So you all probably know that I made it to Ecuador on Monday night. When we got there we were picked up by two sister missionaries who drove us to the church. When we got there the senior missionaries made us dinner. Then I went to stay with the Mission President´s Assistants that night. Some more missionaries came the next day so I stayed with them until I got my companions on Thursday. They were all Peruvian with a few from Chile and Ecuador and most of them went to the Colombia MTC. Until we got our companions we just had a ¨Mini MTC¨at the church. They fed us really good. We got Papa John´s one night then we had McDonald´s for lunch one day.
I got my new companions on Thursday and I´m in a trio. One is named Elder N and is from Bolivia and has been in the mission field for 2 months. The other is named Elder C and is from Boston and has been out for 10 months.
I´m in an area called Los Chillos and it´s a really cool place. It´s about 45 minutes to and hour away from the mission offices in Quito. There are a ton of dogs that wander the street and some that just sit around that look like they´re sick or something. I was told in the MTC that if a dog starts coming up to you that you just bend down and touch your shoe and they´ll leave you alone so that´s worked so far. Most of the time you can walk by the dogs and they usually don´t do anything; they´ll just wander around minding their own business.
Our apartment is really nice...other than the bathroom. :D It´s really small and the shower head is fried because when I was using it on Saturday and was turning off the shower, the water started getting really hot then steam started coming out of it then the shower head lit up red. I was really scared that thing was going to blow up or light on fire, but luckily nothing happened. We just have no hot water and have to shower in cold water. :D
Since we only have two beds, we´ve had to put the beds together and I had to sleep in between with my head at the opposite end of the bed. This morning though we got bunk beds so now I finally have my own bed.
The weather is pretty nice. It does get pretty cold at night though so I usually wear thermal socks to bed. I do get sweaty but not too bad.
Since the area that we are in built on the mountain, there are a lot of hills and some of the streets can be pretty steep, so it´s almost like hiking in the mountains every day. But we take the buses and taxis too so we don´t have to walk too far since a lot of the places we have to go to can sometimes be a long walk from our apartment.
The food is very good. I love the fruit here. It´s very sweet. Also a lot of the little stores have rolls of bread that are sooo good. We went to the store today and I bought frozen pizzas, yogurt and chocolate milk powder. We have a mamita who is going to be feeding us lunch and we´ve gone once so far. Some of the members have also fed us and the´ve given us some good food.
We´re really busy here, and it feels like the days do go by faster than the last few weeks at the MTC, and those went by pretty fast. We´ve street contacted a lot of people and have had a few lessons and we had 2 baptisms on Saturday. We´ve also gone to some family home evenings. This mission gets baptisms every week and we´ve got I think one or two planned for this week. Most of the investigators we have though had been starting taking lessons before I got there so I´ve only taught the first lesson once, which was a cool experience. We found this family and we taught them on Friday night. They´re very faithful Christians and go to a Evangelical church. When we got there, we found out that they have all their family (some cousins, aunts, uncles, etc) come over on Fridays to read the Bible so the first half of our time there was one of their family members reading teaching a short lesson from the New Testament. There were more then 10 people there. When it was our turn to teach, they received it very well. The family member who taught the lesson earlier knows about the church and so then he gave a summary of the Book of Mormon and its origins. He said good thing about it. He said that he knows this book compliments the Bible in being another testament of Jesus Christ. The family seemed to agree with everything we said and found it interesting and really liked it a lot. I really felt like this family was prepared to hear our message. We teach them again on Friday and I´m looking to see how they´re going to progress since they´re a very strong family and I know this can bless their lives since they´ve already been blessed with Gospel and are prepared to receive more.
We have an investigator whose husband is a member of the church and is from Mexico. and he actually went to UVU for college and he says that he loves Cafe Rio. :D
We met a new a family of investigators who went to church on their own this week because a friend told them about it. It´s cool because they´re the Gomez family. We´re going to teach them the first lesson this week.
I feel like the Spanish if different here. I think I´ve gotten used to the Spanish of Mexico and I need to get adjusted to this Spanish. I think I like the Spanish in Mexico better. One member told me that I do speak Spanish like a Mexican so that´s cool. A lot of people here and in South America speak kind of weird Spanish to me so sometimes when we´re teaching or talking to people like members or my companion I don´t really know what´s going on. But I can still understand the majority and I just need some time to adjust to the dialects and stuff.
Well this is a lot different from the MTC and a whole lot different from Utah but I know that if I´m busy and working hard it will go by fast and I´ll have a good time. We had a family home evening yesterday and I was able to play guitar for it and that made me really happy because I´ve missed being to play guitar and music.
I really can´t wait to hear from you guys and how everything is going back at home. Hope to hear from you all soon! :)
I think that for Ecuador this is a pretty nice place. A lot of the people have nice homes and some have nice tvs or ipads and stuff like that. There are some though that live in really small places. We have one investigator who is supposed to get baptized this week I think who is blind and lives in a very small house. But all of these people seem to be happy with what they have and most of them are nice and humble. It´s weird because in the United States we have so much and huge houses and we still act like we don´t have much but these people here have less than us and live happy lives.
I think these are the missionaries that arrived in Quito last week.
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