"We started the week by going to a place called the Barrio. It was super fun! We got our own van to take us there and drove about an hour and a half. We decided to ride the elephants first and it was awesome! We rode them bare backed and even walked through a river. You could feel the whole elephant moving. Afterwards we walked around and explored the Barrio. It started to pour down rain and we all got soaked. haha The Barrio looks like an old Italian village."
"This week has been really hard and very trying of my and Elder Quinn's faith. It started out good with a lot of hope and success. We worked hard and did all that we could every day. Then on Tuesday night we left to go to a Zone Conference on Wednesday. We had to travel there and stay overnight in a hotel. It was really fun because right now we are the smallest zone. We have 10 companionships and they didn't combine us with any other zone. I was able to have another interview with President Senior. We talked a lot about faith and then he told me that he hopes Elder Quinn is training me well for the future. I don't know what that means, but I hope it means something good. haha I didn't really get to see anyone that I knew, but I'm good with making new friends. It's not hard. However, they didn't even get my name right. They typed Elder Smith, Mark. I was like, "Come on really?!" haha We got home late, planned a little and then headed out to work again."
"Thursday was not a good day. Nothing worked out as we had planned. A lot of people wouldn't answer their phones and skipped out on their lessons. I think this really got to Elder Quinn. He came to me the next morning and asked for a blessing. I prayed that he would find faith and then gave him a blessing. I think it helped a lot. We both did really good that day. We found a lot of people that gave us their numbers. We went to bed feeling that we had achieved something. In the end, no one showed up for church and we lost 2 or 3 daters. It was very hard on us. When we were planning, we took another look at our investigators on the white board. There was silence for like 5 minutes. The response we had after this was interesting. We just looked at each other and said, "Well, that is disappointing. What can we do better?" Then instead of making new goals that were less than the ones we had previously set, we decided to do better and get back on top. We really are relying a lot on the Lord to help us. We might have been disappointed, but we will not give up. We will become even better! I really feel that this will be a very successful week."
"The Sisters were able to have 2 baptisms this week. One was the grand-daughter of one of the RCs and the other was the wife of our RC. She was not even interested and then one day she decided to get married. After that, her interest sky rocketed and she told the Sisters that she was ready to be baptized. She read the Book of Mormon every day and prayed to the point that she envisioned her grandma telling her to be baptized. It was way cool! Our RC was able to baptized her and he was so excited to be able to. He got the Holy Ghost and the Priesthood in one day and he could not be any happier. His story is crazy. We first went to teach him at his house after Brother Pone's baptism. His mom was there and started yelling at us to leave her house because she didn't like Christians. We were kind and quietly left and continued to teach outside. He was apologizing a lot and we told him not to worry and that we meet people like that every day. He came to church this Sunday with his wife and told us that he had just gotten kicked out of his mother's house and has no where to live. But he also said that the Lord will provide. What a guy! He wants his wife to be baptized and we found out that she is also pregnant! This will be an amazing family. I love you all and this is going to be a crazy but successful week."
