12/15

This week we watched the Christmas Devotional thing. I'm still not used to the whole lips don't match up with words and not hearing the voices of the apostles and such, but it was pretty fun. Each time the MoTab came on we played a little game. How many pairs of glasses can you spot? How many this or how much that. It was pretty fun. Then we had a meeting with President Riggins to do a little verification on what we learned in the meeting with Elder Uceda. 

There was supposed to be a baptism for the other Elders in our ward on Saturday... until the person getting baptized didn't show up. That was a bummer. There was a baptism for a different ward though, so we stayed for that. 

We had an Amigo Secreto (Secret Santa) with the YSA in our ward. All 4 of the missionaries got ties, but that was a fun thing. This past week has been pretty hot.. and that's NOT very fun. I've been sweating a lot more than normal. But yeah... it's whatevs. 

Almost forgot, yesterday we had some interesting things happen with the meals. We ate lunch with a family and last time we ate with them Elder Ulloque didn't finish his food, which is pretty much rude here. So this week after I finished my first plate they asked me if I wanted more, and I said yes and I got seconds. The only problem was the hermana put way more food on my plate than the first serving. I really struggled to finish it, but I did finish it! I was just super full. Then for dinner I wasn't hungry like at all, and I could barely finish the dinner. But then we got dessert too... doughnuts. I didn't have any trouble eating 3 of them. They were very good for home made doughnuts. 

A normal week really, and I don't think I have much else, so yeah!

Much Love, Elder Roberts

This past week a Subway opened like 2 blocks from our house! Its pretty expensive, we're talking 10 dollars for a footlong, so I just went with a 6 inch for 5 dollars. But yeah it feels bit like home and its really good. The owner of the Subway is from Guayaquil but he studied in Canada and Miami for 8 years so he speaks like perfect English and is super cool.

This my Secret Santa. She's the bishops daughter and is a missionary for the ward, teacher of Gospel Principals, and a seminary teacher! Crazy!

This week we had an activity in our ward. We played futbol with our Elders Quorum and some menos activos and investigators. I'm getting a little better at futbol, not a lot, but a little. It was pretty fun, but we played with the hardest ball of all time, so my foot hurt a bit. Then right after futbol we did a service project where we were in the sun for hours and I got nice and burned, so that was fun...

12/8

Some experienced missionaries say it doesn't quite feel like lunch if they don't eat rice. I kind of doubt I will ever feel like that because we eat so much rice that I look forward to every meal without rice. On P-day we go to the mall and eat Carls Jr or something like that and those are amazing lunches.

 Estafany and Jesus moved. They were living with the sister of Estafany, but now are living with the father of Jesus. Since they live in a different ward we can't visit them during the week, so that's a sad thing. They still come to church on Sundays though. We haven't visited Dora in a while because more than anything she just wants to sit and talk with us. She will talk about her family and just about anything for like 45 minutes, but the minute we start talking about what we're going to teach, she says oh I have to do this or that... so yeah it's been a while since we went there. That's the case with a lot of people here. Everyone loves to talk, but not a lot of people love to listen to our message.

This week we shared a video called "El es la Dadiva" a lot. In English it's something like He is the Gift (in spanish Dadiva is a pretty specific word) So we've been talking a lot about Christmas lately. We visited quite a few members and shared this video. It's pretty cool.

Toward Christmas we're going to have a special Christmas Show. All the missionaries from Quevedo are going to sing a couple of songs, and there are some other performers, and it's going to be a really big event that should be fun. So we've been working on that this week. One more fun thing, our President of the Area visited us this week. He had a capatacion (sorry I forgot the English word for capatacion) for us Saturday in the morning. It was really focused in the retention of new members. It was pretty fun. There were missionaries from about 1/3 of the mission there. Yeah... that's pretty much it this week.

We celebrated Elder Arnells birthday in District Meetings with a cake and cola. This is him trying to avoid the tradition of taking a bite of the cake and then getting your face slammed in the cake. Luckily we had Elder Mecham to pull him off the wall and slam his face in that cake!

12/1

Answers e-mail first... In all likelihood I won't be transferred for a few months because I'm probably going to train in a couple weeks, but we'll see. 

I finally got the package with my bedding today, and I also got Christmas packages from Mom & Grandma. So that was cool. No cards from Mom yet, but I have received a few cards, letters, and Dear Elders from other people. They come about a month to a month and a half after they were sent on average. I need to write like a ton of letters! I should have sent them out before now so they could get there by Christmas, but I think that time has passed now. :( 

The new Star Wars is already coming out? Ahh! Yeah, that's on the list to buy so I can watch it when I get home! 


MMMMKAY. So this week we had two interesting high tech service projects. The first one we were whacking termite homes with a broom, and the next one we were pulling weeds and getting bit by a million ants. Really, it hurt how much the ants bit us! 

Other than that, we got sung to by a contact. We were just talking outside his house and all of a sudden he was like, hold on I'm going to go grab my guitar. He ended up singing like 3 songs for us. He's pretty decent, but that was super interesting for sure.

I'm trying to think of other stuff that happened this week, but honestly there isn't much. I went on inter-cambios with Elder Gomez and they have these annoying roosters that are super loud from like 5 in the morning all the way through study time. It's pretty awful. I also had inter-cambios with Elder Meacham this week. They were pretty normal days though... just working in a different sector or with a different companion, but same sort of stuff. 

Oh! Today we saw President Riggins at the mall and he wasn't wearing church clothes. It was really weird to see him out of a suit and tie. I suppose that's how the members feel when they see missionaries in normal clothes. 

 HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

So this is what we did for Thanksgiving. The missionaries from my ward and the ward next to us went to a burger place for dinner. It was way different from a regular Thanksgiving, but it was super fun anyways. The interesting thing is that on Thursdays we have a member that makes food for us to take home to eat, so after burgers we went and picked up a second dinner but we just saved it until the next day.

We found Elsa this week! In Ecuador they have this crazy tradition of lighting this "doll" type things on fire. I dont know, my English is already struggling, so I cant think of the word for it. But yeah, so for New Years Elsa will be lit on fire. There are other cool little "dolls" on the streets and it's kind of weird to think they will be burnt in about a month.

  

I think we need a bigger tree since I got the packages from Mom and Grandma. So yeah, pretty much we're ready for Christmas in the apartment except that the tree is too small. There was a lot of stuff there... pretty crazy.

  

 Yeah... this is just a picture. There's no fun story or anything. I just felt like taking the picture.