Week 18 Layco District, El Salvador--November 23, 2015

It's a boy!

 Well everyone it´s official. I am now the proud father of a young son. Elder Piñeros was born into Layco on Friday November 20, 2015 at 1.81 meters tall and 60 kg. He is from Colombia too! Entonces, because my papá was Colombiano and now my son as well, I, therefore, must be a Colombiano. So yeah on the reals after only getting 11 weeks of training (as opposed to the normal 12) i am now a trainer myself. not only that but because elder palacios left i am now also the district leader of distrito layco. a whole lot going on here and i am super busy all of a sudden. but we are still havin all kinds of fun! this past week (as i said before) we had thanksgiving! it was a great multi zone meeting with pie and all that good stuff. i hope all of you also will be able to enjoy your propios thanksgivings this thursday. also i cant believe november is ending too. but thats cool too because next week we get to go to the temple! so anyway that multi zone was tuesday, wednesday elder harris finally came to layco to have intercambios conmigo and we had a very successful and fun day. and then thursday was the only day really last week that i got to work with elder palacios. but we made it a good last day. friday of course we had our cambios and now elder piñeros and i are working hard to get the work movin. yesterday we had stake conference. we had only one investigator committed to come to church but he didnt show. however, a miracle happened. another investigator that we have named xiumara came to church and we didnt even invite her nor did we see her at all this past week! she is super good and super prepared to be baptized so we only need to try to find time to meet with her and even better with her husband as well. so we are gonna be praying for them! so yeah thats what we got goin on here. we are starting a fumigation process because the cucaracha population has escalated in our house. other than that all good things. have fun this week everyone and be good to yourselves (when nobody else will). love you all bye!

PUPUSAS: entonces the count at the end of this last cambio was 65 putting me at a grand total to that point of 191 pupusas! this cambio (meaning the past 3 days) my count is now at 5 woooooo!

Mijo!

también discúlpen que mi cámara tiene la calidad más peor de las fotos

Elder Lainez: he went back home to honduras (now the second zone leader to end his mission with me) so here we are

Week 17 Layco District, El Salvador--November 16, 2015

 It came from the drain

heres a story for my mother this week. the other day i was in our bathroom brushin my teeth or something, i dont remember. then i saw something moving in the drain a bit. i stopped and looked down and out crawled a very large cockroach. sudden inspiration caused me to react quickly and crush it with my companions shampoo bottle (dont tell him). crisis averted. so yeah sorry guys i dont have much to say about this past week. so instead i will talk about this coming week! tomorrow is thanksgiving for us missionaries! we are gonna have a multi zone meeting with the whole (san salvador part) mission! dinner and all. itll be great. and this week is the last week of this short cambio. entonces, it is very possible that elder palacios will be going. por lo general the trainers leave and the new missionaries stay to kind of direct the area with a new companion. oh yeah im not gonna be in training anymore after this change! thats kind of daunting but exciting too! right now our area is tough and we are running out of places to go to find new investigators (our area is really small as well) but we are gonna work really hard, faithfully to have success. pray for our investigators cuz like no one is progressing and we are kinda sad about it! but all good things because this is now our chance to exercise a greater faith in the Lord! okay be good! have fun! study the scriptures! love you all! ¡salud!

Pupusa Count (I forgot last week...): 61! next week i will give the final count for this cambio like always

Week 16 Layco District, El Salvador--November 9, 2015

¡Mapache! Jump on it! Jump on it! Jump on it!

Ha Im so witty with my email titles. okay the reason is this (now i realize, lame) story. we were contacting in this neighborhood with this member kid who is from the area (obviously). we pass this house and they had a pet baby mapache on a leash in front of the house. it was jumping on and climbing their bike it was funny. our friend assured us that its not a common pet, however. okay so yeah we had the baptism for victor on saturday! and it was his wifes birthday! so what better present than the prospect of now being able to be sealed in the temple in a year! we missed the confirmation because we were late to church picking up investigators...but so it goes. and hey i wasnt lying about the christmas thing a month ago. because, for weeks now people have been setting up decorations in their houses and now all stores have trees and stuff for sale and music and all. thats what happens when thanksgiving actually doesnt exist (and the people dont have to pretend that it doesnt *cough* americans *cough*). and hey im writing late because this morning we went to a volcano! it was super cool and the first p day that we have actually done something here! yay! cambios are coming up soon so who knows, maybe i will get sent to an area where we can do something like that every p day. but layco is still great and we actually just found this great investigator xiumara who is super positive and we are looking to baptize her at the end of this month (the next cambio) so i would be happy to be here for that as well. whatever is the will of the Lord! okay love you all so much have fun and be good this week byeeee

bautismo de victor

bautismo

also i forgot my camera this day so these pics are from elder palacios. sorry if theyre bad

ignore that elder ramos didnt wait for elder harris to move...but this is partway down on the way back from the volcano. view of san salvador

Con los elderes volcan...we just got back from a volcano

view from the base of the short hike

the sign/pared at the start

Crater

el volcan

zona

crater

the cooolest museum everrrrr (at the base of where they hiked to the volcano)

Week 15 Layco District, El Salvador--November 2, 2015

Uhhh

hey i hope you all enjoyed your halloween! in the spirit of halloween heres some good experiences that we had to creep you guys out! (as in to maybe make my mother feel all gross). so last p day we decided we needed to clean our house a bit. i was the sweeper (professional grade from my training in my youth), but there was this box underneath my table that i wanted to go through and throw away. there are a lot of boxes and areas full of missionaries old stuff. so i told my comp that we should go through it and through out less important things. and so we began. and i knew beforehand there would be cucarachas. thats a given. lift up the first book, boom two cucarachas grandes. one jumps out of the box and i kill it. at this point i realize we need to work together to clean this little box. elder palacios wraps his hand in a plastic bag and begins digging through the box. lift up the next book (large manual actually), boom 6 cucarachas. my comp shouts "oh freak!" (which is funny cuz he doesnt speak english) and then decides to just dump the whole box on the floor. i lost count of how many cucarachas there were after 12...but hes standing there shouting "mátalas! mátalas! mátalas!" and so i start swatting them all with a broom to stop them from running and he is stomping them to death. luckily we were successful in killing them all and exterminating this little box. this week we plan to go through this other box that is probably twice as big and is overflowing with stuff. so thatll be fun! yesterday i also saw two cucarachas in the street the size of rats. and i saw an actual rat climbing a wall in this old lady´s house too on saturday. enjoy your day now mother! okay but good things that happened. on friday we had a lesson with victor and presidente y hermana hintze came to join in and help the lesson. it was super cool and really fun to be able to teach alongside them! they both bring a very unique Spirit to the lessons and it was fun to learn from their teaching styles as well. this week now we have victors baptism on saturday so pray that all things will go well with that! okay other than that i have nothing of severe significance. i hope you all enjoyed all the candy and count chocula for me! love you all bye! 

Pupusa Count: 34 womp womp (when your comp runs out of money and you have fast sunday/saturday you tend to eat less...)