I Really Can See How Much I Have Learned And Grown

Hola como estan????

So we are in the mall writing, and a Coldplay song came on... yeah I miss music a lot. Anyways summer is here!!! I really can't believe that Mace has been out a whole year, and that I've been graduated for a year. I always remember those crazy last weeks of school. It was the best time of the year though... other that Christmas obviously. It's still slowly getting colder, but this week wasn't as wet luckily. Yes I do have an umbrella dad, but we foolishly forget our umbrellas a lot last week. When we would leave the house we would ask each other, should we take the umbrellas today and we would always say nah it's not going to rain... We know now that it's better to just drag the umbrella the whole day and not use it, than get stuck in a down poor without. But this week was great... and guess what! We have two baptisms tonight. Sandra is going to get baptised and also Diego. Getting everything ready for baptisms is always, to me, really stressful!!! So this week has been pretty busy and quite stressful. But have finally got everything ready. Oh and the sisters in our ward are going to have a baptism too. I had the opportunity to do the baptismal interview for their investigator. It was a really cool experience.

So I've almost been a district leader for a whole transfer... yeah we have transfers next week! I don't know what is going to happen but I think that I am going to be leaving Carrasco. I would seriously love either way. I have been here for a while, but I don't want to leave our investigators. Especially Paula and Raul! They seriously are so awesome and I feel like there is just a bond between us. They say that they want to get baptised but Raul says that he doesn't want to get married. Paula wants to get married so bad and told us that she has been talking about getting married for the 13 years that they have been together. On Wednesday we had an awesome charla with them and we read The Family A Proclamation To The World to help them understand the importance of marriage. It was a great lesson. Haha and we were fasting that day because as a zone we were fasting to help us reach our goal for this month, but Paula and Raul were offering us food and we were like no thanks we are good, but Raul was like guys just eat the food... so we sheepishly said that we were fasting. They were really nice about it, and acutally gave us some banana bread to eat the next day.

The fast really helped though!!!! Especially with Sandra and Diego, because we couldn't get in contact with either of them on Wednesday but then on Wednesday night we went by Diegos house and talked to him and set up a charla for the next day. And there were just a bunch of difficulties with trying to get these two baptised. It seemed that just everything was going wrong. I heard one time from a missionary that he said that in his whole mission he never had one easy baptism, and I think I can understand where he was coming from. There seems to be things that pop up, especially the week of the baptism, that try to stop these people from making these steps in there lives. Sandra even told us that she has had thoughts that tell her to just stop, or for instance she told us that the day of her interview she said that she had those thoughts that told her to just not go. But she is so awesome, and told us that she had remembered us saying that there will be opposition... we just have to fight it. I am so happy for everything that is happening here.

Being a district leader has been a very humbling experience. I find myself being held more accountable for everything, which is awesome. Especially because I have to verify with the zone leaders every night and let them know how the district is doing. But I have learned so much in this last change. The mission is interesting, I often thought to myself that I had reached a moment where I knew sufficiently enough to complete my objective as a missionary... but then I continue to learn more and more. Looking back I really can see how much I have learned and grown. The district meetings are fun, I have only actually done two due to zone conferences and a special conference with Pres. Gonzalez (a member of the seventy that we had this week). It was seriously such an awesome conference. I was so impressed with President Gonzalez and his public speaking skills. Missionaries would make random comments or questions that he would respond to but he somehow kept it all on topic and focused on his main points.

Sounds like the summer fun is a comin! Have fun. Love yall

Elder England