August 2nd, 2014

Hi family,

Sorry again that I couldn´t write last week. I was trying to copy and paste something and it deleted everything! This week I will try to be more careful :) 

So this week was good again. Every week this transfer we have had good weeks but we know we can keep on improving and hopefully have great weeks! This week we are expecting 4 baptisms, but we won´t be able to do it without your prayers because these investigators have had a lot of opposition and are a little bit shaky sometimes. The first baptisms I had here in Pasto were María Edilma and Estiven and now these baptisms that are coming up is the other son of María and the sister of María and her 2 children. They have already been to church 4 times but there have been some complicated things that have happened to them. It is so hard in Colombia for the people and sometimes I wonder what we can do to help people with so many problems. A lot of times I feel like Grandma and Grandpa Armstrong how they say there are so many problems in their branch as well. Our convert Maria has gone through a ton of things ever since she got baptized and it seems that things are getting a little worse. First, she didn´t have money to buy food for her family so the ward helped her out with that a little bit back. Second, her husband left her with all her kids and isn´t helping them at all. One time he came back to their house while we were there and her 19 year old kid (the one that is going to get baptized this sat.) started to get mad because he wasn´t helping them with anything. When the husband left her son left running out of the house and started trying to fight the husband. Eventually the husband chucked a boulder at the son and they ended up getting in this big rock fight and pretty much the whole neighborhood was out wondering what was going on. Luckily Maria broke up the fight and no one really got hurt, but it was pretty crazy! Now the problem with them is that Maria is leaving the house all day long and doesn´t leave her kids with anyone. We don´t really know what Maria is doing; maybe looking for a job or something like she says, but the kids are alone pretty much all day or they go over to the aunt´s house (the one that is getting baptized with her family this Sat.) and the aunt is starting to get pretty mad. They had a problem the other day and the other family says that Maria came to the house drunk and starting hitting the kids. We don´t really know what the truth is because Maria tells us one thing and then her sister tells us another. We have commented to the bishop and the bishop is going to interview her this week and maybe get child support involved depending on what happens. With all these problems we are going to need a lot of prayers so that these people can get baptized and hopefully resolve their problems at the same time. The sister of Maria is named Estella and her 2 kids that are getting baptized are named Mario and Darcy. The other son of Maria that will get baptized is named Miguel. We need all you prayers for them this week! 

This week we also had interviews with Pres. Pricoli for the first time. They were good, but also super different from pres. Prince´s interviews. The thing that I missed was sister Prince´s banana bread that she always made for us during interviews, but guess we will have to get used to not having banana bread now. Pres. Pricoli´s vision is that we can all be celestial missionaries so we are now focusing a lot more on christlike attributes and be more worthy to receive direction from the spirit. We have to pick an attribute to study each week so this week our zone studied the humility. It will be good to develop these attributes and I invite you all to also study the attributes like it shows us in Preach my Gospel. 

Thanks for all the updates and pictures! Sounds like you guys had a great time at the family reunion and at the lake. That was crazy with the storms at the Lake! Glad everyone made it out alive though. Miss the family, but hopefully I will finally be able to go to a family reunion next year! 

Got to go so everyone have a great week this week. Love you! 

-Elder Armstrong

Oh and random thought, I asked Sister Pricoli when my release date was and she told me October 7th!! She told me it´s not a for sure thing and could change, but right now that is when I will finish because that is when the next transfer ends. Start buying the food for the parties when I get back!! and don´t worry I will keep on working til the last day in the mission :)

Happy Birthday Elder Armstrong July 20th, 2014

July 20th, 2014

Hi mom and family,

Thanks for the birthday package!! It got to Pasto on the 17th but I Didn´t get it until Friday because it was with the zone leaders. We were all super excited to get a package and I opened it here with my district :) the 2 things I was most excited about were the Preach my Gospel flags and the missionary scripture book. I have started marking all the scriptures in preach my gospel and it is amazing how I still haven´t studied a lot of things and I´m already almost finishing the mission. My goal is to try and study all of preach my gospel (including the scriptures) by the end of my mission. The book you sent me my old companion elder Laws had the same book so I thought that is a cool little book to study too.

Of course I was super excited about all the little church pictures and stuff to give out too. I am going to try and make a gift for all my converts before I leave the mission, so those little pictures and cards will be great to give out. THANK YOU!!

That is crazy that Carlee already got home from her mission! It is crazy how fast the time passes. I still feel like I have a ton of time to go, but I know it is going to pass super fast too. 

This week was a good week again so thanks for the prayers again! We had 7 people at church again and have a couple great families that will get baptized soon. One family has been super special and we had some cool experiences with them this week. It is a sister that is inactive but wants to have her son baptized in the church. We went and contacted them about 2 weeks ago and she said she has been inactive pretty much since she got baptized, but that she wants to return to the church and have her son baptized. Her son is 8 years old and he is super excited to get baptized! At first she didn´t want us to talk to her husband because he is a "jehovahs witness" but we invited to listen during the first lesson and he excepted the invitation to read and pray. Ever since then it has been smooth sailing. The husband started reading and praying and tells us almost every lesson that he feels super peaceful when we go to teach them. A once Jehovahs witness accepted the invitation to get married to his wife and after that to get baptized. We had a super spiritual lesson and one of the counselor´s in the ward helped us out a lot. We have a super good counselor here and he shared his experiences about marriage how he basically sacrificed everything to get married with his wife here in Pasto. He is from Cali and had a good job and life there. After his mission he met his future wife at a church activity and decided to move to Pasto because he wanted to marry her. He moved to Pasto without a job and even had to beg for his food sometimes, but he promised this guy that if he got married then he would find work and would receive a ton of blessings in his life. After sharing his experience, the counselor asked Mauricio (the jehovahs witness) if he would get married and he and his wife were both crying and saying how they wanted to change their lives and get married! It was a neat experience and I have no doubt that they are going to receive lot of blessings. They are going to get married and then Mauricio will get baptized after. The best experiences in the mission are to see families become converted because the gospel is all about converting families right?! 

Well that is the experience that I wanted to share and thanks again for the birthday wishes! I had a good birthday and my district bought me a surprise cake! They also followed the Latin tradition and smashed an egg on my head and poured flour on me, but guess I have to enjoy that with my last months in Colombia. I haven´t gotten a release date yet, and I´m sure I won´t get one until a week or two before the end of my mission. I know some missionaries with less than a month that still haven´t gotten their release date, so I am not expecting anything too soon. 

Love ya all and have a great week!! 

-Elder Armstrong

July 14th, 2014

Hi family! 

Thanks for all the birthday wishes! It is hard to believe that in 3 days I am already 21 years old! The time is flying by and the mission is starting to come to an end. Today they announced the transfers... Drumrolll.... I am staying in Pasto! I am staying here with Elder Amasifuen still so I am pretty content and fine with that. 

One of our zone leaders is getting transferred to Cali and guess who is coming to be our zone leader: Elder Pancheri, my first companion in the mission! We started the first 6 months of the mission together and have barely seen each other since, but looks like he will be coming to Pasto now and we will probably be finishing up the mission here in Pasto! I am excited to see my good ol buddy Elder Pancheri again and even though we won´t see each other a ton still, it will be nice to be in the same zone again. 

Well now about this week, THANK YOU  for the prayers and fasting because this was the week we needed here in Pasto! We finally had people come to church (7 investigators compared to 0 last week) and we put 3 baptismal dates and have 2 solid families that we are teaching! I know that yours prayers helped and we hope we can now start to have success here. One of the families we are teaching is the sister of our recent convert Maria Edilma, and the other is a reference of one of the less actives we are teaching. We are starting to realize that if we work through the converts and less actives, we not only strengthen them, but we also find golden investigators. The other baptismal date we put is a reference of another less active (the one that is in the volcano picture I sent) and is golden golden and will be baptized for sure in August. 

On Sunday we had a prayer in our hearts all morning hoping that we would have investigators come to church. We went to one of the families and knocked on the door at 8:30 hoping they would be ready for church like they said they would. I was just praying they would be ready as we knocked on the door, but of course they were in PJs and just getting up! They told us they weren´t going but I wasn´t giving up that easily. I said "no you guys told us that last week and you made this commitment with God, go get ready and we will wait for you!" I told this to the daughter and after that the mom came down and said they weren´t going but we just kept on persisting and telling them all the blessings that they would be missing out on and finally the mom gave in and started getting everyone ready. It was a huge relief that she finally realized she needed to go to church and I know that God answered our prayers! Sometimes you just have to persist through things. Most people don´t realize the blessings they are going to miss out on, but at least we do and we should help them know that right?

Well got to get going here, but thanks for the letters and prayers! Keep praying for us this week, and I know that we will start to have success. I am dead tired right now because we just got done playing almost 4 hours of soccer, but it was fun and I think I am starting to get better (even though everyone makes fun of me when I try and kick a goal and it goes the complete opposite direction!) Hope ya all have a good one! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong

Multiculture Food Actiity

July 14th, 2014

Elder Armstrong with President Pricolli and his wife

July 4th, 2014

Mom and family,

Happy 4th of July! Sounds like everyone had a great day and I pretty much forgot it was 4th of july, but our zone leader did call us and wish us a happy 4th so that was nice. As you all know, Colombia lost in their game on the 4th, but thanks for supporting Colombia everyone. It was a sad loss and all the Colombians are pretty mad because they say that Brazil cheated them! I of course didn´t get to see the game but all the Colombians still talk about it every day here. 

During the game, we were supposed to stay in the house all day.  We left to preach in the morning until lunch and then all afternoon and night we were just in the house pretty much hanging out. It was kinda nice to have a little rest this day I guess, but I actually got a little bored. After Colombia lost it was pretty much silent the rest of the day. I´m pretty sure we heard some sobs in the air, but that was about all to be heard the day of Colombia´s loss. On the other hand maybe it was a good thing, because when Colombia wins everyone goes absolutely nuts! The last time they won, they was 8 deaths from drunk drivers that day, so they prohibited all the people from driving their cars on the 4th. I can imagine if Colombia would have won,  people would have been celebrating all day and all night so that´s why pres. Pricoli didn´t want us leaving this day. 

Anyway, the work of the Lord has been alright. We are working hard, still having little success, but hoping that this week will be better. The good thing of this week was that we found 11 new investigators. All of these investigators were references from members and were actually pretty good. We committed almost all of them to come to church with us on sunday too, but guess how man came church? Zero.. We again had it hard getting people to go to church on Sunday. We left early sunday morning in the pouring rain to pass by and pick up investigators. Every house we passed by they didn´t answer and I´m pretty sure were still sleeping. I guess they just figured that when it rains they cancel church in Colombia? We thought we still had hope because we committed some members to pass by other investigators. We got to church and the members said that they didn´t pass by the people because when it rains nobody likes to go to church.. Thanks a lot members of Pasto! I mean I guess that´s probably true but people don´t understand that we should go to church whether it´s raining or thundering or earthquaking or whatever! At this point I am about out of ideas trying to get people to come to church, but I guess we will just keep on working and praying and hope that it doesn´t rain so that the investigators will come to church this sunday. 

Well the other thing that happened this week is we got to meet Pres. Pricoli! He came on Saturday morning and did a little conference with us and he seems like a pretty neat guy. I asked him a lot of questions about how it is to be called as a mission president. He told us about his experience in the interviews with apostles and what they have to do to prepare. He said that they received an interview in November of 2013 and then they went on preparing. Sister Pricoli told us that they had no idea of anything when they got a call saying that Elder Christofferson wanted an interview with them. She said she bursted out crying when that happened and her daughter thought that someone in the family had died! But they are good people. Pres. Pricoli is changing some things in the mission. We now do not have a mission newsletter and we don´t get informed about how many people the other missionaries had to church or how many people had baptisms and stuff like that. I always liked seeing those dats and trying to improve on the numbers, but pres. Pricoli said that the mission shouldn´t be a competition to see how many baptisms we can get. I guess every mission President is different, and I will have to adjust to his new ideas. 

As for the sisters, they seem to be doing a little better, but one sister can just be so hard sometimes! Well I share my testimony with you all that I know this church is true and I know the Christ is the real head of this church. I know that we have a prophet that directs this church and we are so blessed to be able to receive revelations from him. I hope everyone has a great week. I love you all! Thanks for the letters and encouragement as always! 

Love,

Elder Armstrong