3/24;

This week was alright. It was one of those weeks where everything you have planned kind of fails, and then so does your plan b, and even plan c so you have to improvise - using the Spirit of course. So it leaves room for miracles. We have had a lot of random chances to serve people. For example, helping push a broken down car into a parking spot for someone. We also knocked a lot of doors this week and thats always an interesting experience to say the least. The thing that amazes me about Cuenca is that honestly a good chunk of our investigators come from part member families. We visited an MA this week in one of the pueblos outside of Cuenca and we´ve started teaching her 10 year daughter. Her oldest son is baptized, he´s 18 but doesn´t have the priesthood and apparently he just got back from a vacation in Uraguay with his family that is super strong in the church over there and they asked him if he could pass the sacrament and he felt so bad that he couldn´t. So he´s now working on getting his license so he can drive his mom and sisters to church on Sundays. We visited a man and his wife that we found on the branch member list. He got baptized when he was about 20 or so back in Bolivia and his wife is not a member and wants us to teach them. So we are very excited. Hna Clay and I walked out and talked about how we both pictured them in white, with him baptizing her. And I think thats the key. Not to see people as they are but to see them as they can become. Thats the beauty of the Attonement. We can become amazing, incredible people through the gospel of Jesus Christ. If there is one thing I have learned out here its that. 

Hna Palomino

3/17;

Hey family! 

Another great week in Cuenca! We have another investigator on fecha. Elvis, the man that has gotten baptized already but never got confirmed. Well he has another date for April 13th so hopefully everything works out. He came to church yesterday. The week could´ve gone better. We had a lot of things scheduled and set up but I guess I found the downside of working with a small branch full of part member families. Everyone is essentially related in some way or another, out of our teaching pool. So we try and schedule lessons to get people a little more one on one to focus on their needs but instead they buddy up on lessons and come to someone else´s lesson because they think its the same thing. Its a little difficult because it just kind of messes up the plans we have to focus on people. But it also makes room for working with the Spirit. There´s a pro and con to everything I guess. 

Yesterday I realized just how important it is to work in strengthening the branch is. The Relief Society teacher didn´t show up so the president just looks at me and clay, hermanas will you teach? Sure. Sunday school, Gospel Principles teacher doesn´t show up. Hermanas, will you teach? Got it. Sacrament, my second time giving a talk in a month. And guess who´s playing the piano, Clay. Guess who has to lead? Palomino. Guess who can´t sing or lead? Yes, thats not a gift of the spirit sadly. Haha it was a crazy Sunday but honestly I loved it. Cuenca is such a good little place. Honestly its grown on me and I love it here. Its been a good month. Hna Clay and I are trying to work our hardest and see more and more miracles happening. 

Well I love you guys and hope that everything is going good! 

Hna Palomino

3/10;

Hey Family!

We had a good week in Cuenca. Like always. I really do love this branch and this area so much. There is so much potential and so many good things waiting to happen. And I love working with Hermana Clay. She is a great companion and a hard worker. This week we had an interesting experience. We had a first lesson with someone that we had met on the street. We got to her house for the appointment and there was a lady that was a practicing Jevohah´s Witness that had randomly stopped in before us. When the lady that was visiting realized we were Mormon, she got all huffed and kind of confrontational with us. We tried calmly explaining that we were simply there to share a message and not fight or argue but she was getting geared up for seemed like a round of bible bashing when all of a sudden the investigator said no. She politely asks the lady to leave and she says to us that we handled that very well because to her it didn´t seem like God´s message should be shared under contention and she didn´t like the lady´s intentions of fighting with us. So we had our lesson and everything went well. To me, it was just a testimony builder that this message we share, God´s message is of peace and happiness, not contention like she said. The lady was impressed by how we handled it because we really are not here to fight, nor convince. We are here simply to testify of what we know. It was a great experience.

What else. Elvis likes to bail on our lessons, punk. Marcel went to France for a few weeks for his nephew´s funeral but he says he will come back and get baptized. His fecha is still good for April, so we´re just praying that everything goes well. The branch loves me. I have to speak on Sunday.. again. Haha Presidente Vaquera said he wants us to baptize for his birthday, so obviously we promised him we would get on that. Haha I love this branch. 

Hna Palomino

3/3;

Well this week in Cuenca was great! We met a lot more members and have a good pool of investigators now. Honestly, all of our investigators have come from the part member families of the branch and area book work. We have done some street contacting but not enough. But I feel like this week we can work on that because now we have a better feel for the area and just kind of know what we´re doing now. We started teaching a man named Elvis. He got baptized a few years ago and never got confirmed, so the branch president wants us to proceed with teaching him all over again and baptizing him again but this time making sure he seals the deal, so to speak. So we are excited to work with him. He was a lot of desire, but he is very wishy washy when it comes to acting. We had one lesson with him and he failed on us the second time and didn´t come to church. So we´ll have to see where that goes. And we had a total miracle last night! We found an investigator, again through one of our less actives. He´s a friend of one of the members that just moved here from France about a month ago, he´s retired and speaks no Spanish. But he´s been coming to church and is very interested. So we set up a lesson with one of the members, he´s from Utah but he´s working here at the university teaching English and speaks French as well so we had a lesson with him as our interpretor. And the lesson went very well. Marcel brought up that he wanted to be baptized so we put him on date! It was so cool! We also had a whopping 22 people in church. 2 of which were our investigators so that is very exciting. One of our less active ward mission leader that we have decided to reactivate haha we want to have correlation so we are working with that! I really love Cuenca. Its a really great little place.

This week we also got the chance to attend our mission tour. Elder Texiera from the Eurupe area seventy came and spoke to us. It was awesome. A spiritual feast. haha we talked about our purpose as missionaries, how to recognize the spirit and finding people to teach. He said something that really stuck with me, he was talking about how we couldn´t be doing anything more worthwhile right now in our lives than serving missions. ¨The world has a lot to offer, but nothing like this¨ its so true. And its crazy to think that this week I´ll hit a year... Where has the time gone? Honestly, there is nothing I would rather be doing right now. If I could sit down and talk to me a year ago, I would tell myself to just go without any fears because I was scared out of my mind this time last year, I had no idea what was waiting for me here. But now I know, what was waiting was work. Hard work! But an abundance of blessings as well. There´s no need to fear because the Lord will take care of His missionaries, I´ve seen it countless times. I love this work, I love this gospel. I don´t care how cheesy it is to say but its true. My mission has changed my life for the better and I would never regret my time out here. I mean that wholeheartedly. Alma 26:1-3 :) 

Hna Palomino