Week 9

Hey!

I don`t have a whole lot of stuff to say this week because we spent most of it  knocking on doors trying to find people without much luck,  but here are some of the highlights from this week.

 

The food is still tasting good to me so that is always a plus!  Every single day we have eaten something that I liked.  For breakfast I have had cereal every day and it is still probably my favorite meal to eat because it is the same as it is back home.  We also have a lot of clementines  because you can get 25 of them for a dollar, so they are super cheap and all the people give us a couple when we go to their house.  Bananas are also cheap you can get 20 of them for a dollar, but more people have clementines so that's what we eat more of. The bakeries here are also awesome!  Their fresh rolls are the best.  Whenever we walk by one and they have hot ones they are awesome.  I also had some sugar cane. It was kind of weird because you just bite the cane and suck on it and you get a sugary water kind of stuff - I didn`t like it that much.
 

 We knocked on a ton of different doors. Every single house we went to said that they were Catholic and did not want to hear from us. They were long exhausting days. There is one guy that wants to be baptized, but he did not come to church and it is hard to teach him because he is never home.
 

On Saturday we had our first English class where we taught the members some English. It is only an hour long so it is hard to teach them. We more or less just taught them how to say hello and stuff, to introduce themselves. 
 

Last night we ate some hamburgers at a members house. We had a family home evening at their house, it was definitely nice to have!
 

There is not much more to talk about. This week flew by and most of it was spent knocking on doors! I hope everyone has a good week!

 

Love,   Elder Sorensen

Week 8

Hey guys another week has gone by! It has been a good week! We got a lot done and I keep on learning more and more Spanish! It seems like just yesterday I was writing you guys and it is here again!

This week we baptized two more people. Xiamara  (Ariel`s sister) and Yannina. Yannina`s was very cool because her family has been members for a while, but she never did get baptized. She has met with the missionaries for the last year but, would never commit to getting baptized. Then on Tuesday, our district leader decided to just do the baptismal interview with her, because she has received all of the lessons and goes to church every week. After he did, she agreed to getting baptized, but she did not tell anyone in her family. We all kept it a secret too. Then on Saturday she just walked in with her baptismal clothes on and to see the face of all of her family was very cool! It is definitely the coolest experience so far!

The food is pretty good. I have not gotten sick of rice and beans yet so hopefully I can make it for 2 years! We had KFC last P-day for lunch and then on Tuesday night we had some Pizza Hut because it is buy one get one free. Other than that though I have lived off  of cereal and eggs, and the lunch that we get every day. The meals that they give us are huge so it is tough to get it all down and it leaves us stuffed for the rest of the day. We also drink so much soda here! Every house we go to they run and get us coca cola at the store and so I have had more of that in the last two weeks then ever before! Then the fresh juices they give us are all really good as well!  Yesterday we had some Dorado which is a kind of fish that I like.  (Dorado is like Mahi Mahi)

I also got to do a guys English homework the other day. It was a big 120 problem assignment so I pretty much did it for him. It was all the English we would do in first grade so it was pretty easy!

We get around by walking a lot.   If it is kind of far away then we take the bus, it is a quarter and if it's farther away we take a taxi- it's about a dollar.

The weather has been super hot. It is hard to find a way to cool off. You go inside houses and it is even hotter inside. On Friday and Saturday it was unbearably hot everywhere. Then yesterday it got shady and started to rain so that was nice. The rain here so far is kind of weak. It is so humid that you really don`t feel it. It is more like walking through misters as it rains.

Khristian's Zone

Everyone that attended the baptisms this week

Lunch at a sweet members house.

GOOD = All the fresh juices we have for lunches

BETTER= The Family Pena's lunch.  She is such a good cook!

BEST=  The baptisms!

Well that is about all for this week! ! Have a good week everyone!

Elder Sorensen

Week 7 Off To A Great Start!

Hey guys!

Well I am now in Ecuador! How is everything going back at home?
 

My companion and trainer is Elder Herrera. He is from Columbia and speaks very little English! But it is all good because it makes me learn Spanish even more!  He is very cool. He helps me a lot and he has been in the area for a month already so he knows everything. I am doing good here.  It is very hot in the day, but during the night it can get pretty cold. It is perfect when I try to sleep. 
 

The food is very good here! Everything that we have eaten I have liked a lot. It is usually rice and beans with some kind of meat, and it really fills you up! On Thursday they gave us so much food that we could not even eat it!  Yesterday we had some ceviche or something like that. It had shrimp in it. It was pretty good definitely a different taste then what I am used to. Overall the food is really good. For breakfast and dinner I just make some eggs and toast real fast because the members make us so much food for lunch. 
 

My area is Venticinco de Julio. It is in the city of Guayaquil and I really like the people and members in the ward. So far everyone that I have met is awesome! There is one little kid named Diego that is like my best friend. He has never seen somebody with blue eyes before and so whenever he sees me he runs up just to look into my eyes. On Friday we had a talent show night where we had to sing and everyone else sang and it was a lot of fun. We have 4 total missionaries in our ward because is it growing so much.
 

On Friday I had my first 2 baptisms.  I really had nothing to do with teaching them, but my companion had me baptize them, so that was pretty cool. The little boy is only eight years old and he has already read the Book of Mormon. We also are baptizing his sister this next week!

 

Our apartment is pretty big in one way, but also narrow. We have to fit 4 beds in it,so it is pretty difficult to get everyone to fit there but we managed. Elder Tomlinson that was in the CCM with me is one of the other 2 missionaries in our area so it is nice. We both are learning everything around here together, and  it gives me somebody to speak English with. The showers are very cold, so since the ice bucket challenge is going on back at home, really everyday I am doing it when I take a shower.

We had church yesterday and it was ward conference and I really did not understand much at all. We then had the ward council meeting and it was great. It went on for quite a while, but it was good. 

 

Last thing was there was the big rivalry game between Barcelona and Emmulek last night. It is probably bigger than Red Sox and Yankees because how fanatical all of the fans are. The whole city was either in Blue or Yellow jerseys. Barcelona won 1 to 0 and you could sure tell when they scored their goal. The City erupted with a roar. It was pretty fun to see how passionate everyone is. 

Well that is all for my first week in Ecuador. I like it a lot and I will definitely make it for 2 years! Hope everyone has a good week and hear from you guys next week!

 

Love, Elder Sorensen

**I updated Khristian's address**  (over on the right hand side)
      Email is the same  :)

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, 32 new missionaries arrived in in Guayaquil South Mission.  From the airport, they went over to the Guayaquil Temple for a picture. 

First Baptisms

Elder Sorensen and Elder Herrera

First Apartment

Week 6 WHERE IN ECUADOR IS ELDER SORENSEN?

Khristian sent this letter & pictures late Monday night before he left for the airport to fly to Ecuador. I've been waiting to post to see if we would hear from him once he got there, we finally got a letter from his Mission President a few minutes ago. He arrived in his new area today.  He is in the La Pradera Zone and his companion is Elder Herrera. We can't wait to hear more next week!

Hey guys!

Well I am now done here at the CCM! We leave in 2 and a 1/2 hours to go to the Airport. We fly out at 2:30 in the morning! We go to Columbia and then have a two hour layover and then go to Ecuador! It will be awesome! We have had an awesome week here, but it has also been super hard because I feel so overwhelmed with all the stuff I still need to get done before I go to Ecuador. 

My spanish is getting better and better each week. It will be a real adventure once I get to Ecuador! We have 2 new Spanish Elders again in our dorms and they are awesome to us. One is from Mexico and the other is from El Salvador. They are really cool and we talk with them from 9:30 to 10:30 every night. It has helped my spanish out a lot.  It's great to be able to talk to them with words that do not relate to the church. I feel like I am going to get to Ecuador and only know words relating to the Gospel, so it will be hard to communicate anything outside of that. 

This week we got our pictures taken, for the farewell video we have every Sunday. It was pretty sweet to see us up there after watching 5 weeks worth of others going out. We were the big guys on campus here and it was pretty sweet to know that we had been here the longest. Everyone in our branch is going to miss us because we were the favorites with everyone. We also got a new Branch President this last week. He is a very cool guy and it is too bad that we got him only for our last week. Today we had to say goodbye to our 2 teachers Hermano Vargas and Hermano Polo, it was sad to say goodbye to them, but they know that the best is yet to come. 

Well other than that this week was pretty ordinary! I leave tonight to go and can´t wait! It is time to start the real phase of missionary work! Everything is the real deal now! Everyone have an awesome week this week and I will hear from you guys next week!

Love,  Elder Sorensen

Elder Christiansen, Elder Williams, Elder Sorensen

Elder Sorensen & Elder Ferreira

Wildcats Baseball Reunion!  Elder Perkins, Elder Ferreira, Elder Sorensen

I'm pretty sure they never went hungry..

New Elders from Mexico and El Salvador

As goofy as they get....

WEEK 5 Christmas in August!

Hey everyone! How are you all doing?
 
     I have had a pretty good week 5 and now we are on our last week here at the CCM! This last week went by very fast and there was not a whole lot that went on. We have studied a lot this week to get ready for Ecuador.  I think everyone is starting to get stressed that it is about time to go to Ecuador. Our Spanish is all getting a lot better and it has been nice to see all the progress that we have made. Elder Kwak and I have gotten pretty good at teaching the lessons. It is very difficult however because they only give us 15 minutes to teach each day, and that is not enough time to teach. It seems like as soon as we answer any questions that they have, it is time to close. It is a pretty cool feeling though to understand just about 100% of what they are saying in a completely different language. For me it is a lot easier to understand what they are saying than for me to talk, but I am progressing every week. Elder Kwak is really good at speaking Spanish he just does not understand a lot of it, so I act as a translator for him most of the time. 

   We had our Christmas in August last Tuesday night and it was a lot of fun! We all bought each other presents and then acted out the birth of Jesus. We had a lot of fun with it and got into some pretty good costumes to act it out. It was nice to just take some time off studying and just have some fun. We also had a great devotional that night.

    There was a pretty cool answer to my prayers this last week. An Elder in our district has been having a hard time learning Spanish and a tough time just being here.  Our teachers were starting to realize that he really needed help. This was last Wednesday. I had a meeting with our 2 teachers and we decided that we would pray that night and tomorrow we would talk about what we should do. That night I prayed that he would receive something that would help him feel the love and support back home. Well the next day we went to gym and before we go to Gym we check the mailbox everyday. I do not know why we check it before gym because never once has there ever been mail before gym. Well this time there was 3 pieces of paper which usually mean there is a package for somebody. Well all 3 of these were for the Elder, from his parents. I think the whole district was more happy for him then he actually was, but since then he has really brightened up and seems to be having a lot more fun here. It was a really cool experience to see and definitely strengthened my testimony. 

    Not much really went on this week, we lost our 2nd set of Spanish Elders from our apartment, but they were nowhere as good as the first ones were. We are now in our last week to get ready to go to Ecuador. I don´t know what time we will be leaving yet, we receive our flight plans on Thursday. If we leave on Monday then we will be able to write on Saturday night. If we leave Tuesday then we get to write on Monday night. 

I hope everyone has a great week and look forward to hearing from you guys next week!

Elder Sorensen

Khristian's GOOD- BETTER- BEST for the week...

GOOD= Christmas in August

BETTER= The week went by super fast!

BEST= When I prayed for inspiration and the Elder got his packages from home.



The Nativity -MTC/CCM style.
I love the gifts the Wiseman brought.

Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus.

The Angels visiting a Shepherd.

The Shepherds visiting Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus.  The Angels too.

Sunshine!