Poco a Poco

This is an ant!

Handmade silk ties for $6.00, what a deal!

They call this fruit guava.

It comes in a pod in fuzzy white "pillows"...

Poco a Poco, what a wonderful phrase, basically it means... "5 years please" But, as far as us missionaries here, we are increasing the work here, poco a poco. We were down in the dumps for a while, but we're starting to come back.

Questions/Answers: Things with my comp are still good, we're doing really good actually. It's just that a lot of the time he doesn't get when people are joking... and I'm always joking. And I didn't get to finish watching the zone conference, we had an appointment so we had to go early. But I can tell you right now, during the time I'm here, my mission president won't allow Facebook... or at least I don't think he will, we'll see...

So this week we started to get some new investigators, and hopefully we'll actually be able to visit them in the future. One that we contacted on Tuesday, Bernardita, said that she loves to read and would read the whole book of Mormon before we come back... we passed by her house yesterday and showed us that she had been reading, and I think she was already in 1 Nephi 15 or so. She seems like she will be a good investigator. A different day we were contacting and came across a preacher/missionary for the Jehovah's Witness. He agreed to let us come back. Also, we have that other preacher from a Pentecostal church (where Ascencion and Juana are attending right now) who wants to talk with us... for some reason we can only get pastors/preachers... So it looks like we'll be able to have some good new investigators in the coming weeks.

And yesterday, in church, 1 of my 10 converts were in the church... Why? Gossip. Things are pretty bad with gossip, it really kills relationships... don't gossip!!! We are trying to repair things, and remind everyone of the real reason that they are in the church, but it's so hard when there are bad feelings one toward another and so basically we just have to be patient until things blow over. But it's just so hard, it would be much easier if people just wouldn't start to spread these things before it gets bad. Anyways, there was a scripture that I found in Mormon that applies well to all this, it talks about "learn from our mistakes", we can see that in the Book of Mormon that gossip, lying, etc. lead to destruction as well.

We are working hard and I'm hoping that in this next change Naranjo will have 6 or 7 baptisms, whether I'm here or not. We'll see, changes are this week. But no, I don't know right now. I'm doing good, I'm happy, life's great, I know some cool magic tricks, I feel pretty legit, all's good.

Keep being awesome, choose the right, and read the Book of Mormon!!! You will find so many answers when you read, and whoever is reading this and is preparing to serve a mission, read the book... it has every answer you need.

Love you all!

Elder Black