Missing Hali

May 27, 2013

That´s really sad about Hali, she was an absolutely amazing dog and I´m going to miss her a lot. I was thinking about her a lot and a quote came into my head.  Someone was talking to the prophet Joseph Smith a little bit after one of his favorite horses died. The man asked something along the lines of whether or not his horse would be in heaven and Joseph responded ´I can´t imagine heaven without him´. Just something that I remembered and gives me a happy thought.

Nug the day he left home for his Mission with Hali.

So this past week was good and kinda rough. Rough because we spent a lot of time contacting, but didn´t get much out of it. We were really tired at the end of the days and a little discouraged, but we got over it and we´re ready to take on this week.

Last Monday we had a family night with the Bishop, his family, and Reyla. It was really fun!! I made hamburgers and the others played pass the pigs.

Family Night - Armando, Nug, Reyla, Bishop, Ester, Brian, Elders Alvarez, Briceño & Webb

Also last Monday I called the health secratary about my toes.....ya, I´m having problems again. The nails that the doctor took off are growing back, but ingrown.. so they hurt and are pussing. Today when I go the office to pick up my package, I´m going to have him look at my toes so we can figure out what to do.

Elder Molina, Elder Norberg & Elder Mañuico

This week it has been raining quite a bit which makes it hotter and more humid :( The worst was Tuesday night, because it was raining so much that the power went out.  I was sweating, and trying to sleep when I remembered that Mom sent me the most amazing gift!!... A mini fan!! So I took that out of my bag and it saved my life!! ( Thank you mom).







Also, another problem that we had this week is that my comp got an ear infection.  He can´t really hear out of his right ear and we have to put some drops in his ear every 3 hours and then he stays with his head sideways for 20-30 minutes, ... that kinda kills our schedule during the day.

Nug with Elder Fisher

We had some really good lessons with Reyla and Leslie.  We´re really working hard with them so that they can have their baptisms this Saturday. Also, Liseth and Loren are still doing great. They are reading the Book of Mormon, the pamphlets and praying! Super Awesome! That´s been kinda it for this week, nothing super big happened, but super pumped for the baptisms.

Nathan & his Trainer - Elder De Los Santos

Love you all!!! Abrazos y besos!!

Update: Since I wrote this message earlier this morning,  I've been to the office to pick up my package and it´s great!! Loved the letters and super happy to have the new dvds! Thanks family!! Also, I spoke with the health secretary and basically he told me that my toes suck and we´re going to go to the clinc on Wednesday to get them checked out.

Great Week in Barranquilla!

May 20, 2013

What´s up people¡¡¡ How´s it going?

This week has been awesome, but kinda slow with lessons. We had two big conferences this week; one on Wednesday with President Gaviria and the other on Saturday with Elder Uceda (Area 70). Both were super awesome... blew my mind too.

They talked a lot about what we can do better with our investigators, how we can help them to keep their commitments better, and different things we need to do with them. All in all they were awesome days. I learned a lot of stuff and found some way that I can improve.

One big thing that the two talked about was English. The missionaries that don´t speak English need to study, they really hammered on that. The rest of the week was pretty good. Our numbers for lessons have been down because we´ve been contacting a lot in apart of our area where the previous missionaries  didn´t really go. It´s been kinda rough there, but we had an amazing few lessons with one family.

We first got a reference for a girl ,Vera, so we went and taught her the first lessons and she loved it and wanted to learn more. We said that we would come back Thursday for another lesson, but when we got there she wasn´t there.Vera's little sister, Lora, was there and she had read the lesson 1 pamphlet and had a lot of questions so we taught her. She loved it and wanted to learn more so we said we would come back there on Saturday. We went back and Vera wasn´t there again, but Lora was and also her cousin Liseth. Turned out that Liseth was super interested in the Book of Mormon and had read all of Moroni and all of the introduction.

I had my mind blown¡¡ It was sooo awesome¡¡ She is golden¡¡ She reads everything we give her and understands it too and she really wants to know if it is all true¡ I'm soo pumped for those three¡¡

We´re also working really hard with Reyla and Leslie so that they can get baptized either this week or next week. They are just a little indecisive so we need to give them a little push.

We didn´t do anything for pday... just played pass the pigs and slept. We´re going to have a Family Night with some members and Reyla. I am making hamburgers for everyone so I get to bust out my Nielsen skills tonight¡¡

Well that´s about it¡¡ Love you all¡¡

Abrazos y besos¡¡

Skype was Awesome!

May 13, 2013

Hey!! So this weekly update is going to be kind of short because I wrote last wednesday and not much has really happened. 

This week we contacted a lot in the part of our area where the other missionaries haven`t gone to before. It was just really loooooonng contacting and it just made me more tired at the end of the day. We found some new people but not a ton, which is kind of a bummer. 

We had a really awesome lesson with Reyla the other day. We were talking about her baptism and when we would do it because she wants to get baptized. Her parents aren`t super supportive so we were talking about that and then her aunt told us that they have a plan. So I was thinking something bad was going to happened but it turned out that Leslie (cousin of Reyla and daughter of the aunt of Reyla) wants to get baptized too with Reyla!! 

So now we`re going to baptize them both on the same day, but we just have to pick a day so we`re going to talk with them tomorrow about it!!! Hopefully this Saturday or the next! Fingers crossed! 

The Skype call yesterday was super awesome! Loved talking with you guys!! It was really weird to see the house again. The place that we went to skype is the internet of Reyla, so once we finished talking with our families, her dad just looked at us, told us to shake his hand and that we didn`t have to pay!!! So we got to talk free! 

But ya, that`s about it for this week. Everything is going well with my comp, just working hard (or hardly working) just kidding. I`m going to be making some goals in these next couple weeks so I can accomplish and get to where I want to be in this coming year.

Love you all!! This week we`re going to have a zone conference and a conference with an Area 70. It should be a great week! 

Love you all!! Abrazos y besos!!

Week of Food & Floods!

Mary 8, 2013

Me, Alvarez, Webb & Gonzalez

What´s up?! This week has been pretty crazy.

Starting with Monday/Tuesday, we passed by Sofia, the lady we did the exorcism blessing on, and she went to the hospital to get medical attention because she wasn´t doing too well. Basically more creepy stuff/bad spirit stuff was happening at their house too so we gave her husband a blessing. She´s doing a lot better now which is good to know so we´re hoping that she can keep improving.

River in the Street.

This week has been kinda rough with my health because I got sick again. On Wednesday we ate fish, but it was different than what we have had before. Elder Web and I got sick and I threw up more and just stayed in the house the whole day with Elder Webb. The bummer is that since that Wednesday I haven´t been feeling super great. I can´t eat alot of food or else I throw up... :( .

It rained some more this week SUPER HARD!! The streets were rivers and it was thundering really loudly too. Luckily we were already in the house so we just waited it out. After the storm a ton of bugs just showed up out of no where. It was really hard to eat/teach because bugs landed on us every 10 seconds.

We had Zone conference Saturday and they told us that the transfers are now going to be on Mondays. Our pday for the week of transfers is Wednesday, but the rest are on Monday like normal. They also told us that this Sunday or Monday we can Skype families!!! YAAA! Doesn´t feel like it was that long ago when I called for Christmas.

Me & some friends.

Also at the conference I got my cedula!! Basically it´s just a foreign id card, but it´s super awesome! I also got 3 letters, two from Granny and one from Mindy. So sorry people that have sent me letters, I haven´t gotten them ...

More Friends.

Elder Alvarez (left) and Elder Briceño - que lindos!

On Sunday we found out about our new changes and my comp, Elder Gonzales, peaced out to Cartagena and the rest of us stayed. My new comp now is Elder Briceño. He´s from Chile and super awesome. We get along really well and he´s a great missionary. We only have two days together so I don´t really know him that much, but so far we are doing great.

One of the best things about transfers was that I got to wait in the terminal for 7 hours. I just chilled there and got to talk with all of the missionaries passing through. I got to see sooo many people. I finally saw Elder Neff (from my group in Bogota) and Elder Soderborg!!! It was awesome talking with them and catching up on what has happened in the mission.

Mickey D's!

Today for pday we finally did something! We went to the Plaza to find Taco Bell, but it wasn´t there!!! We weren´t happy. So we ate Mcdonalds instead. I also bought a new bag because my old one is worn out, dirty, and broken.

Things are going pretty well with our investigators. Reyla passed through her interview perfectly fine, but the problem is that her parents aren´t super supportive so we´re working really hard with her so she can get baptized. We also have two others, Monica and Vicente, who just need their interviews and then they´ll be set to go for batism! We´re just working with them trying to get them preped for that and finding new people to teach!

We also got a new rule for pdays! Every first pday of the month we can have a district pday, meaning we can go to different plaves in the city with our whole district, and the pday after we get money on the 15th we can have a pday with 4 missionaries! So basically we´re going to be doing more fun stuff for pdays!!!

Chicken Chow Time.

So ya! That´s it for this week, I´m going to be writing again Monday so I´m not sure how much will happened between now and then but love you all!!








Abrazos y besos!

Stay Classy.