Buenos dias

Hola mi familia,

We had a pretty chill week here in El Olivar!! We're just in the groove of missionary work and I can't believe it's been another week!

This week we had a fun little service project.  We painted the house of a less active family so that was pretty fun.  We blasted our mormon tabernacle choir music and sanded (I don't remember what that's called?) and painted their house.  It was fun and mostly I just listened to all the Elders joke around in Spanish.  I know Spanish and can communicate fine but still not well enough to make jokes and be funny haha.  Also we got some shirts for our zone "El Olivar" that I'm wearing in those pictures painting and it is pretty funny because they are bright green and I don't know who chose the color but they didn't think about how all of the people that work for the city wear the same shade of bright green.  All of the gardeners, garbage workers, police officers, and everyone so we put them on and were walking and realized we looked exactly like all of the city workers around.  It was pretty funny.  

Yesterday we had a broadcast for all of the members of ward council in the area. I'm not sure if in other parts of the world they are focusing on ward councils but here just about every training or broadcast we have is a focus on ward councils and how we can "hasten the work of salvation."

They are putting a huge emphasis on missionaries and how everybody together needs to partcipate on three things: Baptize, Retain, and Rescue. Everything that we do in ward council should be focused on people specifically that need help in one of these three aspects.  It's pretty cool and has been changing a lot.  Elder Uceda, the member of the 70 in charge of this area is really great and everything he says is golden.  And he's from Peru so he's even cooler. 

In the broadcast we also heard from Elder C. Scott Grow and Elder Waddell.  You can tell Elder Waddell served in Spain because he has a lisp in his Spanish - Matt, do you have the Spain lisp?

We met a man named Joel this week and he's solid.  He accepted a baptismal date for Dec. 7th and came to church yesterday.  He's great and loves the church.  Also we are teaching a couple who is not married but their daughter is a member living in Spain.  We are working to get them married so they can get baptized because they know the church is true and love it.  

Dad, to answer your question, there are about 40 sister missionaries in the mission and I don't know for sure but I think about half are from The United States.  Maybe a little more.  When I got here there were 25-30 and by the end of the year we will have 50.  Sisters keep coming and we've only had two leave! The mission is growing and the work is hastening. The church is true!

Love you bunches and thanks for everything!!! 

-Hermana Jones