Alma 29:14

What a week! It feels really strange when you start a mission because you do different things. You eat different food. You talk to different people. You sleep at a different time (at least I did) But after a little bit of time, it becomes normal. It becomes fun. It becomes your life. You love it and even when you are sad or discouraged you love what you are doing. You get to know people and their stories. You get to pray and cry over them because you just want to teach them. And sometimes you get to see the fruits of your labors and sometimes it comes after. 

But the theme of this week was the scripture that I titled the email. Why? Becuase my JOY is complete when I see the success of my brothers. And the elders and sisters here in this zone are seeing the fruits of their labors. They are loving what they are doing and we are moving foreward as a zone. We put zone goals for the month of January and to see the faith of these missionaries is SOOO amazing. We have a lot of work for this month but the Lord has blessed us with so many people to teach and many of them will be baptized this month. I am grateful that our wonderful buddy Dustin could get baptized by his father this week and I will always remember his baptism (not just because I messed up "I like to look for Rainbows" song) And at the same time I will remember calling our district leader to tell him that our investigator was ready for his interview and he tells me "I can´t right now I am doing the interview for the other elders" We had no idea about the other baptism. It was a miracle for them and for the zone because these wonderful people from the whole zone are entering the waters of baptism. I wanted to ask for the pictures of the zone and their baptismal services to send to y´all. Just to express that it´s not about us. It´s about them. It´s about the miracles that are happening for them and we just get the amazing chance to be here to see it. We work hard but in the end it´s not about us. The glory is His and always will be!

The other pictures are of my wonderful friends of Huquillas that came to Machala to recieve a patriarcal blessing and they hunted me down to say "Hi, do you want some food?" And the other is of just about ALL the wonderful gifts from my birthday and Christmas. (And people say it´s bad to have a Christmas  Birthday)

The rainy season has begun and my shoes are ready for the challenge! The best part is that when it rains, the next day is ten times hotter, so it´s really toasty!! 

I couldn´t get any pictures of Leadership Council this week but it was soooo great to see old companions and the leadership of the mission! I LOVE working with the whole mission! 

Love you all and hope you can make someone SMILE

Elder Alder :)