Week 34

It has been a very good week! We have been working very hard this week to find some people to teach, and our hard work has worked out quite a bit!  We have 4 people that are all set to get baptized this month. We have 2 for April 4th and 1 for April 18l and 1 for April 25thl!  We are teaching them and they are all coming along very well.

          We are teaching Xavier who is going to be able to get baptized April 4th. He will be                able to go to watch some of General Conference. His cousin was baptized this week            and he was very excited to see that.

We are teaching Guillermo. He was at church this last week and it looked like he liked the church quite a bit. He has a wife and kids that we can hopefully teach too.

          We are teaching Ronaldo. He sells fries and we just started talking to him while we                were waiting for him to cook our fries. He said that he wants to change and he should            be able to get to church this next week.

We are still teaching Miruim. She was sick this week so we were not able to teach her much. She also was not able to go to church because she was sick. Hopefully she will be able to get to church the next week. 

It should be a good week this week. We have a family home evening for every day of the week Monday through Friday.  Hopefully the members will be able to bring some people over to them. I am doing really good and having a good time. Hopefully we will see these 4 investigators at church I hope that everyone has a great week this week!!

Love, Elder Sorensen

                                                   Elder Aliaga

Cuenca

I like to look for Rainbows, whenever there is rain...

At some point,Khristian started saving banana stickers. ( that is a lot of bananas) 

Apparently the best hot dog in the world!

Week 33

Hey guys! I hope that everyone had a great week! I had a pretty good one!

Well Elder Grafton got transferred. He really just switched bedrooms because he still lives in the same house. He is now in Monay a sector that is right by us. My new companion is Elder Aliaga. He is from Peru and has 19 months in the mission. He has been Elder Williams companion so it is pretty cool that we have had the same companion now.

 Well Osvaldo did not get baptized again. We are going to work with him, but we are not sure what is going to happen. We found Miruim this week I do not know if I said anything about her last week. She has a daughter that is 6. She and her daughter went to church this week. It was pretty cool to see them there. She is preparing for April 4th for her baptism.

This has been a slower week. We also had a training with Presidente Torres. It was a very good day and we learned a lot. It was overall a very good day. The rest of the week we spent trying to find Osvaldo. Sorry I don't have a lot to say this week I will have more to say next week! Hope everyone has a great week!!!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 32

Well another week has came and gone! It was a very good week, the only problem was Osvaldo was not able to be baptized. Here is a recap of the week. 

On Tuesday, I had interchanges so I went to the zone leaders district so that one of them could go and interview Osvaldo for his baptism. I had a really good time there.  Elder Flamenco is who I was with. He is from Boston so we talked about Boston a lot haha.  Osvaldo did not get baptized this last week, but he will be this week.  He is very excited and cannot wait for his baptism.  It actually ended up being a blessing that he was not baptized though, because we got the opportunity to talk to his parents.  His parents at first hated us and told Osvaldo if he was baptized they would kick him out of the house. We never had the opportunity to talk to them before, but after the interview they talked to his parents just a little bit. We went back the next day and invited them to church.  They said they probably would not go because they are super catholic. But surprisingly,  on Sunday when we stopped to pick up Osvaldo for church his whole family was ready and we brought his mom and dad and sister as well. They all liked it a lot.

 

We also met a menos activo family this week.  They are very cool and we got them to come back to church. Then last night we went to their house for a family night and they had some friends over too. We taught them about baptism and now they all accepted dates to be baptized.

 

We had 6 people come to church this week. It was definitely a good week for us. Xavier could not go because of work but we are still teaching him. Eddy the guy that was in the hospital is now home and he went to church. He is a member and  he is a very cool guy. His mom and sister are not members and they went to church with them Sunday as well. 

 

Well over all it has been a very good week. It was nice to end the week with 6 people at church! In all we have 9 people that should be going to church for this next week. It should be a good one!

Love, Elder Sorensen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elder Ashton is from Payson (such a small world)

Tres Leches

Week 31 Already 7 Months!!

Hey!

It has been another great week here in Tomebamba. It feels like this week has just flown on by. It did not seem like a week had passed by at all. We worked with Osvaldo and Xavier a lot this week. They are doing really good. Xavier is very excited for his baptism and wants to just get baptized this week. He is also teaching what he has learned with his family and all of his work buddies. He said that a couple of them are very interested and want to hear from us, so we will be teaching them this week. Xavier was not able to attend the church this week but he told us he definitely will be there this next one. He needs to go to church two more times to be baptized. 

Osvaldo is doing really good as well. He attended church and now only needs his interview to be ready for his baptism this Saturday! It should be a good Saturday- because when we have a baptism the week goes by extra good. We are excited for him and he is excited as well. He has a lot of faith and on Saturday we took him to another baptism and it got him even more excited. 

This next week we will be working with a lot of less active members too. We met a lot of families yesterday that are not going to church and so this week we will be visiting them. We have family home evenings scheduled for the next couple of nights with families so it should be nice. 

One thing that is really nice about this ward is there are a lot of people from Venezuela. It is awesome because they actually know about baseball- haha.  It is pretty cool to talk with them about it because there, baseball is what soccer is in Ecuador. They have a lot of cool stories about some player they met. One member even has a signature of Pablo Sandoval

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Well everything else is really good here. We are having a great time and we are working very, very hard. The weeks are going by very fast. I have already been in this area for 3 weeks and it seems like it has been like 3 days I have been here. I hope everyone has a great week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 30

Well it has been a another good week here in Cuenca! We have worked very hard this week and we had our 2 investigators at church so that was good!

Well this week on Monday and Tuesday we had Carnival so we could not leave the house for nothing pretty much. We had 2 hours each day to leave and talk with our investigators then after that we had 9 hours in the house. Those 2 days were very very long days. After that,  the week went by very fast. We have been teaching - Osvaldo and Javier.

Osvaldo is doing good he has been to church 2 times and only needs to go 1 more time. He will be baptized the 7th of March. It will be nice to see him baptized. He is 48 years old and a pretty smart guy.

Javier also went to church for his first time. His Aunt that he lives with is a member and he told us he wanted to be baptized before we invited him. That was a good sign. His only real problem is going to church. He usually works on Sundays, but we are working with him to change his schedule. 

Yesterday was also a Stake Activity- Missionary for a day. All of the young men in the stake left with us for the entire day to see what it is like to be a missionary. We walked a lot and the 2 young men thought that we were crazy for walking that much. They were about to collapse on the ground. 

Our mamita here in Cuenca is very cool. We get a 4 course meals every day. We get a bowl of fruit. Then a bowl of soup, after a main course then  a dessert (mostly a cake). The food is really really good here. On Monday members said that they would bring us guinea pig but they forgot. We were really excited for it too. 

Well that is about it for this week. We worked hard and are pretty tired, but ready for another week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Cuenca at Night

Week 29

Well I am now in a new area called Tomebamba in Cuenca. I got transferred on Tuesday. My companion is Elder Grafton from California. I am now a District Leader as well. I am doing really good. Cuenca is very pretty. There are a lot of parks and grass. They also have Peanut butter so that is nice. I am doing good though  I do not have a lot of time to write because it is Carnival and we have to be inside all day today and tomorrow. So, I will write more next week. I hope that everyone has an awesome week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

WEEK 28

Hey! I hope everyone is doing great! I have had a really good week!

Well Arturo did get baptized, and it was a very good baptism! A lot of people ended up going, and it was cool to see the branch supporting him. His son Alex came a little late, but he did come to the baptism. He thought it was cool, and we have been teaching him a lot the last couple of days. We bought some chocolate cake for the baptism, and it ended up being a great night.

Other news, Mario and Maria were out of town again, and not able to go. They were supposed to be baptized this week, but we will now have to push it back. Hopefully they will go this week and can be baptized the following week. We were not able to teach them much this week because they have been super busy. Hopefully this week will be better.

Vinicio ended up going to church and he likes it a lot. He told us after, that he will be coming every Sunday, so that was some good news. He will be baptized next week as well if he gets to church this Sunday. He said he would be coming, and hopefully we can get his family to the church with him this Sunday. 

 

Alba had been busy this week too, so we did not visit her that much. Hopefully this week will be a lot better and we will be able to get her and her daughter to church again.

 

We also have been visiting the less active family. They were already to go to church yesterday, but the member did not show up, to pick them up. We are teaching their son, Jose and he has a baptismal date as well, but he did not go to church, so we will see what happens with them. 

 

We also have a lot of other people we are teaching, but did not go to church this Sunday.

 

On Saturday we had a little training, with President Torres. It was a nice training, and we learned a lot. On Saturday was the district Priesthood conference, so he was already in town, and we had our meeting. 

 

Well not a lot more to really talk about. I hope you guys all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Sorensen

***The address for letters and packages has changed- I updated it over to the right- the  change is in red**







I am so grateful to the sweet sister that cooks for my missionary!