October 2015

10/5

We had a zone conference this week with President Riggins. He talked more about what we had talked about with Elder Calderon. We talked about baptism and did some practices. We went to the temple in the morning which was really nice. When we were going home after they gave me my package. Sand, candy, ties, all the good stuff :) Thanks a ton! As far as clothes I'm doing fine. My shirts and pants are fine, and members have given me 2 pairs of shoes, plus I got my favorite old shoes sewn back together, so yeah... Ecuador!

General Conference was super good. I only was able to listen to the Priesthood session but that's okay because I understood the talks just fine, I did miss hearing the actual voices but that's okay. Almost nobody came to the chapel to see conference, everybody just watched it at home. We were inviting everybody this week but we didn't have that many people come. Well, nothing much else happened... JK! Elder Lafuente had cambios! He is is Duran now. I'm still here in Samanes. I will be training again, so I will get my new companion on Wednesday. For now I'm with Elder Morga. I don't know why they don't like telling me when I'm going to train, they tell other people they're training, but they don't tell me anything, so I show up in the terminal and think I'm just picking up my comp, and BOOM! Elder Roberts you're training! O well... so next week Ill send you a picture of my new companion and all that good stuff :)


10/19

So my second kid, Elder Silupú, is doing fine. He's learning and he's really excited and it's all good! This week we had an activity in the Stake. It was to celebrate 50 years of the church in Ecuador. They invited the stake over (Estaca Pascuales) and we had almost 2 thousand people there (supposedly). The missionaries from our stake did a little sketch which was pretty fun. We did a little representation of the Plan of Salvation. It was a fun activity but it was sad cause not many people from my ward showed up. President Riggins was invited to talk so he came. There was food there and Hermana Riggins tried Salchipapa (hot dogs in small pieces with french fries) for the first time in her almost 2 years in Ecuador and LOVED it!

People are already starting to bug me about going home, which is incredible seeing as how I still have most of a year left! I can't imagine how it'll be when I'm actually close to going home. We're searching for investigators right now. We have a couple, but we need more! This week that is coming up we're going to have a huge service activity with all of the stake so that should be pretty fun. Well, that's pretty much it. I'm going to see if I can send some pictures, but I have a pretty gnarly virus on my memory card,  so we'll see if I can do it. That's the bad part about the cybers here, you have no idea what kind of virus you can pick up. Fun stuff,  right? I haven't lost any pictures, but the cyber I was at last week had a virus security system (I don't remember how to call that) that didn't let me open up the files last week. AHH! Bueno, eso es todo! Ten una buena semana y manda saludos a todos allí en casa!


10/26

Elder Silupú is from Peru, from a city named Chiclayo. He is 21 and only has 2 years in the church. His family aren't members, and after he met the missionaries we got baptized 6 days later. The service project got postponed, I'm not really sure why, but yeah... it's coming up towards the beginning of November.

As far as me this week, we had an interesting Sunday. A companionship of Elders called me at like 11:30 (after my church and after their Sacrament Meeting) and told me they were going to have a baptism in like an hour and they didn't have baptism clothes, so I had to find a member to take us to our house to pick up the clothes and then over to a different chapel. We got there and they said... hey the baptism got changed to 4 instead... whoops. But that's OK because it gave us time to go to lunch and then pick up an investigator and take him to the baptism. After the baptism we had to go super fast to the stake center cause we had Priesthood Conference. That was the day on Sunday. Hectic!

We had a pretty good week this week. Elder Silupú is learning quickly so that's good :) But we are having some problems working with the ward leaders. We're not really working efficiently together. We'll see what we can do to change that.

 This is a handcart for the activity that celebrated the history of the church. Pretty cool. They didn't let us take pictures as missionaries, so I don't have any pictures of the actual activity.

 Yo y Elder Silupú en el faro!

September 2015

9/7

These pictures are from a couple of P-days ago

Last week was pretty crazy. Tuesday I was in barrio Condor and Friday in barrio Orquideas, and on both Wednesday and Friday we did invasions in different sectoros in the afternoon. I also had an intercambio with the AP, Elder Fernandez. He is from Chile, lived in Brazil, and is super cool.  So yeah, really interesting week. 

On Saturday there were 11 baptisms in the zone. We had the Noche Blanca and everybody was running all over the place. Hectic. We are using the members a lot right now to find new investigadores. Today we ate with a family from Brazil. They made us a Brazilian Lunch and it was awesome!  

9/14

This week we did invasions again everyday. With the invasions they can come from district leaders or zone leaders, but the invasions this week were a request from the stake president. We had an activity in the stake on Saturday, so we were inviting everybody to that. 

9/21

So this week that went by really wasn't very exciting. But this week that is coming up should be pretty awesome. We have a 70 that is coming to talk with us and also right now the zone is pretty close to meeting the goal for baptisms and rescues. If we meet the goal we are going to have lunch with President, so that should be pretty cool. 

Today we went to Parque Samanes and played a couple different things. The plan was futbol, but President isn't giving permission right now for futbol, so we played wall ball, hand ball, basketball and tennis. I left with a bit of a sunburn, but it was pretty fun. This week we have ward conference and to get people excited we have activities every night, so we're going to try and invite a ton of investigators so they can get to know the members. Bueno, that's about it... 

9/28

Well, truthfully we didn't have a great week this week, but we've figured out a little of what happened, and we're ready to have a much better week next week! I had intercambios again. I went to 2 different sectors, so I was away from my sector a lot again. 

This Sunday we had Ward Conference and that was cool. We had a TON of people at church, but a lot of them were from the stake. We are growing in the ward though, which is good. This week we also had a visit from a 70, Elder Caldaron. He is from Quito. He gave us a pretty good capacitacion (I dont remember how capacitacion is in English).  Nothing else special happened. Well, we did celebrate my birthday a couple of times, nothing too big, just nice and small.

Last night we had a little Happy Birthday dinner with the Familia Torres. They are super awesome. La Hermana Torres just had her birthday on Saturday, so we met in the middle and celebrated on the 27th. :)

This is the Hermana Gina- She is a member that we're working with. She got me a tie for my birthday :)

 Familia Plaza... Thank you for the Birthday Cake!

 ZONA ORQUIDEAS! LA PODEROSA! We did a service project as a zone. That was pretty dope.

August 2015

8/3

We had a BBQ with a pretty dope family this Sunday to end fast! They are the Family Plaza and they are super cool. There is a recent convert in that house, and some less actives we're working with, and also an investigator, so when we go to that house we get 3 lessons for the price of 1 :O 

Really good BBQ!

This is the Family Cuenca. They are super nice and super cool and we had lunch with them! They came to pick us up at our house so we wouldn't have to walk... not even that far away. It was still really nice. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDELYN!!!! She invited us to lunch on her birthday and then that night to eat cake! She's the bomb. Here in the corner is her boyfriend who is from a different ward and who leaves on his mission in 2 weeks to PERU! So that's the story!

 This is the Family Becerra. This Sunday was their last week here in the ward... Sad face. 

The ward got even smaller.

 This is Alfonso Quijano. He is a recent convert with his family. He was like a really big futbol star in the 60s and 70s. His nickname was El Rey (The King) This is him and his Wall of Fame. This family treats us like their sons. Theyre the best!

8/17

So my year mark came and went without anything big happening... I didn't have a super awesome year day, but it wasn't very bad either, just normal. This week we've been back and forth between our sector and the office of the mission. My companion is having problems with his wisdom teeth so he's had a couple appointments in the city with the dentist and this Wednesday they're going to take them out so that should be pretty interesting. We're going to be stuck in the house for a couple days while he rests, so that'll be pretty boring. 

Other than that we had a meeting in The Kennedy (pretty much the main building of the mission) which was the first church building built in Ecuador. We got taught a little about Family History. I don't really have much else to report... we have a couple of investigators that are progressing which is pretty cool... we'll see how things go with that. 

8/24

I don't have much to write this week because we were mostly in the house all week with Elder Lafuentes teeth situation. He got SUPER swelled up so that was pretty funny. He's getting a little better already, so that's a good thing. We almost had a baptism this Saturday, but the whole not being able to visit her messed us up, so we had to reschedule the baptism. That was a bummer. I don't really know what else to say... I read a lot of scriptures this week :) That was a good thing. I kind of started to go a little crazy in the house, so I asked for an intercambio for a day to get out of the house and work. I felt bad cause Elder Lafuente was also going crazy in the house, but he couldn't just say I want to leave.

8/31

We had a pretty cool week. We worked normal this week. We had Stake Conference and we had a Setenta presiding, Elder Ardila. There were some pretty good (and super long) talks. 

The baptism we were going to have is going to get baptized this week that is coming. In the zone we've have a goal of 15 baptisms, so we're trying to do something really cool... Noche Blanca... White Night. All the investigators will go to the stake center and President Riggins will give a talk and then we will do the baptisms. Super cool! We'll see how many of the 15 actually end up in the water. There are a handful of sure baptisms and some more potentials. 

Yesterday we were visiting one of our investigators and she had this "prophecy" or something I guess. We were talking about baptism and out of nowhere she said "Elder Roberts, one day when you're in your house, you're going to be a really important person in your church. Mark my words!" I was just like okay whatever you say crazy lady (she is a bit peculiar this girl). That was pretty funny. So yeah... that's what I've got for you.