Semana 20

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas and are going to have a great new year tomorrow!

I really can´t believe it´s already been six months and I´m 1/4 of the way done. It goes by super fast. The days where we´re completely focused and work to our fullest just fly by!

Normally on P-Days we start working normally at 6 PM but because of it being new years eve we have to be in the house by six to avoid all the parties and crazy things they do. They have a tradition on new years eve in Ecuador where the men dress up as women acting like poor widows and then they annoy the people asking for money and bother them a lot. The other thing they are doing here is they make paper mache manakins and then they burn them. Some of them are popular people or characters like Iron Man. Some of the ones they make are huge like over 10 feet and some probably 15 or 20. I think it´s funny that they take so much time to make these things and then they just end up lighting them on fire.

Well these weeks here in Pelileo have been a bit difficult. Almost everyone is gone on vacations for the holidays or busy making jeans so we´ve been having trouble getting into homes. The people here are pretty strong Catholic. We don´t have very many investigators here and this area hasn´t had baptisms in probably four months, so it´s been a bit of a challenge coming here. I have a lot of faith and confidnce though that that´s going to change. No point in letting yourself down over the challenges an area has because the Lord will always give us the miracles and success we need. I remember how we had a ton of success and lots of baptisms in Los Chillos and I was thinking how we got that success and how can we apply that to this area to help us. I was thinking and I think a lot of it is member support. The past missionaries didn´t really work much with the members and leaders and I think that´s what´s going to give us the most success here.

In our district we only have me and my companion and a companionship of Sisters and we share the same branch. They have a baptism this Saturday and I will be doing the baptismal interviews with them since I´m District Leader now. I´ve enjoyed being District Leader working to help my district and be an example to them. 

We found a new investigator on Sunday named M who was really receptive to our message and we invited her to be baptized on January 25th and she accepted. We are going to really try and work hard to help her maintain this desire. With this baptism on Saturday, it will be an excelent oportunity to invite investigadores to the baptism to let them see what it´s like and help them gain a testimony.

Well I want to wish you all a happy new year in 2014. I hope to hear from you all soon!

-Elder Gómez

Semana 19

Hi everyone. This has been a pretty fast week. I really like my new area in Pelileo. This area is huge! There are parts of our sector that take over an hour to get to. There`s very few members so we`re in a Branch here. My companion said that just before I got here they stopped teaching a ton of their investigators because they weren`t progressing, so we don`t have much investigators and we`ve mainly just been finding new investigators. We found a family that is really good, who the dad said that the day before we found them he was praying for someone to visit him to teach him the Gospel. We had a good experience with them. We just need to help them all come to church now.

I was able to go to Quito yesterday and go to the Christmas dinner at President Ghent`s house. It was a lot of fun, and we got to play ping pong with the other missionaries and the President`s Assistants before dinner. 

Well this Christmas I hope you all can think about the true meaning of Christmas. Even though it`s fun to get gifts we should always think what the best gift of all is which is salvation and eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Hope you all have a very merry Christmas and have a great time this week. Hope to hear from you all soon!

-Elder Gomez

Transfer Week-Semana 18

Hey everyone!

Transfers were today and I got moved to a new area; Ambato! I had to take a three hour bus drive to get there. I´m going to be a District Leader here so that´s pretty exciting too. My companion Elder Church is staying in Conocoto and a Peruano is coming there to finish his training and Elder Moreano is in the same zone still just moving to a different district. My new companion is Elder Morones who has been here for one transfer so I will be finishing his training (which means I´m his step-father ja ja ja). This area is more in the Andes mountains so it´s a bit more rural and a lot more hills. It sounds like it´s a really nice area and I´m excited to start working. I was pretty sad to leave Conocoto since after being there for four months, it´s felt like home to me and all the members and investigadores have been like family to me. I know though that this is where the Lord needs me to be at this time.

 Elder Morones told me that they´ve had some difficulty here finding investigadores that progress and go to church so this is going to be a bit different from Conocoto where we had a lot of people that progressed. I´m looking forward to working hard though because if we work hard and have the faith the Lord will give us success. 

We had the baptism for the Gomez family this Saturday. It was really great but the older daughter didn´t show up so she couldn´t get baptized. She has some bad friends and influences that it seems like she´s with a lot and her parents and worrying and upset over this. We talked to her yesterday and set goals for her to stop hanging out with these bad influences and find better friends and won´t get into trouble so that she´ll eventually be able to be well prepared for a baptism date.

Well I´m really really excited to start working here and being a DL. We had a lot of success in Conocoto and I know we´re going to have success here. 

Hope to hear from you all soon!

-Elder Gómez

Transfer week

We got an email from Alex today.  He is being transferred to Ambato which is about 3 hours South of Quito and they are making him a District Leader.  Hopefully he will be able to email when he gets there.

Semana 17

Hi everyone!

We`re already coming to the end of another transfer, and this has been the fastest transfer ever. I feel like every week seems to just go by faster and faster. I`m feeling like after 4 months of being here in Conocoto I`ll probably be transfered to another area. It`s kind of sad thinking that because this area has become home to me and I love all the people here, but I feel good about the work we`ve done here.

So I said last week that we had emergency transfers. Elder Collantes was sent to another zone. In place of him we got Elder Moreano. He is from Peru, has 6 months in the mission and is 25 years old. I`ve learned a lot from him about teaching by the spirit and following lesson plans.

We didn`t have the baptism for the family Gomez this Sunday because they had an interview with the mission president`s counselor and he said they need a little more time to work out some family matters. But he talked with them on Sunday after church and everything`s working out. He said that they are all ready to be baptized on the 14th. So we will have 4 baptisms this Saturday; a great way to end this transfer. We visited them yesterday and the mom E told us how over many years they have been trying to find a church and they just hadn`t found what they were looking for. Then once we started coming and teaching them the beginning of October, we and them have seen many changes and miracles in their lives. She was never sure about being baptized in any of the other churches but now she says she is for sure wants to be baptized in this church. It`s so amazing to see these kinds of experiences happen. It makes me really happy that I chose to serve a mission because I`d never have these experiences if I never went. These experiences have been a real testimony and faith builder for me. I know that this church is true and and Jesus Christ lives and this Gospel does change lives. 

Well next week when I write I`ll find out if I`m staying here or going to another area. Until then, hope you all have a great week and stay safe. Hope to hear from you all soon!

-Elder Gómez

Semana 16

Hi everybody!

Today marks five months since I left home, and it`s been the fastest five months of my life. November was the fastest month ever. We only have two more weeks in this transfer as well. The time just keeps getting faster and faster here. When you enjoy the work and your companions and work as hard as you can every day, it goes by super fast. You don`t think about the time and you`re not homesick or ´´trunky.´´ 

In December, the mission president invites all the missionaries over for a Christmas dinner, and we should be finding out the schedule soon for when each companionship gets their turn to go. Also we get to skype the family this Christmas! I`m probably going to have to practice my english! 

We`re seeing the fruits of our labors come forth. The Gomez family has their baptism this Sunday the 8th before church and their daughter has her baptism the 14th. We also have a lot of investigators that are progressing and coming to church. 

I just found out today that we are going to have emergency transfers and Elder Collantes will be leaving tomorrow to Santo Domingo. So now it will just be me and Elder Church for the rest of the transfer. I`m not sure why they did emergency transfers, but it`s kind of sad, because I really love Elder Collantes and he`s such a great missionary. 

It`s been going great here, and with transfers coming in two weeks, I feel like I might be staying here for a fourth transfer. But we`ll just have to wait and see. Hope all is well with all of you back home. Hope to hear from you all very soon! 

-Elder Gómez

Semana 15

Hi everyone! I hope things are all going well for you all. Things are going great here. We`re already in the fourth week of this transfer and November is almost over and I feel like this has been the fastest transfer and month ever.

Well we thought that last week was Thanksgiving so we made mashed potatoes to celebrate. Then we just found out today that it`s this Thursday!

Things are going really great here. After splitting the sector and losing investigadores we`re arising up from the difficulty and the success is coming back. We had six investigators come to church yesterday. The Gómez family has their baptism for the 7th of Diciembre

We had a family home evening last week for the farewell of the bishop`s son who just left on Wednesday for Perú. Their family invited a lot of the members and a lot of their family who aren`t members. The five of us missionaries taught the family home evening and we shared what a mission is and why we go on a mission. It was a great experience. He was really great and we did visits and exchanges with him a lot so we`re really grateful for him and his service. He`s really prepared and will do great. 

Zone Conference was last week and we met with a few other zones and President Ghent and a Seventy were there and gave us a training. It was really cool. We also had a video satelite conference last night where the Area Presidency gave the missionaries and ward councils very good training. They say that we`re in a new era of missionary work and that this is an era as significant as the early events of the Restoration. It`s really exciting to be a part of this. The Area Presidency has received instruction on this new Work of Salvation plan that we have here from the Prophet and Apostles and that we have to work with members like never before. Reactivating less actives is now as important and significant as teaching and baptizing investigators. 

Well that`s all for this week. I hope you guys all have a great week and I can`t wait to hear from you. ¡Buenas Tardes!

-Elder Gomez

Thanksgiving dinner a week early...minus the turkey

Christmas lights in their apartment