A for Awesome People, B for Burnt Cookies, and C for Crazy Kids

                                                                                                             July 11, 2016
Dear Everyone,

       This week was pretty awesome to say the least. Well first we decided
  to make cookies for Maria and her family (the family whose baby died)
  and visit to them. Long story short, we went by without cookies and I
  have been having half burnt cookies all week. But it gets better I
  promise.

       We stopped by and she lets us in, what a change, everyone was so
  happy, everyone was smiling and super welcoming to us. Then even asked
  us why we haven't been coming over and asked if we were busy. I
  couldn't believe my ears, Maria wanted us to come over another time
  with all the family and she has been reading the pamphlets. How
  incredible, I'm beyond excited for them. We actually ended up there
  too long and late for another appointment with Emily Deleon but it was
  all good. We actually had the appointment at the house of members, the
  Quevedos, whose the family of Jessica, Emily's friend. Then we had
  Karla come over too, the member whose sister's cancer cells
  disappeared and she shared her testimony and in the end, we had to
  leave because we were late for another appointment but everyone stayed
  behind and talked a little bit more, now that's awesome.

       Then we had a fireside and in which our brand new mission
  president, his wife, and son spoke at. While waiting for the event to
  start, the missionaries were conversing with the members. The sisters
  were playing with the kids and the elders were talking with members
  and then the worst thing ever happened. The sisters started talking to
  the members and then the elders started playing with the kids. I got
  destroyed by the little kids, at one point they gagged and choked me
  with my tie. At the end of it, some were concerned for my well-being
  but the fireside started and I was given a moment of rest and got to
  participate in an incredible fireside. The son, Cameron, just got back
  from his Spanish speaking mission 3 weeks ago so he was the more
  fluent out of the three . Sister Bingham just started learning Spanish
  so she just gave her testimony but it was short, simple, and sweet.
  The President Bingham, who is turning out to be a way chill guy, gave
  his talk. He served in Brazil so he knew Portuguese and he was
  learning how to convert that into Spanish but he spoke up there like
  he has been speaking to a Spanish all of his life, he spoke in great
  Spanish, a little Portuguese with a dash of English. Everyone loved
  him and had such a good time.
       This week we will hopefully get back with Maria and have even
  more miracles. I hope your week and July 4th was great.

                                                                                              Love, Elder Agre

  I'm sure everyone was confused when I commented last week that my picture was too small and then I resent the same exact picture, hopefully this one should come out clearer.

Also we are waiting for some other elders and our laundry so I got bored and took a                             picture of me in this cowboy hat.

Changes, Changes, Nothing is the Same

                                                                                                         Jun 27, 2016
Hi Everyone,

     Big, big, big changes going on up here. One of my trainers,
Elder Patrick is now one of the Assistants to the President which
means he is now working closely with our mission president, by the way
our Mission President, President Woodbury, is going home soon and we
are getting President Bingham as our new president and he knows all of
our names and where we are from, every single of the about 150
missionaries serving here, whoa. It's going to be a bit different now
because President Bingham has two teenage daughters living with him
and his wife as opposed to the Woodburys whose children are all grown
up and out of the house. I don't know how it's going to be different
but it will probably be different. We also got a new Hermana in our
district, straight from the Provo MTC and the old Assistant to the
President is now our new district leader. So a bunch of changes going
on around me.

     In other news, we had a free car wash for getting new investigators
and we washed five cars. The 3 cars of the missionaries, our ward
mission leader's and a random car that was parked at the church. So no
success from that but it was a nice time to say goodbye one last time
with the missionaries who were leaving. So remember Maria from the
hospital? The one whose baby died? We gave her a text to see how she
and her family was and she texted back saying "we will call you when
we are free" which usually means " goodbye forever " but we aren't
going to give up on her we are planning to go by and drop off cookies
and stuff like that to say that we really do care about her and the
passing of her baby. We also randomly passed by the house someone we
had met before but she was busy but then she asked why we didn't call
her and we double checked that the phone number was correct so
hopefully we get an appointment next week.

     In the end of the day, this week wasn't really successful in terms of
appointments, new investigators, and etc. But I have learned grown in
other aspects. I was able to give a priesthood blessing and I felt the
spirit so strongly to say that she will be healed the next day, I
still haven't seen her and it has been 3 days but I feel so strongly
that she was healed. Funny story:we gave a priesthood blessing to this
one missionary in the district who was having a horrible feeling that
someone got in a car crash and basically the blessing said it was not
important. Two days later at an appointment, a member said that his
ex-wife got into a car crash that same day. The lady is ok but it was
way funny.

I'm super excited this week for all the new things that will be happening.


                                                                                                   Love, Elder Agre

                   Our last district photo

                  Us at the car wash

Father's Day Week

                                                                                                                Jun 20, 2016

    

     Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, especially to Pops (what

I call my dad)

     I'm excited for this weekly email, a lot of fun and a lot of
miraculous moments, also a bit of some sad moments.

     So Maria's daughter died and she was texting us as her baby was
passing away. We were then invited to the funeral of the baby (the
second funeral and rosario, a special kind of Catholic funeral, I have
been to). So we went and mourned with them while sharing the Plan of
Salvation with them. The effect was amazing, their sadden faces turned
into tiny smiles.

     Miraculous moment: it was the end of the day we decide to contact
someone before we retire for the night. A family had given us a whole
bunch of Spanish names because we have been having trouble finding
Hispanic people so they gave us addresses off the Internet and also
names they find at work. One of the names was Leticia and we had an
address so we were in the neighborhood and we saw a girl walk up the
street, turned out to be Leti and even more amazing she was
interested, awesome.

     Fun times: I got to service on a farm it was a lot of fun. We used
chainsaws to completely destroy a tree. We also fed some horses and
burned a bunch of dried up woods, it was so much fun. We had a Karaoke
night on Saturday to celebrate Father's Day, the missionaries sang
Feliz Navidad well we changed it to Feliz Día de los Padres. And there
was a lot of fun times especially when two little girls sang a song,
way adorable.

     I guess I'll just finish up this one by saying I really love my dad
and appreciates all he does for me and I cannot wait to reunite with
him and the rest of my family .

                                                                                         Love, Elder Agre

It was surprisingly nerve wracking. The horse is as tall as me and 3 times heavier.

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