"I am as busy as I think I have ever been in my life."

One slide from a PowerPoint we did for training.

Holaaa familia!

How is everyone? It's a little weird not hearing from anyone! I guess the change from Monday to Saturday was just a little too much for everyone to handle... haha

Well this week we did just a ton of exchanges. On Wednesday I had the opportunity to go up to Tuluá with one of the zone leaders there to do an exchange up there. It went super great, it is so fun to get to know and work with so many missionaries and teach a ton of different investigators. We have been focusing the exchanges on managing time well... President has basically stressed over and over that the missionaries are to be using half of their time rescuing and retaining with recent converts and less actives and the other half with the investigators, and with so much to do we have to know how to use our time wisely. 

We set up a scheme of how we can be teaching up to 6, 7, or 8 lessons a day and we have seen some great results. When more responsibilities come the less time we have to put into the field, and it has helped me learn how to use my time wisely. 

I also got to stay here for a day while my companion went up to Zarzal. When we are in exchanges we dont work in the office that day we just spend the whole day in our area. It was fun to see what we could do with an entire day to proselyte. We actually have had quite a bit of success early on in our new area. The recent converts have been presenting us new people in our Actividades Hogareñas (Home activites FHE type thing) and we have been finding new people that way. We actually are going to have a baptism tonight, her name is Margarita and she was found through her son who is a member now for about 7 years. She is a really sweet lady, she was taught by the other elders who were here before us and handed over after the change. 

We also had a great webcast training this past Tuesday for all of the new missionaries and their trainers. We just basically went over the tools that we use in the mission to work with members. It was a little different giving a training looking into a camera but in the end everything turned out great! We actually showed an example of when elder Aldunate and I were in Buenaventura when we found Luis and Diana through the list of old members we had, used member families to provide fellowship and help them to the waters of baptism, and then through them we were able to find another family and do the same with them, I will try to send you the PowerPoint we used. 

The time is going by super fast ever since I have gotten here in Cali. I am as busy as I think I have ever been in my life. But it is great always knowing that I am doing so much to help this work move forward! 

Sorry this is short! Have a great week!

Elder Eliason