Clock keeps ticking . . .

Dear family y friends,

It has been an interesting week with lots of ups and downs. I am getting used to being cold all the time y even though its not THAT cold (35-40 degrees) the cold, humid wind sure chills the bones!

Started off the week GREAT! On Tuesday I did an intercambio with Elder Chavez from Texas, who has been in the mission about 5 weeks. Everything went FANTASTIC which is exactly what I was hoping y praying for because apparently he has been having a hard time. All the people we planned to visit were home y all the lessons we went were PERFECT. We get along really well so we had a lot more unity teaching which makes a HUGE difference... even with the little spanish he can speak. We had a GREAT lesson with the Familia Mercado that we found last week talking about The Restoration. We did a contact y were able to teach an awesome kid named Jonathan y talked about the Book of Mormon y Prayer. We had a delicious dinner y great chat with a VERY INACTIVE family in our ward y had a great discussion about the Atonement which was very powerful! Honestly it was probably one of the best days of my whole mission. That night we were up a bit late talking, then the following morning we had to switch back with our companions EARLY because President Stapley y one of the assistants also wanted to do intercambios with them that day.

Unfortunately from that point on things started to go down hill for the rest of the week. Wednesday, Pablo cancelled our appointment that I was super excited about that we were planning to invite him to be baptised. Thursday I got news from the Zone Leaders that after talking with President Stapley, Elder Chavez would be going home on Monday. Saturday all of our plans cancelled on us... and the Familia Mercado that I was super excited about teaching basically told us that they didn´t want to talk with us anymore out of nowhere. It is very frustrating when things aren´t going the way you want them too... and luckily my companion and I are able to keep our heads up and keep working with the hope that there are people that the Lord has prepared for us to teach out there SOMEWHERE!

Apart from all that, we did have some success with one of the people we are visiting. I think a couple weeks ago I told you about an Hermana María who came back to church after many years after she started reading the Book of Mormon again. We had also talked a little bit a couple weeks ago with her boyfriend who she is living with named Cristian, who said he doesn´t believe in ANYTHING. I don´t know if its a good or bad thing but apparently he had a pretty frightenin/life changing experience this last week with a vision/dream of the devil or something and now he is scared and wants to learn more about God. On top of that we talked a bit with Marías 2 kids that are living with her now who both want to be baptized! Hope to see some progress with the whole family in these next couple weeks!

Anyways, thats all for this week. Hope you all have a great week!

les amo
Elder Ian Wheelhouse