Week 37 Ecuador

My leg from doing power cleans...came out a little bruised. ha, when did I become all soft?

Service with the bishop.

This photo is from a HUGE banana plantation in another sector I went to work in. We were teaching upstairs in their wooden loft of a tree-house, sweet! By the time I got a chance to snatch a photo it was pretty dark though.

They are one of the worlds largest banana producers! Cool.

We were hungry, and "ate like Americans" for a night. I'll have to wait to get back to America for a truly good burger. ha

6/8/15 That’s Life... (voice message)

Hi family, hope you had a great week. I’m enjoying kind of a rainy morning here, but it’s pretty cool. I like it. I’m waiting for some studies to start. I had another rather normal week, but with some changes and surprises. 

It started out when we went to a ladies house. She’s less active, and she needed help to build her house. She was changing houses again. It’s a house of bamboo, like a lot of people live in here. We helped her make her floor out of cement, and without a cement mixer. That was so hard. Shoveling cement for 2 hours was definitely a challenge, and I was in need of uncle Pete with his big cement pumper truck, but we got it done! :) It was me and my companion and two other guys that she just picked up to come help. I contacted them, we have a lesson with them tomorrow to go teach. Good deal. I was hoping that the whole ordeal would touch her heart, and that she would come to church, and she did! She came yesterday, for sacrament only, but hey, that’s a good start. Maybe we can get something going here? 

I went out and did visits with the bishop last night, Sunday night.  We visited some families that didn’t make it to church. We went to another less active family, and one of their kids was sick, so we gave him a blessing. The dad’s not a member, but the bishop told him straight up, your missing out bro, on your family, on everything. I was like, “Oh! Way to be direct bishop!” Hey, maybe it will spark something in him?

For this next story, I’ll just give you a quick run down on my physical level. I am completely healthy as far as I know, although I’m pushing 180#. I think I’m just bloated, full of rice honestly! Um, but you know, maybe my fast helped clear me out. It was a good fast. I set a new personal record for holding my breathe for 3 1/2 minutes. That was sweet! 

Ok, ok, here comes the more exciting part of my week. Um, my district grew today, and I now have a pair of sisters, and two pairs of elders in my district.  So six people...that’s fun, do some more splits with people, and get around. So, I went out with Elder Wallin, the zone leader, to his sector. I’ve been waiting for that, to get some new ideas, and get out of my sector for a minute. It was good. We were visiting, and a sister went out with us from the ward around 4 in the afternoon. His sector out back is pretty ghetto. There’s some back streets and everything. So we went to this house, and we were looking for a less active, and this guy passed by and told us the house was abandoned. He’s like, hey, I know where this guy lives, and he said the name and everything. The sister asked him to show us, and we started following him. He does a few turns, I wanted to contact the dude, and talk to him about the church, but he was walking so fast, and then he just stopped in the middle of the road in front of this bamboo house, and said that they live here. Sweet! 

I got there first, and I looked at the house. When I turned around, he pulled this huge butcher knife out of his pants. My comp was just walking up, and he held it to my comp, saying hey, give me everything! So, he took his watch, his ring, our phone, and like $15 from my comp. I just stood there in a daze while my mind was running a hundred miles an hour! Do I take this guy out? Do I run? Do I give him my stuff? I had my pin drive, my money, my camera, and all my stuff with me!  Anyway, as I was thinking, he pointed the knife at me! I grabbed his wrist, and I said, “Don’t touch me! I don’t have anything!”, and I shoved his hand, causing him to stumble backward. He was shocked, and pointed his knife at me saying, “Run!”  I looked at him, scuzzed him off, and then we just walked away. 

So, anyway, we totally got robbed! The sister called the police, and then we called President. The police came and told us to get in the car, and we drove around for 10 minutes fast and furious in these back streets. It was sweet! They know where this guy lives, and we went to his house. He was hiding inside. All these ladies were outside screaming at us and wouldn’t let anyone in. The police told us to get out of the car, but the ladies had butcher knives too! I didn’t want to get out of the car, but we did. Everyone was yelling, and the police were trying to calm them down. After they left, the police told us they would get our stuff back. So, all is well. I’m not too confident if any of those people around there will lovingly accept us into their homes now. There goes the mission work in that sector! :/ 

As far as the work...well, the funny thing about mission work is nothing really happens until somebody wants to listen. We did have a few people listening really good, progressing, but then they moved houses into another sector. We had to pass a reference over to the other elders, so they got a kind of gimme baptism. We have other people listening. We have a really cool mom. Her name is Cate. She and her two brothers all live together. There’s a few other families, we’re finding new people. We’re working, but we don’t have much support from the members. It’s hard to get people to go to church. I don’t know. That’s a hard principle for them here, just to go to church. Maybe it is for all people? I don’t know. 

 Oh, and last but not least, before I forget, if you guys can’t understand the video, or if it doesn’t send, I made bread with the bishop. He’s a baker. We wanted to go over and do service, and when we showed up he’s like, hey, just help me make this bread. What do you guys want to make? So, we learned how to make bread. He makes...they’re called rosquitas(?). They’re little circle things, and you eat them with hot chocolate, stuff like that. People love ‘em here. They’re kind of hard to make. He’s the only one that can do it. Everyone else is retarded at it. I was too at the beginning, but I got the hang of it, and everyone was like, wow, look, Elder Wilson can do it! It wasn’t really that hard, it was cool though, and I was having a good time. So we kind of did service, kind of learned something new. It was fun. I’m trying to be creative with the work, keep some new ideas going to keep the work interesting, keep it fun. I’m trying to take initiative, because if I don’t, then nothing gets done. You got to stay on top of it! Anyways, I’m going to close out with that for now. I hope I can talk with all you guys today while writing, but if not have a wonderful week.