12 months - Fanta Mloridarta

Joseph sent these pictures today of him and missionaries from his zone in a touristy part of Antigua with a volcano in the background - 

Joseph is the last one on the right

All the pics mostly the same but slightly different...

When he called today he was able to talk with Wes and Natalie a little bit, Natalie asked him why he had to got to a mission with a volcano. We are going to Yellowstone tomorrow with my family and Corey showed the little girls a video about volcanos to teach them how Yellowstone was formed and now they are worried for all of our safety and Joseph's too. Natalie wants to go on a mission to Brazil where there are not volcanos. She's cute. She also asked him why he had to go on a mission. He said there are people who don't know about Jesus so he went to go teach them. It was cute to listen to them talk.
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     Subject: Santa Marta + Florida = Fanta Mloridarta   

Buenos días a todos!!

So this week has been really great and some of the highlights are all the people we have been finding. Yesterday we taught this guy who is 21 named Luis and he is SO PILAS!! He told us he had visited with the missionaries before and that he wanted to learn more about the prophet. So we taught lesson 1 and he understood everything and is going to read the Book of Mormon! He is s super bright kid and I'm excited to see his progress. The only thing that could be a problem is that he usually leaves on the weekends with his family but the good thing is that he doesn't work or study on the weekends and said that he will come to church soon. Also we finally got a lesson with this lady named Aura and her Daughter Madelin who are references from a member but the hard thing is that whenever we pass by them or set up an appointment something happens and we can't go but last night we taught them with some members and when we started to read from the Book of Mormon with them Madeline had already downloaded the gospel library! She actually said she did it "hace ratos"(meaning a while ago). So we are hoping she will read and start coming to church too.

Speaking of church we didn't have anyone in church this week which was sad. Things just came up and even though people said they would come they weren't there when we passed by before church or they just didn't show up. So we are going to focus on that a lot this week and are going to do all we can so that people will come to church!

And these past couple of days we have been especially busy because we now are going to cover 2 areas! The area we are in is Santa Marta but across the main street is another area called Florida. They go to church in our same building so it will be nice and like 9 months ago they were combined because they are both smaller areas. So our area is bigger now and we also have a lot more members to work with!

Also yesterday Elder Tercero had to go to the immigration offices and so we woke up suuuper early and I saw Elder Castillo there! He was in Jutiapa when we had the mission change so he ended up going to the east mission but now he is in the capital. We talked a little bit about how thing were in Jutiapa and he said that a guy we found in our last week there and came to church that sunday named Jairo (Jairo junior because his dad is also named Jairo) is progressing a lot and indexed a bunch of named for a family history activity and that he is preparing to be baptized. His dad is progressing too but hasn't come to church as much because he has been really sick. So we just chilled at the area offices while our comps were at immigrations and a member invited us to eat in a cafeteria nearby and then after Elder Tercero got back he was really hungry so we went back and as we were finishing up another guy there (probably a member) paid for our food. Haha so I got two free breakfasts!

And I also got this cool new scripture case for a small quad!

It has Tikal on the front (aka the temple in the land of bountiful) and Moroni burying the plates on the back with some typica material on the sides. And on the bottom it says Elder Wride Misión Guatemala Sur -> Antigua because we just switched missions!

I know that Christ lives and guides this, His restored church. I know that if we read and study and live what we learn from the Book of Mormon every day then we will be happier and have continual peace in our lives even though things might be hard.

Love you all!!