Dear Family,
Sounds like you had a really fun week and didn´t spend any time inside the house. I loved the story about Danny pushing the raft back to the beach. Dan: Way to go, strong one! You are awesome!
This week I really saw the results of my commitment to be obedient-- Hna Navarro and I were able to work a lot more efficiently and teach many more lessons. And we found lots of new investigators-- including a very nice family of four. But the funny thing is, during the week I felt like I broke my promise to be obedient about 100 times and kept making a lot of the same mistakes. But I definitely improved-- especially in being diligent about contacting. I guess the lesson of this week is that a small change in be (I was more willing to be obedient) makes a big difference in do (we accomplished a lot more). This week I will keep working to change my heart and be 100% committed to 100% obedience 100% of the time, so I can keep seeing the results (more people helped) in my area.
Hermana Navarro has been a real blessing this week. Her new enthusiasm for contacting and teaching charlas cortas (short on-the-street lessons where we teach one or two principles and pray at the end) really helped me be enthusiastic and diligent too. And when I had moments of negativity, she helped me not be discouraged. I´m so lucky to be her companion. We had companionship inventory this morning (we ran out of time yesterday) and we shared personal and companionship goals. We realized we are a lot alike in that it´s hard for us to see what we are doing well sometimes. We set a goal to pray for more confidence and faith, and to pray every day to be able to meet our goal of 4 baptisms in September. That is a lot of baptisms, especially for Hurlingham, but we are going to give it a shot.
In other news, Gaston is still progressing and came to church on Sunday. He still reads the Book of Mormon every day and told us he is praying 3 TIMES A DAY!!! He is so fantastic! He still has a lot of challenges, but he seems much happier and laughs more than when we first started teaching him. Gaston´s biggest challenge right now is giving up smoking. We are praying for him and doing everything we can to help him quit. As of today, we are going to try calling during all the times of day when Seba (his brother) told us that Gaston usually smokes. We just hope he has the willpower and the faith to do quit, so he can get baptized soon.
Other highlights:
* Teaching 24 lessons and finding 16 new investigators! On Thursday, we taught 8 lessons and found 9 new investigators, including 12 year old twins Braian and Priscila and their mom, Carina. They are the really nice family I mentioned earlier. I really hope they progress!
* Zone conference with President Carter. He talked about new changes in the mission: The old Standard of Excellence (the goals for lessons taught, investigators in sacrament meeting, etc. per week) is now called the Standard of Expectations (does that name put on more or less pressure?). Now we count our numbers every month instead of every transfer, which is supposed to help us be more efficient and stop asking for last minute exceptions to rules so we can baptized investigators who don´t have enough church attendances. And there are no longer unofficial "rules" about when a person gets transfered-- I´m not the only one spending more than 6 months in my area, and several sisters are back with companions they´ve already served with. Interesting. I think the changes will be good for the mission. It´s kind of exciting to have a new mission president!
Well, I´m out of time, but have a fantastic week! I love you all!
Love,
Ellis
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