Week 69 and Week 70

WEEK 69

Hello everyone! This week has been quite an eventful onefor my companions and I. First and most exciting is that Elder Smith finally got to got to the temple! They had to drive all the way to the Philadelphia one which is four hours away from the offices of the mission (which are an hour away from our house, so he was gone all Saturday.) When he came back he had so much energy and light in his face and it was amazing! 

The second most exciting thing was the new training we recieved that has to do with Facebook. We were encouraged to make accounts if we didn't have one and to use it as much as possible as a missionary tool. We should be friends with all the members in our wards and and use our profiles to share awesome content from our Zone Facebook pages with other members and people we are teaching. It is quite the change because beforehand in this mission, being on Facebook was almost seen as being disobedient, however pretty soon almost all our work will be through it. 

Another highlight this week was our district activity that we had today! We went to the Bull run national park and saw the Stonewall Jackson monument and lots of other historical things, however my favorite part was the socializing with other missionaries and taking pictures :). 

Finally our friends Damian and Karina answered us last night and we had an amazing lesson with them! Even though it went pretty long, they were very open and they loved meeting Elder Smith despite his newness to Spanish. They even offered to help him learn it (they speak English as well)

Uh oh, I gotta go! I will write a more thourogh email next week!

Elder Hilton

WEEK 70

Hello Hola Buenas tardes como están bendiciones mis queridos amigitos :)))

This week was crazy and went by pretty quickly but with the little time I have left to write this email, here's what happened:

Tuesday: 

We had to cancel our service because of the Zone Conference which was AWESOME! It was all about finding JOY in the work. 

Later that day we had interviews with President Duckworth and they were great. It is nice to sit down and just be completely honest with someone and get absolutely everything off your chest, especially knowing that how he resonds will be in a loving way. I let him know what he needed to, and he told me that both of my companions had expressed the same things to a lesser degree and then gave me special advice on how to better lead the companionship. Later that night we recieved an urgent referal from Roni Pimentel - a person that we have been sending scriptures to. He told us that his mother and brother had both passed away in the same week and that although he is fine now, his family in Guatemala is strugglling a lot and he wants our friends (aka other missionaries) to visit them to "comfort them with the word of God". Of course we agreed right away.

Wednesday: District Council! Our realplays went alright (albeit very long) and we got to take a hilarious picture of all of us out next to our 2020 Chevy Equinoxes in a row :) We also found the Elders serving in Guatemala and sent them all the info we knew about Roni's family. 

Today we had a lesson with someone who I found on Facebook and slowly became buddies with! The lesson turned out alright, and in the end it turned very political, but to be brief let's just say he has a lot of faith in Christ but not in this country.

Thursday: All I remember was that we carved our pumpkins that night! I made mine an Adidas symbol with the nike slogan :)

Well, I ran out of time again! Quickly some other highlights were going to church on Sunday (Karina went to church!!!!!) and bearing my testimony loud and clear for all to hear in Spanish! Also today I got an expensive haircut and the little Asian lady cutting my hair was hilarious. She kept saying in her barely understandable accent "You look moviestar!" But after it all my hair got CHOPPED and I am rocking a Q-tip head - I remember why I cut my own hair now - But the experience was definitley worth it :)

Have a great week everyone!

- Elder Hilton