El Espino Mission

Hola familia! well it looks like you all have been waiting to hear about cambios...entonces.... I am still here in good old El Espino! hahaha. this is my 5th cambio here in this area and its so weird to think how much time i have here. pretty sure my mission is El Espino...not Santa Ana El Salvador. Just kidding. But its good. Lots of work to do here still. BUT i have a new companion. Her name is Hermana Mayorga and she is from guatemala. She has 7 months in the mission so we will finish our missions at the same time. CAN YOU BELIEVE I HAVE 7 MONTHS? ya crazy. Anyways she is so super great. From what i have seen this week she want to work hard. She is a convert of 2 years. super super cool. She was catholic before. Her family is members too. But anyways i feel kind of bad because the truth is we have no investigators right now. She is coming from an area in santa ana where the members work really really hard and they had 6 fechas for bautismo. and then she came here and we have no one and the members dont give us references...so i feel bad and i know that at first she was a little frustrated. But hey i have been in this are for 6 months now and i have learned to love it. I think she will be humbled to be here in this area where there is a lot to improve. But that is the good thing, is she has a lot of good ideas to work with the member and so we are going to try and motivate them and have a change of culture in this area. Because the truth is knocking doors really doesnt work that well. We arent having any success finding people knocking doors. In these days we really need to work through the members.. So that is the first thing we need to improve is receiving references from the members. When we received references from the members we will actually have new investigators, and when we have investigators then we will actually be able to teach lessons throughout the week, and then we will be able to teach investigadores with the members, and then we will be able to bring people to church, and then we will be able to have baptisms!! yeah! haha. but really if we cant find people to teach we cant do anything. So thats kind of where we are at right now. Trying to find people. I had a few rough days this week just because with our leaders its super hard because we really cant have much work if we cant find people...but slowly we are going to find people. I told my companion that i want to act like we are opening up this area. I want to act like i wasnt here before and just start fresh. we are starting something this week that my comp used in her other area. There is a family missionary that we call each week during sacrament meeting and they have to have one person in the family leave with us each day during the week. That way we can contact references with them, find new people with them, have lessons with the investigators with them, and then they can help us bring those people to church. My comp used it in her other area and it worked really well. (the members in her other area worked super super hard) but i think this is going to help our member start to get motivated to work more. We are starting with the Bishop and his wife so that they can be the example in the ward...because if the bishop doesnt do it, the members arent going to do it. But yesterday we went and planned with the bishop and his wife when they are going to leave with us each day this week. I know its going to be a sacrifice for them with their time but i am so so so happy that they accepted to start this plan and are willing to work because i think we are going to have a lot of success this week working with them and starting this new program here in the ward. Then in sacrament meeting they will announce to the ward the work they did with us, (how many lessons, how many contacts, how many new investigators we found with them) and then we will call a new family to be the missionary family. Anyways so we´ll see how that goes. I hope we can start to see changes here in the area. I know i need to have more faith and we can find these people. The mission isnt easy in any way but it is rewarding to know that even if i dont have success, all day every day im just serving the Lord and trying to help these people and that is what matters. I have bad news...that basically broke my heart. On tuesday morning we received the call to say who has cambios and i found out i was staying here in the area....and i was so happy because i was just thinking in David Calderon and how i can be here for hopefully when he gets baptized...and then tuesday night we went so that hermana salguero could say goodbye to David and Alba....and guess what. Alba told us that David left to Honduras to work for a few weeks. and we dont know when he is going to come back. I was so devestated because mostly he was the reason i wanted to stay in the area so that i could see him baptized and now he is not here. and he was so close to accepting a fecha for baptism! i cant explain how upset i was...but we'll see when he returns. i hope its during the cambio. And yeah Marcos is still coming to church...and still reading the book of mormon. he is in like 3rd nefi. he says he hasnt received an answer still and he doesnt know why. And i told him he isnt going to receive an answer if he isnt willing to keep the commandments (get married and such)...but yeah he is still attending. But we are counting him for numbers and not counting him as progressing....basically an eternal investigators...we just visit him and Eloisa once a week now. Anyways thats bascially it. Sounds like everything is great at home. I cant believe colby and janelle are going to be moving to georgia! ah crazy. But yeah. And yes mom whoever that girl is can borrow one of my prom dresses. no problem. Anyways love you all tons. until next week! thank you so so much for your prayers. Hermana Groneman