Elder Tanner Roberts: 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.