Change of Plans

This week was really really good. Really, really hard but wow I love this area.

 First off, it has rained allllllll week long, really strong. The picture of the two kids under the umbella is funny, but that´s been the week basically.

 We had a cool experience this week. On tuesday, we had a day....horrible. So bad that we came back to the house and talked forever about what we need to do to be more eficient here. We talked about how there are lots of members and inactives who need lots of support, help, and love. We talked about how we felt like we weren´t helping all that many people, that we had just been searching frantically to try to find more people. Our missionary purpose is to invite PEOPLE to come unto Christ, and we decided that we were not focusing enough in strengthening the members and inactives. Before we can find people and convert and add people to the branch, we have to make sure that we are constantly strengthening the branch itself.

 So in our plans the next day we put a ton of inactives to go vist in place of contacts that were more or less that we were going to waste a ton of time searching. We organized some visits with the members and took them to help us visit the inactives, and had a couple come to church. The members were really excited and willing to help us, and they are going to start getting together amongest themselves to start visiting more people. The first day we did this, we found 5 news, had 5 lessons, visited 4 inactive families, received 2 references and contacted them both.  Up to this point, we hadn´t had a day like this. It showed us that if we plan eficiently and look for the best use of our time, we really do have time to find, teach, visit, contact, and strengthen the members and inactives. It was a cool experience, and we are going to continue to do it. We also went to a new part of our area that is kinda far so we always have to take a taxi. The misionaries hardly ever go there and so there are a ton of inactives and people who have never listened to the missionaries. The town is really big actually, there are tons and tons of people there, and we decided to work there alot more. So it has been really fun this week to basically have an entire new town to work in, and we are going to do some good things there.

 We had alot of people in church this week, close to 30. The branch president and his family are really struggling. They are going through lots of hard stuff in their lives and we are doing all we can to help them. Pray for them that they can receive the answers and directions to their prayers that they need.

 Dad, I absolutely loved the email with all the stuff from cinco. It was very special and much needed to hear all of that stuff, I really am starting to realize what a blessing it is to be hear. I feel really inadequete at times, I feel young and inexeperienced, like I don´t always know what I´m doing but I guess thats the mission, huh? That´s why I´m learing sooooooo much stuff because there is no other way to learn it. I can´t even express how hard this is but how much I love it. I can´t describe how up and down it is but how Heavenly Father always always always climbs the mountains with us, and decends in the valleys with us too, because he knows it is hard and because he loves us he never leaves us alone.

 Good to hear that all is well, way to go Parker for having such a great time at EFY! I love you all soooooooo much, thank you for the prayers, we can feel them here and we need every prayer that you can send our way!! ;)

Mucho amor,

Elder Eastmond