"Come Join With Us"

Well Howdy family!!

This week was a good one indeed! And thank you all for the emails, I get so many!! I love hearing how everything is going back home, even if all you say "it's about the same..." I LOVE to hear that!! It's just always great to hear from y'all. :)

Well, some highlights... We had an awesome multi-zone conference! I always get so much extra enthusiasm after those things! I am realizing that I get times where I really start to slack off and this week is the week where I got goals set to really snap back and be the best missionary I can be!! The branch council this week gave us a BUNCH of people willing to help in lessons and visits, so I really think this next week will be a good one with real success!

This week was a little cloudy so it got a little cooler! It felt so nice, but I still found myself sweating... I think I'll just have to get used to that. jaja

Well, this week was a real success for the other missionaries! They had a marriage and baptism, so that was great! I think this week we will be able to place a couple of baptism dates with some people, our last lesson with one investigator I really felt like she was ready, she even told us she wants to be baptized on her birthday, which is in March, but I think we might try to get it sooner. 

By the way, that conference talk, "Come, Join with Us", is the best. I have used that talk and applied it in more lessons than any other talk and especially in working with less active families. It is golden. So my challenge for all of you this week is to go and read it. I promise if you do, you will learn how to strengthen your testimony and how to help others also. Always look for those less active members. Retaining the members is a focus of this church in these days. Come, Join with Us in serving our fellow members remember their way back!

Also, all of the missionaries received family history pamphlets for us to fill out and share with our investigators! So family, I need your help. Will you send me pictures of our family to put in the pamphlet? I also need individual photos of Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, and so on going back. Like a 1 inch by 1/2 inch photos. And also, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, what would you like me to write in my paragraph space about who you are? What you like to do? Hobbies, personality, etc. This will be for my posterity to read in the future, and for Peruvians to read during my mission. :)

But a little about that, we are really starting to put more effort in using Family History as a way to get investigators interested! So we are working on the folleto and also we have been asked to have 2 visits with the stake family history consultant every 6 weeks. So this can be great help for our members and investigators, and I'm excited to learn more myself!

This week I have grown to learn how powerfully I have grown to love the Book of Mormon and my testimony of it. I know that our Testimony of

this Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will grow every day that we read it, and that any doubt or question we have can be answered through the doctrine of that book. I love it, I read it every day, and it is a book written specifically for me! I am reading it and I am realizing that it is the PERFECT handbook on how to be a better missionary. And I believe that for all of you non-full-time missionaries, it will teach you how to be a better member, member missionary, father, mother, sibling, friend, teacher, WHATEVER YOU ARE! It will help, and I can promise you that with all of my heart because I have seen that in my life and the Holy Ghost bears testimony of this to me.

Well, I know that this church is true, I love it and hope to always be a member who is a helper in the work. I know that the gospel blesses the family and that its doctrine and teachings can bond the family regardless of all the tempations and tribulations striving to tear it apart in these hard days. Apply the gospel daily to your lives! It will bring blessings and the spirit!

I love you all, have a great week!! And Katie, I keep thinking of where you are going to go! I even had a dream about it last night!! haha! So... I just have to narrow down my 4 guesses to just one this week. But it will be the best thing ever to serve a mission!

Well, I'm off! Love you all, keep being awesome!

Con amor y felicidad,

Elder Collin Russell

No NEW pictures this week, but he did send us some from the CCM!

With Elder Mason Rich (his long lost cousin :)

 With Elder Darrin Nielson

 With Elder Gabe Preece

The group he traveled with from the CCM to Piura -- with President and Sister Rowley