"I understand now that we just labor and the Lord harvests,"

walking in the jungle? abbey road jungle version? maybe? 

Railroad tracks that we rode in on 

Today we went to the jungle!

And pretty cool group foto

Hiya familia! 

It's always a great first week of summer when High adventure and girls camp get goin'! Summer is definitely a great time of year! Good luck kids and cherish those memories because one day you won't be in YM or YW anymore! 

Well as for me here in Buenaventura, there has been a lot going on! We had another leadership council this past week and there was a lot discussed about the development of the mission. The mission has opened so many new areas to accommodate the army of missionaries coming in that many are in pueblos where there is no chapel.. haha. We have 204 missionaries in the mission right now and a TON of them are from this year alone. We are very young and inexperienced. So there is a huge need of leaders in the mission right now that can help train the new generation. 

We also placed new goals as a mission but in a different way. We want to change the culture of the mission to a mission that finds 10-15 new investigadores every week. The key to having success in the mission is finding. If you can become a pro at finding the prepared investigators and not wasting time with old non-progressing people you will see a huge change in your mission. It is just sometimes laziness and fear that gets in the way of us constantly finding. It is always so awesome to add to our tank of motivation and commitment with those meetings!

Here in Buenaventura it has been busy as always, after last weeks baptisms we don't really have much in progressing investigators, but a ton of new people who look to be promising. Bryan Solis has turned missionary and is talking to everyone about the Gospel, he presented us to 5 people last week haha. He says he wants to prepare to serve a mission, I asked him where he wanted to serve and he told me England haha. He does speak great English so I think its a good possibility  I told him that my brother served there and he flipped out. Turns out he is a huge Man City fan and I told him that Code had a pic in that stadium, so if dad can do me the favor of getting me that picture that would be cool to show him! 

Elder Inga and I have been really focused in finding a sure way to help all of the missionaries in the zone out. We are really young and Buenaventura is a work that is so different and challenging that sometimes it is easy to get down and quit working as hard. I think I can see where they are coming from, early on in my mission I got really down after someone would lose interest or stop progressing. But I learned that that just tears down our faith and slows down our diligence. I understand now that we just labor and the Lord harvests, we can feel great about our efforts as long as we have served with all of our heart, might, mind and strength. The key is not in what we are doing, it is the why!

One of the few progressing investigators happens to be Lininger Granados, the miracle from last week. He couldn't come to church this week but he has been reading like the B.O.M. He knows the answer he received was from God and is progressing very rapidly in gaining his testimony. This week we will also see him 2 or 3 times.

We will be heading out for Juanchaco on Wednesday! We leave at about 5 in the morning and get back around 4 in the afternoon. President wanted just us to go with Pdte J'ose to check things out and then we will bring the whole gang to romper!! 

Well that's about it for today, I have to write a report to Presidente!

Thanks for everything and until next week!

Elder Eliason