Giron Week 17

Cambios! Which means transfers! Actually it means changes, but I think in English they call them transfers. My assignment is....drum roll.... the same! I'm staying in Giron for another 6 weeks and after that I'll likely get kicked out. My trainer, Elder Torres, went to Bogotà this morning to go be a zone leader or something. My new companion (hasn't arrived yet) is Elder Carballo from Bolivia. I hear he's really short, cool, and pretty relaxed. So basically everything you could ask for in a companion. He has been working in the mission office as a secretary, so he's probably gonna be super stoked to baptize everybody. He probably also has glasses, because I'm pretty sure that's a requirement to be a secretary. To be honest, I'm a little unsure about carrying on the burden of the area, being that I'm still learning how to speak Spanish, but then I remind myself that I can rely on that Lord and then I'm like wow this is too easy. I'm glad to be staying in Giron though, because there are a lot of people that I still haven't baptized. But really, I have some awesome investigators there and they are progressing super well. And if I stay, I don't have to learn my way around a new area. But mostly, it's that seeing those people progress in the gospel and change their lives makes me really happy, I hope that when I have to leave, everyone is either baptized, or not progressing, because then it'll be super easy to go. Just kidding kind of. Lizet and Rubiero changed their minds again and said they wanted to get married, and I think it's for sure this time (probably). The same with Nelson and Wendy (they have very American names). The big difficulty is still marriage here. And from what I hear, all South American missions. It's super cool though that we have an in with the government. We keep the kiosks for the mission in the top story of the government building that does all legal documents and marriages. The guy in charge there is LDS as well as basically everyone else (don't tell anyone but we are taking over the government here). One funny story about doing kiosks to close- there was a homeless guy who makes a perfect meowing cat in distress noise. He would point up in the trees after making the sound and the people walking by would stop and look for the cat stuck in the tree. It was super funny. The church is true!

Love Elder Downing