Sept. 7th, Rest

So this week has been a lot of time in the house studying. I got sick on Tuesday and just rested for one day and then my comp got sick on Saturday so we have just been resting a lot. I feel pretty restless being in the house for so long but Ive just been studaying a lot. I dont know if we are going to be able to work a lot at the start of this next week. My comp is still pretty sick so we will have to see. 

I was able to go on an exchange this past week to one of my old areas with Elder Fuentes. It was so nice to see everybody from my old area. I was really happy to visit the Guzman family. We made some food with them and had a really good time. When my comp was on the exchange they found some new investigators that we are going to visit this week. He said that they were really good so Im pretty excited to visit them.

Thats about all that has happened this week. We didnt do too much due to sicknesses. 

Elder Britt

Pic 1. So our area is just like a big farm. I see sooooo many cows, pigs, and chickens everyday. 

Pic 2. That the Guzman family. I love that family. 

Pic 3. That was a HUGE spider we found in the house when we woke up one morning. It was a lot bigger than my hand. It was giant. 

Aug. 31st, Activities!

So this week was pretty good. We have been talking a lot in ward concil about doing activities so this week we had 2 good activities that we are going to be doing every week. What we are doing is a night of brotherhood. I think thats what it is in english. We pretty much just play some games at the church and then we give a spiritual thought. We had about 20 people come for the first week of doing and everybody said that they had a really good time and are going to be coming back next week. We are hoping that more people will invite their friends and we can get some new investigators through this activity. We also started teaching an english class every saturday night. There are a lot of people that want to learn english here so we started a class. Not to many people came for the first class but we are going to keep working hard to get people to go. But we really hope that with these 2 activities we can get more of the members here active and our investigators can become friends with the members here but we are going to see how they go.

This week we found two less active families in our area. The Torrico family and the Zuñaga family. The torrico family are really excited to come back to church but the problem they have is that the work all night everyday taking the feathers out of chickens. Sunday morning they are very tired from working all night so we are going to see how we can help this family. Then the Zuñaga family arent as excited to go back to church. They are very shy people and dont like talking to people. Its going to be hard to get them to go back but we are going to do our best

We did drop some of our investigators this past week. We were really sad to drop Alexander. We asked him if he still wanted us to visit with him and he told us not too much but we should come back in a month so hopefully he will be ready for us in a week. But we are visiting with 2 new families that we found these past few weeks. the gamboa family and el hermano acenciano. They have potential to progress. We havent really been able to find any investigators in our area that progress but we are really hoping these 2 families will start to progress. 

Thats about all thats been happening this week. We are going to keep contacting all the houses in our area.

Elder Britt

Aug. 24th, Contacting

So this week has been pretty rough finding people to teach. There was a few days that we couldn't get a single person and did A LOT of walking. We have dedicated a ton of time to contacting. We are dedicating about 3-5 hours a day just to contacting. Its been pretty hard to get new people to teach. We don't get a lot of referrals from the members here and so we are pretty much alone trying to find new people.

We decided that we are going to try and visit a lot of the members and recent converts. We are going to try and get them really strong so that they will be able to help us. Honestly if we find somebody new the branch isn't strong enough to keep those new people. We are just trying to make sure that all the other members are strong to retain all the other people.

We did have another good lesson with the Polanco family. They are still destroyed from what happened to there daughter. We watched a Mormon message with them about the guy who got in a car crash with a drunk driver and his wife and 2 children died. They were really able to see that when they pray they receive the help they need. Almost every time we teach, they always just end up crying very hard. They tell us a lot that we are helping them a lot. Its really nice being able to visit and help this family. 

That's about all that happened this week. We are just going to keep knocking doors trying to find new people to teach out here. 

Elder Britt 

These are some pictures of activities that we did in the past 2 weeks here. The last one in my favorite member out here. His name is Luis Miguel. He doesn't live in our area but he is a really good member. 

Aug. 17th, No Subject

So this week was really good. We have been working really hard to find new investigatores and We have been able to find a few.

This week we had a really good lesson with the Polanco family. It seems like every transfer we find somebody who is just going through an extremely hard problem. The sister told us that her daughter was studying in a city really far away from Santa Cruz and was studying music. She told us that this one boy did something really bad to her. She told us this boy raped her daughter and now she was pregnant. It was an extremely hard lesson for us to think of way we could help this woman with this problem. We felt like everything we said wouldnt be enough to help her. But as I was thinking of things we could share, a really good thought came to my head. I shared with her John 3:16. That God sent his Son to the earth, a place really far away from His home. There Christ was doing everything perfect but the people chose to beat Him, spit on Him, and in the end kill Him. Its the same thing that was happening with her and her daughter. That she was really far away from her and that this other person chose to do something really bad to her daughter. We taught her that God knows exactly what she was going through because he went through something like that. It was a really good lesson and I was so thankful for the chance that my comp and I had to help her. With that lesson we had we were able to help her have more intrest in learning about the gospel and going to church. She told us that just being there helped her out so much. It was a really good lesson. We are going to go back on Wednesday to see how she is doing. 

We are also trying really hard to help some recent converts in our area, the Sangary family. We are trying so hard to get Eduardo Sangary, the father, so stop drinking. We have seen some progress with him but we are trying really hard to help.

Thats about all this week. We are going to keep looking really hard for new investigatores. 

Elder Britt

Aug. 10th, Contacts!

So this week was really good. We pretty much have just been doing contacts this week. We have been doing hours of contacting. We havent seen to much progress but we did get a few new investigatores this week.

This week we finally set a date for the Galarsa family. We set it for september 5th. They are pretty far from being ready so we have about a month to get them ready for that date. They like learning from us and like us visiting them but they dont really want to go to church so thats what we need to focus on. But they are progressing pretty well. 

This week we were really focusing on the Sangary family. The father has a problem with drinking beer. We have been trying to do everything to get him to stop but hes still struggling with him. We are trying to pass by everyday to see how he is. Sometime his wife will tell us that hes out drinking and so we go look for him and try and take him to his house to get him to stop drinking. Its really sad to see how sad the entire family is when he drinks. We are trying to get him to stop 100%. He told us that he really wants to stop but just cant so we are trying to help him with that. 

Not too much happened this week. We are going to keep searching EVERYWHERE for new investigatores. We are trying to come up with some new methods to contact.

Love you guys, 

Elder Britt

Aug. 3rd, Funeral

So this week we had our transfers. Like I already knew my comp was going to be Elder Mell and I was going to stay in El Torno. Hes a really good guy from Arizona. He has about 8 months in the mission and we are working really hard out here in el Torno. Hes a really good guy and its really really nice to have a white guy as a companion now. We get along really well and teach together really well.

So this week we had a weird experience. So we were walking by a plaza on friday and a member told us that another member had died. It turns out this member killed himself because of a girl and was only 20 years old. So it was a really big suprise for the family and all of his friends. So this member told us that we need to go. The only people in this family who are members are the mom and his brother. When we showed up, their family was very angry. They were not happy at all the we were there. So we just kept going because we wanted to help this mom and brother. We felt like we were going to have to say something when we were walking to the last part of the funeral. We really didnt want to say anything because we werent really welcomed and pretty much everybody there was really catholic. So we tried to stay in the back and not be noticed. When we got there, the mom saw that we were there and called us up to the front. She wanted us to offer a prayer. I looked at my comp and he just told me, you got this one. So I had to offer a prayer and I felt like a did a really bad job. There was about 50-60 people there so I was pretty nervous and I felt like I did a bad job on the prayer. After the prayer we pretty much just waited for a second a left. I felt happy we were there to help the mom and his brother feel better. Later on sunday was fast and testimony meeting. She spoke and said that she was so happy that we were there to help here and said that the prayer I offered was really beautiful and helped her out a lot. Shes going through so many problems right now. I was just really glad that I could be there to help here with this problem shes having.

Sunday night we had a family home evening with her and a lot of the branch members went to help her. It was a very spiritual family home evening.

Thats really about the only thing that happened this week. It was a pretty good week and we are going to work hard this week!

Elder Britt

July 27th, !Fiesta en El Torno!

So this week we lost 2 of our investigators in Angostura this week. Guiesa, who was our really good investigator, moved to find work. She had to start working because of everything that was happening with her husband so we were also really sad to lose her. She was progressing really well and progressing and she moved. So we passed the reference to the other elders where she lives and we hope that they are going to visit her. She was pretty much ready for baptism. Our other investigator in Angostura this week passed away. It was really sad. He was extremely sick. We showed up to visit them on Saturday and we got there and realized they were having a funeral service there. We decided not to stay because there was so many family members there. 

This week we have been teaching a lot about families. There has been 2 converts that we are still working with. Last night we taught them about the Family proclamation. We pretty much just said, what goals do you have for your family? What do you want for your daughters when they are older? Do you think your family is happy? Then we just started to read it. It was a really good lesson and they realized how important the gospel is in their families.

So the last thing that happened this week was we found out or transfers already but the transfer day is on Thursday. So I'm going to stay in el torno this transfer. That means I'm going to have 7 months and a half in one area. Its crazy. Ill have over a year in the same zone. My comp is going to be elder mell. Hes a white guy who has about 6 months in the mission. I'm pretty happy that I'm going to stay!

That's about all that happened this week!

Love,

Elder Britt