Week of November 11, 2013

Hey my Family,

so as I'm sure you all know, we were stuck in our house all this week. and had nothing to do except for watch movies and study........ and lets just say that I'm glad its over. no but i liked it. i was able to study alot and we got to relax alittle. really i learned even more the importance of being obedient. i also got to watch a few new movies that I've never seen before or I watched when I was like 5. 

The best part of the week was Friday, we have a friend I guess you could say, that works in the offices for institute and the offices are in our church building. Anyway we planned to have a BBQ with him and the first counselor of the bishopric. it was sweet because it was a mix between a Colombian and an Argentinean BBQ. In Argentina they basically only eat meat and so we ate, the 6 of us, ate 3 kilos of meat and ya that was it, it was spectacular. 

Sunday as well was nice, really peaceful. I got to study Jesus the Christ for most of the day. 

Oh ya it was kind of a good thing that we were in the house because we basically didn't have any members here the whole week. Its way different here with trips to the temple, the people here can only go once a year. and it costs alot to go. They sacrifice so much, that's another thing I have learned alot, is really how lucky I am to live where I live, to speak the language I speak, and to be able to live in a town where almost everyone is active in the church.

I love you guys alot and can't wait to hear from you next week. Thanks for all your love and support. Until next week,

Love from Colombia,

Elder Franks

P.S. sorry I know its not the best but i am just terrible with writing.

Week of November 4, 2013

Dear Family,
Just so you know we had p-day Saturday, we are going to be locked up in our house for a week, so we won't be able to write on Monday or anything.
Hope all is well with the family.
Talk to you next week.
Love you guys so much.
Elder Franks

Week of October 28, 2013

Hey my grand family. 

How is everything?  First off I am still in the same area, Cartagena. I've been here for 6 months now. I am excited that I didn't get transferred, I didn't want to leave para nada, so it's all good.  We haven't had anything grand happen this week. but are investigators are progressing pretty well. We should be having some bautismos coming up.

   Next Monday until Friday or Saturday we will be in the house because here in November they have a huge celebration in Cartagena and its dangerous for us to be in the street, but all is good and don't worry so we will either be in the house for that week or we will go to Barranquilla for that week. we don't know yet. 

   Brit asked me some questions and I will answer them to everyone. the weirdest things I've eating here is first, cow stomach. and I've eatin shark, alot of fish, they eat iguana here as well, but I haven't eatin it yet or ants.

   As for my best experience so far. We baptized a young man and two weeks later he was able to baptise his sister,  that was a moment that all I could think of was. "this is why I'm serving a mission"  I've really had alot of cool experiences that I will tell you about when I get home.  

   The worst experieces that I have had is probably what all missionaries experience and that is when you talk to someone about the church and they accept a Book of Morman and they read the whole thing but than they don't want anything to do with the church.  You think they are golden but than you get disappointed because they quit and don't what to hear any more. That happened to us in one of my area's, it was in my second area I don't know if i told you guys about it but we had a guy read the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the conference issues of the Liahona from last October and all the pamphlets that we have and he didn't want to pray about it, so we had to stop teaching him.  Hopefully one day he will want to learn and get baptized.

   The family I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, the father has decided that he doesn't want to learn any more about the church but his wife wants to get baptized so we are still working on him so that they can get baptized together.  

  All is good in Cartagena. It is p-day none of us elders have any money, so we are at the church playing ping pong and killing time.  We have done our laundry this morning and now we are just writing letters.  I hope all is well with my family.

Elder White says hi,he's an elder from my group and we are really good friends.

Love you all.

Love from Cartagena,

Elder Franks