January 6th, 2014

HI family,

Sorry I am writing a day late here. We had a little activity of capture the flag with our district and with some of the other people of the ward so our zone leaders told us to just go ahead and write today. Hope everyone had a great new year! We didn`t do much around here. We live in the wealthier part of Palmira so nothing really happens in our part of the town. We hung out until midnight and watched a few fireworks go off, but within 30 minutes everyone was in their houses and quiet. We did hear a couple people blowing up their dummies that they had prepares. Remember how I told you that all the kids ask for money in December for the mannequins? Well that is what they save for is New year`s eve to blow up all these dummies. We heard the next day that there were hundreds of people hospitalized the next day for all the explosions they do here! Everyone likes to blow the things up but they all end up with burnt hands! 

The district is going alright here. It is definitely easier to be a district leader here than where I was in Cali, but it still isn`t easy. Just pray that our district can keep moving forward without any problems! The goal of the mission this month is 344 baptisms and that will be the most baptisms in the history of the mission if we can pull it off. Everyone is pretty motivated right now so we should have some good baptisms coming up. 

We are working hard with these 2 families Osorio and Lenis. The Osorio`s are excited to get married so we are going to get going on that this week and help them have the money to do it. We are thinking that Sister Osorio can make a lunch for all the missionaries and if we get all the missionaries from our zone to pay a little for the lunch they should have enough money to get married after that. The Lenis family are going super good,but unfortunately they don`t want to accept a baptismal date. The mom is an inactive member and she doesn`t want her kids getting  baptized without it being their decision and commitment. She kinda discouraged them from accepting a baptismal date with that unfortunately, but we are going to work with the  members this week to get them to feel more comfortable and accept that date! Pray for them! Our goal is to have at least 5 baptisms this month :) 

 

Anyways got to go to work now. Talk to everyone next Monday! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong