Week 13 Squid and Aliens!!

Hey everyone! I hope you guys all had a great week!

I have had a pretty good week this week! We got a lot of lessons taught and have some investigators, now we just have to get them to attend church! 

 

The first part of the week we got 2 new Elders who moved into our house. Elder Huayamacari from Peru has 20 months on the mission and is very cool. The other is Elder Grafton from California. He is in the group just after me, so now I am not the newest missionary in the mission! There are now some missionaries newer than us! It has been nice to have some more people in the house to talk to since Elder Thomlinson and Elder Thomson left. 

 

The food has been pretty regular this week. A lot of beans, rice and meat! On Saturday we had some kind of soup that had Squid in it, so that is probably the oddest thing I have had here. It really was pretty good though so I can`t complain about it. Yesterday I also had a new kind of drink that is verdes crushed with milk, but it was not too bad either.

 

 

We met this guy on the street the other day that called us over to talk to him. He had been drinking a lot and said some pretty funny stuff to us.  He asked me what I though about aliens. I replied with I don`t know and then he said, "I have seen 2 aliens here in Ecuador and they looked exactly like you! You are an alien!"  He then started to laugh and walked away. It was a pretty funny experience.

 We have six investigators that we are all teaching right now, but every single one of them has one problem or another that makes it so we can`t baptize them. The most common is that they are not married, but live with their girlfriend or boyfriend. It is really common here, and it stinks because it makes it hard to get baptized!  Others need permission from their parents, but their parents won`t give them permission and stuff like that. They are all super good people, and they want to be baptized!  We also have one other guy we are teaching that is named Vincinte. He is a very cool guy, his son just got baptized and he wants to know about the church.  7 years ago he got in a car crash and he his paralyzed from the chest down, but he is so happy all the time and he is definitely motivating.  Even though we have some hard times, there are definitely people that have it a lot harder!

 

That is really all for this week! I hope everyone has an awesome week!

Elder Sorensen

Week 12

Hey!

I hope everyone is doing good! I am doing great!

This week has been a pretty good one! It went by very fast and we had a lot of work to get done. 

First thing is the other Elders in our house were transferred, so now it's only Elder Herrera and me in the house. It is definitely a lot quieter because I can only speak Spanish with him, but it has been good for me to learn Spanish. It is transfers today too, but I am pretty sure that I will be staying here with my companion. 

On Friday we had a missionary training with our zone and one other zone. For the training, they had 3 missionaries who will be leaving this week teach us some of the stuff they have learned throughout their time here in Ecuador. I learned a lot from it and it definitely helped me become a better missionary. I also got to see a couple of my old pals from the CCM, so that was nice. 

Saturday we  had a kind of food that was not that good. Up until Saturday I had loved all the food we have eaten, even though I can barely eat all of it everyday, because they feed us mountains of rice. On Saturday we had some kind of fish soup that I did not really like. I think on weekends the fish is cheaper or something, because we always have fish on Saturday and Sunday. We also had some kind of beet salad with mayo. I did not really love that too much either. The texture was different.  I had some more McDonalds on Tuesday, so they cancel themselves out! 

Today, my companion needed to print some pictures out from his past 4 months, so we went to the mall to print them out. The mall is very big and it was cool to see that they have things here that are similar to the US. In my area it is all small houses and small little stores. There is nothing else, so it is nice to see some other parts of Ecuador every once and a while!

We keep finding people to teach, but it is very hard to get them to church. There is always a ton of parties every Saturday night and they spend the whole night at parties and don't want to go to church in the morning. That is probably the hardest right now. If we can get more people to church we can baptize more!!! Last night we had a pretty good lesson with a member though. She has been deciding if she should go on a mission or not, and so she wanted to talk to us. When we talked to her at first she said , there was no way she was going, but by the end of our lesson she said she wants to go! She was not an investigator, but it was definitely a good lesson!

That is really all for this week! It has been a quick one, but a good one! I hope everyone has a good week!! 

Elder Sorensen

**Hey guys,  Khristian's birthday is Nov 8th.  I am sure he would love an e-mail from you all!  

Last day together before transfers

Week 11

Hey guys! I hope everyone is doing good!

I have had a great week! We are starting to find some people who want to be baptized and listen to our message. We have one guy that said he wanted to be baptized and the date was on Nov. 8th, so he could be baptized on my birthday!!! I can`t think of a better Birthday present! We have worked very hard this week and it has been nice to see the hard work paying off. 

We cooked a lot of food this week, and it has been nice to eat the things that I want to. I think I have made every kind of dish you could possibly make with eggs, but I am still loving them so hopefully I never get sick of them! We made some pretty good  breakfast burritos the other day with hotdogs and scrambled eggs. It is nice to eat an  American dish every now and then. 

 

There was not a transfer this last week, so it is still us 4 in the house. We are thinking that maybe this next week will be the transfer, but then again we may still be together for this next week. To say goodbye to us, a family got us a cake and said goodbye to the best 4 missionaries they have ever had. One of the members of the family is inactive, and has not been to church in 10 + years, but because of us she has gone the last two weeks and plans on going to church every week for now on. It is very cool to see the work we are doing paying off, and to see how much happier they are because of this gospel!
 
 

There has been a constant pattern with the weather here that is kind of unusual. During the week it is super hot during mid-day, and pretty hot in the night, but on weekends it always seems to be overcast.  The people here think it is super chilly, but it is really the perfect temperature. They think that 70 degrees is cold haha!

That is really all for this week! I hope everyone has a fantastic week and can`t wait to here from you guys next week!

Elder Sorensen

 

I love the ketchup smiley face :)

Week 10

Hey! Another week has come and gone!!! It has been a very good one and conference the last two days capped off the week!

First off, we have been teaching a lot of people, but they are not getting anywhere. We had 4 people this last week say they wanted to be baptized and we taught a couple of lessons, but when it came time for them to attend church they did not, so they probably will not be making it far. The people all want to be baptized, but they are not willing to do anything, but listen to our messages.

The food this week was all pretty good. We had the usual everyday. Rice and some beans, and of course a little bit of meat as well. I've have had rice every day for lunch for about a month now, but it is still pretty good and I have not gotten sick of it. We did stop at McDonalds on Tuesday for lunch because our Mamita could not cook for us. It was nice to have some American food!

It was also Elder Thomlinson`s birthday this week. He is one of the other Elders that lives with us. They are in the same area as us, so we threw a birthday party for him at a members house. It was a lot of fun and they have  a crazy tradition here that you get whipped once for every year you are old, so in a month I will be getting whipped 19 times I guess!  (Khristian's birthday is Nov 8th!)

Conference was really good! It is a cool experience to watch it differently way than how I usually watch it. It was all in Spanish, so it was very difficult for me to understand everything,  but I could get the message of their talks. On Saturday we watched the sessions at a members house because if we don`t have investigators we can`t go to the church & watch it. It was a lot harder to focus and listen to the talks. It was cool though because Elder Martinez-that spoke in Spanish in the 2nd session on Sunday, had came and talked to us at the MTC. It was cool to see him during Conference because we had just listened to him a couple weeks earlier in person. On Sunday we had some investigators come with us and so we watched Conference at the church. It was a lot easier to focus on the talks. Overall Conference was very good! I loved Elder Bednar`s talk because it was perfect for us missionaries especially with our investigators there listening!

This next week Ecuador plays the US in soccer - that is what one of the members told us, so it should be fun to hear how it goes. In the ward there are 3 gringos and then my companion who is from Columbia, so we have a little wager that if US wins then he owes us pizza, and if Ecuador wins then we buy pizza for him. It should be fun!

I hope everyone has a good week! 

Elder Sorensen

Verdes-they are like Plantains, they are squished and fried, and some scrambled.  A member saw them walking by and had them come in and eat.

Birthday party for Elder Thomlinson 

Cooking at a members house. They made Arepas- they are tortillas with meat inside 

A bus that tried to pass a truck and ended up on the divider! It got impatient and went to the wrong side of the road and it was just a mess

This is how much the 4 of them drink in a week.