Week 41!

hey there everyone,

i'm emailing you from my wonderful area in Artigas.  yes it's about the same size as Paysandù with the same amount of missionaries.  my area is near the outskirts near the artigas airport.  it's starting to get cold down here, hahaha needless to say i'm using my blue fluffy blanket that i brought with me to the mission.  this week we found a new investigator whose name is Carlos he lived in Boston for 8 years and recently came back to Uruguay.  he wants me to talk to him in english so he doesn't loose it.  so i speak it to him every now and then.  we invited him to play futbol with our ward for friday and he was the first person to show up.  it was alot of fun!  there was only me, my comp, carlos, two youth from our ward, and a non member whose wife is a member.  even though there was only 6 of us playing we had a lot of fun!!!!!  we played for an hour and fifteen minutes without stopping.  but this week has been a little bit tougher but also with some miracles!  this past week we've been pushed really hard about finding people to baptize,  President heaton has been super worried about the whole mission; he told us that he recieved revelation that there are 1,500 people prepared this year to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ in this mission.  but for right now we aren't looking soo great.  part of our fast for me and Elder Vega was to find prepared people to accept the gospel in their lives.  from monday all the way to saturday we only found one GOOD person ,Carlos,  we get to church and he didn't show up....  super devastating because he told us without us asking that he was going to come to church.  a little bit through church the one primary teacher that this ward has comes up to us and introduces us to a young 10 year old girl and tells us how this girl is not a member, her parents aren't members, but her grandma is a very active member and she went with her grandma to church because she loved the example of her and she wants to follow the example of her grandma and she also wants to be baptized.  we fixed a time to go by her and give her a Book of Mormon for this week and we'll see how this plans out.  we told her that she can only get baptized with her parents approval and if her parents were with her in the lessons.  i know that it's only a 10 year old girl, but to me it's a miracle because we were truly depressed because we didn't have anyone in the church... then she shows up!!!!  haha it was a true blessing!  but i gotta go, i love you all!!!

lots of love from uruguay,

Elder Atkinson