Family, and Friends: 

This week has been kind of crazy but it has been good. We are beginning to see the fruits of our labors, SO IT HAS BEEN AWESOME!!!!

This week we found some good investigators which I have been so pumped about! One of which that I will talk about is Nadía. She is in her late 20´s and has two kids, April (7) and Benjamin (7 months). We found them one night when we were contacting and she said to come back another day, so we did. Then when we came back, she told us to come back another day, so we did. Then finally, she let us in! WWWHHHOOOOPPPP WHHOOOOPPPP! She is super awesome. She works two jobs to support her beautiful family. She has a sincere desire to learn more about the gospel and she said she loves reading. So, we talked to her about OLA (Orar, Leer, y Asistir) or in other words, praying, reading, and attending church. The lesson went super well and her kids were behaved the whole time, which is a miracle in itself because it was late at night. We talked how it was important for her to find out for herself because we are just young men preaching and the only way she can know is by praying to know if what we share is true. Anyways, she said that she was going to read and pray about what we had talked about! The only thing that is going to be hard is trying attending church because she works at the hot springs on Sundays but I know that if there is a will and desire to go to church, the Lord will provide a way!! So that was our lesson we had with her on Monday. I am so excited to go back and teach her and her family again! 

On Tuesday, we had our zone meeting. We talked a lot about families and the importance of the family. We learned a ton about Family Home Evening, and a ton of fun games to go play with everyone. So hopefully we can put those into practice this week coming up soon! Anyways, after we ate lunch as a district and headed back to Cerro to get to work. Right as we walk into our appointment and find out that he is canceling on us, we got a call from our zone leaders, they needed us to do splits with a companionship that was visiting for the next few days. So we went back to the house, planned for like 15 min then went and picked them up. Elder Rodrigues and I, he is from Bolivia, went through with our normal plans that we had that night. We taught a few lessons and contacted as much as we could. It went really well. We taught a lesson on temples to our recent convert Yessica! It went super well and was a bit emotional. I am so grateful I got to work in the temple for a few months before the mission. It has made all the difference as we testify of temples and the sacred work that is done there. AAHH it was so awesome! At the end of the night we dropped them off at the bus stop and headed home. 

Wednesday was super good too. We didn’t get that much done in terms of missionary work but it was a super spiritually uplifting day. President Heaton and his wife came and talked to us and we had an interview with them. They brought us in each individually and thanked us for the work we were doing and gave us some advice and sent us on our way. When we got home, all we had time to do was go to correlation with our mission leader. It went really well. 

Thursday we hit the ground running. We had so many lessons planned and just worked worked and worked allllll day. It was so awesome. We came home and were dead!! Best feeling ever!!

Friday was basically the same as Thursday, except we had a huge gap out of it for weekly planning. I hate weekly planning but it is such a blessing. When we plan well, our week goes really well. So is was worth it! 

Saturday was super good. Working hard and we had a really awesome lesson with our investigators Maria Eugenia and Rodrigo. They are awesome. I don’t know if I talked about them but they are super fun kids. They are the kids of two inactive members who went to church as kids but never go anymore and they were never baptized. They are really great kids. We watched the movie the restoration with them and bore testimony. Then we played a game about the restoration. They both shared that the felt that the movie they saw was true. It is such a powerful film. I am so grateful for those movies. When paired with testimony it is an amazing experience. We had a member from the young men’s presidency with us too who recently returned from his mission so that was awesome as well! They committed to going to church the next day too! We were super pumped up as we left that lesson! 

Sunday was great! We called Rodrigo and Maria Eugenia to make sure they were coming to church but they didn’t answer so we went by there house. They were both asleep but they got out of bed and came with us and were actually grateful that we came and got them! We were late to church but it was worth it because they got there!! And church was great as always! After church we had splits and I went and taught a lesson and Elder Kemp taught a lesson. We went to lunch after and hit the streets. Sundays are a great day to contact. We worked for 5 hours then got on a bus to Centro and went to the broadcast last night. It was inspiring. I was struggling to understand all of it because it was in Spanish but I was surprised at how much I understood! We all came out with pages of notes so hopefully we can apply all we have learned in this next week!

This week has been so awesome. I am grateful every day for the opportunity I have to share the gospel in a full time capacity. There is no greater work! I love my Savior and am so grateful for all our many blessings. We are beginning to see miracles on the mission!! 

I love you all!! Thank you for all of your prayers!!

Elder Staffieri