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