Week 67 Ecuador

1/4/16 voice message

Hi family, well I hope you all finished out the rest of your vacation, and winter break very well. Garrett I hope you got a lot of skiing done, and it has continued to snow. Um…as for here, we anticipated the big change, and that landed me back in Duran. Well, Duran South, it’s a different zone with my companion from El Paso Texas. You guys kind of got a brief rundown on that last week. After that there wasn’t a whole lot of time or things I could say. 

The zone here in Duran has been struggling for a while now. They haven’t been baptizing or doing very well, but we’re going to do all that we can to pull it back up. Going out in the sector this week the new members we came across all received me very kindly, and the sector’s pretty cool. For the first time after working this week I feel like I’m working more to serve the ward and the members than I am to get numbers and baptisms for the mission. Although, I want to do both. It just has a different feel to it here. I also learned the importance of having those member families at home, especially when you’re trying to get to know a sector. My companion only has a month here also, so not a whole lot of time. The thing is that families just weren’t home, with the New Year most of them go on vacation, they go to the beach and everything. So, we did a lot of work on our own. A few nights we just ended up going around contacting all the neighbors here around our house. It’s a pretty nice area. We taught a few pretty strong Catholic families, just testified of the Book of Mormon. It was interesting, you can’t go wrong there. It’s actually really interesting too how many people accept the Book of Mormon. They accept it, they read it, but when it comes to that point when their ready to make the change and be converted, they’re like no I can’t change churches, I’ve been in the Catholic church forever. They don’t get the purpose. 

Anyways, in the midst of all this we didn’t have time to go buy food on Monday, so that evening we bought some eggs, and some little things. When I got home I put the eggs to boil in some water, and then we started planning, and got cleaned up for bed. We organized the meeting with the zone that we would have the next day, and we went to sleep, until…like it was part of my dream, the smoke detector is like toot, toot, toot, toot. The neighbor from below is calling us, Hermanos, hermanos, I didn’t even realize until my companion got out of bed, and opened the door. The smoke detector was even louder. I was like OH SHOOT! We go out there, and there’s a ton of smoke coming from the pan. I go over there and all the water had evaporated out of it. The eggs were black. We unplugged the smoke detector from the wall. It’s like 4 in the morning. I put the pan of eggs in the sink under cold water, and one of the eggs exploded. I was cleaning egg off the wall. We had some very toasted eggs. I’ve never done anything like this my whole mission. I felt really dumb. It was a funny story though. I told the zone; they all got a good laugh out of it. Changes are rough sometimes. 

The New Years was good though. We invited six other elders to stay in our house. There was eight of us here. We played Monopoly, watched a pretty impressive fireworks show. They make paper doll figures here, and they burn them on New Years. I have to give it to the Ecuadorians, they put on a show for New Years. It’s not such a big deal at our house, but I hope you all enjoyed it. After, we sang some songs in the English hymn book, God Bless America, My Country ’tis of Thee, The Star Spangled Banner, while the latinos just watched us. 

The next day we took advantage of having the elders all over to play some basketball. I’m not super good at basketball, but compared to the others I’m average. We did alright. It was fun. I think the New Year threw the atmosphere out of whack. The weather here is testing us with all kinds of extremes. Friday afternoon we were burning from the sun. I forgot my sunscreen. We were walking around, and by nighttime the rain came out of nowhere. It came down super hard, and that raises the humidity. We hid in a members house for a bit. It wasn’t stopping, and we couldn’t teach anyone because they all have metal roofs, and the rain comes down so hard you can’t really hear each other. So, we booked it home, running down rivers in the street a few inches deep. It was pretty crazy. We got caught without an umbrella the first time, but now I’m smart carrying it around. 

Anyway, I’ll leave you guys with a cool story real quick. There was a brother from the family Chavez, he’s the dad and got baptized two weeks ago. The thing is, his family have been members for eight or more years. His wife, and his sons, he’s had two sons serve missions, and now his third went out. The son who just went out on a mission had studied French for a long time, and the dad prayed that this son could serve a French speaking mission, so that he didn’t lose that. He got called to Argentina, so the dad was bummed about that, wondering if God really answers prayers. Then he found out that the ward where his son is serving is a French speaking ward. That, along with the work of the Elders, he decided to get baptized. It’s an interesting story. All I know is that God answers us, and that serving a mission blesses our families. I’ll leave you with that. I hope you can all adapt to going back to work this week. Enjoy it, and love it. Love you all. Take care. Bye 

Week 66 Ecuador

Well...the biggest news now is I`M BACK IN DURAN!!! Woah, I was here 4 months ago. I'm not really close to where I was before though. It all seems unfamiliar here, the houses, streets, layout of everything, but with work I will come to love new converts and things about this city. I imagine being here for atleast another 3 months. Time to start learning!

My new companion is Elder Estupinan. He is latin american and his family is latino, but he`s lived his whole life in El Paso, Texas. He will be going home in March so I`m likely his last companion. Things should go well. 

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

Week 64 Ecuador

Dearly Beloved´s,

The transfer has passed and I am still in Babahoyo!! Woohoo, that means I´m safe to see the ¨Noche Blanca¨ stake baptismal service this Saturday. If all goes right we´ll be having 3 baptisms, and as a Zone hopefully 13; lots of interviewing to be done. I´m excited for the programs and things we´ve lined up here for Christmas, then, I´ll likely be moved on the 28th before the New Year. 

Holiday Sprit is influencing a lot of people to let us into their homes to share a special message. Most don´t want us to come back but they enjoy the undeniable spirit that we bring into their homes; (I think it´s the church and studies and eternal promises that scares them a little, haha_all jokes aside, important stuff). Our mission president was in Baba this weekend for our stake conference and everyone loves him-he has a gift for speaking. One of our investigators for this month who´s been a little flaky came up to us after and said he wanted to do his baptismal interview this week; if all goes well he´ll be baptized the 19th too. I guess if you can´t get the job done, leave the tough ones to President. Humbling..

The season brings out the Lord´s chosen as well as the ¨Scrudge´s¨ and oooo I have had the door slammed in my face this week, words said i´m glad I don´t understand, some other hand signals by passer-by´s that I do understand and the list goes on. It´s a shame they can´t see it but E´Albrecht and I get a laugh out of how dumb people look.

Highlight of the week is when the Assistants came (one who is from Guatamala and sings extremely well) we went to the center of Babahoyo where there´s a BIG lit-up Christmas Tree with Books of Mormon, Brochure´s of Joseph Smith, Christmas cards and tiny mints wrapped up with red-ribbon and sang for everyone there (just the 4 of us) but people started clapping and coming up super interested so I started writing referals, then my companion, then the other elder and at points there was only E´Salcedo singing (he did just fine). Fun experience.

Apart from the city center I also went on an intercambo to Montalvo, on the edge of our Zone and found MOUNTAINS! Ah, the air was cool there and it was awesome. The Elders baptized a person from there last week. I have a feeling my next Zone will be a District? But, we´ll see. It´d be good experience.

My convert was afraid I was going to have changes and made us Tacos! Well, I didn´t have changes, but the tacos were still really delicious!

I like having more say over the way I choose to share the gospel this Christmas, and a little more knowledge of how to do it. We´re looking to make it a memorable one. Best of wishes to all of you and remember, the greatest joy comes when we serve others!

 Love,

Elder Wilson

Week 63 Ecuador

Big Happy Birthday S/O to my wonderful mother Cammie this week on the 10th!! 😀

We`re battling bats in our ceiling, Crickets eating through our screen (and sleeping with elder Albrecht).. no worries though, we`re winning. And, if it ever gets out of hand I`ll just climb into my fresh Hammock for the night!

We should be all clear with meetings for a month or so after this past week of like.. 4! Ugh. Can`t say I`m a huge fan honestly. I`d make a bad Assistant of the President.

I woke up to a solid 16 minutes of P90X Ab-ripper with Tony Horton. It didn`t wipe me out because we`re going out for some Zone soccer. Paint-ball will be suspended for a less rainy day. (if we ever see one of those again)

I hope all were able to attend the First Presidency`s Christmas Devotional. Maybe I`ve taken it for granted but there truly is a great sense of peace and gratitude that comes during the Christmas season and, anytime we search for the light of Christ. I am taking focus in the simplicity of that this year.

I have verified why I need a Savior; in more eloquent words we often sing ¨me cuesta entender que quisiera Jesus bajar, del trono divino para mi alma rescatar..¨ but I know that Heavenly Father truly did send his willing Son, His only Begotten; He was born to virtuous parents, he lived, he died accomplishing his infinite Atonement. The scriptures don`t say much at all about the first 30 years of His life, but one says enough at the end of Luke ¨Y Jesus crecia en sabiduria, y estatura, y en favor con Dios, y los hombres.¨ .. (pardon that I memorize these in spanish, ha). I know that I too can find forgiveness, receive strength or direction at the beginning of each day as I desire to do what`s right through his mercy.

Love you all, 

-Mr. Brightside

12/7/15 voice message

Hi family, this week flew by so fast that we’re sitting down Elder Albrecht and I, tonight…Saturday night, trying to write the whole week of events in our journals all at once. It added up to about a page for me, because I don’t have that great of a memory. 

Anyways, going back to Monday (almost 5 days ago) we dropped our clothes off at this crazy laundry mat because the lady who washes our clothes was out of town. It was raining, and we were leaving to go to Guayaquil. It ended up working out. It was $9, kind of expensive. We were just looking for a laundry mat to wash them ourselves, but I guess that’s not how they do it here. 

So, we got our stuff together and headed off to Guayaquil for the leadership conference with the zone leaders. We ended up bowling that night, just Elder Albrecht and I. That was fun. We only ended up getting in one game, but I bowled a 157! Not bad for just stepping up there and lettin’ r rip. I got like 3 or 4 strikes…solid. 

We stayed in the mission home that night, and the next morning up and at 5 o’clock. We went to the temple, did a session there of endowments. I always like to try and learn something new, or ask president Riggins if he can answer me a question. So I took advantage of that. A favorite scripture from the conference that you guys can all look up is Moses 6:34. Interpret that how you want, I’ll just leave that one wide open. 

Wednesday we were back in the sector, and then returned again to Guayaquil, this time with the entire zone. We slept in the hotels next to the temple. Thursday we were there again, it’s always nice to have a hot shower every 3 months. We did another session, and then had a zone conference where president talked to all of us. This is probably putting you all to sleep. It was a week of meetings, and it was good and bad. I guess we could say it flew by, but in the moment not exactly. Rising to the climax though, the office boys brought all of our packages to bring back home! I received my Christmas package pretty early this year. Super stoked, and as you can imagine I did not leave it sitting under the bed for 20 more days. So, thank you very much. I am a Very spoiled missionary, and probably one of the most loved of the 88,000 active missionaries serving around the world. I will never feel unloved. Again, thank you very much. Enjoying the Tevas, very comfortable. Lovin’ the hammock, though there’s not exactly space here in the house to hang it up properly. Um, I got it up in the little back closet. You guys will get a picture. Super comfortable, love having it. It’s sweet, super sweet. I’m way excited to get it out in the mountains with it, do a little hammock backpacking. Anyways, the candy, the cards mom your card I have sitting on my desk...thank you, the P90x videos are gonna whip me right back into shape…as soon as I start doing them, ha. That starts Monday…you know, starting a new week. The tie is super sweet, and I won’t have any problems with E’ Albrecht stealing that one from me because we don’t have the same taste in some things. That’s ok, it’s a good looking tie. 

So, some of the upcoming stuff…in the conference we got pre warnings that we needed to go buy canned food, and packets of rice, and all this food storage and extra water, because El Nino is coming! Big rain storm, I’m sure you guys have heard about it. It’s supposed to hit pretty hard, and water is known to get up to waist level and stuff. I don't know, we’ll see how it all goes. We did get our two first rain storms this week. One we were here in Babahoyo, and the other…we found it. All the fields flooded, and all the crickets and grasshoppers came out of the fields to come live in the city. Tell you what, we blocked up our house pretty good. Only one or two got in, but the church, and the buildings, just everywhere walking around outside is tremendous with those things flying around, smacking you in the face, dying in the church. I’m super excited for our next baptism on the 19th because I will have the honor of cleaning dead crickets out of the baptismal font. It’s all worth the price though. It’s all good. 

I just recently finished giving myself another haircut. We’re getting pretty good at that. E’ Albrecht comes in and verifies, and touches things up. Just got showered up, looking pretty fresh I guess you could say. I need to get better at these voice messages. This isn’t spiritual at all…just talking. You guys are probably a little bored, but tomorrow will be good. We’ve got church, and then we’ve got meetings, an invasion. We’re going to go invite everyone to come to stake conference in two weeks, but I think we have the Christmas devotional too that I’m hoping to be able to go see. Maybe try to and take some investigators to it, so they can meet the prophet. 

Anyways, we’re going to hit the sack I think so we can get to it, and try and stop smelling this rotten milk that spilled all over the floor from our fridge overnight. It then sat and ants died in it, and our house smells like warm, fermented milk. Anyways, goodnight to you all. I love you. Happy week, happy evening. Thanks a million, really…love you all. Take care

Week 62 Ecuador

We baptized some future leaders of the church this past weekend, Zailart and Daniela have my heart! I love the relationships we create with these awesome families and to see the Gospel light up their homes.

We´re always looking forward. We went to make wedding and baptismal plans with the Baragan family (7). The Dad and daughter were fighting when we arrived and there was no spirit. We sang. We taught. The lesson turned to cold feelings and everyone trying to give suggestions from the scriptures. I had a lump in my throat and just said, ¨YA¨ .. stop. I promised the answer would come if the Father prayed, so we kneeled, he gave a sincere prayer, and then as family members arose and resorted to dishing up the dinner or talking in a hushed tone E´ Albrecht and I stayed kneeling for 15 minutes more as the father continued praying silently. Rarely have I prayed so sincerely. Well. He got his answer. Time to put that answer into action so we can realize there baptism on the 26 of December!

Always lots of unrivaled experiences here in the mission field.

I´m feeling that I will be soon called out of Babahoyo before the new year and I feel sad about it. It´s a lot of feelings. I don´t want to go. I love my converts, I have lots of investigators with a lot of potential. It may be a selfish feeling too that I don´t want to give away what i´ve now set-up these past 3 months. Ha, maybe I am too comfortable. E´ Albrecht and I are like brothers and are enjoying our success. Shoot, I don´t want to go. I will love this month, then, I´ll happily do what the Lord thinks best.

Well.. off to go wash my clothing! Then go to Guayaquil for the Leadership Conference, that´s always inspiring.

PS: the church came out with a new video ¨A savior is born.¨ Look it up, share it on Facebook, put it out there for everyone to see! 

Love you all.

Week 61 Ecuador

I give a quick thanks, leading into this Thanksgiving week, for the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

It is a maravelous work, it`s inspiring to see the converstion of someone, fulfilling to attend their memorable baptismal services, and a little out of this world when you stand with them Inside the House of the Lord.

I`m blessed to have a Temple so close in my mission and to see these new members testimonies drive them to realize the work for their Family members waiting on the other side! 

Start with the end in mind; See them dressed in white!

Zone Unity