Week 89 Ecuador

3k Anti-Tobacco Run

1st and 2nd place goes to "the gringo Elderes"

...we made the newspaper

Baptism of Sabina Castaneda

6/6/2016 Voice Recording :)

Alright, hi family. Let’s get all caught up on a busy, busy week. We are back here on Monday, but last Monday we’ll start this out with a spiritual experience. I know we don’t get enough of those. So, last Monday night we were at a family home evening with a somewhat less active family, except they’ve come to church twice now, so they’re progressing quite well. Anyways, we were teaching the restoration, and the invitation was that they work towards receiving temple recommends once again. I don’t know that they’ve actually ever gone, there not sealed or anything. It was cool because the wife said that she really would like to get sealed someday, and her husband agreed. We taught them, and the wife was kind of sick, so I got this spiritual impression that I should ask her if she wanted a blessing. So I asked her, and she said yes. Then I asked the husband if he would give the blessing? He’s like I’ve never given one before, so we showed him how to give a blessing. We each put our hands on her head, and he gave a really choppy, broken, simple blessing, but it was powerful, powerful. We finished, and she stood up with tears in her eyes, and gave him a big hug, and they kissed. Spiritual hot zone right there;) We were just like Yes! Are job is complete…and we left them. That is how a missionary knows he does his job good. aka…being guided by the spirit.

Anyways, we had some other good lessons the next day, and then we were off to the temple Tuesday afternoon for a 7:30 endowment session at night. It was all wonderfully familiar, the spirit, and everything that was there. Me and Elder Coleman were, sorry, Elder Coleman and I (proper english here) were one of the last to enter into the celestial room, and it being what we believe the final visit if Elder Coleman to the Ecuador temple, we just sat down and, not even by each other, in our own parts of the room, and I started praying and soon found the room nearly empty. Everyone else had left, and I cannot describe the complete stillness that was in that room. It was incredible. I can truly say for one of the first times that I received revelation. The Holy Ghost talked to me about my responsibilities, how to help me prioritize, and some counsel that I needed. Definitely a special experience there. 

Alright, now on to the fun stuff. We this week had a special invitation I guess you could say. There’s a policeman that works below our house. We kind of talk with him sometimes, I gave him lesson on the restoration, a little booklet and stuff. He invited us to run in a community 3k race, so it was only like 2 miles, but it was for an anti-tobacco awareness event type thing. So, we have these little t-shirts, mormon helping hands from the LDS church bibs, and we went wearing those, and handed out a bunch of word of wisdom pamphlets, and we ran this race! It was actually competitive right there at the end, coming around the last corner. We haven’t run much, but I kept my pace with the Elder Coleman. I never mentioned to you guys that he is like a state champion in the 800 in track, so I was pretty happy with myself. I gladly took 2nd place, as we sprinted all out for the finish. There was a big old ripped gym dude giving us a run for our money. So, hopefully we made some friends. We each got a medal for placing 1st through 3rd, and we also got a trophy. They gave E. Coleman the trophy, and I, and we happily gave our trophy to President Riggins for letting us run the race. E. Coleman found a great scripture. You guys will have to look it up in 1 Corinthians 9:23-24. We wrote that on the bottom and gave it to President Riggins. It was fun, it was fun. We were at the leadership counsel the next day, Wednesday after going to the temple and he told the story to all the missionaries that were there. It was fun. We didn’t know until yesterday in church, but a bunch of members were telling us. Hey, you guys were in the newspaper! We were like, wait, why, for what? You won the race, we saw it. So, we’re trying to get a newspaper article, but apparently we made it in the newspaper. Way to advertise for the church, right? 

So the traveling didn’t stop. After getting back from Guayaquil the next morning we had to make the hour and a half to two hour drive to our zone meeting, and no pressure with the assistants there, but we were able to lead a good gospel conversation on faith, the nature of God and the trinity. After that we split up E. Coleman and I. I worked with E. Merit, a long time friend here in the mission who is going home with E. Coleman on the 20th…2 weeks by the way, we’re kind of freaking out. I stayed here in our sector, and then the next day, traveling again on the bus 2 hours to Babahoyo to pick up E. Coleman. All the traveling in this sector wears us out, but we’ve had a really, really successful week. That left us two days in the sector, and we’re super happy we had a great baptism of our friend Sabina. Love all my converts, sorry, their not my converts, the Lords converts, I said that wrong. She’s good, her mom’s a member, and we’re also teaching the mom’s boyfriend. He’s a super cool guy. We’re hoping that he and maybe two other men can get baptized the end of this month. 

One of these guys is our 70 year old investigator. He’s Juan, and he didn’t go to church this week because, well we passed by after and he was pretty sick. We saw a pack of cigarettes sitting in his house, so we were like hey, teach the word of wisdom. We taught him the lesson; this guy is a champ. He’s like well, if the Lord tells me to do it, then I’ll do it. We were like ok, Juan we want to do two things. First we want to get all the coffee, or alcohol, or tea, or cigarettes, anything that’s in your house and just put it on this table. He just had coffee and cigarettes, and put it on the table. We were like okay, now Juan we want to give you a blessing, so you can be strengthened, and overcome these addictions. He’s like yeah, yeah, yeah…we give him a blessing, and he gets a newspaper and wads it up, and smashes the coffee and cigarettes, and gives them to us to throw away. Yes, dudes a stud! So, we’re really excited, hoping he can get baptized at the end of the month too. It’s a bit of a heartbreaker that E. Coleman won’t be here. Oh, who am I going to be with? Crazy.

This same lady that…she lives in Milagro, a half hour away from here. She’s the one who drove out here and presented us to Juan, and took him to church the first time. Yesterday in church she brought another reference, so this lady is on fire. She might just stack up all my baptisms right through the end of my mission here. These next two months, that’s what I’m hoping for! I tell you what, she’s a returned missionary. I hope I can be as pilas as her when I go home. If all members were willing to give references and work in the mission work, Wow. It would be a different story. The success would explode. Makes me realize how ignorant I was about mission work before I came out here. I had no idea. I remember Brian Keith being called as the High Priest in charge of the mission work in the stake, and I had no idea what his calling was. I was like oh yeah cool. 

Last thing, I was thinking, and I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but it looks like I’ll be getting home on my flight that Tuesday afternoon at like 1:00. I probably won’t get released by the stake president until the evening, 8 or 9 o’clock, something like that I imagine, so if you guys run into the missionaries, I know we don’t see them a lot, and I know I’m going to be missing you a ton, but I would be thrilled to get home, down a slice of that apple pie, and head out with the missionaries for the final hours of my time set apart as a full time missionary. So if you run into them, if you get it set up, I’m down. If not, don’t worry about it. I probably wouldn’t know how to preach the gospel in english anyway. 

Okay, well keep praying that the work of the Lord goes forth, and we will keep putting the shoulder to the wheel. So take care you guys. I love you. Bye.