Week 7 - First week in Uruguay

First of all, I have the best traveling story ever. So in kilos the weight limit is 23 kilos, and at first I wasn't worried because it worked the first time, so it was going to work again right? I forgot that I needed to bring more books with me from the MTC. We had a scale in the MTC, but I wasn't sure how accurate it was. To make an unnecessarily long story short, when I went up to weigh my suitcases my big suitcase was 22.9 kilos!!  I had to check my carry-on and take with me my shoulder bag and scripture bag to do it, but I beat the system!

So when Elder Hernandez and I got to the area, I learned that we were opening it, so Elder Hernandez had not been there either. So we did a quick scan of the area book, but our first day was just contacting. We have also been having trouble locating the old investigators. What I think is eventually going to help us the most though is that on Saturday we had divisiones with the Zone Leaders and one of them that I was with in our area was the one who closed it, so he was able to show me where everyone lived and the best times to find them, and he gave some promising futures that we could follow up on. Finally it feels like Elder Hernandez and I have something a little more hopeful to do.

The ward here is great. There are about 70 active members and they are all so nice, but I have heard that they don´t like to do missionary work as much and just leave that to us, so that is our new goal. We have to get this ward a little more excited to help us. We've been given a new focus in the mission to not only find people, but to focus on people that are 12-30 years old. I was hearing it in Spanish so I didn't get all of it, but at least in my mind I can see it being really good because they tend to be a little more social and we can get some of their friends to take discussions too. This was my idea at least.

I'm happy that I have not had really any people say that they can't understand my Spanish, and in a lot of ways I've already begun to speak in the Uruguayan accent, but I can't understand it for the life of me. Hopefully that'll change soon.

It's been interesting though because Elder Hernandez will hear it, then I can ask what they said, and he'll say basically the same thing and I'll understand it because I can understand him just fine, but the Uruguayans are way harder. 

Well, I think I should tell you the really impressive thing about Pres. Olsen now. When he got here the mission was getting about 200 or so baptisms a year I heard, and after a year of him being here we had about 400, and by the end of the following year we had either in the high 700s or 800 or something like that. Now this year we have the goal of 1000. We're a little short of it now because we are just shy of 500 at the moment, but I still think we can do it. Apparently this time last year where the goal was only 700, they had only gotten about 280, but then things started going like crazy. I can't wait to see if we can get this going.

Well I can definitely say that this is the best mission in the world! Nos vemos!

-Elder Martin