Semana 28

Hola y buenas tardes a todos mis hermanos y amigos. Espero que todo esté bien con ustedes. ¡Tengo casi 8 meses en la misión!

We´re doing good here. We just got over being sick again this weekend.

This Sunday was elections in all of Ecuador for the city leaders. In Ecuador it´s mandatory to vote. If you don´t vote you have to pay a fine of 30 to 50 dollars or something like that. So there wasn´t a lot of people in church and we only had the first hour. At least now we won´t be hearing super loud music for the campains.

The Family L has a baptismal date for the 8 of March! They still feel nervous about making the decision, but we´re going to help them a ton. I feel like they´re ready but they just don´t think so.

We found a less active family this week who got baptized over a year ago but the parents were living together without being married and got baptized anyway. I dont know how the missionaries let that pass through since you can´t get baptized if you´re living together with someone and not married. We´re going to really help to get married and come back to church. They have this really cool monkey that´s really fun to see when we visit them. The monkey is best friends with their dog and always rides on the dog´s back. It´s pretty funny!

 Well I feel really excited this week. We haven´t had the most success here in Pelileo, but I feel like the Lord wants to teach me something. That I need to have more patience and trust in Him more with faith. I know that if I can do that we will receive many blessings and the Lord will give us the success that we desire.

Thanks for all your support! Have a great week and hope to hear from you all next week!!

-Élder Gómez

Semana 27

Hi everyone! I hope you`ve all had a great week this week! We`re already halfway through transfers, and I can`t believe how fast this transfer has gone by. With each transfer it just gets faster and faster.

Well we`re passing through some difficulties here. A lot of our investigators just aren`t doing there part, so we`re going to have to stop teaching some of them. But that`s not going to get us down. We`re trying to work harder and be more diligent. We just need to work more with through references. It`s really easy to contact on the street and knock on doors and get a lot of lessons in and new investigators, but in the end they`re not very good investigators who after a few lessons just don`t progress. Missionary work is no longer knocking on doors and tracting, it`s about working with the members. References from members have more support and the message isn`t so new and foreign to them. So I think that`s what`s going to help us the most.

We`ve been starting to work a lot more with less actives, recent converts and part member families. We`re starting to see better results. We just need to really help them a lot.

I think I`ve really learned that without the Lord, missionary work would just completely fall through and fail. There is no way that we can do this on our own. The Lord is in charge and He is the one who gives us success. Sometimes it doesn`t come all at once, but if we stay diligent and work to our fullest having complete faith in Him, we will get sucess.

Hope you all have a great week this week. Hope to hear from you all soon!!

-Èlder Gòmez

Semana 26

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great week!

The volcanoe is still puffing out smoke and last night it was shooting out lava which was really cool. Many times during the day we can hear booming from the volcanoe. One night our house even shook from the vibrations. On Tuesday it was raining ash so I was wearing a doctor mask for some of the day and a lot of other people were too. 

Well we found a ton of families last week. The only problem is that none of them are coming to church. The problem that we´re struggling with a lot here is that the people who accept specific dates to be baptized are the ones who don´t go to church and those who reject baptismal dates are the ones who go to church. It´s been hard. I´ve been thinking a ton about what we can do differently and how we can teach more efficiently but it´s been a challenge. We´re just going to have to put all our trust and faith in the Lord like never before.

The Familia L came to church yesterday. They recieved their answer that the church is true a few weeks ago and we´re seeing a change in them. Now we just need to help them accept a baptismal date. We have a visit with them tomorrow and we´re going to invite them again to be baptized on a specific date. We´re going to be praying really hard that they will accept a baptismal date this time.

For this month, our mission is donig something really special. It´s called the The Faith of Febrero Brings the Miracles of March. We have to all make sacrifices this month and work to increase our faith in order to see miracles in March. The goal is that every companionship will baptize a family and reactivate a family in March. We have to make some sacrifices like not listening to any music at all for Febrero and March and then each missionary has to make a personal sacrifice. We´re going to be reading all four Gospels and the book of the Acts, looking for miracles. What I´ve learned is that if we have any shadow of doubt, we can´t receive miracles. We have to have 100% faith in the Lord in order to see miracles here in the mission. That´s what I´ve been working on a lot, is trusting in the Lord and His will in missionary work.

Well I hope you all have a great week this week. Hope to Hear from you soon!!

-Élder Gómez

Semana 25

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week.

Well it´s been 7 months since I left and it´s gone by super fast. 

I got sick...again... this week. I had a fever one night but then it got better. Now I´m just getting over a nasty cough, but it´s all good and I´m a lot better.

The volcano Tungurahua erupted this weekend. It was crazy! Most of the sky was covered in clouds of ashes and we even saw lava shooting out of it. Luckily we live far enough that we didn´t get any ashes but the areas closer to it had to be evacuated and the roads there were closed off. 

Well we didn´t have anyone come to church this week. A.N. had a fecha for the 15th of Febrero but she didn´t come to church so her fecha fell through. We´re going to try to give give her another fecha for the 22nd this week. The L family didn´t come either. What we´ve been thinking about and what we´ve talked to the zone leaders about is working more with less actives. This Branch has over 400 members on record but only about 80 come to church. The Lord won´t trust us with new souls until we can rescue the souls we already have. If we can work with the less actives we´ll be able to get references from them and new people who are more likely to progress than people we find through just contacting on the street or knocking on doors.

Well I´ve enjoyed being with my new companion Elder Ercanbrack. He doesn´t really speak spanish so I´ve been teaching the lessons and giving him time to share his testimony and when he can he shares small parts of the lesson. He has a lot of desire to learn and get better and that´s what´s most important. If we want to do something but it seems hard at first, we have to keep trying and practicing to be able to do it. And if we have faith we for sure and do it. 

Well that´s all for this week. We´ve been working really hard and we´re going to do new things this week to get more success. As long as we maintain the faith we have in the Lord we can do anything. Stay safe and hope you all have a great week!

-Élder Gómez

"If you want to achieve results you´ve never seen before, you have to do things that you´ve never done before"