Finishing Our Missions With Honor

Hey freaks,

I like the pics... Dalt your head actually looks small for once, like mine! Happy Memorial Day! To be honest I think a lot of our family members that have passed away. I feel a lot of times that they are helping me and pushing me to work hard. I'm still sharing Ti voglio bene with missionaries, it's the best! I hope you all have a wonderful day. Wow I can't believe that was two years ago when we went to St George, don't worry I still sing in the shower... but don't only hymns. But guess what, I have realized on my mission that my musical talents are... still none existant. Speaking of music, they just put on the song Piano Man here. Good ole Billy.

So this week has been pretty great. Carlos is doing very well. haha his wife wants him to get baptised so bad. In the last charla we had with them she said, ¨Yeah you should get baptised on June 6th cause it's my birthday!¨ she is so funny. But the lesson with them was amazing. There was a member family that came with us to the lesson. The family Alvarez (mom dad, and their 5 year old daughter). It was super spiritual and their testimonies were so powerful. The best part though was how direct they were with Carlos about the blessings that he can have if he gets baptised. We tried to help Carlos consider the eternal blessings that he can have through being baptised. Yesterday, he and his wife Carmen showed up early for church and were in all three hours and participated in the classes, it was great.

We also gave a little presentation in our ward council this week. Our ward mission leader, Daniel Hernandez, is amazing. He is also on the stake high council. But he talked with the bishopric to give us some time to explain the new initiative that the area seventy has sent to us. All of the changes that I have been telling you guys about come from this new initiative. It was a great opportunity to explain to the members that the missionary work in this ward belongs to them, and that we are just here to help them. We are here to be instuments for them to be able to strengthen their ward. The goal of the new initiative is to see real growth in the ward, to baptise, retain, and reactivate together all at the same time. Hopefully we can see more success implementing this in the ward.

With all that is going on and the plans that we have made for the zone, it will be a lot easier for me to stay focused and work hard. President Cook sent all the missionaries that are in there last change a letter explaining the importance of finishing our missions with honor. Luckily I have a great companion and a great distict leader that help me to continue improving and consecrating myself even more.

Thanks for all the love and support! You're the best, and I love you all more than you will ever know!

Elder England  

Pet Spider

This is our pet spider. It is incredible! We have been giving it food

for like two weeks now. We started throwing flies on her web,

then smaller spiders, and yesterday she ate a cockroach.

It's ridiculous how much she eats. But she is still beautiful.

Howdy folks!

Wow was this a great week in Durazno. It was kind of crazy, but we have been seeing a lot of success in the zone. Something that all the changes in the mission have helpéd me to understand, is that all of the success that we are seeing is all thanks to the Lord. I loved your email Mace! I'll try and sharpen myself up. But this last week we did something to help all the missionaries consecrate themselves. We invited them all to fast and make a list of things that are impeding them from being obedient and reaching their potential. Then the district leaders are going to be asking every day how we are all doing with our lists. It has helped me a lot this last week, and I hope that it can motivate me to keep improving until the very end. 

Holy cow DREW!!! Thankfully he is okay. Hey Drew, did you speak to him in  Spanish? I think that would have caught him by surprise. Hopefully we can catch the little buger (I don't know how to spell that). Darn it I didn't write Matthew, but I will today. That would be awesome if he passed through Utah, I'd love to see him.

Dad your Sunday sounded pretty awesome!!! I'm sure you felt so great last night. One of my favorite feelings is laying down at night and realizing how tired I am because of everything that has happened that day. Your'e the man! NOOOO... iI'l be praying that they don't close the track, don't worry. 

Mags I am seriously so excited to go sky diving. I literally have thought of how amazing it would be to go sky diving so many times. My dreams will come true this summer. You better prepare yourself.

As far as my area, we are teaching a man named Carlos. Elder Martinez and Elder Stewart were already teaching him before. But he is the husband of a recent convert and he is so amazing. He went to church yesterday for the three hours. The thing with him is that he understands all that he needs to understand and he is seriously ready for baptism. He reads and prays, but for some reason feels that he needs to learn more before making the decision to be baptised. It is one of the most interesting situations that I've seen, just because he is so great and wants to be baptised. We are thinking that working more with members and involving them will help him to see that you don't need to know everything before getting baptised, and  that we are never in this life going to understand everything. But we will see how it goes this week.

I've been getting to know a lot of the members. I'm trying really hard to get to know them, just because I have so little time here. But there are some amazing members here in Durazno. 

Things are going great here. Thanks for all the support and love. You're the best. 

 I love you all more than you will ever know!

Elder England

Go Utes!

Me and Elder MIles before he left

Mother's Day Skype!

Hello my lovely family,

It was so fun to see you guys yesterday. Thank you so much everyone that went! You guys help me a lot. 

Sorry I don't have much time to write. I decided to use my time to write some other people, cause I talked to ya'll yesterday but I love you all more than you will ever know.

See ya'll next week.

Elder England

Loved talking to Davis!!!! 

He is confident, gentle and focused on finishing his mission strong!

We LOVE him! 

Hoping to get a video put together of highlights soon!

I Am Grateful For Where I Am

Hello my friends!!! 

Oh my gosh we are going to see each other in less than a week. So we got changes!!! Elder Miles has not left yet. He will be leaving on Friday, but I will be going to my new area tomorrow! Yeah my new area!!! Okay I'll explain... I am going to a different ward here in Durazno with Elder Martinez the Elder from Colombia that was living with me. We are going to be the zone leaders here. I'm super excited!!! We get along really great and because we were living together we already know each other really well. It was super fun telling him the transfers while being with him. I took a video, but I don't think that I can send it. You'll just have to wait 6 weeks. But yes, Elder Miles and I talked to the assistants about putting sisters in one of the areas here in Durazno, because all of the sisters in our zone live outside the city in smaller cities. Well when we have conferences or transfers they have to stay with members over night because we are all Elders here. So we explained the situation and they said that they would think about it. So in the ward I am in now they are going to put sister leader trainers, and they will be living in the house that I am in now. I am going to move houses, but I will still be here in Durazno. Seriously all of the changes in the zone are great! I'm very excited for my last change. Elder Martinez was already in this area so we won't have to do a white wash. 

About skype, I think that we are going to do it at 6:30 here... which would be 3:30 there. I hope that we can figure it out, but if anything happens I'll try to contact you. 

Wow Spencer and John got their mission calls!!! That is so crazy for me. They seem so small to me. But I'm super excited for both of them. You guys are going to be amazing missionaries.

Thank you mom for setting everything up, I love you!!! and I can't wait to wish you a happy Mother's Day and wish Mags a happy B day. It's crazy that I'm skyping on Mags B day and I'll get home on Kenna's B day. You´re very welcome, for me making your birthdays so special. But they will be very special days for me too.

This week has been great! KAREN GOT BAPTISED!!! She is really amazing. It's going to be great for her to have sisters here in this area. In her baptism she gave such a great testimony. I didn't think she would get up and share her testimony because she is kind of shy, but she got up and shared a lot about how she has felt over the past month or so. President said that he felt good about her being baptiz ed. He said that he asked her multiple times if she was really willing to endure to the end, and she obviously responded yes. Her mom and aunt and some cousins went to the baptism, and it seemed that they enjoyed the service very much. Hopefully the sisters can get to work on helping her family.

YESSSS!!! I just looked on the mission newsletter which shows all the baptisms from the last week, and in Rio Branco it says Marcela and her son Nicolas. I wish I could have been there. But I'm so happy for her. 

We also had concilio last week. It was really great. Oh and we did divisions with the assistants. It was a pretty busy week. But in concilio we talked a lot about the work with members. We trying to change the mission so that we work more with members. The culture of the mission has definitely not been that of working with the members. But we are making plans to be able to do just that. 

We gave a zone conference yesterday to explain all the plans and goals that we made in concilio with the rest of the zone. It went really great. Elder Miles and I were talking a lot the other day about how much the mission has helped us have more confidence in public speaking or teaching in general. The mission has definitely blessed me in so many different ways. I was reading just this morning a talk from a year ago by Pres Uchtdorf. He was speaking about being grateful in every circumstance. As I read I felt the truthfulness of what he was saying. When I am grateful for where I am and the trials that I have, I am a lot happier and I simply enjoy everything more. 

It's hard to explain how happy I am. I'm not very good at expressing myself, but I hope you guys can see how much the mission has helped me. 

See you on the flip flop later!!!

Have a great week!

Elder England