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