Week 22 in El Salvador: Still Climbing

Estimados Familia,
Well still climbing means taht we are still working on the branch here. We are up to 80 people in the sacrament meeting, and we are hoping for 100 by the end of the month. We are starting to reap some fruits from our efforts, because we had 7 people at church, and we have a few investigators with baptismal dates. I just hope that they stick to it and go thropugh with it. We are hoping to have 2 baptisms the 18th and 1 or 2 on the 25th. I have to admit I feel a Lot better about my last area now. Because I was really depressed when I left. We had just worked for almost 2 months with one family, and we didnt get a chance to do their baptism, even though they went to church over 10 times by now. But in my last week there, I worked so hard, and I think it payed off, because in my last week we put 2 solid baptismal dates for the next change, and we had the other 2 from the family. And the other day i was at the stake center in Layco, and there was a brother from Las Cañas, and I asked him how things went, and ther 2 baptismal dates that I left there went through on got baptised right after I left. And the other family is still going strong. It is really hard to go a whole change without baptising here, Especially when you got he whole time working hard, But I am really happy that our work payed off.

Anyways here in layco I´m still pretty optomistic. The main probelm is that the missionaries who were here before (including my companion) didnt even leave one investigator for us this change. I feel like they didnt do anything last change, because At least Elder Suarez and I left baptismal dates and progressing investigators. Here we had to start absolutely from nothing, and that means that the first few weeks of the transfer are kinda rough, because its all searching, and working hard to find people. But now we have a few progressing investigators, so a lot of the strees is taken off. But still we are praying, and I would invite you guys to pray also for sister Marisol, and Maria Aparicio to get baptised this 18th of september. Because president said that if we dont baptise here this change, he is going to close this area, and we really need to bring this branch back to life.

Also dont be suprised this next week if you get a suprise call from a member I met down here who lives in Oregon, I gave him our number so he could call you and let you know how everything is going down here, we worked with him to baptise his family this last week. Btw I havent been emailing grandpa Joe, because I don´t have his email. I don´t want him to feel bad, I´m not trying to exclude him, I simply dont have his email. If you could forward him all of my old emails, and send me his email so that I can start putting him in the address too I would appreciate it a lot.

I don´t have any pictures for this week, but I´ll see what I can do about next week.

Much love,
Elder DeVictoria.