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.