March 2016

3/7

My companion and I are sad this week. I left my camera in the house one day and exactly that day there was a ton of cool stuff to take pictures of. My companion had his camera, so he took all the pictures and we were good, until we got back to the house and we realized he lost his camera... with all the photos from his entire mission. We're pretty sure he left it in the taxi we took that night, and it wasn't an official taxi. We talked to the driver a little bit, but he didn't want us to visit him, so we didn't get any of his informacion... sad story.

Other than that we had an okay week. We went to Guayaquil on Tuesday to have a meeting with President Riggins and I saw my MTC buddy Elder Norris. He recently had changes, and is now an office Elder, so he spends the morning and a good part of the afternoon in an office dealing with all of the administrative parts of the mission. He got sick with parasites for the 3rd time in a couple of months so they sent him there to have him close to the best hospital in the mission and to be able to give him better food. Now whatever package or letter you send me will go through Elder Norris before getting to me.

As far as the work we lost a lot of families this week. They were families that we weren't sure were going to progress, but after this week we realized they weren't progressing. But we also found new families, which is good. Triunfo is definitely the easiest place to find people that I've been in. We always have people to teach.

As far as service projects we're just doing small little things right now, nothing major or super cool. And for P-Day activities, we're in Triunfo and there's not much to do here. We come to write, buy food, and then we don't know what to do with the rest of the day, so we usually just sleep... and that's P-Day. 

Also, with your weather report from California, I have an update on El Triunfo... FLOODED! On Saturday we saw the blackest skies ever and that night it rained super hard ALL NIGHT, and it almost got cold... almost. There was a crazy lightning storm, very intense. We woke up in the morning and it wasn't too badly flooded, just some really big puddles, but by the time we left church on Sunday the streets had flooded completely. We had to cross rivers to go anywhere. Only the main street of Triunfo didn't flood. Everyone says the last time Triunfo flooded was like 15 years ago, so it was pretty interesting. Not many people came to church on Sunday and there were a lot of people who had water enter their houses. 

Elder Coleman & Elder Roberts

Here is our pueblito church. It's actually a lot bigger than it looks, we have a hidden chapel. It has to be one of the nicest capillas I've had. It's always super clean and it's really new as well, so that's cool.

3/14

We're in a small pueblito, maybe 40,000 people in total that live here, and missionaries have been here for 20 years with 4 missionaries currently in this town. So the majority of people have at least seen missionaries around before, a pretty large number have talked with missionaries in the street, and a decent number have conversed with missionaries in their house at some time, but there's always new people to meet and teach. Just this week we were looking for a reference in a fairly unsearched area and we found a family of 11 who had never seen missionaries before. That was interesting. 

This week I had an intercambio with Elder Llanque. I went to his sector so I was pretty much just following him around the entire time. We had an okay day. We found some new investigators, which was our goal for the day, so that was good. 

As for my sector, we're doing good. Working hard, working hard. We had a really big number of people at church this week, which was cool. the number went from 92 last week to 160 this week. I think the flood last week had a good amount to do with that though. I don't know what we'll do when the ward grows more because with 160 we had a FULL sacrament meeting, but we have a goal to get the attendance higher in El Triunfo this year. I don't know where we'll put the other people, but we'll find the space!

3/24

Well, before I knew it my hour was up. I'm not really sure where my time went. Whoops... I'LL WRITE DOUBLE NEXT WEEK!

3/28

Well, no double letter this week after all. I spent my time researching all the college information and options you sent.  WATCH GENERAL CONFERENCE!

This guy might look cuddly, but he bites really hard!

Lunch is served. ;)

 So many little animals running around...

 BUCAY IS TOO GREEN! 

Elder Coleman freaked out, and got super homesick for the mountains the first time he saw it. 

The temple... 'nuff said.

February 2016

2/1

This is Bucay.

I will never get used to how green it is. Also I was almost cold when we went there this week. I'm sure it's only because I haven't actually felt cold in a year and a half, but still... 

 It's been kind of crazy in our sector because a missionary that was supposed to come here from the MTC went home instead, so that left someone without a companion. Elder Suarez hopped between sectors for awhile, but he spent most of last month in our house. He's off to serve as Assistant to President now, and we're back to normal here in Triunfo.

 Triunfo is a small city with one branch that is split down the middle for the missionaries. We're only an hour away from Guayaquil, a lot closer than when I was in Quevedo, which was 3 hours away. 

As far as mosquitos I'm doing okay. They really eat my companion alive, but I pretty much never get bothered by them. We have seen some pretty scary big bugs lately though. But it's all good, we have repellent and all that good stuff.

So this week on Wednesday we went to Guayaquil and we will be there tonight and tomorrow as well... It's almost like I never left. We had a reunion with half of the mission. I saw Elder Silupu and Elder Lafuente and Elder Lund. I saw my uncle Elder Whalen (was trained but the same elder that trained Elder Ulloque) and my brother Elder Nock. It was pretty fun to see all my old mission buddies! We talked about how we're going to change with what we learned two weeks ago from the worldwide mission conference.

On Saturday we went to Bucay to meet references from a family that lives there. It was a super cool reference, a young couple with a son who are searching for a good church to raise him in. Little do they know that thanks to their uncle they are going to find the one true church in the world! 

We almost  got locked out of our house today, we left the house without thinking about our keys, got to the cyber and started writing, then all of a sudden I ask my companion if he has the keys... ummm no! So we call Elder Accordino and Llanque and they were just about to get on the bus to go to Guayaquil when we called, so we got saved there.That would have been really bad! So yeah... I think that's all.

We made cinnamon doughnuts, and they were super delicious!

Elder Carlisle... model status. When we are just walking around town the teenage girls go crazy for the two gringos guapos. Last week when we were on the bus to go to Bucay a group of high school girls got on the bus. They asked us if they could take a picture with them, and we said no. But they were just like U.S. teenage girls, taking a ton of selfies and all those shenanigins, and we just "happen" to be in the background. I did get in a pretty solid Book of Mormon photo bomb!

2/8

I had already heard about the Super Bowl. We had a reunion with President Riggins this morning and he gave us the results. His Son-in-Law called to gloat because he is from Denver. 

The reunion was for changes. We thought Elder Carlisle would have changes because he already had 6 months in Triunfo. My new companion is Elder Coleman from Utah. He has 6 weeks more in the mission than I do, and we're going to tear it up here in Triunfo, if I don't get lost. 

 My last week with Elder Carlisle was pretty good. On Monday we went to Guayaquil at night and on Tuesday we started in the temple bright and early. We talked a lot about planning, something I didn't do very well at home, and we talked again about what we learned in the worldwide conference for missionaries.

We came back Tuesday night and we found a super awesome family to teach this week, the Figueroa Family. They are a family of 6 and are totally prepared to change their lives! 

On Saturday we went to Guayaquil again and went to the temple with the branch. We had a couple of recent converts there, and it was a pretty cool experience. In the bus coming back to Triunfo we talked to a super cool guy from Venezuela. His name is Gustavo and we talked pretty much all the way to Triunfo. He was awesome and we're going to send the missionaries there to visit him.

At church there weren't very many people this week because Carnival started. A lot of people went to Guayaquil or the beach or the sierra and the people who didn't leave were busy having a huge water/paint/mud/everything else that gets you dirty war. We tried to avoid it by visiting members, but we got hit anyway, so that was pretty "fun". They tell me the stains come out of the shirt super easy, we'll see if that's true.
Well, that's the story and I'm stickin' to it.

Here are the carnival assassins, Matias and Jack.

 They told us on Friday who had changes, so the Branch President invited us to pizza and fro-yo to say goodbye to Elder Carlisle.

 A birthday/carnival/farewell cake of my companion.

 This is my new companion, Elder Coleman, or how all the latinos are going to say it here, coal-eh-mawn. He's tall. 

2/15

El Triunfo is a nice little pueblito, and it's super cool here. Well, it's still hot, just not as bad, but it's a great place. We got a little lost this week, but not too bad. We had super good days Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, some pretty rough days Thursday and Friday, but overall we worked well. 

We found a TON of new investigators this week. We already had quite a few, but we found 4 or 5 new families, so that was pretty awesome. We're working with a couple of super awesome families who want to get baptized, but they aren't ready to get married yet.That's common here, but we're trying to help them get ready to get married and baptized. 

Elder Silupú is here in the zone, which is nice. Actually we have a ton of new missionaries in the zone, and as a zone we had such a better week than the week before, it was a breath of fresh air.  I LOVE EL TRIUNFO. 

2/22

The rain isn't really coming like it did last year. We're almost in Marzo, and it's really only rained a dozen times or so, that's weird! 

We had a really hard working week this week. We found a ton of new investigators again. It's easy to be excited when we find so many new investigators like we have the past 2 weeks. People here in Triunfo are so awesome, now it's just our job to help them get ready for baptism! 

We found a new investigator yesterday named Raul, he was so prepared it's ridiculous. We have to help him overcome some problems, but he is so ready to change his life. Also I heard one of the investigators I was working with in Guayaquil got baptized. His name is Jose. He is a really old guy and is really funny. Apparently the week after his baptism was fast and testimony meeting, and he got up and shared his testimony, and out of nowhere started singing  a song. He's really interesting, but really awesome. 

We had to go to Guayaquil this week... AGAIN! I've been there a ton since I left. We had a doctor (psychiatrist) visit us from the area because we're crazy, or going crazy. He talked about stress and how we can deal with it. It was super fun because he and his wife are from Australia, and even in Spanish some of their accent carried over. This week that is coming we DON'T have to go to Guayaquil. We'll be here in Triunfo. YES! 

Well, I think that's it... I'm going to get my hair cut today.... wish me luck. 

Elder LLanque... working hard or hardly working? Answer: Working hard. The poor guy collapsed on his bed like this Sunday night after a long hard week.

2/29

I don't remember if I told you or not, but Elder Silupu has followed me here to the zone. We had an intercambio this week, so the father and son were united again. 

We had a pretty good week this week. We have a ton of investigators to visit and have been running all over the place doing that.

We had a pretty interesting experience yesterday. We were on our way to visit a family and we passed by the house of another family we just started teaching. We decided to stick our heads in and say hi. When we did we found the husband laying on the coach pretty hung over and with a pack of cigarettes in his hands. We starting talking to him, and then he told us he thought God had sent us to him to help him drop that stuff and save his marriage, so that was pretty cool! We took out his cigarettes and alcohol, the alcohol he was drinking was ridiculously strong. When we poured it in the street you could smell it a block away, that was pretty insane. They're a super good family and we really want to help them.

We're teaching another family that is really Catholic. They even have a daughter getting ready to be a Franciscan Nun or something like that, but they're willing to listen and read the Book of Mormon, so we'll see how that goes. He sells rice, an important thing here in Ecuador, so they're pretty rich by standards here. They gave us a super delicious dinner and their house makes me remember a nice apartment from the United States.

I just about walked out of these shoes the other day. We were walking and all of a sudden I heard a sound and I looked down and saw a flopping shoe... dang it!

After a year and a half of wear and tear what finally put an end to my Eccos is mold.  This pair might not look that bad, but trust me, they are done for. On the inside... well, it's not pretty.

#ecuador #humid

These shoes got me through the first year and a half of my mission and they have seen SO many miles! THANK YOU SO MUCH SISTER FARRELL! You are the best!

I'm sure that seeing 2 pairs of shoes shredded in one week you're worried I don't have  shoes, but it's OK, I still have 2 pair. Remember those war boots we bought? Yeah, those things are perfect for all the rain and mud I have going on in my sector right now. 

If my last shoes break down just a little bit of time before I go home I can always buy a pair here, they might not be the best quality, but they should last me at least a month or two! 

My clothes are fine. I had saved a couple of new shirts for the last part of my mission, so I've thrown out the worst looking ones and starting using the newish ones. The other day I was looking in my bag for a book I knew I had tucked away somewhere and I found socks I hadn't used before, so I even got to put on new socks last week.

January 2016

1/4

 I'm still getting used to my new sector, but my companion and I get along really well, and I'm excited to work here. It's my first sector that isn't really in a city. Now I'm walking in dirt and mud... something new for me in the mission. The sector is super big, but only a few places where people live, and less places where there are members. We focus the majority of our time in the city of Triunfo, but we also visit Bucay and Cumanda, both about 40 minutes away.  My new zone is only 12 missionaries, 4 in each branch in the district.  Our Branch has an attendance of 150 (more than any of the wards I've been in) but this week very few members because of the holiday. I think all of Ecuador goes to the beach during this time. I played the role of the new gringo who had just arrived from the US with some members this week and it was pretty funny to see their reactions when we got to church on Sunday and they realized I wasn't a new missionary.

This where I am now. It's what I thought the whole mission was going to look like... Good stuff.

This is what New Years looks like here. pretty interesting.

 

 BURN BABY BURN! 

Fireworks and music woke us up about 1130 pm and things didn't finally calm down until almost 2:00 am

 1/11

The only person in the mission with a car is President Riggins. Cars really aren’t necessary here. There are buses that only cost $1.50 to go to Guayaquil (90 minutes) and a taxi to wherever you want to go in the city is $1.00. We don’t go to the other cities in our sector too often since it’s not very efficient, but when we do go, we go in bus. We just wait on the main street and the bus passes by quick. My companion Elder Carlisle got here in Ecuador at about the same time as I did. We’re getting along well.

This week I ate something called Cuyi, you can look that up to see what I ate. It was kind of weird because I knew what I was eating, but it really tasted pretty good, maybe like a small chicken.

There are a ton of people here that are willing to listen, so we’re always busy. There are some challenges that didn’t exist in Guayaquil, but it’s a really good sector. This week we went to Guayaquil for a meeting with President Riggins so we lost 2 days of work, but we still had a good week.

 My Christmas package got here. Thanks Santa Claus! He got a little lost, but he finally made it to El Triunfo! Good stuff

I also got a late Christmas Present from Duran... Thanks Hna Piedad!

1/18

This week I didn’t work in my sector much at all, which was weird. I only worked with my companion Elder Carlisle on Monday. On Tuesday the assistants to the President came and we did divisions, on Wednesday the same, on Thursday my companion went to Guayaquil with another missionary and I stayed and worked with Elder Accordino and Elder Llanque, on Friday we had an intercambio with Naranjito, on Saturday more than anything we were in meetings, and on Sunday we did divisiones with the ward leaders. It was a strange week.

Even with all that we found a ton of new investigators and it was a really good week. We didn’t have many at church, but next week we should have more. We got blessed with a free baptism. It is a 10 year old who comes to church every week, but who never got baptized, so he talked with President Henry and said he really wants to get baptized... good stuff!

I think I just about burst on food this week. On Saturday people fed us 4 times, 1 breakfast, 2 lunches, and 1 dinner, and 3 of those meals were rice and chicken, once for breakfast (first time I’ve eaten rice and chicken for breakfast). Then on Sunday we ate 3 dinners because everywhere we went people wanted to give us food. 

 This is real lasagna... It was the first time I had eaten it in a long time... It was super good!

Dinner 

1/25

We had a mission conference on Wed. There was nothing ground-breaking, but it was still a good conference. We were reminded of things Preach My Gospel teaches, and as I applied those things during the week I had some cool experiences.

I had intercambios once this week, and on the intercambio I did 3 baptism interviews. The people live super far away from the chapel, so I just did the interviews in their house, which was weird because it was the first time that I had done baptism interviews outside of the church. It was a family where the mom has been a member since she was 8 (her parents were some of the first Ecuadorian members) but her husband and kids aren’t members. They were really well prepared for baptism! The whole family has been coming to the church for a while, but they were just recently able to get married. That’s something that is seen a lot here in the zone. We’re working to marry a couple of families so that they can get baptized.

We have an investigator who says she is 80% sure she wants to get baptized and we have really only taught her about repentance, baptism, and a little of the restoration. Now we just need to help her get a testimony, but with her desire to get baptized that shouldn’t be hard.

We also went to Bucay this week. We visited an old investigator who was going to get baptized a couple months ago, but something happened and he got discouraged. We talked to him and invited him to church, and he said he couldn’t come this week but he would be there next week, so we’ll see if he gets excited again.

When I was on the intercambio in Troncal we went to the gym in the morning during our exercise time and that killed me, hasta el día de hoy (until this day) I’m still sore... and the intercambio was on Thursday.  Also the rain is finally started, it’s cooler here in Triunfo, and when it rains its almost cold... almost.

We’ve been in a trio with Elder Suarez for the past couple weeks, but this week he is leaving. Elder Suarez is a really good missionary and he´ll be missed.

This week we made cinnamon rolls, pancakes, and cinnamon dougnuts in the house and it was all pretty good. But this branch definitely keeps us well fed, so we don’t have to cook much. It’s a good little branch! It’s actually bigger than the 3 wards I’ve been in, but the district isn’t big enough to be a stake, so we cant have wards. That would be the long term goal of the district, but we need to open up 2 more branches and we have to baptize and rescue a ton of sacerdocio (priesthood).

 Noche de hogar with the family Nieves! 

There's lots of kids, and those kids also have kids, so they're a huge family. 

 This is Bucay. It's part of my sector that doesn't look like any other area of the mission. It's getting toward the mountains, so it's really different. Sadly it's about 45 minutes from where we live and go to church.  

December 2015

12/7

My companion was a little baby during his surgery. He kept putting his hands by his face like he was going to take the doctors hands out of his mouth, so they ended up tying his hands down. Really it wasn't too bad, he didn't suffer much, just missed dinner a couple nights.

 This is us painting a house, the house of Carol to be exact, with Josue. It was turning out super bad for a time because Elder Silupu had said he knew how to mix paint, but he really didn't. So we were like what do we do? We ended up putting in way more paint, but it still didn't really work. Then Carol came home and fixed it.

  I don't remember if I already sent this picture or not, but here we have proof that my companion just buys EXACTLY what I buy for the week.

 Thank you Alejandra forTthanksgiving dinner! Side note is that my companion was at this time in the house suffering with his wisdom teeth. I was with Jamil.

12/14

CHRISTMAS!!!!!!! So we're getting ready for the Christmas activity that we will have on the 23 as a mission. It's going to be super cool. We're getting a couple songs ready to sing. More than anything, we're focusing on the inactive of the church. We have found that people are pretty open right now thanks to Christmas, but also a lot more busy. We are visiting a ton in the night, and in the afternoon we are visiting members to ask for references. We have found a good number of families to work with, We have an older investigator who knows the church is true, but doesn't want to get baptized yet. We're working with him so he gets baptized as a Christmas present to Jesus, but he wants to get baptized as a birthday present to himself (in February).

I just kind of realized that I should have made this into a couple different paragraphs... I don't really remember the paragraph format thing... that'll be a problem.

There were changes this week. There was speculation that I was going to be changed, but in the end I stayed. Elder Zeta (my house mate) got changed to Vinces. There's not many missionaries in the mission right now, so instead of closing a couple of sectors they put several trios en 2 different sectors. So now I'm with Elder Silupu and Elder Arellano, We have my sector, Samanes 2, and also Elder Arellanos sector, Guayacanes. We're going to be able to do divisions, so it shouldn't be that big of a problem, but it will be interesting to go to the church on Sunday because they want us to stay together as companions.

This week there was an activity for Christmas for the Primary which was pretty cool. We brought some investigators. We also had a meeting with President. We talked about the power of a testimony of Joseph Smith and The Book Of Mormon. Okay, that's enough. Next week I'll have pictures. I know I always promise that, but this week I'll really try.


12/21

Merry Christmas from zona Orquideas - the best zone in the world.

 Esto es mi arbolito de navidad (This is my little Christmas tree) with my presents from the beloved members of Samanes 2!

This was a Christmas activity that we had in the ward Sunday. We had the Young Women/Young Men choir and orquestra of the stake and it was pretty cool. There were a ton of people there.

This is New Years here in Ecuador. They make super cute little creacions... and then at midnight they throw them in the street and burn them... okay.

Elder Blackhurst... gettin' big in a creative way!

 That's Familia Larreategui for ya. This was in the activity for the little children!

So we had an interesting week with the whole trio thing. We had to find members to come with us pretty much everyday so we wouldn't leave a sector empty for the day. I went out with a few different young adults from the ward. I went on an intercambio on Friday and met some really good people. We found one guy who had both of his legs chopped off by a car accident. We decided to sing him hymn and even though we don't have the best voices ever, it still ended pretty cool. 

We practiced for the little presentacion for the mission. We are going to sing two little viancicos (christmas carrols) that are a little bit Catholic, but they're cool I guess, although they don't make much sense. They're called Mi Burrito Sabenero y Peces en el Rio. 

This week we will be with President on Tuesday and Wednesday and that'll be good. Well, that's just about it on the whole me front... HAVE A GREAT CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

12/28

Tuesday and Wednesday we were together as a mission. It was a good time. We did a lot of singing, which was interesting considering I can't sing, but it was fun. We started on Tuesday singing on the side of a street. Lots of cars going by and a couple of people stopped to listen. At night we went and sang together as a mission at the temple for the temple presidency and workers. Then Wednesday we went to the temple in the morning, ate lunch, then went to sing some more. We sang at an old folks home and on the street again (the same street, just a little way from where we were Tuesday). Then we went to the church and ate Christmas dinner and there they did the slideshow with the photo that they asked from y'all. Then we had a little presentacion. All the zones had gotten a couple of songs ready and we sang and then we went home. 

On Christmas Eve we went out with a family to sing Christmas carols to some other families we're teaching. It started to rain a little bit, but not too much. We ate 2 dinneres and we almost DIED, so much food, a ridiculous amount of food!

On Christmas day we also went and sang some Christmas carols. Good stuff. Here they set off fireworks for Christmas, not as many as on New Years, but still... so that's the story of Christmas. 

I still haven't gotten my package. We'll see when I get it. That's all the news I have for you. 

JUST KIDDING! I got transfers today. I'm now here in El Triunfo with Elder Carlisle. It's a small little city in a small little district. We live with 2 other Elders (if you remember Elder Accordino) and after that the closest missionaries are 90 minutes away and the next closest are 2 hours away. It'll be interesting because it'll be the first time I will be working in a place like this. so that's fun. Il'l keep you posted on my new sector.

New Year, New Sector.

This was supposed to be a picture of the fantastic 5 from the MTC, but we couldn't find Elder Palmer.

This is my new companion. I took this picture in the activity of Christmas before I knew he was going to be my companion. He's from Utah. I think half the mission is from Utah, and the other half is from Peru.

 Christmas Dinner.... Rice and Chicken!

 Happy Birthday Josue! His birthday is the 24th.

This is the new house. It is pretty nice. The church is next door. Good stuff,

good stuff!

Niño jugando con sus juguetes. A child playing with his toys.

Opening my presents.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

November 2015

11/2

So we had a Noche de Hogar with President Riggins on Sunday that was pretty cool. We brought a couple of people, and people said they learned a lot, so that's good. Today we went to Parque de las Iguanas! I fed the iguanas mango from my mouth (see picture) which was interesting. 

Ummm... I'm not really very good at writing about what happened during the week... we talked to people, we walked around, we drank water, we slept, and then we did it all again. People are already starting to bug me about how I'm going home soon, I can't even imagine when I get a little bit closer how it will be... interesting. Ummm... I guess that's it for now.

Just feeding the iguanas a little bit of mango... WITH MY MOUTH! A little iguana kiss never did any harm! A ton of Ecuadorians took pictures of the crazy gringo feeding the iguana like this.

Cupcake that someone gave to us. Everyone here is crazy for the minions!

DINNER! So about half  the people in this picture were getting ready to go to the USA for Thanksgiving dinner with the family of the other gringo in the picture. They said they're going to bring me back DR. Pepper!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Elder Clark Kent :)

11/9

Okay, so this week I don't really have much to say... I don't have any pictures and well... yah. I'll try harder to do interesting stuff this week.  :) LOVE Y'ALL

11/16

This week my companion has been having pain in the wisdom teeth area and it looks like he will have to go to the dentist and have them taken out like Elder Lafuente. We also had to go to the Ministry of something to take out the visa of my companion (that is the most spanish formed sentence - I'm speaking spanglish) There's a family in my ward where the whole family speaks English. The parents are English Professors, the nephew served his mission in Pittsburgh, and the daughter understands everything but doesn't like to talk. So anyway, we were with them this week do a small little service and we were talking a bit of English. I was saying something and I wanted to say mas grande and I said more bigger.... I'm pretty much latino. 

Today there were cambios in the mission. A couple of people from the zone got changed, but I'm still here with ELder Silupu, AND Elder Norris is still here in the zone too. In this transfer we're going to pass the 1 year mark in the mission that we've been together in the same zone... that's a long time! People are already getting ready for Christmas here which is pretty weird. 

UMMM... sorry if the email is a little bit short. I just feel like we do the same things every week, so I don't really have much to write.

11/30

So this week I pretty much didn't do anything for fault of my companion. He got his wisdom teeth out on Tuesday. We had a last minute meeting with President this week to talk about the new video for Christmas. #hanacidounsalvador  whoops... #latino...  #asaviorisborn. 

Anyhow, I did eat some Thanksgiving dinner this week which was pretty cool. It wasn't turkey, but I did eat some rice, so that's good news. :)

We had the primary program this Sunday at church and some people came that I had never seen before. Good stuff. We also planned what we're going to do for the Christmas activities that we have. We have to sing a couple of songs so that should be interesting. 

Ok that is it I think. Sorry, this week there isn't much cause I really didn't do much, and I forgot my camera at home... next double photos.

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.