Wednesday, July 30, 2014

(WEEK 48) I killed him.

I'm getting thicker thanks to this week. Our ward loves Elder Murphy, so the members gave us a ton of food everyday! It was awesome! Plus the members here cook a lot better than the majority of the members in Quito from what I've heard. So I'm satisfied. But we seriously had at least 1 dinner appointment every night. So there are perks in "killing" a missionary. I actully said hi to him in the offices today. With his group there're actually a ton of awesome missionaries going home. So it's kind of sad. But oh well, bye Elder(brother) Murphy.
This last week we were busy again. But we're used to it now. We had a meeting with the stake president and the mission president on Thursday that we have every month now. And in that meeting he invited us to train all of the bishops in the stake about the progress forms that we always use in ward council. It was kind of intimidating to be honest haha but it went pretty well. We felt powerful. Elder Murphy has already been a branch president before in the jungle so he already knew what was up and how to answer their questions.
The Elders in Santa Anita are beasts. They baptized again this week; This time they got 3 baptisms. So we're just used to supporting them by going to their baptisms almost every week. Our zone is super small ever since Elder Oaks took two big wards from the stake to make another new stake in Quito about a month ago, so Santa Anita is just really saving us right now with all the success they're getting. The good news is for us that the members are really starting to "turn on" and help us a ton in missionary work by giving us references and by visiting investigators with us (I think that's just another perk of a missionary leaving). So we should get a really good program going soon in San Carlos.
My new companion is Elder Santana. He's an awesome missionary from Chile. I actully met him almost 5 months ago when we were both district leaders in Calderón. But now we`re companions! So I'm pretty happy because I know he's a hard worker and there shouldn't be a dull moment in San Carlos this whole change because he's a pretty funny guy just like Elder Murphy. When I recieved the changes alone last night it was kind of funny because ther was one district that wasn't affected at all, but in the other district almost everyone got changes. I think probably the worse think about changes is the million of calls that you have to make and recieve to make sure that the missionaries get to their new sectors safely all around the mission.
Eso es todo. Ya maté a Elder Murphy. Yo no cumpliría algunas preguntas en una entrevista bautismal, supongo. Oops. Tal vez soy un poco dañado. Jaja pero bueno. Les quiero. Hasta luego

(WEEK 48)
















Wednesday, July 23, 2014

(WEEK 47) ¡Veinte!

Emergency changes always get us by surprize. We're in a trio now. I'm still with Elder Murphy but now we're also with Elder Araque. He was about 18 months in the mission and is from Columbia. So he'll stay with me at least until the change(1 week) but probably for another change as well. And Elder Murphy is not trunky, but he only has so many days left that he's basically a walking skeleton right now (6 days left for the big guy). The good news is, the whole ward knows that he's leaving so we have a dinner appointment like every day of the week haha yeah! We'll just have to keep running with this altitude every morning or we'll all get fat. Maybe I need that though. Plus the momitas here cook even better than the ones in my coast sector, o sea, felicidad.

On Wednesday we contacted a lot (Which was the day Elder Araque got here) On contact number 20 Elder Murphy knocked on a door and peeked through a little hole in the door to see if any one was there. Suddenly a huge german shepard almost bites off his face when he yells "¡Veinte!" I was laughing for like 10 minutes haha. Overall it was kind of a slower week but we found a couple new investigators that have a date and seem pretty solid. One of them is named David. He accepted basically everything we told him. He has a super strong desire, so we were lucky to find him. With Hna. Avaneth, we met with Hno. Altamirano (A super rich less-active member that's a lawyer). So he will slowly be helping Hna. Avaneth with her divorce/marrage problem. He lives in the green towers behind the church. His appartment is so nice though, so nice. Plus he was wearing a nice grey suit at the time so he looked like a boss. Then he bought us expensive pizza. Gotta love the benefits of having rich members in the ward haha.

We did divisions with Iñaquito this week on Tuesday. I was with Elder Ramos in San Carlos(His first sector in the mission) and Elder Murphy was with Elder Richey in Iñaquito. Elder Ramos showed me a couple of old investigators that he remembered from about 14 months ago, and we're still teaching one of them so that's pretty nice. The elders of Santa Anita are beasts and got another baptism this week. I don't know how they do it. They seriously get about one baptism every week. But I'm super happy for them and they should also have a baptism this week. bestias son.

Eso es todo. Envíame carne seca en el paquete con la familia de Elder Black si es posible, para que yo pueda ponerme tuco(fuerte). pilas.

¡Les quiero!

(WEEK 47)









Tuesday, July 15, 2014

(WEEK 46)

So I just thought of a random thing, I'm almost 20 years old and a mission is 2 years. Or 1/10 of my life when I finnish. Tithing is also a 1/10 rule. So it's like I'm doing life-tithing right now. I even get useless personal revelation sometimes haha.
I'm not going to lie, this week was a bestia. Everyone here is into the world cup even though the United States did better than Ecuador. So the contacts didn't want to listen and even the members were impossible to teach haha. The good thing is, Germany won. Now Ecuador wont be bragging that the world cup is in South America! So now that the world cup is over and everyone is getting back from the beach, this week should be a good one. Our investigators that we have are still doing great. They were just hard to visit this week because they were travelling or out of town. The main two are familia Puga(4) and Avaneth. Familia Puga now has all of the lessons and just need one more attendance then they are good for baptism. I wantto get them baptized before Elder Murphy leaves (2 weeks). And Avaneth has to still get divorced and remarried before she gets baptized but she has the strongest desires ever. She wants to get married in the temple with her future husband who is already a member. We'll have to wait for her but I know she'll get baptized. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she was more grateful than any other person I've ever seen, and by far. I've handed out so many of them that sometimes I forget the impact it makes on people with desires.
On Thursday Elder Murphy and I did a training in from of 2 zones. I was actully super nervous right before but I got up there and everything worked out perfectly. We were asked to train on goals and planning which I honestly thought would bore everyone but we made it funny and interesting. Now the training-in-front-of-a-ton-of-people-in-Spanish fear has been overcome. I'd be more than willing to give another one. This week we did another zone activity. We played water volleyball, lightning(knockout, fry-em, speed, whatever you call it), and dodgeball. The zone isn't very big since the other Quito mission stole two chappels from our mission but the zone has been super united this change. So Murphy and I are just loving it. On Sunday we ate with the bishop and he had some gringo friends over. A old couple that baptized the bishop. He actully served a mission in Ecuador when all of Ecuador was only one mission in the 70's. Plus he used to live in Parawan for a couple years. So the world is super tiny.
That was my week. Tengo que cuidar a Elder Murphy solo porque parte de su grupo en la otra mision se van mañana. Hay que no estar Trunky. Pero todavia él trabaja duro. Pero aveces su Trunkyness se cae sobre mí. ¿Han matado a alguien en la mision? Me parece un poco duro. Por ejemplo, escuché Hard to Say I'm Sorry por Chicago en el metrobus hoy día, y él empezó a cantar, y me pusó un poco Trunky de verdad. Pero soy fuerte haha. No hay ninguna cosa que me pone demasiado Trunky. ¡Pilas!

(WEEK 46)








Tuesday, July 8, 2014

(WEEK 45) La mamá de las semanas

So we'll start with Monday, After I wrote for just like 20 minutes we have a zone BBQ. (We're awesome zone leaders!) We cooked a ton of burgers and hot dogs with a ton of soda and chips. We also had basketball, soccer, and dodgeball tournements.It's lasted for like 3-4 hours and then we had to hurry to have a meeting with the mission president and the stake president together (Que sacerdocio en un cuarto, fue como el consejo de los profetas.) At night we had almost no time to do anything because we had to help the missionaries from the jungle and the coast arrive to our house (Our house is a mission hotel(party)). On Tuesday all that I did was go to the zone leaders council with all the zone leaders in the mission (Aún más sacerdocio.) It literally went from 9:00am- 7:00pm. I learned a ton but my brain was super sore after.

On Wednesday morning the zone leaders left back to their sectors. But before they did we made cookie dough with Elder Kingsford (My old ZL, he'll die in a couple weeks with Elder Murphy) and then we used the chappel oven to make cookies for Hna Deveraux's birthday (Sister missionary in our ward). Thursday we had the monthly mini zone conference. The only difference was, I had to flippin´ teach it. So Elder Murphy and I used the training we got in the council (That's how it works) and we taught on it for a couple hours, kinda fun actully. 

On Friday (4th of July) Elder Murphy woke me up by singing the entire national anthem hahaha and with soul, brotha. We wanted to buy a burger and put a small american flag on it, but we couldn't find a dang flag... Next year though. At night we had a ward activity where we (as 6 missionaries and our mission leader) taught members how to help others that are newly investigating the church feel welcome. Then we played games and had fanta floats (We wanted root beer floats but they don't have many soda options here.) It was an awesome ward activity though. Like 50 members showed up which is pretty good for here.

And finally, on Saturday we had 3 zone baptisms. We wanted to support the zone by attending all of them. So first the sister missionaries had a baptism at 6:00pm. Then mission president and his wife showed up to this one, as well as some other missionaries in the zone with some investigators, and then we atended the baptism from Elders of Santa Anita. They had 2 baptisms at 7:30pm. Plus we had to do 2 baptismal interviews earlier that day. So it was a super busy week. This week should be a lot easier.

(WEEK 45)