Week 77 Ecuador

Baptism of Eilyn

Birthday Jazz

3/14/16 voice recording

Good morning, and Happy Monday my beloved family. It’s been a big week, some big events, so we’ll start with the big news. Everyone knows Rachel Munford right? Of course. Well, she if you haven’t heard is engaged to Derek Jennings, and yes they are getting married on June 9th. Wow. Well, I suppose this is all making up for a good story to tell someday, and one less mystery to solve when I get home. Enough said, back to life.

We had fun this week. We’re getting some basketball tournaments going with the youth here in the ward, well we’re trying. It’s going to start this next week, but we did play some basketball with them. I’m always down for a round of 21 too. Elder Estupinan’s teaching me the ropes a little bit. I’m not really great, but I’m not terrible either, so that’s where we’re at there. 

Baptisms, baptisms, super important stuff, so we did have the baptism Saturday of Eilyn. Awesome, really fun baptism. Crazy downside is that Iriina and Kevin still haven’t entered into the waters of baptism, due to some complications. Coming from an extremely Catholic family, all the family actually likes us, their pretty receptive, except for the dad. He won’t even talk to us, and the day of the baptism he threatened to throw Irina, yes she’s 26 years old, but he threatened to throw her out of the house if she got baptized, so that put some nerves into play, and well, we’re working on it still, but she’s going to get baptized. Also, Maria Jose, incredible testimony that made me cry. She’s an investigator, she’s not even baptized, like doesn’t have the gift of the Holy Ghost yet, but me and E. Estupinan were talking and we believe God knows who he wants in his church, and they want to be there. It’s really super easy, our job, when people have the desire to better their lives, they want to come to Christ, so it’s fun seeing miracles happen. They really do!

So, aside from baptisms and the work we had a meeting with President Riggins and the stake president again that we do every month. They’re interesting, you learn a lot. Actually E. Estupinan came up with incredible spirit guided consejo that now we’re going to change the whole organization of the stake missionaries, but not ’til the end of March, so that will wait. I think he’s trying to screw us over, cause he’s going home, idk ha. We’ll see how it works out. 

As for March 11th though, we woke up to a partly cloudy and the usual 73% chance of rain in Ecuador, with 85 degrees. If she were permitted, I know grandma and all of you would have called me and sang me Happy Birthday like every year, but I’m happy to say that President and Hermana Riggins beat you to it, and yes they sang me Happy Birthday over the telephone. Although it was a pretty busy weekend with…I didn’t know I shared by birthday with the anniversary of the relief society, but it was a busy weekend in the church. The bishops daughter had her birthday on the 10th, so they sang to me there. Ummm, we were going to do an exchange with the other missionaries to work with them, but they got sick luckily…I didn’t want to do it on my birthday anyway. I had a lot of fun, so we have officially waved goodbye to the “teen” years, and hello to new adventures and discoveries. 20 years old, as they say in Ecuador…it’s not an age, it’s an attitude. The birthday cake did come through last night though. A sister in the ward, I’ll send you guys some pictures, she decided she was going to make us a chocolate cake, and we also bought ourselves some neopolitan and oreo ice cream, and we’ve been treating ourselves well, not to worry about us. 

So the biggest adventure of the week I guess would be curiosity grabbed us, and we  went to a 50 foot metal wall looking for an ocean radar ship. It’ pretty big, but when we went there the security guard showed up too, and he was drunk. He let us in, he was like “Hey, you want to go in? Go in.” Me and E. Estupinan both took like a spirit check to see if we were getting any tingly sensations, but we didn’t get anything so we went in. This whole place was abandoned 8 years ago. It was an old military base, and it was super crazy. There was some houses, some huge abandoned boats, and then there’s this one big ship. We went back there, and this lady came out, and she was kind of freaking out. She was like hey why are you in here, how did you get in? We were like hey the security guard let us in. Then she went and got the security guard, and then we had this big discussion because they all thought that we were spies, that we were infiltrating everything. We were like no, we just want to take a picture. They were like no you can’t take pictures because they thought that we were secret security, CSI stuff. So, we walked around, and unfortunately I didn't get a picture but we did get to see a lot of really cool stuff, and then we were escorted out…bummer. Pretty cool to see though. 

Alright, to wrap this thing up, speaking of being wise and 20 years old. I came across the definition of wisdom this week listening to a church talk. Wisdom means applied knowledge. So I asked myself after 20 years of life, and almost 20 months in the mission if I am applying and really putting to use all that I know, or in other words how high am I setting my bar? What do I expect of myself? I learned a lot so far about the importance of surrounding ourselves with good people. It’s said that we are the average of the 5 closest people to us, so pick good friends right? So you can be a better person. I don’t know, foremost I think we have to be that person, or strive to be the person we want to be. As far as putting off our imperfections, we have to stop trying to put off our imperfections. We have to succeed in doing that which is necessary. I get really tired of missionaries “I tried, I’m trying, I tried.” Bueno, we must succeed in doing that which is necessary. Get it done. Do it. I like that. I’m learning a lot to be less judging, and more accepting, to inherit the best of those who surround you. There’s a lot of good to be found. However, don’t judge their faults because we all have them, and we all have different gifts that we can take from one another and perfect ourselves. I think my biggest trophy thus far, well this morning I was putting on my shoe. One of my dress shoes, and it has a big tear down the side, so a pair of my shoes officially tore. That’s pretty crazy, so we’ll see how many pairs of shoes I come home with. 

Anyways, if you get this and listen to it, you guys can send me a quick message. Any questions? How’s life for you guys? I’m sure you all wrote me, you’re awesome, and I love you, and I’ll be writing you all later, just not right now. Mom I hope you got into the nurse practitioner program. That would be awesome. We’re going to have a lot of highly educated members of our family here coming up. Garrett, I hope baseball is going awesome. Hope you’re hitting a lot of doubles, maybe a triple, home run coming up. Don’t forget to read your scriptures. Dad, keep tearing it up with the family history, and carpentry, or you still can’t go motorcycle riding. Maybe you can go on the turkey hunt, maybe get some turkey tags. I’m throwing a shout out to Maddie, Aeva, and Gracie. All three of you are tearing it up in soccer, and it’s cool. I know you’re like angels in church, and awesome friends. You always have the best friends. If you’re a good friend, you get food friends, so congratulations. Darby I hope your getting a nice pancito, that’s how they call a little stomach here, a little tummy for your baby, and I’m excited to find out if it’s a boy or girl, so don’t pull the whole secret thing. Oh, we’re going to see when it comes out, cause I want to know if I have a nephew of niece. Bryan, be a man dude. Be a man. I know that I’m not there to do man challenges, but you’ve got to keep challenging yourself to succeed, to be the best, and then I’ll come back and we’ll be each others wing man, and everything will work out good. Ok, love you all. Da-da-da that’s all folks.