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!