Elder Jake Welch: 07-05-16 to 07-11-16 Leadership Council

This has been a pretty rad week. But also very unproductive as far as the work goes. But it's mostly Zone Leader Probs so whatever haha.

Tuesday we left Ipiales bright and early to head to Cali for leadership council. As always, the bus ride took 13 hours. PHEW. But I always love MLC (Mission Leadership Council) because i get to check on my converts! E Weight who's currently in Zarzal brought GREAT news! Nabor is a counselor in the branch presidency, and already has the Melchizedek Priesthood! Also, Gerardo is a counselor in the Young Men's presidency and his preparing for his mission! I guess Zarzal is about to become a ward. It just needs higher attendance. I'm so grateful to see the fruits of my labors.

Wednesday was MLC. Phew. Long day, lot's of instruction. But i did learn a lot about faith. Sometimes the hardest part of being a missionary is just opening my mouth haha. It was also cool that i got to get to know some of the missionaries better. I made pretty good friends with E Rodriguez from Texas and E McDermott from Draper. rad guys!

Thursday we got some Pony Malta and Pandebono for breakfast and head off for Ipiales. The bus ride took a bit longer because some truckers have been protesting the raise on gas prices and have been blocking the highways and burning buses. But don't worry, a ton of police and soldiers were escorting us :) I felt cool haha.

Friday we were all excited to work, but we ended up having to do house revisions. It's always a good time, i feel like a cop searching the missionaries stuff for prohibited items! haha!

Saturday we had a zone meeting, my first one in Ipiales (and my 3rd to last one in the mission). It went well, the missionaries in my zone are good at participating which makes it easy and makes the time fly. But Saturday we also had our HUGE MISSION ACTIVITY in the branch! We called it MASTER CHEF EXTREMO 2! hahah it was basically like the one we did in Palmira but 100x cooler. We had a lot more plates, 4 judges with their "judging number sticks" from 1-5, an announcer, a "camera man" and music! It was way organized and we had a turn out of almost 30 investigators! Pretty good for a tiny branch :)

Sunday was cool because even though we had almost no proselyting time during the week, we had 4 investigators come to church thanks to the members! In gospel principles, we talked about "work and family responsibilities" and i felt pretty grateful that my parents had given me work to do like mow the lawn, (even though i whined about it haha). also i felt grateful that i have a hard working dad and a mom that could stay at home with me. That's SO important for kids to have the 2.

Saturday night we finally got a chance to teach E. He's SO happy with the church, and it's basically 100% sure he'll need to be baptized again. But it'll be for the better because he's been inactive all his life and his papers are LONG gone.

So i'm not sure if it made the news but last night in Esmeraldas Ecuador there was an Earthquake, and we felt it in Ipiales! (we're like 4 hours away). While taking the weekly numbers from the missionaries, the chandeliers in our living room starting moving! I couldn't feel it but I could see it! Kinda cool! We're so high up here in Ipiales that there's no real danger of a super strong earthquake so don't worry!

Well that's been my week! Different, but busy! Which is all I can ask for. Love you all, and I hope all is well!

Elder Welch