeks! This week we are expecting 4 baptisms, but we won´t be able to do it without your prayers because these investigators have had a lot of opposition and are a little bit shaky sometimes. The first baptisms I had here in Pasto were María Edilma and Estiven and now these baptisms that are coming up is the other son of María and the sister of María and her 2 children. They have already been to church 4 times but there have been some complicated things that have happened to them. It is so hard in Colombia for the people and sometimes I wonder what we can do to help people with so many problems. A lot of times I feel like Grandma and Grandpa Armstrong how they say there are so many problems in their branch as well. Our convert Maria has gone through a ton of things ever since she got baptized and it seems that things are getting a little worse. First, she didn´t have money to buy food for her family so the ward helped her out with that a little bit back. Second, her husband left her with all her kids and isn´t helping them at all. One time he came back to their house while we were there and her 19 year old kid (the one that is going to get baptized this sat.) started to get mad because he wasn´t helping them with anything. When the husband left her son left running out of the house and started trying to fight the husband. Eventually the husband chucked a boulder at the son and they ended up getting in this big rock fight and pretty much the whole neighborhood was out wondering what was going on. Luckily Maria broke up the fight and no one really got hurt, but it was pretty crazy! Now the problem with them is that Maria is leaving the house all day long and doesn´t leave her kids with anyone. We don´t really know what Maria is doing; maybe looking for a job or something like she says, but the kids are alone pretty much all day or they go over to the aunt´s house (the one that is getting baptized with her family this Sat.) and the aunt is starting to get pretty mad. They had a problem the other day and the other family says that Maria came to the house drunk and starting hitting the kids. We don´t really know what the truth is because Maria tells us one thing and then her sister tells us another. We have commented to the bishop and the bishop is going to interview her this week and maybe get child support involved depending on what happens. With all these problems we are going to need a lot of prayers so that these people can get baptized and hopefully resolve their problems at the same time. The sister of Maria is named Estella and her 2 kids that are getting baptized are named Mario and Darcy. The other son of Maria that will get baptized is named Miguel. We need all you prayers for them this week! 

This week we also had interviews with Pres. Pricoli for the first time. They were good, but also super different from pres. Prince´s interviews. The thing that I missed was sister Prince´s banana bread that she always made for us during interviews, but guess we will have to get used to not having banana bread now. Pres. Pricoli´s vision is that we can all be celestial missionaries so we are now focusing a lot more on christlike attributes and be more worthy to receive direction from the spirit. We have to pick an attribute to study each week so this week our zone studied the humility. It will be good to develop these attributes and I invite you all to also study the attributes like it shows us in Preach my Gospel. 

Thanks for all the updates and pictures! Sounds like you guys had a great time at the family reunion and at the lake. That was crazy with the storms at the Lake! Glad everyone made it out alive though. Miss the family, but hopefully I will finally be able to go to a family reunion next year! 

Got to go so everyone have a great week this week. Love you! 

-Elder Armstrong

Oh and random thought, I asked Sister Pricoli when my release date was and she told me October 7th!! She told me it´s not a for sure thing and could change, but right now that is when I will finish because that is when the next transfer ends. Start buying the food for the parties when I get back!! and don´t worry I will keep on working til the last day in the mission :)

Happy Birthday Elder Armstrong July 20th, 2014

July 20th, 2014

Hi mom and family,

Thanks for the birthday package!! It got to Pasto on the 17th but I Didn´t get it until Friday because it was with the zone leaders. We were all super excited to get a package and I opened it here with my district :) the 2 things I was most excited about were the Preach my Gospel flags and the missionary scripture book. I have started marking all the scriptures in preach my gospel and it is amazing how I still haven´t studied a lot of things and I´m already almost finishing the mission. My goal is to try and study all of preach my gospel (including the scriptures) by the end of my mission. The book you sent me my old companion elder Laws had the same book so I thought that is a cool little book to study too.

Of course I was super excited about all the little church pictures and stuff to give out too. I am going to try and make a gift for all my converts before I leave the mission, so those little pictures and cards will be great to give out. THANK YOU!!

That is crazy that Carlee already got home from her mission! It is crazy how fast the time passes. I still feel like I have a ton of time to go, but I know it is going to pass super fast too. 

This week was a good week again so thanks for the prayers again! We had 7 people at church again and have a couple great families that will get baptized soon. One family has been super special and we had some cool experiences with them this week. It is a sister that is inactive but wants to have her son baptized in the church. We went and contacted them about 2 weeks ago and she said she has been inactive pretty much since she got baptized, but that she wants to return to the church and have her son baptized. Her son is 8 years old and he is super excited to get baptized! At first she didn´t want us to talk to her husband because he is a "jehovahs witness" but we invited to listen during the first lesson and he excepted the invitation to read and pray. Ever since then it has been smooth sailing. The husband started reading and praying and tells us almost every lesson that he feels super peaceful when we go to teach them. A once Jehovahs witness accepted the invitation to get married to his wife and after that to get baptized. We had a super spiritual lesson and one of the counselor´s in the ward helped us out a lot. We have a super good counselor here and he shared his experiences about marriage how he basically sacrificed everything to get married with his wife here in Pasto. He is from Cali and had a good job and life there. After his mission he met his future wife at a church activity and decided to move to Pasto because he wanted to marry her. He moved to Pasto without a job and even had to beg for his food sometimes, but he promised this guy that if he got married then he would find work and would receive a ton of blessings in his life. After sharing his experience, the counselor asked Mauricio (the jehovahs witness) if he would get married and he and his wife were both crying and saying how they wanted to change their lives and get married! It was a neat experience and I have no doubt that they are going to receive lot of blessings. They are going to get married and then Mauricio will get baptized after. The best experiences in the mission are to see families become converted because the gospel is all about converting families right?! 

Well that is the experience that I wanted to share and thanks again for the birthday wishes! I had a good birthday and my district bought me a surprise cake! They also followed the Latin tradition and smashed an egg on my head and poured flour on me, but guess I have to enjoy that with my last months in Colombia. I haven´t gotten a release date yet, and I´m sure I won´t get one until a week or two before the end of my mission. I know some missionaries with less than a month that still haven´t gotten their release date, so I am not expecting anything too soon. 

Love ya all and have a great week!! 

-Elder Armstrong

July 14th, 2014

Hi family! 

Thanks for all the birthday wishes! It is hard to believe that in 3 days I am already 21 years old! The time is flying by and the mission is starting to come to an end. Today they announced the transfers... Drumrolll.... I am staying in Pasto! I am staying here with Elder Amasifuen still so I am pretty content and fine with that. 

One of our zone leaders is getting transferred to Cali and guess who is coming to be our zone leader: Elder Pancheri, my first companion in the mission! We started the first 6 months of the mission together and have barely seen each other since, but looks like he will be coming to Pasto now and we will probably be finishing up the mission here in Pasto! I am excited to see my good ol buddy Elder Pancheri again and even though we won´t see each other a ton still, it will be nice to be in the same zone again. 

Well now about this week, THANK YOU  for the prayers and fasting because this was the week we needed here in Pasto! We finally had people come to church (7 investigators compared to 0 last week) and we put 3 baptismal dates and have 2 solid families that we are teaching! I know that yours prayers helped and we hope we can now start to have success here. One of the families we are teaching is the sister of our recent convert Maria Edilma, and the other is a reference of one of the less actives we are teaching. We are starting to realize that if we work through the converts and less actives, we not only strengthen them, but we also find golden investigators. The other baptismal date we put is a reference of another less active (the one that is in the volcano picture I sent) and is golden golden and will be baptized for sure in August. 

On Sunday we had a prayer in our hearts all morning hoping that we would have investigators come to church. We went to one of the families and knocked on the door at 8:30 hoping they would be ready for church like they said they would. I was just praying they would be ready as we knocked on the door, but of course they were in PJs and just getting up! They told us they weren´t going but I wasn´t giving up that easily. I said "no you guys told us that last week and you made this commitment with God, go get ready and we will wait for you!" I told this to the daughter and after that the mom came down and said they weren´t going but we just kept on persisting and telling them all the blessings that they would be missing out on and finally the mom gave in and started getting everyone ready. It was a huge relief that she finally realized she needed to go to church and I know that God answered our prayers! Sometimes you just have to persist through things. Most people don´t realize the blessings they are going to miss out on, but at least we do and we should help them know that right?

Well got to get going here, but thanks for the letters and prayers! Keep praying for us this week, and I know that we will start to have success. I am dead tired right now because we just got done playing almost 4 hours of soccer, but it was fun and I think I am starting to get better (even though everyone makes fun of me when I try and kick a goal and it goes the complete opposite direction!) Hope ya all have a good one! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Multiculture Food Actiity

July 14th, 2014

Elder Armstrong with President Pricolli and his wife

July 4th, 2014

Mom and family,

Happy 4th of July! Sounds like everyone had a great day and I pretty much forgot it was 4th of july, but our zone leader did call us and wish us a happy 4th so that was nice. As you all know, Colombia lost in their game on the 4th, but thanks for supporting Colombia everyone. It was a sad loss and all the Colombians are pretty mad because they say that Brazil cheated them! I of course didn´t get to see the game but all the Colombians still talk about it every day here. 

During the game, we were supposed to stay in the house all day.  We left to preach in the morning until lunch and then all afternoon and night we were just in the house pretty much hanging out. It was kinda nice to have a little rest this day I guess, but I actually got a little bored. After Colombia lost it was pretty much silent the rest of the day. I´m pretty sure we heard some sobs in the air, but that was about all to be heard the day of Colombia´s loss. On the other hand maybe it was a good thing, because when Colombia wins everyone goes absolutely nuts! The last time they won, they was 8 deaths from drunk drivers that day, so they prohibited all the people from driving their cars on the 4th. I can imagine if Colombia would have won,  people would have been celebrating all day and all night so that´s why pres. Pricoli didn´t want us leaving this day. 

Anyway, the work of the Lord has been alright. We are working hard, still having little success, but hoping that this week will be better. The good thing of this week was that we found 11 new investigators. All of these investigators were references from members and were actually pretty good. We committed almost all of them to come to church with us on sunday too, but guess how man came church? Zero.. We again had it hard getting people to go to church on Sunday. We left early sunday morning in the pouring rain to pass by and pick up investigators. Every house we passed by they didn´t answer and I´m pretty sure were still sleeping. I guess they just figured that when it rains they cancel church in Colombia? We thought we still had hope because we committed some members to pass by other investigators. We got to church and the members said that they didn´t pass by the people because when it rains nobody likes to go to church.. Thanks a lot members of Pasto! I mean I guess that´s probably true but people don´t understand that we should go to church whether it´s raining or thundering or earthquaking or whatever! At this point I am about out of ideas trying to get people to come to church, but I guess we will just keep on working and praying and hope that it doesn´t rain so that the investigators will come to church this sunday. 

Well the other thing that happened this week is we got to meet Pres. Pricoli! He came on Saturday morning and did a little conference with us and he seems like a pretty neat guy. I asked him a lot of questions about how it is to be called as a mission president. He told us about his experience in the interviews with apostles and what they have to do to prepare. He said that they received an interview in November of 2013 and then they went on preparing. Sister Pricoli told us that they had no idea of anything when they got a call saying that Elder Christofferson wanted an interview with them. She said she bursted out crying when that happened and her daughter thought that someone in the family had died! But they are good people. Pres. Pricoli is changing some things in the mission. We now do not have a mission newsletter and we don´t get informed about how many people the other missionaries had to church or how many people had baptisms and stuff like that. I always liked seeing those dats and trying to improve on the numbers, but pres. Pricoli said that the mission shouldn´t be a competition to see how many baptisms we can get. I guess every mission President is different, and I will have to adjust to his new ideas. 

As for the sisters, they seem to be doing a little better, but one sister can just be so hard sometimes! Well I share my testimony with you all that I know this church is true and I know the Christ is the real head of this church. I know that we have a prophet that directs this church and we are so blessed to be able to receive revelations from him. I hope everyone has a great week. I love you all! Thanks for the letters and encouragement as always! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

June 27th, 2014

HI family,!

We are into the first week of the Pricoli ERA! We still don´t know too much about the new president yet, especially because he didn´t send us a letter or anything today, but from what he has done so far it seems like he will be quite a bit more strict than Pres. Prince. As you all know the world FIFA cup is going on and Colombia played twice this week. We are all super excited because Colombia made it to the elite eight (not sure if it is called that in soccer, but that´s what they say in march madness!) for the first time in history! Everyone was going nuts here and maybe it´s a good thing i´m in Pasto because I´m sure in Cali things were 10 times crazier. In Pasto it is pretty calm, but when Colombia plays the whole city just goes crazy! Anyways the first thing that Pres. Pricoli did as the new president is make sure it was impossible for us to see colombia play. On tuesday he made the whole mission have a zone and district meeting during the colombia game, and on Saturday he made us be in our houses studying so we couldn´t watch the game. It´s definitely not a bad thing and I wasn´t going to watch the game anyways, but Pres. Prince wouldn´t have done something like this. It will be a change in leadership styles i´m sure. Everyone says that the americans are usually a little more relaxed and the Latinos are more strict so we will see how true that is. 

Well this week was good. As far as our stats it was our best week yet. We taught almost 30 lessons in the week so that is probably about the most i´ve had in the mission. We were super worried that we have barely had investigators come to church so we did a fast for that this week. We fasted and tried to invite everyone to the church but we still only had 3 people show up. We had set a commitment to have at least 5 this week, but i felt like we did the best we could so we will just have to try and do better this week. I was frustrated on Sunday because about 5 people that committed to attend church backed out for excuses. One kid that said he was for sure going to go (the last 2 sundays he had left us waiting) backed out again when we called him so we went to his house and banged on his door for about 20 minutes trying to get him to come out. I was just super frustrated that this kid left us waiting so many times so I was just about ready to go pull him out of bed and drag him to church. Luckily, he didn´t answer his door or I would have carried him on my back to church, but he didn´t answer and I calmed down and just figured that we will stop visiting him because he always commits and then backs out. I´m not sure what´s worse: the people who commit and then back out, or the people who are afraid to commit because they are afraid that they will make a "bad impression" in this area we have a lot of those types, but we are just going to move on and hopefully find some good new investigators too.

Well those are about the highlights of the week. We are excited to keep moving forward and see what happens. I am really nervous about the sisters in our district. One of the sisters has been hard to work with and the bishop wants to call the president and get her transferred, but we are trying to talk to her and help her out. She just kinda has had a bad attitude about things and a lot of members say she is hard to work with and is flaky sometimes. The zone leaders told me I have to try and talk to her and help her change her attitude, so I will have to try and do that this week. I think it would be easier if it were an elder, but I will have to see if I can help this complicated sister out. All you sisters out on the mission, don´t be complicated and hard to work with!! 

Thanks for sending the package, I´m sure I will get it :) good job on the Ragnar relay, and I will talk to everyone next week. 

Love,

Elder Armstrong 

June 23rd, 2014

Hi Family! 

We had a good week and finished with baptisms! Our whole zone met our goals of baptisms and we met with the commitment to be able to do the activity with the mission! The bad news is that there were about 4 zones in the mission that didn´t meet the goal, so we didn´t get to go to Cali. :( :( our whole zone was looking forward to it, but I guess it is good in a way because now we will have more time to work this week. If we would have went to Cali we would be traveling all day today and get back probably on Wednesday. 

The big news of today is that this week is Pres. Prince´s last week in the mission. We got his last letter to us today and it was a little sad, but he gave us a lot of encouragement and told us that we have to work really hard with the new mission President. The new president is named Pres. Prícoli from Uruguay and he gets here on Friday. He is going in full swing and is going to visit the whole mission the next week. He is coming to Pasto the 4th of July I think so that will be fun to get to know him a little bit. 

The baptisms we had last week were a mom and her son. Their names are Eztiven (steven in spanish haha) and María Edilma. They had a lot of problems before the baptism, but we were glad that they pushed through and committed to get baptized. They were baptized on Saturday night. We had some problems in the baptism too (we got there and the font wasn´t even filled) because some of the members that committed to do the favors for us didn´t do the favors, but the baptism turned out alright after starting about an hour late! I will send some pictures here in a sec. Eztiven has 9 years old and I baptized him and it was cool to baptize a boy and see how excited he was. He loves the church and talks constantly about how he wants to be a missionary like us one day! Such a cute kid! 

We also have had a hard time getting people to come to church. We only had 3 investigators there on Sunday so we have to make some pretty big changes if we want to have baptisms in July. Pray for us to get things going again! Oh other interesting thing about the area: The stake pres. lives in our area. The other day we were at his house and he was telling us about his companions in the mission. He said he had a Elder Clarkson from Kanab, Utah! haha i thought it was funny that it is such a small world! He served in the mission North Bogota so maybe you will have to figure out who that is. Our stake Presidents name is Elder Marquinez. 

Anyways though, thanks for all the pictures and updates you sent me. Looks like everyone had a great time at the Manti pageant and everything. Looks like Annie had a great birthday party too. In Colombia, yesterday was Father´s Day so I was thinking about dad a lot yesterday! Hope you guys have a great week and cheer hard for the USA in the world Cup! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

June 16th, 2014

Hi Family,

Wow sounds like things are super busy! I keep on thinking that everyone will calm down up there, but everyone always has a million things going on! This week was kinda a bummer, but I still thought it was a fun week :) Not sure where to start, but I will try and organize some thoughts here. 

-We are going to have an activity of international foods this friday! I got assigned to make brownies, so I am going to have to try and make brownies for about 150 people! I hope they will turn out alright and I am a little nervous. Friday afternoon we are going to go make all the brownies so I will let ya all know how it goes. 

-Colombia has been going nuts because of the Fifa soccer tournament in Brazil. Colombia played on Saturday and every goal that Colombia scores everyone starts honking like crazy and makes a ton of noise in the street. I have definitely learned to like soccer more on my mission! 

-This is the last month of Pres. Prince in the mission. He has about 2 weeks left, and if we meet our commitments this month we are going to have an activity in Cali with the whole mission. This is the last week to meet with our commitment so we have to baptize at least one person this week. We are hoping that our zone can meet the commitment and that we can go to Cali next week for the Ultra Cali! 

-One of the sisters in the ward played a prank on me during one of our lunches. She offered the pray and said some super strange stuff, and then ended the prayer in the name of Emma Smith. I was pretty confused and wondering why in the world she would say a prayer like that. She said that she respected Emma Smith a lot and that is how she likes to pray. I was pretty much freaking out and said that we needed to do another prayer. After a while she finally told me it was just a joke, but can´t say that has ever happened in the mission! 

I think those are about the highlights of the week. It was kind of a hard week because all the people we invited didn´t show up to church, but this week we are going to try something different and get some more people to come to church. My companion is funny and it is nice to have the energy of someone who is just starting out in the mission. Hope everyone has a great week and I will try to send some pictures here. Oh and I haven´t gotten a release date yet. Who knows when they will tell me, but I´m not too worried about that! 

love,

Elder Armstrong

p.s. Tell Anna I said Happy Birthday!! 

June 9th, 2014

Hey family,

Sounds like everyone is kicking off the summer big! Looks like there were a lot of fun activities last week. I have had a great first week starting out in Pasto here. It was super sad having to leave Palmira and I think I can say that I left my print there, but you always have to move on. 

Pasto is actually a pretty big city, bigger than Palmira. I was thinking that it would be like a little village in the mountains, but there are definitely a lot of people and members. It is a stake here, and I can definitely tell why Palmira is still a district and here in Pasto is a stake. The leadership is so much deeper and it seems like people are a little more organized here. I got here and for the first time in my mission went to a executive comittee (a meeting that is supposed to be held every week but most people don´t do it). The church here is being remodeled so we had to go to the stake center (about a 15 minute drive away) which is actually a huge church and I got to play the piano and everything on Sunday. This Sunday the normal church is going to be back in function so we will be a lot closer now. They told us that in the normal church they had an average of about 170 people attending, but since they have been in the stake center it has dropped down to 120 people. Kind of sad that so many people stop going to church just for the distance, but I guess it is hard because there are a lot of poor people too. I always think of pioneers though and imagine that they would be willing to walk 2 hours just to go to church. We've got some work to do now to get the attendance back up to 180. We have already planned a international food activity on June 20th so we are excited to do that and hopefully get the ward members excited to attend church again. 

In our district we have me and my companion, Elder Amasifuen, and the sisters. The sisters are named Sister Ponsiano from Mexico, and Sister García from Peru. They are great but everyone is super new (my companion has 4 months in the mission and the sisters have 3) and I am the one that has the time in the mission. It is weird to see my time start winding down and think how little time I have left, but I want to be able to make these last 4 months the best 4 months of the mission. My companion is from Peru and is a really funny guy. It is nice to have the energy of someone who is just starting the mission and we have been working hard. I got here on wednesday night after the 10 hour bus ride.  There wasn't a whole lot to do because my companion barely knows anything about the area still. We were a little lost in the week, but we managed to secure 4 baptismal dates and now we have at least 3 baptisms that are scheduled for the 21st of June! It is kinda relaxing to be a district leader of just 4 people, but it is actually harder in some ways and I know that I have to help these missionaries out a lot that are super new. 

The sisters are great as of now. The Mexican sister has been making us a lot of food and she always makes it super spicy! The other day she gave us a mexican dish and my mouth about caught on fire!! She cooks super good though and made us tacos the first day. The bad thing is that we are all out of money now because we all were pitching in to buy food. The mexican dishes definitely add up a little bit and now we probably won´t be eating as good this week.. 

Well that´s about all I have time to write this week, but I am excited here and things are going good. It gets pretty cold here, but someone left a little jacket in the house so I have just been using that. It is weird because some days it is really hot but then others are super cold. Thanks for all the prayers and have a great week! 

-Love Elder Armstrong

p.s. The trip to Mexico sounds great and I would be down for that! 

Hi mom and family,

This week was a good but crazy week! I feel like there is actually a ton to write about this week but not sure if I can remember everything.. I guess I will start out with the big events that I do remember:

First, we had a branch talent show on Friday! It was super hectic and kinda disorganized but I thought it actually turned out super well. We invited everyone we could think of but the problem was no one really wanted to share a talent so it basically was up to the missionaries to do all of the talents in the show. We are lucky because we had Andres Cruz to help us out. Andres Cruz (the guy that you talked to on sunday) is amazing at planning and running activities. We always have to fight to get him at an activity because all the missionaries know that he makes any activity become fun and meaningful. Andres helped us plan all these skits so we did 3 different skits in the talent show. They all turned out super good and funny and I got the video so I will have to show everyone when I get home. There were about 4 other talents that fell through that ward members were going to do, but the missionaries are always there to save the day when no one has anything planned. We had quite a few investigators come and Ramon, our recent convert, even decided to sing at the end for everyone. He all surprised us because we had never heard him sing before! His wife, Gloria, was dying because she was so embarrased that he went up in front of everyone and started singing. They remind me of Granda and Grandpa Armstrong because I remember that Grandma would get embarrased of Grampa sometimes haha! 

The other thing that happened is we had a Zone conference on Saturday; the last one with Pres. Prince. It was one of the best conferences we had I think because he talked about something that we need to apply as much in our lives as the mission work. He taught us how to plan and set goals. My favorite part was that we learned that we should each have a vision in the mission and in our areas. He taught us that we need to have a vision then we need to set goals and plans to accomplish our vision. I think we could all accomplish so much if we applied that. I don`t think I have ever really had many visions in life, but now I am starting to learn that I can have a vision and I need to set goals to accomplish my vision. The other thing he taught us is that we need to take account for our vision. If we are not reviewing our goals and not having people verify with us then we will probably never reach what we want. There is a quote in Preach my Gospel in the "using time wisely" section by Elder Ballard. It says something like that if we don`t learn to set goals in life then we will arrive to an old age and look back on our lives and realize that we only accomplished a small part of our potential. I hope that you all can learn to have visions and set goals because there are already moments where I look back and realize that I could have accomplished a lot more! I realized that I need to have a vision for our zone and area and I am so excited to apply what I learned in this conference in the rest of my mission and when I get back from the mission too. 

The other big event that we had was the district conference with the district of Palmira. It was cool because it was like the farewell for Pres. and Sis. Prince from Palmira. On Sunday there were about 500 members that showed up and after the conference, we all took a picture with Pres. Prince. It was sad to see the first little goodbyes from Pres. Prince, but we know we are going to see him at least a couple of more times before he leaves at the end of June. 

Well that`s about all the news I have time for because I want to send you all some pictures of the talent show and stuff :) Thanks for all the pictures from Brandon`s wedding! Those were so cool and I am so sad that I couldn`t be there, but I guess that`s how it works sometimes.. I am glad that you guys are getting prepared for the trek too. I know you will do a great job! Love everyone a lot and I will talk to you next week! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Mothers day. . . May 11th, 2014

Hey family! 

Well don`t have too much to say today other than thanks for talking to me yesterday! I loved to see your cute smiling faces and I can`t believe that I will be back home in less than 6 months to see everyone in person. The computer froze on me today so that is about all I will be able to write this week, but I am going to try and send some pictures here too. Love everyone and I will talk to you more next week! 

love,

Elder Armstrong

May 5th, 2014

Hi family! 

I am excited to talk to everyone next Sunday! I will be on the computer to skype sometime before 6 (4 your time) so plan on that. I will probably throw in a 5 minute phone call sometime this week to plan it more concrete so be ready for that surprise.. 

This week was alright, we made some progress in our zone so that was good. We were excited because we felt like we found some pretty good interested people this week, but the bad news is is that all the people we found didn´t end up going to church so that was a little disappointing.  I have been a little sad in these weeks because I have started to see some of my converts drift away from the church a little and be a little lazy in the attendance. I don´t know if you remember Miriam, Alex, and Shirley, the family that we helped get married and baptized in February, but they haven´t been to church for close to 2 months now. The problem with them is that both Alex and Miriam have jobs now and they work on Sundays every 2 weeks. Turns out that they think it is more important to go on little vacations on the 2 sundays that they have off instead of go to church. It is so frustrating to me. . . I guess I have to learn a lot of patience. We are pretty sure that the family has started drinking again too, so we are sad about that too. We aren´t able to visit them too much because they work so much now. I think it is one of the saddest things in the mission to see your own converts start drifting away from the church. They commited to go this Sunday finally, so we will see what happens. The other frustrating thing is the less active people we teach keep on commiting to go to church and don´t show up either. We have been helping these families so much and it seems like the least they could do is keep their word and go to church! 

haha well enough of my complaining but not sure why people don´t show up as much as we bug them. One thing that I am pretty different from Elder Laws is that I am so persistent when I try and commit people to do things. Maybe it is because I sold pest control before the mission, but when people try and say no to things or maybe don´t want something I guess I try and push pretty hard. Not sure if that is good or bad! It definitely isn´t what Elder Laws does and he has told me that I need to not be so pushy, but I think you just have to figure out the right balance. After all this is eternal life we are talking about and people don´t know what they are missing! 

Well this week we have the leadership conference on Thursday so that will always be good. We also have a zone conference coming up the next week and we are excited for that too. I will let you know how those events go. I am super excited to talk to everyone, and hope y'all have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

April 28th, 2014

Dear Family,

Looks like everyone had a great Easter! I got the Easter package, so thanks so much for that! We had the 3 baptisms on Sunday morning and everything turned out great. President Prince even came to our baptisms because he had already gotten to know these investigators before. Paula, Cesar, and Sebastian were the names of the people that were baptized and they were investigating for about 2 years before. They were waiting on some papers to be able to get married so that is why they took so long. The brother of Paula came clear from London and did the baptism! We actually didn`t have to do a lot for this baptism because our ward mission leader planned the whole schedule and did the musical number and everything. We planned the baptism for sunday at 7 in the morning but the people who were going to get baptized didn`t even get there until7:30 so that forced us to start late. It was a little embarassing because Pres. and Sister Prince were there just waiting for the baptism to start, but the program turned out good. 

Well apart from our baptisms things are going just alright. My new companion Elder Laws is a good guy and is finishing his mission in just 2 months. In Samanes we have 2 more missionaries: Elder Mina and Elder Johnson. One is from Ecuador and the other is from Idaho. They seem to be working great and we already did a division with them this week. 

Well other than that we don`t have to much more to report. I have not really thought about what is going to happen after the mission and I don`t like to think about it to be honest! I guess I will have to start thinking and praying about that. I am kinda leaning towards going back to SUU in the spring semester, but we will see. I am excited to be able to talk to everyone here in a couple of weeks. Everyone have a great week and lets keep on working hard in the strength of the Lord! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

p.s. I forgot my camera again so I will send pictures of the baptism and everything next week. 

April 21st

Hey Family, 

Sounds like a busy week! Easter for me was just a normal day of preaching the Gospel. I guess sharing the Gospel is probably one of the best ways to spend Easter. I actually didn`t realize it was Easter sunday, but I did know it was the "Semana Santa" (Holy week). In Colombia Semana Santa is super big and everyone has school break for 2 weeks. It is the holiday of Catholics so all the Catholics go nuts during this week. On Friday, the Catholics do a march through the streets and they marched in front of our apartments and had a mass right there in the street. It was kinda cool to watch because I haven`t been to a mass before. My companion was catholic before he joined the church so he was reciting all the prayers and stuff that they did! Elder Rocha joined the church 5 years ago and he is the only member of his family. I am always amazed how these converts seem to know so much and be such good leaders with so little time in the church. Elder Rocha always makes me answer all the questions and take control because he says that I have always been a member of the church so I should know all the doctrine and answers by now! 

Sounds like Tanner`s prom went alright. It is sure a lot of work there. In Kanab we pretty much just did whatever and had a good time! Maybe it is worth the effort to do all that work though. 

So now for the big news of the letter: the transfers!! They let us know the transfers yesterday and it is definitely a little crazy. I thought for sure they we going to ship me out of Palmira because I now have been here about 5 months. The assistants called us yesterday and said that my companion is getting transferred and I am staying in Palmira as a zone leader with another American. So the big news is that I am going to have someone from my own country as a companion! haha not sure what to think of it because this is pretty much unheard of in our mission. Am I going to forget all my spanish now?  Guess we will see. My companion is Elder Laws and he is from Idaho I think? I am sad to have to leave Elder Rocha because he has been one of my best companions and I have learned a ton from him. He is now going to another area as a district leader. 

We have been have some little frustrations because we don`t really have any investigators progressing right now. We do have Paula, Cesar, and Sebastian that are getting baptized this weekend, but other than them, we don`t have much. Marìa lucely and her granddaughter haven`t been able to come to church and we are wondering if they don`t want to get baptized or something. Eyesmit we kinda stopped visiting and she hasn`t gone to church either. The other news of the transfers is that they are going to send 2 more missionaries in our area again. We are glad because our area was huge. We have to organize everything super good though because now we have to give up a lot of investigators to the new missionaries that arrive. This Wednesday, it will be up to me to show everyone the new area and introduce all the investigators to the missionaries. 

That is about all the news of the mission right now. Thanks for the pictures! I will try and send some too. The week is the week of attendance in the mission and President Prince wants us to try and hit more than 1000 investigators attending church! It will be a ton, but pray for us that we can have some people attending and that we can find some great new people this week. Thanks for all your love and support and I will talk to everyone next week! 

April 14th, 2014

Mom and fam,

Glad you guys got home from the vacations and had a great time! That is so crazy to hear about Luke.. He will definitely be in my prayers. So glad he is alright though. This week we were kinda sad that Eyesmit and Alejandro did not get baptized :( It is so sad and frustrating because they are ready and have been investigators a lot of time but they just don`t want to accept a baptismal date yet. Things were going alright with them but we taught them the word of wisdom and now they say that they need time to be able to stop drinking coffee. The worst part about it is that they had their baptismal interviews and said that they know that the church is true and that they want to be baptized! We are not sure why they will not accept a baptismal date right now though. I guess we have to understand that everyone has their agency. We have already done several fasts for her and her son and I know you all have been praying a lot, but we have just kinda gotten to the point where it is her decision now. We know that she will be baptized eventually, but she might be someone that delays the baptism a lot. The only thing that we can think of is that she doesn`t know too many of the members yet. We are going to try this week fellowshipping them with more members so she can have a "social conversion" like our president says, but if this doesn`t work we are not quite sure what to do. My companion already thinks we should stop teaching her, but it is one of the hardest things in the mission for me: having to just drop investigators when you have invested so much time and effort into the people. 

So anyways, 4 baptismal dates that we had fell through this week. Alejandro and Eyesmit, and some investigators named Marìa Luz Ely and her granddaughter Tatiana. The area changed the attendance for baptism to 3 church attendances to be able to get baptized. Maria luz Ely and her granddaughter had to go to church this Sunday to get baptized this coming weekend, but when we got to their house to pick them up for church they were no where to be found. We are really confident about Marìa Luz Ely and Tatiana getting baptized, but it has just been a little hard for them to go to church. The bright spot of our area is that we have 3 baptisms set for the 27th. Their names are Paula, Cesar, and Sebastian. They are a family that have been investigating for over a here now and have always wanted to get baptized, but haven`t been able to because they weren`t married. They finally got the papers to get married and are going to get married on the 26th and get baptized the 27th. It is cool because the brother of Paula (who is already a longtime member) is coming from London to baptized the whole family. We are excited about these three baptisms and we will have to see what happens with the other 4 that were going to get baptized. 

This week we also had our last interviews with President Prince :( he will be leaving at the end of June and in comes our new President, a guy from Uruguay. Can`t believe time is flying by so fast! Hope you guys can finish out school strong and keep up the good work! Dad told me that Hannah got her mission call, but I didn`t know when she was leaving. That is great for her. Love you all.

Chao!

-Elder Armstrong 

April 7th, 2014

Dear Mom and family, 

Sounds like everyone is having a great time in Cali! The week was good again. This Thursday I went to my first Leadership council meeting as a Zone leader! We are super excited in the mission and we learned a ton! Right now the mission is focusing not as much on baptizing people as "rescuing" the inactive members. Elder Rocha and I have been rescuing a lot of people; we rescued 8 people in the month of March. As a zone leader I am trying to learn to be more organized. We have so much stuff to organize and plan as zone leaders so I have been trying to get used to writing everything down in the agenda. A big part of what we learned in the leadership council is that every missionary needs to be more organized and use the area books. In the mission about 99 percent of missionaries don`t use the area book, but now that we are trying to rescue people (which requires teaching people all the mission lessons, an interview with the bishop, and 2 attendences) it is a lot more important to keep a great record of all the people we are visiting and what we have taught them. The good thing is that we are more organized. The bad thing is that I have not had time to write in my journal for quite a while now! 

The other thing Pres. Prince talked about in the leadership council is that all the Latinos need to learn English! There are very few Latinos in the mission that like studying English, But now they are requiring everybody in the mission to do language study at least 5 days a week. The church is now putting a big emphasis that all non-English speakers learn English. Sister Prince told us that they are even starting to make stake Presidents in Latin America learn English. 

The general conference was of course great! I got to watch it in English this time, so I was sure grateful for that!  We all loved Elder Holland`s talk at the beginning and I remember bits and pieces of other talks too. It was funny because we made a little bracket challenge of the general conference talks! You know, like they do with march madness! We decided in the end that Elder Holland won the tournament, but there were definitely some great talks. 

Thanks so much for all the pictures! I will try to send some more pictures here. The baptisms of Eyesmit and Alejandro are the end of this week, so we are super excited for that! Keep on praying that everything will go through with these baptisms. We have 4 other baptisms planned for this month so it should be a great month. Our zone is doing alright, but there are some area that are struggling quite a bit too. I will keep everyone posted on the baptisms and things coming up. Thanks for all the prayers and support! I love you all! 

-Elder Armstrong

Cinnamon Cake that I made for family night

Bryan and I. . .

Family Night. . . 40 people showed up!

March 31st, 2014

Hi mom and Family,

This week was a good Solid week. Just about like your week: went by super fast and I feel like not that much happened. On Thursday I went to Cerrito which is a little town about 20 minutes away from Palmira. I went and did divisions in Cerrito with one of our district leaders, Elder Stevenson. He is from St. George and he is the one that I mentioned earlier, that is family of the Johnsons in Kanab. We had an alright division.  Elder Stevenson recommended a burger place in Cerrito, so I bought myself a huge double bacon hamburger. In Colombia there are a lot of Burgers that áre not so good, so I took advantage of being in Cerrito.

On Saturday we fasted as a mission for the wife of one of our mission counselors. HIs name is Pres. Trochez and his wife has been having some pretty major health problems so all the missionaries in the mission dedicated their fast to her. Now that our area is super huge (there were 6 missionaries in our area before) we always do divisions on Saturday to be able to invite all of our investigators to church. One of the kids in the church that is preparing for his mission always does divisions with us. His name is Bryan, and he is one of the best friends I have made in the mission! I was with him on Saturday visiting the people and he had a little breakdown. I guess he is going through some trials in his life so while he was doing visits with me he just like got bored and said that he was sick of teaching with us. He said he never wanted to help us out again and that he gave away his whole life just to help us out (which is kinda true because he teaches with us just about all day, every day!). That was kinda a bummer because we basically didn`t have the Spirit after that and we couldn`t invite all the people we wanted to. Luckily after the day was over he regretted what he said and the next day at church he apologized to me. I felt super bad though, because I hate obligating people to help us out! I guess I think back when I was home and never helped the missionaries out. . .  I sure wish I would have. 

The other thing that happened on Sunday is that we finally scheduled a baptismal date for Eyesmit and Alejandro!! Thanks so much for the prayers because it was a fight to get them to finally accept the baptismal date even though they are super ready! They are going to get baptized on April 12 and we have them super excited to go to general conference this weekend too. I have no doubt that they will be baptized this day now, but we of course have to keep working hard with them because the adversary is going to be fighting hard to make them not be baptized. Yesterday we had a little picnic with them to get them out of the house and talk in private with them. It was nice; we made peanut butter bars (one of the recipes you sent me) and sandwiches and went to a little park and just talked to them. It was after that that we finally scheduled the baptismal date. 

Also on Sunday we had a huge family night with almost 40 people! We had planned this family night with the family of Bryan, and when we got there we were amazed to see so many people when we were only expecting like 15 people! It was the craziest family night I have seen in the mission, but I guess you could say it turned out alright. I made a little cinnamon roll cake (another recipe from the cookbook. I am becoming quite the baker with an oven in our house) and everyone loved it too! 

Well those are about the highlights of the week. It was a good week, but nothing much to report more than that. We have my first leadership council this Thursday so that will be cool to go to too. It will be great to hear the vision of the mission from Pres Prince, but I am also excited because Sister Prince always cooks some good food for us! Don`t know if you guys have seen the mission blog, but it is something like Colombia-cali.blogspot.com. Sister Prince always updates it with pictures and everything, so feel free to check it out if you want! 

We are doing good activating a lot of people here too. Hope you guys there in Utah can always give a lot of encouragement to the less actives and inactives. In Colombia the main reason that people are inactive is because they don`t feel needed or loved in the church. It is amazing what a visit can do to help these people.

Love you guys a lot and hope everything goes good in California. Glad Tanner is doing good in baseball and the other kids in their sports and music. 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Ramon and Gloria. . . Wedding and Baptism

March 24th, 2014

Thanks for all the prayers and thoughts! Ramon and Gloria ended up getting baptized and everything turned out great. Eyesmit and Alejandro didn`t get baptized :( but maybe they are not quite prepared yet. I will start out the letter and tell you a little bit about Ramon and Gloria. 

I don`t know if I already explained about Ramon and Gloria, but we found them by pure accident! It reminded me about those stories of missionaries that you always hear; you know the missionaries knocking a wrong or random door and finding people that were already prepared to hear the gospel! Ramon and Gloria were those type of people. About 2 months ago we were looking for some old investigators, but turns out they weren`t home. We knocked and knocked but no one answered. We saw this old guy listening to music in the house next to us and he started talking to us a little (Ramon). He seemed kind of interested, so we shared a little bit with him. At first glance, we could tell that he didn`t really understand anything of what we taught, but he loved the visit and said we could come back any time. We didn`t think much of it because there are a lot of old Colombian people that just love to talk forever, but don`t understand anything! Maybe about a week later, we returned because all of our appointments fell through. That day we asked Ramon if he had read the restoration pamphlet, but he of course had tossed it aside and couldn`t remember anything that we taught him. That day we met his Wife, Gloria. She tryed to avoid us, but after calling her down as she was trying to run up the stairs she reluctantly came to greet us. It was a miracle that she even talked to us because she said she had listened to all the churches and that there never was going to be a church for her. We shared the restoration with her and testified that there is a true church and she seemed to be a little interested. Well long story short, that was when we started to visit them and it always was hard because Ramon understands very little, but Gloria started to get more and more interested. There were many miracles because almost weekly, Gloria would tell us that she was done listening and didn`t want us to come back. She had so much family opposition that she would tell us all the time to not come back, but there was just something that told her to listed to us one more time every moment that she told us no. It continued like that for about 2 months including Ramon telling us that he wouldn`t get baptized if he had to pay tithing! Finally with a lot of help they got baptized this last weekend! We are so happy for them and it was a battle until the end. Gloria, 2 days before her baptism, said that she was not ready and refused to get baptized this week because Ramon wasn`t acting like he was ready to be baptized. We gave her a lot of encouragement and prayed a lot and she accepted again although she said she felt really rushed into everything. The baptism and wedding turned out great, even though it was a super stressful day! They got married at 3:00 on Friday and got baptized at 6. I baptized both Ramon and Gloria. Ramon is afraid of the water and was freaking out and screaming as I dipped him in the water, but luckily he survived! The ward had a little Couple`s night for Ramon and Gloria after the baptism and that turned out super well too. The only bad thing is that we waited about 2 hours for the activity to start, but luckily it turned out good. I know that the Lord definitely helped us out a lot to have them be baptized! We are soo soo happy for them! Thanks for your prayers! 

Well we were also hoping for a miracle with Eyesmit and Alejandro, but not this time. We are having some pretty big changes in the mission and one of them is that the mission is focusing basically more on retention and reactivating people, than baptizing. In almost all the wards of Colombia there are about 20-25 percent of the members that attend church. That means that if there are 500 members about 100 attend church. The area is having us focus more on "rescuing" people and retaining the converts that we already have. They now require us to have the investigators attend church 3 times instead of 2. That is basically why Eyesmit and Alejandro couldn`t get baptized this week, is because they only had attended church 2 times. Keep praying for them though because we are hoping that they will be baptisms for april now. 

Well those are pretty much the highlights of the week! Our zone is doing alright, but there are some companionships that are really struggling because they are having to open area where there are no investigators. We are praying for them a lot so that we can be the best zone in the mission!! haha well maybe not the best, but at least have some good success. 

Thanks for all the support, family, and I just hope that I can keep on improving every day and change to what the Lord wants me to become. Can`t believe that I`m only 6 months away from coming home! I still feel like I have so much more to learn and grow, but I will just try and make the best of these 6 months that I have left. Thanks for the letters! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

March 17th, 2014

Hi family,

I just finished my first week as a zone leader! I am actually really liking it and in a lot of ways it is actually easier than being a district leader. I love my new companion Elder Rocha! He is super loving and is teaching me how to be a zone leader. He has about 2 months less in the mission than me, but he is the oldest missionary in the mission right now. He is 26 years old and he already graduated in his career of special education. He knows how to encourage every missionary in our zone and he always jokes with all the missionaries. He also knows how to chew out the missionaries in a loving way if they are not doing the things right. I love how he can encourage the missionaries and he always ends every phone call with "love you elder." 

This week has been super good, but we are looking forward to probably one of the busiest weeks in the mission I have had so far. Ramon and Gloria are going to get married on Friday, and then baptized in the very same day! Ramon still has not really accepted tithing, but we are going to try and help them with that this week. I am always  impressed by Gloria with how faithful she wants to be. She knows that Ramon doesn`t want to pay tithing, so she is going to start selling beauty products just so she can pay her tithing! They should be pretty solid for their baptisms this friday. After the wedding and baptism, we are going to do an activity for them in the church. I am going to try to make a cake or something and the ward is going to do a couples night for them in the church. Hopefully it will be a special day for them and something that they will always remember. 

The other investigators that we have going super good right now are named Eyesmit and Alejandro. She is the daughter of one of the recent converts in the ward and we are hoping that her and her son, Alejandro, will be baptized this weekend as well. She has been coming to church and we have been teaching her, but she hasn`t accepted a baptismal date yet. My companion and I have felt that God wants her to be baptized this weekend and that she is ready along with her son. It will take a miracle, But we know that if we have faith anything is possible. Pres. Prince has been talking a lot with us about faith. He says that we can`t force people to be baptized, but if we have faith we can set inspired goals and see the hand of God to help us reach this goals. Our goal is that we can have 4 baptisms this weekend, so pray for these people, in particular Eyesmit and Alejandro, that they will accept this weekend to be baptized. 

The responsabilities as a zone leader are not too stressful so far. We only have 10 missionaries in our zone, so it is a pretty small zone. My companion was zone leader of a zone of 24 missionaries, and he said they would be getting calls from missionaries all day long! Basically we just have to verify every night with our two district leaders and they let us know how the missionaries in the district are doing. We have our first zone meeting tomorrow, so I am a little bit nervous for that. We just hope and pray that every missionary in our zone can be obedient and have success in the goals that president Prince wants us to reach. 

Well this is about all that I have time to write. The computers haven`t been able to read my memory card, so that is why I haven`t sent pictures. Sorry! I am going to see what I can do to be able to send pictures of the baptisms this weekend. Hope everyone has the best week ever!

Love,

Elder Armstrong

March 9th

Hi family, 

Well we are through with another transfer and I´ve got some big news... (drumroll)... I am the new assistant to the president!! haha no just kidding but I was called to be a zone leader! I still can´t believe it, but Elder Chavez is getting shipped out of here on wednesday and Elder Rocha will be my new companion (aka fellow zone leader). They are dividing Palmira in 2 zones again so I will be the new zone leader along with the Elder Rocha. We will have about 10 missionaries under our charge and 2 districts. Luckily it isn´t a huge zone, but I am still super nervous to have to be a zone leader. The other part about it is that they are not sending new missionaries to our branch. We have to cover the area of 6 missionaries with only us 2! We will have to learn to organize our time super good and figure out how to work with all this area. Pray for me a lot in all these new responsabilities! 

The week was alright. We didn´t teach very many lessons and we were not very organized this week, but I will be ready for a new start and to have a new companion. Elder Chavez was one of the best companions that I have had in the mission so far, but it will be great to get a companion that hopefully has a strong desire to work and do everything right. We should have some baptisms coming up this month if everything goes well. 

Today we were trying to get the marriage date for Ramon and Gloria, 2 of our investigators, but today we went to look for the birth register of Ramon and it was nowhere to be found in Palmira. Ramon is so funny because he makes some of the silliest comments. He had very little education so I think that is part of the reason that he makes some super funny comments and says some stuff that doesn´t make much sense sometimes. We always love teaching them even though sometimes we have to teach something 10 times for him! 

We are also selling little jello cakes to help some other investigators get married. It was funny because we went to the zone meeting last Saturday and sold these little cakes to all the missionaries. Everyone thought they were disgusting! haha everyone helped us out, but we just told everyone that we didn´t make the cakes, and that they were for a good cause. I was thinking that I should have just made some cookies or something to sell, but I guess it was good that the investigators could work to pay their wedding. 

Well hope you and dad had a great Anniversary Mom!! Sounds like you had a good date and everything. That is cool to hear that Tanner made his baseball team too. Tell him good job! You guys have another huge responsibility with the trek again. I know that you will do a great job and that the Lord has a lot of trust in you. I feel pretty overwhelmed with this new responsibility, but I will let you know how it goes. Love you all and talk to you next week! 

-Elder Armstrong