Elder Weston Birtcher

I did survive this last week. :) We had our hands full all week with training conferences and with traveling and interviewing the missionaries. A lot of work still to be done...that is our job for this whole month of Februrary.

As for arequipa life....its overcast now, and actually really cold. its been like that since last week. A sunny day here and there, but mostly heavy dark clouds and rain. On sunday, it POURED. it was a flood here in arequipa...kinda fun to go visiting people during the down pour. When we came back to the office sunday night to do numbers for the mission...haha we had jackets, ties, shoes, and socks all over the place drying out. got soaked.

The schedule and businesses started fast as monday and tuesday we had the zone leaders and hermanas liders come to arequipa for our leadership council. And from all the comments and opinions...everyone really liked it. i was pretty happy about that. My comp and i were kinda struggling on how to present the info that we wanted to share with the mission. But the lord helped us out as always. He really puts words in our mouths at the moments that we need them!

Tuesday afternoon we were busy trying to visit investigators and other recent converts (because it would be the only time to visit people ALL week long...kinda sad no?) but really didnt have much luck in finding those who we needed to teach.

We hit the road for the rest of the week on Wednesday and traveling down to Ilo with President and his Wife to start the interviews. Met up with my old companion Elder Cornejo, didnt realize how much i miss that guy. One of my best friends. In ilo the interviews went a little longer than expected but great to see that the zone is excited and ready to work and ready to apply the things which we talked about with them into their areas. that makes me excited. we then had our lunch...at 5:30PM before going and doing divisiones with the Zone Leaders. The lessons that we had turned out really great and we finalized the 3 baptisms that they have coming up for this month. Got to stay in the grand hotel ilo for the night which is always fun! :)

Thursday morning i got to work a little bit on some paperwork after breakfast, before leaving for Tacna. Bought a bunch of junk food for the trip over :) haha president and his wife are the best! seriously. love those 2 so much.

Interviews on thursday went well i should say. the zone is doing well...we can always do better, but the zone leaders and the district leaders are ready to take it up a notch. During the evening hours, after checking into the hotel...i had some free time to visit my pentionista from tacna and a family that i love so much and i havent seen them in since i left my first area in tacna. its pretty amazing the feelings you get seeing old friends again. i love those people and i love tacna. haha i think i left half of my heart there in tacna when i 1st left and i was so grateful to find it once more while i was there. President took us out to eat at a super nice restaurant afterwards to end off the day. But i think the best part of thursday was the sleep i got that night! the grand hotel tacna changed out all their beds for new ones and i think i was so tired from everything that i crashed super hard. but i felt great on friday! :)

Started interviews off early on friday and that continued on throughout the whole day until about 5pm before we headed over to the airport to catch our flight back home to arequipa.

so it was a go go go week once again but it was fun to travel and be with presi and hermana zobrist. sure learning a lot here in this position. kinda crazy how fast the weeks are flying by. pero, im happy.

its just starting to rain now...so im even more happy.

this next week we continue on with the interviews here in arequipa for some zones and its a possiblility that we leave to moquegua maybe weekend time...we shall see.

know that i love you all.

i hope you all have a great week.

you are all in my prayers. constantly.

Weston

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