February 15, 2016

Hola Familia,

Well, I hope you had a great valentines day. I know I did. It didn't even feel like Valentines day. I was super busy. Well I would like to tell you a little bit about my new area, new comp, and new responsibilities. First off, the church you found online is not my ward, it is kind of close though. I am serving in the Mariátegui ward in the Wiesse Stake. To start off, I love this ward and my area. In the last year there have been 38 converts here. They have married and baptized about 8 families in the last year too. It is a literal gold mine of investigators. All of these converts help us out a ton too. They come out teaching with us and present us to their family and friends. We recieved close around 25 references this week and had about 20 new investigators. That is a new record for me. They also helped us get people out to church. We had 11, basically 12, investigators in church. We will have two baptisms next week. They are Omar's (recent converts) brothers in law. They are really cool. Omar and his whole family have always been involved in gang activity but now they are all cleaning up their lives and coming to church. We also got a cool reference to a new family. They are named Felipe and Fatima. Their whole family came to church but Felipe got their late so that's why we only had 11 not 12. We are going to work with them so they can get married and baptized in March. We are working with another family in the same situation. Their names are Cesar and Yohana. My comp went on a work visit this week and I stayed alone in my area. I had just two days in the area. I was amazed that I already new the area. It went really well. Our area is pretty big but we only work in a small part because that is where all our success is coming from.

I am getting along great with my new companion. Elder Nielson is teaching me how to be a zone leader. He has changed a lot since the start of the mission. He is one of my best comps. It is a little weird to be with an elder with experience though. I have been training so long that I don't remember what it was like to teach with someone who knows what he is doing. It is also weird to be with a gringo who speaks english. We speak a lot of english and I hope it doesn't destroy my spanish. I don't think it will though because we are always speaking spanish in the streets and lessons.

As zone leader I have a lot more responsibilities. We are in charge of 20 missionaries. First off, we have to make sure they are working and doing it well. Every night we have to verify about the people that have a baptismal date and then something else. We have been getting to bed pretty late. The earliest has been about 11:30 but it is usually past midnight. We are going to create a calling schedule so that we can get to bed earlier. We also have to do a weekly training, help get the families married, do interviews, get to know every person who is going to be baptized, plan p-days, fill out the information for the asistants and presidents, do work visits, help the areas that are struggling, and a lot of other things that I can't remember or am to lazy to list right now.

I just reread your letter again. That is great about all the scholarship offers for Kenzie. Hard studies pay off. Has she thought about serving a mission? Also, my new comp is from Arizona. The changes are on June 21 and so I will be getting home that day. Normally, I would be flying out June 20 at 11 at night and will get there at about noon. I should be getting flight information within one or two months. 4 months are still a long time away. I am not to worried about it.

I hope Kyle wins the contest. I voted for him. You should have all your school students vote for him. That would help him out.

To let you know, I did get my package. Thanks for all the candy, and don't worry, I am sharing it. I am going to miss my old area but I am glad that I came to one that is already built up.

Les extaño,
Elder Isaacson