Week 10 - ALREADY A MONTH!!!!

I find it hard to believe, but I am now a month in and it has felt like 4 days rather than 4 weeks. I am really scared that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and be coming home. I hope it doesn't feel that fast, I still have so much to do.

This week was one of the best and one of the worst all at the same time. New weekly record of 6 new investigators, but once again 0 with fecha (a date)(we lost Victoria and Natalia), 0 in the chapel and obviously 0 baptisms for now.

One antiguo (old, or former) investigator that we've been trying to find for a solid month, the entire time we've been here, we finally found her this week and have a set appointment with her tomorrow. We also know she has at least 2 daughters living with her, so this could be a good opportunity to get some more investigators and help a mini family to baptism.

We had emergency divisions with the other companionship in our district because they started to get a little heated with each other. Although it started bad, I was grateful for the opportunity I had to learn a little bit from Elder Craig and his teaching methods. He taught very simply, very clear, and he made sure that the people he taught understood what was happening. Sometimes I feel like I really need to focus on keeping it simple.

Alright, so we have a family of investigator gold. They are a family of 8, 6 of whom are baptizable, and they are interested in learning more. The parents aren't married (of course, welcome to South America) but the man, Juan, actually wants to get married, which is a new occurrence. Amelia, the mother, with 3 of her kids Fabian, Allison, and Augustina, had a little chapel tour, and she said she would come to church on Sunday with her entire 

family. We were stoked! ... Then she didn't come, but we're going back at it this week; we're going to stress the importance of the chapel like never before. Hopefully we'll get them there this week.

This week we also had scheduled divisions, and I had to lead our area! AH!!!! I was a little scared because I was thinking that I was going to get lost, and I also had to be the main teacher because I actually knew the people that we were going to visit. It went really well though, and we finally found Michelle again! John and Sai were there too, but they were busy and didn't have time to talk with us, but the fact that we reestablished contact with them, and have a set appointment with them again is awesome. The 3 of them also said that they would attend the Church this week, and then they didn't show up either. .... So there is obviously still work to do, and we are going to do it!

Also, mine and Elder Hernandez's first investigator that we found, Alvaro, that we haven't been able to find for more than 3 weeks, we finally found him again this week. He said that in the last weeks he had way more work to do than normal and that he didn't read anything of what we gave him last time. We reviewed the Restoration and the Book of Mormon and we're going to visit him again on Saturday.

Well that was basically the week. Lots of good finds and re-finds, lots of good lessons, but as always lots of fallen appointments and disappointments with the church attendance. One way or another though, we are having success, even if not in the way of quick baptisms, every step forward counts as success. Elder Hernandez told me that the finding we are pulling off is very above average actually so maybe even if we can't guide these people to baptism, at least we found a fountain of options for the future, but we're going to get some, we can feel it. 

Nos vemos!

-Elder Martin

Bryant keeps forgetting his camera so here are a couple of pictures

he hijacked from his companion.