May 18, 2015 -- Proxima semana

Hello everybody,

"Beatrice" is still progressing very quickly, she loves learning when we come to teach her which makes all of the hard parts of the mission worth it and then some. When we first contacted her, she was so quiet and didn't really want to talk, even at her first time at church with us. Now she is smiling so much and has her pamphlets of the lessons we've taught her before and her Libro de Mormòn at every lesson. Last week I looked back when we were walking away after a lesson and she was showing her books to her friend or her brother, it made me so happy! That's why I want to be here and I'm so grateful to be apart of people's lives like that. She is set to be baptized next Sunday!

Yesterday, as some of you may know, was stake conference. "Beatrice" was there with us too and I was able to sit next to her. One of the things she said to me was that she wanted to be a missionary like Elder Vèlez and I, but that she couldn't. First of all, touchdown. Second of all, we told her that she could serve a mission when she was older on a couples mission. Don't think for a second, Grandma and Grandpa, that I didn't tell her about you two. She seemed happy to hear that. Also, during the conference, our mission president, President Swapp spoke for one of the last times since he will be ending his reign this week. I'm sad to not be able to spend more time with him because he was such a great person and had a lot of good things to say to me. One of which was that I would be fluent in Spanish by the end of my mission. Garunteed. He also said I would make 30,000 mistakes (màs o menos) to get to that point. I believed the second part, but was a little surprised by the weight of the first piece of advice. Fluent in Spanish. That's another small part of why I like my mission.

Lessons are going well, but one thing about the people here that is hard to get along with is their lack of following up when we make appointments with them. For example, we could contact 100 people, but only 30 would make appointments or citas with us, that's fine. But of that 30, maybe 15 would actually be available at any time for us to actually teach them. Of that 15, 5 might progress and of that 5, we might get 1 investigator to be baptized. Not quite sure about those numbers, but it definately has that shape. I'm also very grateful for "Beatrice" for that

to keep me motivated. I want to end by extending an invitation to pray every morning and every night for a week and write down the difference you feel throughout the day. When I started doing this I found I was much happier during the day, had more patience and more humility. Especially now, I need that time to be humbled and increase my relationship with Heavenly Father. Prayer is a blessing. Love you all!

-Elder Allgaier

For the pday (preparation day) zone activity, we played nerf with about 15 misionaries. Very mormon, but fun

shoe picture from last night