Day 307

¡Hola familia!
i now have 10 months in the mission!!! that´s pretty much a year already! or almost a year... hahaha. there was an earthquake in colorado? crazy. did you feel it? i did see something about that couple that served here but i didn´t know them. they were replaced by the johnsons in august i think, before i got here. they wanted a list of my companions? well, i was with elder escobar, elder suarez, elder taylor, and now i´m with elder ruano. elder escobar has about a year and a half, elder suarez went home a few months ago, and elder taylor is going home in october.
i was promised that you would take lots of pictures when all of the family is together for the baby blessings but i was never promised that they would be sent to me to see them. please send them. i would love to see them. the week went pretty well and i´m excited to finish up this transfer this last week. i find out who goes and who stays on saturday night (the 3 of septiembre) and i might be leaving on the 5th. we will see. the hermanas in my district think that i will be leaving but i´m not sure. they had me write in their notebooks to say goodbye and how awesome they are but we will see if i have another 6 weeks in zapala. i was thinking this morning that it would be very strange to leave zapala and i don´t really want to go anywhere else... i guess that i´m used to the area now (after 7 months). fa. the mission is not doing well with baptisms right now so the zone leaders are really pressuring us to do a lot more than we are already doing. in the district meeting, i talked about that with all of the hermanas and my comp and we decided that we just needed to talk about the investigators that we already have, and as a district we came up with some really good ideas to help them progress better that we haven´t thought of before. it was a really good meeting, i think. on wednesday, we had an activity in the church. a movie night!! we watched finding faith in christ and the short video of the restauracion. it went very well but we didn´t have as many investigators there that we thought we would have. oh well. i am hoping to get some baptisms this saturday but i don´t feel like it will happen because it is really difficult to find the investigators right now... but we were able to find a few new families. should be great this week.
on friday, i had 4 baptismal interviews with the members of a family that the zone leaders found a long time. i was there when they first found them a few months ago and they weren´t that interested in the church, so it was cool to hear their testimonies in their interviews with me. on saturday, we had another activity for the youth called ´´mtc for a day´´, and we were the mtc teachers and we assigned them companions and taught them how to do contacts in the street and share the gospel with friends. it went very well. after that, we went to a reference that the hermanas gave us, a testigo de jehovah that tried to convince us that we were wrong and that we should rethink where we are. he said that the church wasn´t logical and that i needed to start using my head. i really wanted to leave but he kept talking and wouldn´t give my bible back. the thing that bothered me the most was that in the two hours we were there, elder ruano didn´t say a word. afterwards i told him, ´´hey! you have to help me! all you need to do is bare your testimony with me. if i do it alone there is no power and i really need you to support me.´´ he told me that i can do everything by myself and that i don´t need him to do anything. that really hurt me and made me a little upset with him. he doesn´t realize his potential yet and i think he is starting to give up. i´m talking with my mission president and praying hard for him. i don´t think that i can be carrying him on my back for another transfer but if i need to, i will do it. i´m pressing him hard to do his part so we will see how he does this last week.
pero bueno.
i talked in church too yesterday!! that´s awesome. i talked about john 21 when jesus asked pedro, ¿me amas?. i talked about ways that we can show the savior that yes, we do love him, and how we can leave everything behind and follow him like pedro was asked to do. it went very well and i felt really good about it. well, that was my week. i hope everything goes well this week too, it will be lots of fun! i think someone should print out a card board print out of me so i can participate too. maybe that would be a little extreme but i think it would be awesome. i love you guys!
con mucho amor y ánimo
elder summers