For those of you who dont know, I have a new comp. Elder Guzman was transfered and will be missed, although my new comp is way chill. His name is Elder Noll form Springville Utah. Hes a complete stud! I think he is my long lost twin, we honestly have too much in common and get along really well. Its funny to tell stories about home and see how many things are like the same. He has about 9 months in the mission and has told me alot about home and how things changed and what things had become popular. Sounds like a lot has changed. 

This past week was spent looking relentlessly for a new house. We searched and searched. One night at 7pm (keep in mind that the sun goes down at 6) we called to see a house that was up for rent. After 10 minutes the guy shows up and then takes us in. The house turned out to be a government ran nursery that was shut down a couple months before. So we enter in the house and the power was off, we ended up walking through the house with our cell phone screen lighting the path. The house was huge! It was like living Paranormal activity. After being taking down the 2nd hall all the way down, Elder Noll started freaking out saying that the house was haunted and that the dude was gonna jump us or kill us. We keep hitting lit switchs and finally in the kitchen the light came to revel bats living in the roof and the floor strewn with all sorts of beat us childrens toys. After that we got out and said we´d call him. After looking and praying that week we finally found a smaller but brand new, super nice house. So we called the asistants and we will be moving in there late today! :) 

Its weird to see things coming to an end. I have seen many missionaries that I have known and loved are now going home and starting their lives. It doesnt seem that it will come to an end. This has been my life, is my life and now.. I dont know how to explain it.... Its all just been amazing. Part of me is excited to see home again but part of me will always be a missionary. 

Love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Elder Strang

April 20 2015  Outer Darkness

What a week. I dont ever know where to begin. So what happened is that we were without power for 4 days last week. The reason being is that the house owner didnt get out light bill to us on time so the company came a cut the power to our house. Here in South America they sure are great to charge you and cut the power but not so great to hook it back up. So they came Thursday night to hook the lights back up. We had power that night and the next day at 7:15 in the morning the power turned off again and so we called about 5 more times and they sent NO ONE. Very unrealible here, so that night the house owner called some friend of his that work for the electric company and they came and fixed it. So everything was fine, we went to a lesson and came back an hour later and turned the lights on. After four days it was almost unreal, but something was different, they were extremely bright but we decided to plan for the next day. After about 5 two light bulbs exploded! And so we turned the rest off. We tested the fans and they turned on like a jet engine starting and blew themselves over! So after a pleading call to the electric company they sent a car out to finally fix it. Turns out that someone along the way had down some jack jibbly messed up job and the power was at 240V... Everything in the house was fried. We know have no fridge or microwave. But at least my hot water is back :) 

This week was diferent. I think I said how we didnt have any investigators so we did a clothing drive with a memeber and decided to give that cloting away to the needy and then just asked them if we could visit them to share a message. We got two famiies out of it! Wahoo! Thinking outside of the box on that one! So we are now teaching two great families. Elder Guzman will be transfered tomorrow, it hasnt been that long of a time that we have had together but it has been a great time together. My next companion will very likily be my last. It been quite the ride these past two years and will finishly strong in these next short months. 

I want to thank you all for the love and support that you all give to me and the wonderfull example that you all are. I love this Gospel, I know its true and I live. Have a great week!

Elder Strang

This past week has been incredible hot. Walking through the streets feeling that your bones are getting a tan, its that hot. I dont know why there cant be a middle ground. Its either pouring rain or walking through hell. Im way dark on my arms, face and neck and I think its a tan that will never go away. You may be asking why we walked around in the sun so much? Last week President Riggins and his wife visited our house to check the cleanliness, it was not super clean, the reason being is that everytime that it rains, water comes in the house and gets everything wet. The wall looks like someone threw a bucket of water all over and theres water that comes out of the floor. So they told us that we could live there anymore and that we needed to fined a house ASAP. We have been walkng around looking for house all week and have found only worse than we have now, but we will find one this week. :)

We are sharing the Because of Him video with the whole world here. I think we had 25 lesson last week just teaching with the video and then sharing scriptures about the Atonement. It has been going great but we dont have investigartores! We are working hard but we cant seem to get any.. Hoping this week we will find some! Its crazy to see all the people that I know coming home from the mission. It doesnt seem quite real yet, these have been two great years that honestly in the beggining I never thought would end but it will sonn be over. 

Love Elder Strang 

What a great Conference weekend! If you didnt get anything out of that you should check yourself! In the mission we dont have the oppurtunity to watch conference in our houses so we spent 10 hours sitting the chapel and it was a well spent 10 hours! I loved the priesthood session and Elder Ballards talk and the focus that was put on youth thoughout the conference. 

Its been a difficult week, we are still looking for families to teach, its a hard game here. Contacting didnt go super hot this week, and to add to it, the rain has been incredible! The streets have been completly flooded, I kid you not that the water is up to my knees! There is now way to walk, and its just a wall of water. Lighting strikes are wicked and strike way close to us, fighting the elements! 

Easter here is a little different than home. Its called La Semana Santa and its mostly a Caholic holiday where they do all sorts of stuff the whole week. There wasn't really anything special the whole week, Easter dinner was great though check out the photo :)

Not much else for the week, I hope you all have a great week and can relisten and apply the conference in your lives! Love you all!

Elder Strang 

Well that was another fast week. Great week last week. Temple, 2 baptims, zone conference.. among lots of other things. 

On Thursday morning we woke up at 5 and left for the Temple which is a good 45 minutes from where we are. We left in the pouring rain. We had a great session and then headed to the chapel where we had a zone conference. Its always like getting the batteries recharged in the conferences. President always knows exactly what to say when we need it. He has started to change some of the rules that he has seen in his 9 months here. 9 months that have gone by some quickly.. but after the conference we headed out to leave in the pouring rain, lighting here by the way is wicked. We says strikes all around us, we were going to take a bus but then we saw a ray stike a good 250 yards away, so I replied get in the taxi! It was cool leaving from the storm because it literally was a wall of water that moved into the city and we were running from it. We could see nothing because there was so much rain. The next day rain non stop and so we had a day walking around the two of us, under one small umbrella. 

This week we have teaching and watching the Preach My Gospel videos with memebers about how they can lose the fear to share the Gospel. We have a couple of appointments this week to see how that goes! We had a baptism on Friday and one on Sunday. The one on Friday was great but the one on Sunday was crazy! We have an Investigator that was supposed to get baptized over two weeks ago but didnt. So yesterday in the Sacrament meeting be told him that we wanted to talk that night. He came and we had filled up the baptismal font and we had the lesson in that room. We proceded to have one of the most spirtual lesson I have had in my life. He imediately said that he wanted to bapized on the spot! So we called President to ask permission, I did the interview, Elder Guzman ran home to get clothes, and he was baptized :) and then confirmed on spot. Its was incredible :) It was a good week :) 

March 23

Baptism! mWe had our first here in Panaorama! We are working with the family one by one! It started with the son now the daughter and this Friday, the mom! :) Then the rest of the familiy! This past week was quite the weather interesting week! Its balzing hot here in Duran and has rained the mother of all rains this past week. There were two days straight that it rained all day without stop. I was wet from waist down, the jacket works but it doesnt cover all the way to my feet, so it was a super wet week! And then after? The blazing sun comes to evaporate it all! Its like walking thourgh a stream room! 

We had splits this last week with the zone leaders and everyone in the zone is very old as far as mission time goes. The majority of us have more than 18 months, so we are killing it with success because we are all very expirenced. 

The food in my secotr just gets better and better and the memebers are way good to us. I walk for house to house and they all have AC. Its great, President has sent me to a peaceful place to finish. :) 

We are now working a lot with memebers. We are teaching them how and training how they can present theris friends to us. The knocking doors approaches doesnt work here so we are wokring hard with memebers to get the help from them. Elder Guzman and me had a nice long talk this week about the free agency of people. He was very frustrated that people werent doing the things that they should or how we wanted but we learned that we have to respect the choices of others. Its the first gift that God gave to us and it will never be taken away. The mission is great :)

I love you all and hope you have a great week, help the Elders, they need you! 

Love 

Elder Strang