Week 51 Ecuador

Congrats to Radolfo Torrez and Mariana Salvatierra on their wedding...

baptism...

& reception!

9/14/15 voice message

Hi family, how’s life? Well, for the first week solo in our sector I guess you could say that it turned out pretty good. Elder Albrecht and I, we’re learning stuff. We have to call and ask where lunch is every day, but we have eight new investigators…we’re finding, we’re chugging along. 

We got the zone together to clean an elderly man’s home in our ward. There were eight of us, and we scrubbed walls, furniture, floor, everything. There just cement boxes that they live in, but it took us like two hours. It was good. Hopefully get them excited about service, and maybe train them how to clean their houses a little bit. That’s a big struggle in the mission, elders cleaning their homes. The whole ordeal definitely made me miss home luxuries, like power washers, and shop vacs, and things, but you know Ecuador…livin’ the simple life. 

After that, the next day an assistant to the president Elder Saucedo came out to work with us for two days. He’s really direct with people, almost like he’s in a big hurry. I’m direct with people, but I’m not pushing them. I didn't like the vibe, but hopefully he can teach us something. I learned from him. 

We had to go out to a meeting with Pres. Riggins, and the stake altogether too. Um…shoot, we have a lot of meetings with stake and everything. I think I may begin counting them as lessons;) 

Well, at least we have some good activities coming up this month. We’re doing this casa obierta, and open house of the church, doing kind of a Meet the Mormons type thing. Hopefully we’ll find a lot of people that are interested. 

A couple really cool things happened this week. We had the wedding of Mariana Salvatierra and her husband Radolfo Torrez, and also the baptism which was sweet. After the baptism the church threw a little reception for them in a room, a cake and all that. I got some pictures I’ll send out to you guys. It was fun though. It’s the third family that I’ve married, and baptized, so It’s fun. It’s a big pain in the butt, but it’s worth it in the end. 

We had a new investigator come to church this week too. We met him, he’s the brother of a recent convert. He’s a little bit older, he’s like forty…dad I think he’s your age, but he’s lived a rough life, working on the farm. Now he’s working as a mechanic, but he got into drinking, and he’s getting out of all of it. We gave him a blessing at the end of a lesson, and he came to church. He accepted a baptismal date, and I’m excited to work with him. In the mission I haven’t worked with somebody with an addiction. I don’t want to say he has a hard addiction, but I think the key is when somebody has to leave a bad influence that takes up so much time in their life, you have to replace it with something good. So, we’re going to teach him how to read the scriptures. I know he’s got a good family behind him, and we’ll think of some other stuff to help him out as we go ahead praying and everything. 

Life’s good though. Elder Albrecht and I have a new tradition of eating 10 cent chocolate covered bananas every day with sprinkles. They’re really good actually. I’m kind of a fan…Ecuador thing. Last night, the end of the week, we buy all our food Monday so Sunday night there’s no food, and you can’t buy anything. I ate pancakes and oranges. 

The other elders in the house, they only come here like three days a week because most of the time they’re running around the mission helping other missionaries out. They’re the traveling assistants. Kind of a cool idea. I would maybe like to do it someday. They’ve been playing their EFY church music all morning, and honestly after the mission I will never listen to that again. The cheesy stuff gets old. We’re in a good mood though, we’re in a good mood. Don’t take me on a bad note.

This week we did a day as a missionary activity with the youth. My companion and I gave a presentation before going out to work. It all went pretty good. I’m excited to get some new references to work with. 

We’ll make a quick shout out to 13 months in the mission yesterday! We’re count in up, we’re counting up. If I didn’t mention or make it clear, Elder Albrecht came in the same group as me, so we’re floatin’ in the same boat. It’s cool to be working with him. He’s a really humble guy, but he’s funny. He comes from a family of 10 kids, and his parents. They lived in California before, and now they’re living in Washington. Huge family though, still kind of boggles my mind. 

Anyways, so I got asked to speak this week in church, and I was the final speaker. We had a youth speaker, another lady, and then we sang a hymn, and as we’re all standing singing the hymn, the power goes out right before I give my talk. I go up there, and in a loud firm voice give my talk. I discoursed on stewardship. It was an interesting topic. It was fun to study, and I felt like that’s what the ward needed. It was about 20 minutes, and after my voice hurt. Everyone said they heard me, understood me, got a lot of compliments. I feel like I presented it well. 

The zone stresses me out a little bit. Our companionship, the two district leaders, are doing good, but the other four elders are in training. One of them is struggling with obedience, the other is kind of timid. Then we have the four hermanas. They didn't find a single new investigator this week. They didn’t have anybody in church, so it’s like struggle, struggle, struggle. They don’t know how to make goals, so this week we need to sit down in a meeting with them and make goals with them, and make plans to how we can accomplish them. It’s hard. It stresses me out a little, but it’s all good, because I’m just here to help other missionaries be successful. I’ll do the best I can. I can’t really hold their hand, especially with the hermanas;) I can teach them what I know, and hope that they apply it. Anyways, we’re going to get together with the zone this morning and play some soccer. That will build some unity.

Excited to talk to you guys later. Have a good week. Love you. Bye