Tardito (week 23)

Yes, I'm a day late, I know. My P-day is actully today rather than Mondaybecause... I'm going to the zoo! Hno. Alverado wants to take us to the zoo but it's closed on Mondays so we got permission from the president to change our P-day from Monday to Tuesday. So yesterday(Monday) was a normal work day. I'm going to the zoo later today so there will be pictures to come.

Investigators: Unfortunatly, This last week Henry wasn't baptized because he's still living with Kelly unmarried and he told us he wants to learn more before he's baptized. There's always opposition before the baptism. But he still has the desire. We'll just have to find his "Iceburg." Diana, Fam. Mera, and Lola could all be baptized in February but the changes are on the 10th so I might not see them. You don't always get to see the fruits of your labors, but as long as they're baptized and continue progressing though the true and everlasting gospel, I'm good. Carlina and Orlando Ortiz are our new awesome investigators of the week. And something that shattered my universe: Carlina did the additional study on the back of the pamplets we hand out! No one does those! Elder Black and I were just staring at if for 30 seconds until she said, "Are they correct?" And we just nod our heads like, "Ah-huh, they are."

Bryan & Kevin(Investigators from the other missionarys) should be baptized this week. I'm excited. Presidente Marco's birthday was this week so we celebrated thaton Monday night and then later this week they headed to Utah. They are somewhere in Salt Lake valley right now. Go searching family haha. We went to Lago this week again for the district meeting and ate burritos at Elder Murphys house. Which were dang good but all of us felt sick on Saturday and Sunday because of it. Good going in, bad going out. Elder Murphy actully got really sick so he's in Quito right now. He might just stay there since the changes are soon. We'll porbably see new faces in Lago. We also played Uno that day, I love Uno.

Other news: Elder Black bought an alarm clock last Monday and the instructions are only in Chinese and English. But the translation is SOOOO horrible haha. For example, "...If open to make the bell only, but did not open love to sleep, then be to make the beel arrive enactment time, ring to make a minute. Keyed to stop arbitrarily ring make..." It's great... Also I'll finnish the D&C tomorrow and then I'll start the PofGP. Plus Elder Black has The Miracle of Forgiveness by Pres. Kimball so I'll read that in freetime or trips or something.

Everyone remembers the fact that before my mission I could NOT whistle, right? Well, I can now. I've actully been able to since November. I've just forgot to prove it on my Christmas call home. It took a guy that spoke only Spanish from Guayaquil to teach me while none of you guys could hahaha. You get bless in many ways by serving a mission. And the whistle sure helps with Taxis.

See ya in two! Love you all!

Sky High Numbers (week 22)

So the numbers of our zone basically doubled or tripled this week in average. That's awesome. We have a baptism with Henry Barreto this weekend. He said he might want to wait one more week just so he can learn more but trust me, he's ready. We bet him a cola and oreos, wether he would go to church or not, just so we could get him to go. Whatever it takes haha. Lola Mera has her baptism on the 1st of Februarybut she's still living with Jiame so that might have to be pusjed back a little, but we got the branch president to come and teach about families and the Law of Chastity as a member present. He's the most solid branch predsident ever and I think he really helped them realize the problem. Jairo has a cousin that is interested too! His name is Wilmer, we´re planning on visiting him a couple of times this week. Gabriela(wife of a less active) is a new investigator that we have and she seems really interested too. I'm pretty excited to have some new faces to teach. But speaking of old faces, I had the impression to visit an investigator that we haven't taught since late November... Diana! Diana is solid now and she commited herself to the 8th of November(YES!!). Familia Borja has a date for the 8th but they're not that solid with commitments and they're not going to church so ehh... WE'll see what happens with them. But we finally had a bunch of investigators at church! We had 11 in total so our Gospel Principles class was full this week.

After P-day this last Monday we tried to visit a members house that I've never been to before but it's out in the boonies! Like 45 minutes away! We had no idea until we asked some guys directions. We taught them but we were super late. Tuesday Elder Wright and I did splits together and he has less time in the mission than me so it was kinda fun contacting and teaching a few lessons with him. I feel like we did pretty well for our time in the mission and without knowing Spanish. In the middle of one of the lessons we had, one of our investigators, a 9-year-old girl, totally farted right while I was teaching of the first vision haha. We all busted up laughing for like 5 minutes. Terrible timing but we still gave he a Book of Mormon and a baptism date for the 8th of February, éxitos!

This Wednesday Hno. Alverado took us in his car to see all of the less actives that he knows in the sector, which is super helpful. There's actully not a ton of them but we'll focus on the ones there are this week. Thursday we had a mini conference in Lago. The Lago guys are awesome. Other random things: (1) I saw the most stoned girl ever walking down the street by our house, good laugh, I should have filmed it. (2) I figured out that Hna. Juanita takes like a handful of sacrament bread, so that was nearly impossible to hold in the laugh. (3) During the sacrament also, Hno. Reyes spots a cockroach upside down and squashes it right in the middle of this guys talk in a tini chappel and kicks it out one little baby step at a time out of the door, everyone had focus on him rather than the talk. (4) I heard "Bring Me to Life" by Evanesence on one of the city busses which was hilarious since I'm used to the same Spanish music with either one of two annoying beats.

Sucessful week for the whole zone! Hopefully the baptism dates all work out. We have some solid investigators right now that are more than ready to hear the Gospel. Les amo!

(week 22)

Read this, it talks about a monkey in a diaper somewhere. (week 21)

Pres. Marco totally sang happy birthday to me while I was wearing a sumbrero. Gave me a cake with a firework candle. That put a smile on my face haha. Hna. Jenny did the same thing but bought a ckae that said, "Feliz Cumpleaños E. Bolton" and she gave me these sweet blue and white shorts. The members love me, I swear haha. I also heard a Blick-182 song in the streets on my birthday which will never happen again here. So yes, my birthday was complete haha.

Elder Black left to Quito this week with everyone else in the zone except for Elder Sanchez and I. So we were commanded to hold down the Oriente for three days. We found a new familiy and commited someone to baptism for the 1st of February during those three days. Plus we visited like every less-active, recent convert, and investigator that I know. Eficaz, baby! I also taught my English class on Wednesday and a guy named Patrick Joseph showed up. He's an investigator from the other sector and his English is like almost perfect so I was hard to teach him haha. Also this rich guy that Piko Riko(Chicken fast food) pulled up by Elder Sanchez and I in his car and told us that he's seen the movie, "The Other Side of Heaven" and that he has a niece serving a mission in Argentina so he took us out to lunch there and he said whenever a lunch cancels on us, we can just go there and eat for free! We just need to tell the guy at the counter his name and that we're missionaries and the food is free! GLORY, GLORY, HALLELUJAH!! So yeah, I definatly had a good time with my Columbian buddy.

Everyone else came back on Thursday. Elder Murphy and Elder Sanchez spent that night with us. He told me millions of legendary mission stories that I've sworn to secrecy. It was good to have Elder Black back cause we always do work here together. We have found a ton of new investigators! The only problem is, they never go to church and they aren't good at keeping commitments haha. I wanna slap em'. However we still have Henry who should be baptized by Feb. 1st, I hope. And Lola(From familia Mera(The husband is a less-active)) should also be baptized on that date. Familia Espinosa is a new family from a referal from Hno. Alverado, His 8 year old kid sings in front of large crowds, like Michael Jackson from the Jackson 5 but Ecuadorian. Next week we shoudl really see the fruits of our efforts since it will be the first normal week of the change.

I had a talk on missionary work in church this Sunday and I felt it went pretty good! I was definatly easier than the first one. The first one I read a story and just explained a little bit of it. This time I just went up with two D&C scriptures and expounded on them for 8 minutes. I focused the talk on member involvement in missionary work. (Hint: Dame referencias, por favor! haha)

Side notes: I saw a guy chuck a mango up to a monkey and the monkey caught it and ran off with it, so that was cool. Our neighbors now own a dark grey monkey that wears a diaper. I got to touch it haha, that cool too. I read "The Day of Defense" in like 3 days cause it's dang interesting. It's basically the modern-day equivelent of Ammon cutting off the robbers arms. Hno. Alverado wants to take us to the Zoo on a P-day. It's like 45 minutes away but it has Anacondas, monkeys, boas, panthers, tucans, and other cool stuff. I don't know how we're goping to do it exactly but I really wanna go!

That's my week! I love all of you!

 If there's a random 12 year old kid that reads this on Facebook just by chance, yes, I love you too.

(week 21)

Dos Mil Catorce! (week 20)

It´s super duper weird starting a new year in the mission. As well as turning nineteen. New years we basically bought just A TON of food. And I mean a ton. And we had to be in our houses at 5:00pm just cause it can get crazy down here. And it totally was. As we were stuffing ourselves, playing UNO and just passing the time in the appartment, I could hear just a ton of fireworks. Even super late at night they were going off. They're kinda weird here and they burn statues of random things like mickey mouse or Crash bandicut or something. The next day there were a ton of burnt leftovers on the streets. So that was basically my new years.

So my new comp: His name is Elder Skylar Black from Pleasant Grove, Utah. He is the nephew of Monte & Annette Black that teach at Cedar Middle School. (Small World!) He's a super cool guy. He moves like every 2 changes so he knows a lot of the mission. He came from Esmeraldes. He'll be going home in 7 months. We pray together in English now and it's almost ackward to pray outloud in English. I basically got him right after Elder Magalhaes and Elder Richimondg left on Wednesday. They couldn't leave here until then just because there were no busses because of New Years. Elder Wright's companion got here on Monday, Elder Mamani. He's from Peru.

We have been working like missionary juggarnauts since Thursday. It's been awesome too. We have a lot of new investigators that we're teaching now. We also basically vivited all of our current investigators and a lot of old investigators and less-actives this week as well. Like Kelly & Henry, David & Yolanda, Henry & Yolanda, Fam. Japa, Sergio, Fam. Santos, Particia, Hna. Glenda, Fam. Villon, Verjica and her family, Rodrigo, and Evelia and her family. Just to name a few. My legs are jello. They aren't like jello, they ARE jello.

Sunday was cool because Elder Black and Elder Mamani got to meet the ward and the rest of the members that we didn't have a chance to meet yet during the week. We taught our Gospel Principles class on lesson one since it's a new year now. We taught it on "Our Heavenly Father" which I thought would be tough to teach about for a whole hour in a different language but with the help of their comments, we finnished right on time. I aslo have another talk next week on La Obra Misional (Missionary Work). Elder Black has to leave to a zone conference tonight and basically every one else in our tiny zone is going to Quito other than me and Elder Sanchez. He is from Columbia and he was in my group when I first arrived in Ecuador. So while every on else is up the mountain for meetings and verifications, We'll be Batman and Robining it down here in Coca. I'm Batman.

So today's my birthday and all I could every ask for was a P-day haha. We actully went to the Azriel Shopping place, which is our momita today, and there's this ice cream place. Elder Black was like, "Pick whatever you want from there and I'll buy it."... Banana Split, baby!

That's Elder Jershy Poo´s week. Love all of you guys and hope your New Year's was the best! I was hiding in my house like a bomb shelter as I predicted! Peace Out, Señores!

(week 20)