Week 26 SIX MONTHS!

Hey!  

 

Well it was another week of hard work here in Piñas. We talked to a lot of people and met some pretty cool people as well. Elder Pollock and I went to Portovelo almost everyday because we seem to have a lot more success there. When we are in Portovelo everyone will talk to us, but in Piñas we just hear "I am busy come again another time". So we like it a lot more in Portovelo.

 

Mario and Maria were in Guayaquil this week so they were not able to go to church, but they should be there this next week. That will be their 3rd time going so in about two weeks they could be baptized. Hopefully it all goes according to plan. Mario is very sure that he wants to be baptized. Maria not so much. We are working as a team with Mario as we teach to try to convince her. On Wednesday we are having another family night with them. While they are in Guayaquil they are buying some root beer and we will be having a root beer float party, we are pretty excited. Our last family night with them was very cool. We made some cookies and cooked them at their house. It was nice to have some cookies from the U.S.

Arturo did go to church yesterday. He has gone to church 2 times now too, so this next week will be his 3rd time. Everything should be good to get him baptized on the 7th with Mario and Maria-hopefully! We are pretty excited to teach him because he keeps on telling us of more and more people that he is sharing the gospel with too. He said next week he is bringing one of his friends to church, and last week he brought his brother.

Well this week we had some pretty good food too. Our Mamita made us some really good French bread, and we had some pretty good chicken. She does not like to cook us a lot of rice because she knows we do not like it a whole lot, so that is nice too!

 

Well that is all for this week, I hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Sorensen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 25 Best Week Yet!

Hey how is everyone doing? 

It was another very good week here in Piñas! Probably the best week yet!! We had some good lessons with Mario and Maria, and also found another new investigator in Portovelo.  His name is Arturo .He has a baptismal date for the 14th! We also found a bug that I've never been seen before. It looks like a giant ant, with wings and is as big as my hand... It was very scary. We had some spaghetti this week to, so that was a little different!

Mario and Maria are progressing very well! They went to church this last week so Mario has been twice and this was Maria's first time. They really only need one more time going to church and they can be baptized! The only problem is they will be in Guayaquil next Sunday so we will have to wait one more week after that... So they should be baptized on the 14th of Feb. We are going to their house tonight for a family night and Maria will be making us some tacos. We are pretty excited about that!

We also found Arturo this week. He is a 60 year old miner. He is a very cool guy. It is a miracle that we found him!  He was at church too and has a baptismal date for the 14th as well. He has a son named John that has some brain damage. We had a pretty cool lesson with him yesterday. We went to his house just planning on teaching him a little about the Book of Mormon, but has soon as we started with a prayer we thought we needed to teach lesson 2 (the plan of salvation.) It ended up being an awesome lesson that was completely guided by the spirit. 

These are the 3 investigators that will be getting baptized pretty definitely. They are all very cool people. We also have another family that did not make it but they are very cool too. They own a chicken and fries shop. We went there to buy fries and taught them. After that, they invite us every night to go and eat there as we teach. They won't ever let us pay and we feel pretty bad about it. They always insist that we don't pay. They are some of the most charitable people I have ever met. Some nights when we don't go in they get mad at us because they had already prepared our plates.

Well that is all for this week I hope you guys all have a good one!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 24

Hey guys!

Hope that you guys have all had a great week because I have had a very good one!

We are still teaching Mario. He and his wife are very cool and Mario knows a lot about the church. Oh and another cool thing is that they can both speak English fluently! They want to practice their English so they have us teach and talk to them all in English. It is pretty cool to do. He also used to have the Singles Ward song track, so he was singing us Book Of Mormon stories in English it was pretty cool. Him and his wife have baptismal dates for the 14th of February, but they only need to go to church 2 more times,  so the date can be moved forward very easily. Mario really wants to be baptized, but his wife Maria, is not too sure. But she seems like she is liking the church more and more with our lessons.

We also have a couple of other investigators, that we are teaching, but they did not come to church, so we are going to find out what happened, and what we can do to help them. This last week we went to Porto Velo a lot. It is a little town outside of Pinas. Everyone that works there are Miners. It is a cool little Miner town. 

We also are going to start having only one Mamita cooking for us everyday for lunches. It is a new rule the mission is doing. We chose Maria a lady in the ward that has a son on a mission is Brazil. She always makes really good food. This last week she made us a really good fruit salad.

Well, that is about it for this week. I hope everyone has a really good week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 23 5 Months!

Hey! How was everyones new year? It was pretty crazy here in Ecuador!

Well it was a good week here in Piñas. We found a lot of new people to teach and we brought 4  to church so that was pretty good. We also had a guy just show up to the church that we had not seen before and he ended up being a really cool guy. The members have helped us a little more than the last couple of weeks and with their help we were able to have more success.

The guy that showed up to church is Mario. He is a really cool guy. He lives in Porto Velo which is a little city outside of Piñas but is in our area. It takes about 20 minutes in a car to get there. We talked with him a little bit during church and scheduled an appointment to go meet him and his wife at their house a little after church. It was a really good lesson and him and his wife are very cool people. They will be meeting us at the church tomorrow for another lesson and we will try to put a baptismal date down with them. 

 

We also had a couple of other people come to church. Well 3 others, but they all need permission for us to baptize them because they are under 18 years old.  We also put a baptismal date down with a guy named Luis. He is 21 and an old investigator of Elder Pollock, when he was here before. He was not able to come to church, but we should be able to get him there the next week.

We had New Year's also this week. They celebrate it pretty crazy here in Ecuador. They all make these huge paper statues. In Piñas they are not as big, but in like Guayaquil some are as big as houses.  Once the clock strikes midnight, they burn all of them. We did not see it, because we had to be inside at 6 pm, for the 31st and the 1st.  There was absolutely nobody outside during these 2 days. I think we ended up talking to like a total of 5 people each day, because there was nobody to talk to. 

 

There was not much more that went on this week. We had a good week bringing people to church. If we can bring them 2 more times and get permiso (Spanish) then we can have some good baptisms on the 31st of January. 

Well I hope that everyone has a very good week!

Elder Sorensen

Week 22

Hey! How is everyone doing? Did you guys have a good Christmas?

I am doing good! It was another good week here in Piñas. We taught and invited a lot of people! Every single day we focused on inviting 8 or more people to be baptized. Not very many said yes, but we found a couple of people that we can teach. One is a pretty good family that hopefully will decide to be baptized. We continue to work hard if we could only get a little help from the members we could have some baptisms! 

Christmas was good. We talked to our families without any problems and then had to be inside by 7 so the day went by fast. We will have to be in early on New Years eve as well so we will probably have another week go by pretty fast. There is not a lot of things to write about for this week.  

Yesterday we got a call in the night and Elder Margos got transferred, so this morning we went to Guayaquil to go drop him off and pick up my new companion. We had like a 10 hour bus ride so it has been quite a long day. My companion is now Elder Polloc he is from Washington. We now have a house of 4 gringos. I don't know if that has ever happened before so it should be pretty fun! Well I hope everyone has a great New Years! 

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 21 Merry Christmas!

Hey! 

It has been a very very good week here in Ecuador! Not really very successful but definitely one of the best weeks here on the mission. 

The reason it was so good this week is because President Torres gave us a pretty great Christmas present. On Tuesday Morning we got a phone call that we needed to pack up an extra pair of clothes and get to Guayaquil because we were going through the Temple on Wednesday. So we got our stuff all packed hopped on a 6 hour bus and made our way to Guayaquil. Not only was the temple super super cool but I saw a lot of the people from my district and it was nice to catch up with them. We had like 4 zones that went through so there was quite a bit of us. The temple has like its own hotel right outside of it so we slept there on Tuesday night.  In the morning we went through the temple than hopped back on the bus to get back to Piñas. It was quite a journey, but a lot of fun. Wednesday night was also the Barcelona Emmelec game. It ended in a tie, but it was 1 to 0 for Emmelec in the last few minutes I guess that Barcelona scored, and the city erupted in cheers. It was at like 945 so we were getting ready for bed, and it was pretty crazy to hear the screams. On Sunday they played again for the Championship. Emmelec ended up winning. We were in our Consejo de Rama while the game was going on but you could tell when it ended because for the next 60 minutes we heard nothing but car horns. It was pretty crazy. 

The rest of the week was kind of a tough one though. We invited 8 people to be baptized everyday and a lot of them said yes. But on Sunday the day where you find out if they are serious or not, they did not show up. The family we are teaching went on a trip and so they could not show up either. It was kind of a bummer, but at the same time we ended the week feeling pretty good. This week we did everything possible to get people and investigators to church, but they always have their agency to choose whether or not they will go. 

Sunday was a good day in church though. The 4 missionaries  here had the talks, so we all gave talks on Christ. There is not very many members here so the missionaries I guess usually have a talk once a month. It went pretty well and I hope that most of them got my message. 

Well That is about all for this week. It has been a week of hard work. We are doing all we can and thats all we can do. Looking forward to a great Christmas week and I hope that everyone has the best Christmas yet!

Love, Elder Sorensen

  Temple Trip - Back with some Elders from the MTC.  They look so Happy!

Sunrise in Ecuador

Week 20

Hey! How is everybody doing? It has been another great week here in Piñas! We have been working hard and found a couple more people to teach! Hopefully we can bring them all to church this Sunday!

 

Last Tuesday we found a family to start teaching.  They  have 2 kids. Their daughter is 12 years old and she is very smart. She has read the entire Bible. I don't think there are many 12 year olds that have done that! They also have a 5 year old boy that loves to play soccer. We taught them a little on Tuesday, but then had a lesson with them on Friday. It was a really good lesson. It was really the first time that I have a had a lesson where a whole family has just sat down and listened. It was really cool to finally be teaching a complete family. They were not able to go to church this Sunday, but we are hoping that they will be able to make it this next Sunday. We have plans to go teach them tomorrow with the Branch President, so it should be a very good lesson. 

We also have been teaching like a 23 year old guy named Avanto . He is one of the members best friends. He was not able to make it to church this week because he went to the Barcelona game in Quito, but hopefully we can get him this next week. He is reading the Book of Mormon and has a lot of questions, so that is always good! 

 

The is also a pretty cool thing going on in Ecuador this Wednesday. If you guys all want to be doing the same thing as every Ecuadorian will be doing this Wednesday night you can watch the Barcelona and Emmelec  Soccer game. It is the championship of the Ecuadorian League and not very often the 2 teams meet up for the Championship. When they play in the regular season it is pretty crazy so it will be super crazy when they are playing in the finals! They play this Wednesday and Saturday. Whenever one of the teams scores the entire city erupts with roars. It is pretty cool to see how passionate they are for these 2 teams!

 

Not really much going on other than these things. We had a lot of lessons with Antonio too. I had a good conversation with him for about 45 minutes just him and I. It was pretty cool to be able to talk with somebody in a different language, and actually understand it for the most part. I can't wait to see how my Spanish will be in another couple of months!

Well that is all for this week everyone have a good week! Christmas is close!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Khristian sent  these pictures but didn't say what kind of fruit it was.  So of course I googled it-  I think it is called a Granadilla.  It was from one of the member's tree.