Awesome week! Nothing exciting, but good week overall.

(Emailed to Friends)
It’s been an alright week.  We're struggling majorly to get that 15-20 investigators progressing.  Like majorly.  It's rather frustrating, but we're working hard on it.  We've kinda got to start over since we lost lots of investigators during the semana santa here.

Monday - OK lesson with an investigator.  We’re going to do a FHE with a less active family, but it crashed and burned.  Oh well.

Tuesday - Painted a house in the morning!  A member's house burned (can't say burned down since it's made of cement...), and needed to be repainted.  We painted a ton of it.  Then we had intercambios that afternoon until the next morning.  They went well.  I went with Elder Kirk in his area.  It was fun.  We got lots of work done.  Met a member family who got baptized like 3 years ago.  The parents, the kids (19, 16, 12, and 6.  Exactly the same as my family, just with the genders switched).  They're awesome.  It’d be so awesome to baptize a family like them.  One of my goals for sure.

Wednesday - Finished up the intercambio.  That evening we had quite a few lessons.  We also went to a homecoming of a sister who got back on Tuesday from her mission in Idaho.  It was super cool, and really made me want to appreciate my time here more.  I think it made Elder Solis super trunky haha.  Then we met with Ranquel and Katherine.  They're some of our really solid investigators right now in my opinion.  They read the BOFM and prayed together!  Huge step.  Hopefully we can help them make that a habit.

Thursday - Zone meeting.  Solis and I gave a talk on doing the Lord's will and not ours.  I think it went pretty well.  We did TONS of contacting.  Found quite a few people, but we'll see if any of them are good enough to progress.  Then we had a family night with an investigator and her member sister.  Linabel.  She gave the message on faith.  She invited her friend too and she wants a BOFM which is awesome!

Friday - Long day.  Lots of contacts in morning.  Found some good people, but not a ton who are interested.  The problem here is that probably 60 percent of people will open their door to let you in.  The problem is that only like 5 percent of them have any interest in the gospel.  Hard to know who to teach and who will really progress.  That evening we had more contacts and met with Marianna Nin and taught her about family history.  She has a brother who passed away a few years ago.  Told her she can have his work done.  She’s going to work on it.  Then we had a lesson with some eternigators.  They’ve been investigators for years and years.  Good people, but they just don't want to get married.  Come to church and everything.  He even prayed for President Hinckley in his prayer.  Haha that'll tell you how long they've been investigators.

Saturday - Decent day.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Lots more contacts.  Some lady told us if we want to change churches we just have to talk to her haha.  Nothing much else.

Sunday - Better day.  Marlye and Marianna Nin both came to church.  Those were huge successes in my book.  Linabel and her friend too.  Marlye was super excited because she's going to give the lesson next week in church.  She bore her testimony too.  That evening we had ward council and our coordination meeting with the ward mission leader.  Both went well.  Our ward mission leader wants to work a bit more, so we'll be taking advantage of that.

Today - Cleaned.  Studied.  Went exploring a street in our area.  Lots of shoes and hats.  And knock-off stuff.  Was pretty lame.  I wrote some letters for my converts and that felt awesome.  I hope they're doing well.  'bought it for the day.

Other thoughts for the week:
We were helping a blind guy find his way along.  He bumped into someone and the guy was like "how are you doing?”  And the blind guy was like "Bob? I thought you were dead!"  So we left him to talk to his new-ish found friend haha.

I accidently ate liver the other day.  Sometimes we eat out and I just point to a meat and eat it.  Probably not the wisest thing haha.  I was like this meat has a weird texture, and my comp was like "you know that's liver right?”  Ya.  I couldn't eat any more of it after that.

We contacted an Asian this week.  I asked him if he believed in Christ and he said no and walked away.  So that's that.  I thought that was cool though.

I believe that's about it!  This next week I've got another baptismal interview and some intercambios.  And I'll have news about transfers!  Wish me luck!
Love y'all tons!
Elder Potokar.

(Emailed to Family)
Pretty normal week again.  I've set some goals and I'm doing better at keeping them.  I'm starting to hold myself more accountable to them which makes a huge difference.  Still frustrated we're not even close to the 15-20 progressing.  The district is way far away from it too.  It's a huge goal, and it'll take a while to build up to.  We just seem to be shuffling through so many people.  We'll get there though.  One of these weeks.  I know we will.

Dad getting released made me cry.   He did such a good job in that calling.  Dave and Jeff and Kent will do such a great job.  It'll be super weird getting home with a different bishopric.  There's been a lot of younger bishoprics getting called out there.  Super cool.  I expect I'll feel something similar when I need to come home.  I'm going to try and enjoy my time out here even more.  Realize how limited my time really is.  Push it hard to make the biggest impact I can.

I've gained weight.  Not sure how.  I now weight close to 180 pounds.  I think it shows in my face too.  Kidna scares me haha.  I don't drink soda like at all now.  Like I fill up faster though, but I have the will to eat what I used to haha.  I think it's mainly for that.  My metabolism is finally slowing down haha.  And our area is smaller so we're not walking quite as much.

(Do you eat with many members there? Do you eat off the streets very often? ) We eat with members every now and then.  Usually more snacks with them.  They'll give us some bread or a soda or something.  I prefer to say no to those things, but Solis always says yes.  Streets are rare.  Usually only empanadas.  The liver was in a pica pollo.  They have all this big things full of food, like in the Lee's deli.  And I pointed to one that looked good, and well, it was liver haha.

I met a guy who served with Donley!  Donley was his DL.  How crazy is that?  I was like spazzing out. (Donley was a robotics teacher that Easton really enjoyed.)

Wow.  Can't believe they (siblings) have already almost finished a year of school.  That's super super nuts.  I feel like it went by a lot faster out here than it did when I was in school.  Glad to hear they do good.  I hope they keep up on it.  They're both really smart, just need to work hard still.

Those pictures are of two different families.  Actually cousins.  Their moms are twins.  The first family outside I gave the necklaces too.  One of them asked me if he could shower with it haha.  The middle one was wearing it at church, but had lost the ring on it haha. And I played with their daughter during conference.  Their Dad is the one who served with Donley.

The other family is the one inside the house.  Their dad is a counselor in the bishopric.  Their daughter reminded me a lot of Lydia playing and singing like that.  It cracked me up haha.

That's from the roof of an apartment we were contacting.  The stairs went to the roof so we went ahead and took some pictures up there.

Those sticky notes are of investigators. Unfortunately, my sticky notes are from last Christmas and aren't too sticky.  Most of them have fallen down.  We need to buy some new ones and do it again.

Not too much else for the week.  Feel free to ask any questions.  Love you tons!
Elder Easton Potokar.