December 8

My week has been really, ridiculously busy. We had leadership conference again so that was 3 days out of our prostelyting time. Two days of travel and one day of conference. They also did a few emergency transfers in our zone, so we had to wake up at 3 in the morning a couple days this week to send missionaries in bus to Barranquilla. Something kind of funny happened on Friday. I was on exchanges with a companionship in our zone and when we got back to their house at 8:55 at night the key to their door didn't work and we couldn't get in. We tried for like 15 minutes, then the other missionary with me climbed up to the second story balcony to try to open that door, and we tried for like another 15 minutes and we still couldn't get in. So by then it was 9:40 and I decided to go back to my house to sleep there. At was 10 before we were inside again, which is pretty dangerous here in Colombia. Luckily nothing bad happened and when I told president Searle he just laughed.

I'm super excited because it looks like this Saturday we'll have 3 baptisms. One is Andrea Quintero, Milton Ocampo's wife. We're a little sad because she's the only one in her family for now, but we're glad that she'll be a good example for her family. She's doing it alone because her husband moved to another city to work, one of her sons is moving back to Venezuela to live, and her other son is going to travel to another city for a few weeks to stay with his dad. But she's super ready to get baptized.

The other one is Jheiner Lagos. We found him a few weeks ago when we went to visit his brother Erick, a recent convert. I asked Erick if Jheiner had ever listened to the missionaries, and he told me that he had never listened. I invited his to hear the message, and ever since then he has been super excited and progressing in the gospel. He hasn't missed a week of church since we started teaching him, and he went out to visit with us for a couple hours with his brother Erick on Sunday. He really wants me to baptize him but we are persuading him to have his brother do it. I love the story about how we found him because Elder Uceda, the area president, always teaches us to find new investigators through recent converts and less active members. Jheiner is a testimony of how effective that approach really is.

The last baptism is Esilda Cortina. She's super awesome: she's 78 years old and super excited about the church. She should get married on Fiday and baptized on Saturday. She's been listening to the missionaries for a long time but hasn't been ready to get baptized until now.

I'm pretty sad because in my zone we've had some problems with disobedience and bad relationships between companions. But we have some pretty cools plans for this week. President Searle and 2 of the assistants are coming to out zone meeting this week. That never happens, but we're sure it will really help. We're going to do a ton of exchanges and President will be interviewing missionaries, so pray that these plans will help straighten out the zone.

Well I love you all and hope you have a good week.

Elder Wilson