June 2015

June 2015

6/1

The weather might be all over the place there, but here it is pretty consistent... hot. We've been in a little transistion from Winter to Summer and we aren't gettting much rain lately, but we still have the sun and heat. The good news is we're headed for the nicest 3 or 4 months of weather here in Ecuador, so until about September we should have days a little bit less hot, and nights that are medio-fresco (I forgot how to describe that in English... A little chilly?)

Today there were cambios, but no one from the zone got changed, so we might have another month together, which I'm okay with because we have some good stuff goin' on in the ward right now. We have a Gold Investigator that is doing super good. Two weeks ago on Friday she saw some people at church and she was curious, so she asked one of them when they had services... and it happened to be the Bishop. On Saturday we visited her, she came to church on Sunday, was super busy during the week so we couldnt visit her until Saturday, but she came to church again yesterday and she is super excited. We also have another family that is super cool. The dad got baptized when he was young and has been menos activo pretty much all his life.

Something else fun this week was an activity we had with the ward. It was pretty much a FHE at the church. Not that many people showed up, but the idea is to make it an every week thing so slowly and slowly more and more people should start showing up. Then this week on Wednesday we helped a family move really quick in the afternoon then back to work.

Probably the funnest thing we did this week was on Saturday. We got a call that morning telling us there was a little MTC activity in the other stake and they wanted us to help, they didn't tell us in what, just that they wanted us to help. So after lunch we headed over there and it turned out that they had had a little seminar thing that morning and in the afternoon each missionary went out with 2 people from 16-24 preparing for their mission. I was with a16 year old named Allan and one a little older named Carlos. It was super awesome. We went out to contact a little, and then me and my kids went to the house of the Elders Quorum President, and we went to visit less actives.

I forgot my camera at the other Elders house so this week there aren't pictures, sorry!


6/8

A lot of things have passed in the last week. I had transfers again. When I first heard I was kind of disappointed because Ana (the girl I think I talked about last week) was doing really good and was pretty much ready for baptism. On Tuesday we went to the terminal and I was waiting for my new companion when the assisstant told me I was training and opening a new sector... so that is interesting.

I was with Elder Cordovo and Elder Erickson Tuesday. We just worked in the ZL's area for the day, and on Wednesday morning we went to the temple at 6 in the morning, then from there to the house of President Riggins. We had a small capacitacion for the new missionaries and then got our new companions. My child is Elder Lafuente from Bolivia.

Now I'm in Guayaquil in an area named Guayacanes. It is really different. The houses are really nice and almost American, but it is kind of hard because we can't just walk up and knock on whatever door we want. Everyone has a gate around their house, so we have to touch the doorbell and then it depends if the people want to come out to talk to us or not.

This week we tried to meet a lot of the members. The Relief Society president helped us a ton, she is honestly the best. She helped us find a lot of the members and we also found some really cool people just in the street.

Saturday there was a baptism, which was pretty cool. That's just how powerful we are that we arrived and had a baptism. This week we also found a guy that from NY that is having some serious problems in his life. He went to the church when he was young, but it's been years since he's gone. I just talked to him for like 40 minutes here in the cyber, so I don't have much time... but pretty much it's been a really interesting week.

It was my companions birthday on Friday. This is Elder Lafuente.

 

 

This was the baptism on Saturday. Her name is Stefani. She was really excited for her baptism, which was cool!

 

 

We went to the temple with the ward on Thursday. We live so close that they just decide one week they want to go to the temple, and the next week we go. In Quevedo we had to have like 2 months notice.

6/15

Right now it's just my companion and I in a huge house where 4 Sisters used to live. In this ward they have had Sisters for like 12 years, so we're the first Elders in a really long time. A lot of people are confused and some even think we are from a different church, so it's really interesting.

This week we worked with a good amount of the members in the ward. We are focusing on gettting to know all the members. We are also trying to contact new people. We've found a good amount of cool families, it is just a matter of visiting them and a matter of time. The thing with the sector we're in is that pretty much everyone works during the day and are only home at night so it's a little hard to contact. We're trying to find small ways to do service, and talk to people we find on the streets, and have a ton of FHE with members and their friends.

This Friday we have a ward activity that should be pretty fun for Fathers Day. Oh, this week in church I gave a talk. The microphone was broken, which was pretty much perfect, because it gave me the oppurtunity to invite everyone up to the front. It's weird, here in Ecuador the first people in the chapel go straight to the back and the people who walk in late get the front rows, so sometimes it doesn't really feel too much like a ward family in the Sacrament Meeting. So I asked everyone to filll up the first banks of chairs. I don't really have much else for you, that was my week!

6/29

I don't have much time this week and I also don't have pictures. I'll try to take some pictures so you can get an idea what it's like in this sector, and I'll try to do some cool stuff so I can tell you about it! I know you're updating the blog this week, but we really have to go... sorry!!!!!!!!!!!

May 2015

5/18


Sorry I didn't send an email last week. We went to the cyber really early in the day, and no one had written me yet, so I just wrote to president and we left. We were going to head back later in the day, but never made it back because we ended up short on time.


As far as your questions, Spanish pretty much isn't a problem anymore. I do wish I had a little better vocabulary. I still struggle with that sometimes. As for other things to send in the package, you should send more EFY music because Cammi didn't include much of that last time. Also, I kind of miss sour gummi worms, so you can send a package of those. Ties are always cool to get, but don't spend too much because I am really putting a toll on my ties. I can't really think of anything else that is too important. I'm getting less and less "I want that! I want this!" I think it has a lot to do with the situations I see here. I'm probably going to get back home and go into shock with all of the things I have.


As for me this week, we had a capacitacion (training). It was a video for all of the ward councils in the South America northwest region: Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela. Other than that, we did 2 invasion of sectors this week. That pretty much means all of the missionaries from the zone go to one sector and contact for about 2 hours. It's pretty fun. I also had an intercambio and went to a different sector on Friday. We taught a family that my companion and I had contacted a week earlier, but they don't live in our sector, so we had to give the reference to the other elders. They're a super cool family. We went to visit them, and we put a baptism date, and they accepted. I just have to find an investigator like that that actually lives in my sector.


A priest in my ward got his mission call this week. He is going to Honduras. The family invited us over when he opened up his call, and it was super cool! We had a small missionary testimony meeting. Both of his parents served missions, so they shared some of their best experiences, then they invited us to share what we wanted. I just want to say to y'all that I am so happy for this time that I have to serve a mission, I have grown more in this 8-9 months than ever before in my life, and I still have a lot more growth that I will be able to have in the coming year. This opportunity is so special and I have learned so much. So yeah, that didn't make much sense, strangely enough I was able to express it better in Spanish. 

This is a cool teaching tool we use. The first nail is Jesus Christ because he's the base of our religion. The other nails represent a different fundamento (principle) of the church. The nails can change depending on what we want to teach, but they're often Prophets, Apostles, Priesthood, Revelation, Scriptures, and whatever other thing we want to teach, like missionary work, or church attendance, etc... Try it out!

This was a little thing we did for our "Dia de la Mamita" we gave one to all of the hermanas in the ward that do a lot for us. The rice krispies turned out pretty well, the thing that didn't turn out quite as well was the shape of the hearts.

One of the members of the ward has a cat that just had babies, and one of the kittens came out white, so they named it Robert (after their favorite gringo).

My companion took a little nap, and I had a little fun... probably wasn't a very good companion thing to do, but his reaction when he woke up about 15 minutes later was really hilarious.

5/25

This week we found an incredibly prepared person to teach. She talked to the bishop, and he presented us to her on Saturday, and we already taught her a watered down version of The Restoration, and she came to church yesterday. That was really awesome to find someone so prepared. We also found a really cool family. The dad is actually a member. He got baptized when he was a teenager, but he hasn't gone to church in years and years and years. We're teaching his whole family now, and I think they're coming to church next Sunday. We're also teaching someone who is pretty much deaf. We have to talk really slow, and really loud, and even then he doesn't always understand things. We end up teaching mostly with pictures and writing down short phrases for him to read, but his vision isn't the best either. It's definitely the most peculiar teaching experience I've had. He's an interesting guy for sure.  So yeah, some good people this week.

I MADE PANCAKES! They were pretty good, but not as good as the ones we make at home.

We went bowling again. It's one of the easiest activities we have that's actually fun. I think I've been bowling more times in Ecuador than in the United States.

This was the sunset the other day. The camera did a pretty good job of capturing it, but not perfect. It was actually a little more vibrant. It was probably one of the coolest sunsets I've seen in my life... just missing the ocean and the beach!

April 2015

4/6

We watched conference in English this time. We had a room of the gringo missionaries and it was nice to actually understand (although by now I could have understood in Spanish). This sector is more affluent than my first one, so pretty much everybody has tv and internet in their house, so conference  attendance was pretty sad. There were maybe 15 people there on Saturday, and 50 on Sunday.

We spent most of the week focusing on inviting everybody to conference, and then nobody came, which was pretty disheartening. We had one person that really wanted to come, but she couldn't. That was a bummer, but good that she understood the importance of going.

I didn't take any pictures this week, and I dont have much to share because like I said, we were just trying to get people to come to conference, and then no one came.


4/13
 
Sorry I dont send very long messages, but to be honest not that much different happens during the week. I don't want to be one of those missionaries that have every little detail of their week in the email. Right now we dont really have investigators that are progressing, so we're doing the same thing... walking a lot, meeting a lot of new people, and teaching a couple of lessons. 

We had intercambios with the ZL's this week. The ZL's sector is the richest sector in this mission, and one of the richest in all of Ecuador.

We are still teaching our English classes. we have about 15 people every week. It's really weird to think in English. Before I thought it was weird that Spanish had two ways to say to be (ser y estar) but now I think it's weird that English only has one... I think thats pretty much it.

This is the building we're living in now. It's a pretty nice building, but our apartment is a little small for my liking, and we have no windows. It feels like we're stuck in a dungeon.

 

 

 

 

Elder Lund was a little sick and feeling really tired this week, and so yeah... this is him studying Lehi's Dream.

 

 

4/20

 

In this ward I have had to give 2 on the spot talks, but I don't really have anything prepared, I just kind of wing it. It's really not that hard when I'm studying everyday. It's a little different than giving a lesson, but it's really not that hard anymore. We sometimes have to teach Gospel Principles, but that's literally just like how we teach the lessons, so we could pretty much do that in our sleep.

As for this week, we had a baptism out of nowhere. He is a son of two people who were members. He was already baptized once, but his records got lost, so we taught him all the lessons this week and baptized him on Saturday. He is 12, is super smart, and already knows he wants to go on a mission. He asked me to baptize him, which was cool.
 
Other than that, today we went to the city and did some exploring. We went to some small shops and did some bargaining. It's really funny because the people are always so shocked when we started speaking good spanish. I bought some cool things to remember Ecuador.


I have pics to send, but we're short on time and the computer is being a little dumb, so I will send them next week!


4/27

This is the baptism of Nayed. We forgot the clothes for him, so we had to run back to the house. We were sprinting through the streets, so that was interesting, and when I baptized him his foot came up, so I had to do it again.

 

 

This is la familia Pareja. They changed wards this week, so they had a little goodbye dinenr with us. They are super nice and super cool and it's a bummer to lose them.

 

 

Bye Elder Lund! We had a really weird cambio this week. We passed Sunday Night without a call, so we assumed we were going to be together more time, and then Monday night they called us and said Elder Lund had cambios. I'm not exactly sure what Elder Lund is doing in this picture, but this is just kind of how he is.

 

 

This is the 2nd counserlor, the Bishop, and my new companion Elder Torres. I only had 6 weeks with Elder Lund and they already changed him. So that happened... Elder Torres is from Peru. He's a cool guy.

 

 

 

This was a pretty cool sunset. It rained really hard that night, and during the day it was super hot, that's Ecuador for ya.

 

 
 

March 2015

3/2

Today was the last P-Day for Elder Cuberos. He is from Colombia and he heads for his house in one week. We had a zone activity to see him off.

This was a pretty cool thing. It's in remembrance of a treaty of some sort between Ecuador and somebody else... clearly I don't know much about it, but it was big and cool!

3/9

This is Elder Lund. He is my new companion. After just 3 weeks with Elder Figueroa he got moved. Elder Lund was born in San Fran, but his family lives in Utah right now. The Gringos are going tear up barrio PONTON!!! 

For the most part your first companion is one of the longest of your mission because you're getting trained. After that we normally have a sector for about 3 or 4 months with a month or two with the same companion in this mission. But right now we have a lot of missionaries going home, and we don't have many coming, so there are more changes than usual. We should get some pretty big groups of new missionaries when the summer starts though.

We made ourselves some empañadas the other day. They are Argentina style and pretty delicious! 

We live in a house with just us two. It's small, but pretty nice. One thing it's missing is windows. The lights went off for like half an hour when we got home one night, and we couldn't really see anything. The showers are still cold, but it's better than a lot of the houses. There's a water shortage here, so most of the houses missionaries live in have their water shut off at 10 pm, and when they do have water it comes in bursts. That is so annoying that some people just fill up big buckets of water, shovel smaller buckets of water, and splash it on themselves. Our house has good water, it's just cold. It's all OK though because we really are only there to sleep, study, and get ready for the day.

3/16

I didn't take any pictures this week... whoops. More than anything we are looking for new people to teach. We found lots of them, it's just a matter of doing check ups and seeing who is going to progress. We also worked a little more with the members. There is an RM we have gone out with a couple times this week. He served in Guatamala like 4 months ago. He's super cool, but he's leaving here on Friday and going to Mexico. Next week we're going to try to go out on visits with all of the Elders Quorum. So that's where we're at right now.  

3/23

So I don't really have much to report. We did meet one really cool family this week. The dad was doing some cleaning outside his house and he started speaking to us in English. A lot of people here do that, but his English was a lot better. We found out that's because he studied in New York. We asked if we could come back another day to visit his family, and he said no problem come on in right now. We met his wife and his four kids. This week only one of his kids came to church because the rest were sleeping, but we're going to visit them again and I hope they all come to church next week. They're really nice and cool and everything that is good!

This picture was taken at a historical park in Duran. It shows the progression here in Ecuador from old to new. The bummer is that they have a pretty good sized zoo, but its not open on Mondays. So nobody really goes to that place on Mondays except missionaries... But yeah it was still pretty cool.

3/30

 Last week we had a Zone Conference. We went through the temple in the morning then we had a meeting with President Riggins. I sat with him at lunch and he has a sense of humor like Dad. It's pretty funny. :)

 Our really awesome family of 6 is progressing well, but they are moving out of our sector in a couple of weeks, so they may end up being a reference for other Elders.

Baptism! 

This is Fransisco, Carolina, and Omar. Fransisco is a member, but he and Carolina aren't married, so she couldn't get baptized. Omar could though, so we started with him. Now we're going to work on getting his parents married. Omar's grandma tried to talk him out of getting baptized, but he shared his testimony of the church and told her my mom and your son are going to get married and sealed and we're going to live together forever and if you want to join us you need to get baptized too. I was like dang!  He's only 9, but he's super smart, has a super strong testimony, and he's my homie.

February 2015

2/2

I'm sure you've been amazingly busy lately with all the wedding stuff going on. It's weird to think I don't actually know what my sisters last name will be in a couple hours. I hope everything turned out the way Shayna wanted it and that it's a fun day for all of you. I hope you have a cardboard cutout of me, that or you'll have to photoshop me into all the pictures.

So from my end it's a little small this week. We had a bit of a sad thing happen. One of our investigators, Judith, who was showing so much promise with some awesome questions and good desires decided she didn't want to talk with us anymore. We got a text Tuesday during lunch, and it was like "sorry I can't make the appointment we have today at 3 and also I can't accept you anymore because I've decided I'm not interested." So like the stubborn missionaries we are, we went to her place anyway, and we asked what the heck happened, but she wouldn't give us a straight answer. So yeah... that happened.

In other newz, this week there was a missionary leaving and a missionary returning home. The leaving is Elder Zamora and he is awesome. He is a convert of just over a year and he's headed for Paraguay after 2 weeks in the Argentina MTC. The Elder that came home is Elder Calle. He is part of the biggest family in the ward. He is the last son and he got back from Peru. 2 days after coming home he received a calling as Ward Secretary.

We also had a little meeting with President Riggins. It wasn't an intense meeting with big time teaching or anything. We sat down and he told us we were going to watch a movie and then get back to work. That was pretty weird to me. I was ready for The Hunger Games or something, but we watched Conozca Los Mormones (Meet the Mormons) instead. It's pretty cool. I don't know if you have seen it, but if you haven't you should.

Okay that's pretty much my week this week. 

2/9

So this week I experienced some stupid Ecuadorian weather. It's a strange thing to get used to. It will be one of the hottest days of my whole mission when we leave the apartment, and before we get back the streets have turned into rivers and we are just absolutely soaked. So yeah, that happened like 3 times this week. Luckily we have almost always found ourselves in houses while it was raining hardest so we can wait out the worst of it. Other than rain, the only news I have this week is that Jackie Chan (Angel) is progressing really well. He is reading what we leave for him and yesterday he was waiting for us at church. It was super cool that he was just waiting there for us. That's what I've got this week.

2/16

 So I went to bed last night and I slept like a baby, and apparently everybody else did as well, because when we woke up in the morning we realized we had missed a call from the assistants. Elder Magallanes and I had cambios today. We had to be in the terminal in Quevedo at 8am, so I had about an hour and a half to pack all my things. That was pretty crazy! I was throwing stuff all over the place, and then I realized my suitcases were full, and I still had all my shoes to put in. Everything ended up okay with that though, and Maggy and I made our way to Guayaquil. I'm in a city called Duran and my companion is Elder Figueroa. He is from Argentina and he has two months left, so I will be his last companion. I don't really know too much about this sector, just that today we went to a super nice mall that looks like a mall in the United States.

2/23

So here in Duran there's a lot of money. My ward goes right up to the river, and then on the other side is one of the richest wards in the entire mission. My sector is a little more humble than across the river though.

Our ward only has an attendance of like 100 and we don't have many investigators right now. The idea is that we really have to search for people to teach this week. Last week we found one family that's pretty cool, and we're going to keep working with them too. So that's pretty much the plan. 

We're pretty close to Guayaquil, so this week for P-Day we went to explore the city a bit. We went to a place called Malecon 2000 and the plan was to go climb a hill that has a super old catholic church up top that is supposed to be super cool. But we were with the zone, and Elder Cuberos goes home in like 2 weeks, and he wanted to look for recuerdos, so we went to a shopping place nearby and shopped for a while, and then we just explored a little before we had to leave to get back to Duran. I have some cool pictures I took but I can't send them right now because the computer is being a pain. DUMB! We're going to go back to visit the Malecon again soon though. 

Love y'all and miss y'all!

This is us at Familia Menoscal on P-Day. Hermana Menoscal is taking this picture, and it's really funny cause shes trying to be all artistic and take a cool picture, but it really just made me dizzy.

My addiction here in Ecuador, en serio! OREOS I currently have 4 different flavors in the apartment. My favorite is Cookies and Cream, which doesn't even make sense because Oreos already are Cookies and Cream, but yeah...

I had to take this pic because I had an intercambio, and this shower in the apartment of the other Elders was magical. It was the first hot shower I've had in months. 

I also got to teach some cool people. One was a family with one son on a mission in Argentina, and another son getting ready to serve a mission. They live right across the street from the church, but the mom isn't a member and has never gone to church. We're working on that.

                                       

This pic is from a talent show in the ward. It was kind of sad because only something like 40 people came and there were only 5 talents (two were from missionaries). But yeah... it was on Valentines Day. I didn't even realize it was V day until we got to the activity and there were hearts everywhere, and I was like OHHHH!

I'm not sure if you can tell what's going on this picture or not... but I have a big plastic bag over me. This was my "poncho" this week. It rained super hard a couple of times, and one of the times we were with a family we are teaching, and as we were leaving the dad asked if we had paraguas (umbrellas). We were bad boy scouts and weren't prepared, so he said don't worry I have something for you. He works in one of the giant banana fields, and he made us ponchos out of the big bags they use for the bananas. It's so weird here how the days are super, super hot and sunny and then out of nowhere comes a huge storm.

January 2015

1/12
This week Elder Ulloque had a meeting for the District and Zone Leaders so Monday and Tuesday I was with Elder Accordino. That was pretty fun. We worked in his sector for a while and he has some really cool investigators.The rest of the week was pretty normal. We did have a new investigator who is pretty interested come to church, so we will see what happens with that.

Then Elder Ulloque got a call from the Zone Leaders last night. He has cambios today as do Elder Arnell, Hermana Ticeran, and Elder Gomez, who is one of the Zone Leaders. On top of that 3 hermanas from our zone ended their missions yesterday; Hermana Tistoj, Marroquin, and Lopez. So now the zone is going to be half new (only 7 of 16 left).

My new companion is Elder Rabago. He looks like he's latino, but he's actually from Riverside, so we live pretty close. He has about 15 months in the mission. I don't know much about him yet, but I'm excited, he seems like a good missionary. That's pretty much all I have this week.

1/19
So my first week with my new companion... cool stuff. It was pretty funny, Elder Ulloque broke his chair, but it was still pretty much sittable, so he just used it broken. Elder Rabago lasted less than one day before he was like I need a new chair. Later we went to visit with Familia Menoscal and we said something about how we were going to buy a chair and they were like, "no take one of ours" so that happened. I love that family!

This week we were working with one of the members a lot. She is a ward missionary and wants to pretty much introduce us to everyone she knows, so we got quite a few references from her this week. One of the families she introduced us to is married (which is pretty unusual here) so we worked with them quite a bit this week.

The rain started pretty good this week, which means it rains during the night and early morning, and then it's super sunny and hot during the day. That pretty much sucks for us. I had to buy so much water this week! That was pretty much the week.

1/26

As far as your weather question, during this part of the year there is a lot of rain during the morning and night, but during the day it is super hot and super sunny, so that's interesting. Today it's actually a little cold though. I almost pulled out my jacket for the first time here, it feels weird to be cold. 

So this was a pretty cool week, nothing really special happened... but I don't know, I just kind of had a little more fun this week. On Wednesday I had an inter-cambio (exchange?) with Elder Mendoza. We talked to a lot of new people and we found 1 or 2 potentially really good families to teach.

My new companion and I are in a finding investigators stage because before we just kind of kept teaching the same people who weren't really progressing. So yeah. We found some new people this week, and we had an investigator attend church for the first time in a while, and we have a couple more people who are really interested but had to travel this weekend so they couldn't come to church. Also they have to get married, so that's a bit of a challenge.

As far as the whole no marriage thing, many people simply don't have the money to get married. To get married is about $80, which might not sound like all that much, but for people who barely have enough to buy food and necessities it's tough to save that much. More than anything I think it's the culture here though. Most people pretty much feel there's no point to get married because it's just an expensive piece of paper that doesn't mean much.

We also starting teaching Jackie Chan. We actually found this guy a couple weeks ago, but we didn't think he was really a solid investigator, so we didn't drop by much. But yeah, his name is actually Angel. He is slightly Asian, and he was drunk a lot, and that made him act kind of crazy, so pretty much everybody calls him Jackie Chan. But we taught him The Word of Wisdom about 2 weeks ago,  and then when we dropped by his house this week and he was like, " Why didn't you come back? Why didn't you bring me to church last week? What are you going to teach me today?" Apparently he hasn't had a drop of alcohol since we taught him, and he has been reading and re-reading the pamphlets, so that's pretty awesome. He came to church with us this week and he really liked it. We also have another guy who is super curious and who started asking us about baptism and all that good stuff this week. So we have some good investigators, which is cool!

Elder Rabago

We played Ecua-Volley as a Zone activity. The net is a little bit higher, and the ball is harder, and there isn't really anything similar to volleyball other than the name. It was pretty ugly. We were basically playing catch with a net in the middle. It was super hot and sunny too, so it was miserable weather to play in.

This little bugger runs around the church every Sunday. There is also a cat. We pretty much keep the dog out of the sacrament room (I have forgotten how to say that in English, in Spanish its la sala sacramental) but the cat sometimes gets in there. Its an interesting thing...

This is Moroni (Alexander). We had a FHE with him and his family and celebrated his birthday with cake. He turned 17 and his parents want us to invite him to come out with us a lot so he gets excitement built up for his mission.