Hello my fellow good people!

What’s up y’all?

I hope everyone has had a good week.  For the most part, it seems like you have - awesome! My week wasn’t bad at all. Lots of walking and working as usual. I’m actually quite surprised on how focused I am with the fact that I'm way stoked to be home soon and go to college.  I’m going to miss the mission for sure. I'm so thankful for the things I'm learning in every situation that I come across.  Can’t complain about that. I was thinking the other day and noticed how before the mission, I wasn’t some one who was really interested in learning, but I've changed a bit it seems. Talking with a lot of people and really getting to know people has made me interested in learning new things about life, and not just about the gospel but just about everything.

Well, any who, it rained the past three days and that did not help with church attendance! There were a lot less people in church but we did manage to have one investigator, so it wasn’t too bad.  Her name is Liliana; I might have mentioned her in the past. She has been to church a lot but not as as much recently until yesterday. She wants to get baptized but her husband has to get divorced and then married to her. She was telling us, though, after church that she’s had a tough week with her husband. He drinks a lot and doesn’t respect the kids or her very much and she’s thinking about leaving him, kind of sad. So we are going to go by tonight to try and help her a little but more. I hope everything works out. She has problems - she gets panic attacks and stuff - but she’s really a nice person with a huge desire to get baptized. I know everything will work out for her and the Lord will guide her in where she needs to be and what she needs to do with her life. 

We also found a couple of new investigators this week. They have some doubts, but none that can’t be answered.  Hopefully we will be able to find them again this week and teach them some more. 

We had Zone Conference this past Wednesday, too. It was one of the best Zone Conferences I've had in while. I really learned a lot and felt the spirit strongly. Pres started doing interviews and during one of them he got a call from Pres Arnold. So Pres put the call on speakerphone.   Elder Arnold spoke to us a little and congratulated our zone because this past three months as a zone, we’ve had 100 baptisms and are the best one in our mission right now. So that was pretty rad to hear the Area President congratulate us and tell us thanks for our hard work! 

My first area, Vucetich, has been baptizing a lot of people and seems to have gotten stronger since I was there which I'm way happy about. Also yesterday at church we had a visitor in our ward and it was a member from Vucetich. She remembered me and came up to me after sacrament meeting to say hi. Her dad was our ward mission leader when I was there. I was almost speechless seeing her and hearing how everyone was doing there, it was legit!  She told me that she’s going to tell everyone when I leave for home so they can all go to the fireside for missionaries held during their last week, so I’ll be able to see them again!

My interview with Pres was way cool. He asked a lot of questions as if I was an investigator.  It was kind of funny but he helped me with a couple things. I told him we’ve been working really hard but we just haven’t seen a ton of success even though the area is progressing little by little. He told me just to be a baptism chaser and look for baptisms everywhere I can, so that’s what I've been trying to do.  We’ve actually found some less-active families who have children who aren’t members!  He told me just to keep working strong these last couple of months and that the Lord loves me and is happy about my work, and then gave me a huge hug, nice huh?!

So it was a pretty good week and we are still seeing progress here in Pablo Nogues, which I'm happy about. Yesterday I gave the lesson about prayer in Gospel Principles. Something that caught my attention and that the class members liked was that,  “When we feel like we don’t want to, or have excuses not to pray - that is when we need to pray even more”. So just a reminder to all of you this week is to always be praying and even more so when you feel like you don’t want to. Also, in Alma 37: 37 we are promised a blessing.  It says if we pray day and night that we will pretty much have eternal life.

I love you all and am thankful for everything you do. I miss and love you so much and hope you have an amazing week.

Love,

Elder Drew