Week 65 Ecuador

Problem solving question of the week: Hahaha

Voice message 12/21/15

Hiiii family. Pretty crazy to think we’re going to be talking this week on Skype right? I’m pretty excited. I still need to find a cyber, or preferably a members house to Skype in, but we’ll get it all figured out. 

I’m glad to say that we haven’t actually had time to figure it out. This week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday we went out with the assistants of the President, and started doing a presentation to the zone about how to do planning and stuff. We did a Christmas presentation, and then me and one of the assistants went out the next day and did baptismal interviews, and visited families investigating the church of the other missionaries, and it was actually a super spiritual day. I loved it. Except for the hours of 3 to 4, well I’ll tell you what happened. We were waiting at the church to do an interview, and the person was a little bit late, so we decided to clean up the church a little bit. We go in the sacrament room, and the floor is black and moving with crickets! I think I sent you guys some pictures, no? This is what happens when it rains here. All the crickets, and grasshoppers come out of the fields and try and get in the buildings. The buildings aren’t to well closed in here, and so they get everywhere. They were climbing on the church benches, they were everywhere, everywhere. We filled up two garbage buckets full of just crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers. We were using big brooms, and those pick up brooms, and just like by the load. Some of them were dead, but a lot of them were still alive. It was disgusting. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. A very unique way to serve God and my fellow Ecuadorians in a way. Really my main motivation was to see how many garbage buckets I could fill up. Luckily only a few have been able to enter into our home, so we’re staying safe:)

Well, turnouts of the Noche Blanca (baptismal service) weren’t entirely as we had hoped, but all the meetings went through, and it was good. We had hoped to baptize 3 in our sector, but one guy kind of flaked off, knowing his baptism date and went on vacation. I’m kind of bugged with him right now. The other guy did not pass his baptism interview, and he will have to wait a little while. We did have one baptism, Jenna. She’s great! Her mom and sister are also working to get baptized maybe in January, so we’re excited for her. The zone all together came up with seven other baptisms, so we did pretty good. We didn’t reach what we had hoped exactly, but I organized it in the first place to keep the missionaries excited and hopeful getting so close to Christmas; that they would keep working and try baptizing in this month, not get super distracted. Although, it’s a little hard to deny this is the season the missionaries would all most like to be home. 

Well, church today we saw the confirmation of Jennifer and others who were baptized in our ward. A missionary came home from Paraguay. We brought three new investigators to the church today, a new family. I’m excited for them, they have baptismal dates in January. I was really disappointed, the topics in sacrament meeting consisted of being in the world but not of the world, the youth, and tithing. Not a single word was mentioned of Christmas, so that kind of astounded me. It really killed my vibes you could say, so to fix that we organized a little caroling tonight. Us and the sister missionaries in our ward, the mission leader, and a couple other people went out and we sang to recent converts, to less active families, and to a few random houses, just contacting them. There were some nice people, two guys opened the door, and then shut the door…ok, that always happens. We wore santa hats, it was a fun, good, good way to spend the evening. 

Well, looking at the schedule we have set up for these next few days, I’m going to want to spend Christmas just sleeping. We’re going to be cleaning churches, and volunteering in hospitals, and doing caroling Christmas performances in three different places in Guayaquil. It will be really exciting; it will be fun experiences, but a lot of traveling around, a lot of babysitting all the missionaries. That’s what it really means to be a zone leader, or a leader in the mission, just make sure everyone else doesn’t do something stupid, and get where they need to be, and do what they need to do…I love it! 

 Ok, well I just had to pause this and take a phone call that kind of took a little bit of time, so I don’t really remember where I left off, what I was saying, but I suppose I will continue in wrapping up, just saying I’m super excited to see you all Skyping this week. I’ll be sure to let you know when, and where, and how. We’ll get it all set up, with God’s help it will all work out like it has to this point, hopefully with a little less worry and frustration. I hope you all have a miraculous, and a peaceful Christmas week. We’re talking soon, enjoy it because this may be the last Christmas you don’t have me there causing havoc, so anyways love you all. Take care. Bye