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