February 9th, 2014

Hello Family,

Sounds like everyone had a great weekend! The work here is slowing down a little bit now that all our families have gotten baptized. It was great while it lasted, but now we have to do some MAJOR finding this week. The mission is changing so much right now. There are a ton of people leaving in these weeks, and the mission is going to be receiving 30 new missionaries at the beginning of March. The district leaders all have to step up and be training all the new missionaries that come in. 

This week we did have another baptism. I forgot to bring my camera so I will have to send a picture next week, but we baptized the last member of the Lenis family. She is named Sandra and she was one of the sisters that lived in the house with them. At first she was super unsure about the decision but this week we finally got her to realize that she was ready to be baptized and on Saturday we did the baptism. That was pretty much the highlight of the week. We only had 1 investigator go to church because everyone is baptized here. The goal in the mission now is to have 3 new people that go to church, and 3 new people with baptismal dates. It is a huge goal, but I guess with God anything is possible right? Our president wrote us today and the reason why the mission is changing some things is because he talked with the past mission President`s and asked them for some ideas. The conclusion that Pres. Prince came to after talking to the other mission President`s is that we need to set more baptismal dates, and we need to be teaching shorter lessons to have time to do everything. This is going to be hard with the Colombians because everyone here just likes to talk your ear off! 

I guess the other news of the week is that my companion got sick. We were inviting people to church on Saturday and all the sudden my companion`s stomach started killing him.  Luckily we had a member with us this day, so my companion was able to stay with a member while I went and did more visits with the other member. My companion got so sick that he couldn`t even go to the baptism that night. I went to the baptism alone with the member, and had to baptize her without my companion being there. It was kinda sad the pictures without him, but he had a lot of pain. The baptism ended up turning out a little improvised, but we made it through it. We called my companion after, and it turns out that he had to go to the hospital. I got there as soon as I could and I had to wait outside of the clinic for him until midnight. He has a minor intenstine infection and he has to be resting for 3 days. This happened on Saturday and he is still kinda sick with diarrhea, but we are hoping he will be better by tomorrow. If not, he has to go to the hospital again. 

Well that is pretty much all that happened this week.  Anyways, got to go but everyone take care and this time pray that we can find some quality families this week to teach. 

Love,

Elder Armstrong