Note: The first paragraph was copied from a letter sent by Skylar's Mom.
Hello From Ecuador!!!,
I'm sure your week has been eventful and very exciting! What's it like to be completely on your own? What's it like to prepare your own meals? Do they have Ramen?:) jk. How many people have you taught? any baptisms yet? :) jk! Who's your companion? Where is he from? I'm so excited to hear what Ecuador is like and all about your first week...! Are you wearing your flip-flops? :) How are your shoes and socks working for you? Have you tried your barefoot shoes? What do you think? Do the members feed you daily or do you have to fix most of your meals?
Sis. Benedict told me today that Columbia had a 7.1 earthquake today. Did you feel any aftershocks?
First to answer all your questions. No actually I don't have to cook any of my meals. I don't know if they have ramen because I haven't looked. We have taught....I don't know, 10 people? Yes we had baptisms! 2 Jenny and Diana. They are 12 and 8 years old. Their mom isn't a member but they were golden my companion said. They already had a baptismal date when I got here so I've only taught them once. I baptized Jenny. I'll send pictures next week. My companion is Elder Salazar, from Quatemala. He speaks fluent english, which is a blessing lol. Yes I'm wearing flip flops and doing all the things that I'm supposed to and not doing all the things I'm not. Shoes and socks are working well. We don't cook at all. We have bread, yogurt and fruit for breakfast, we have what is called a Mom-ita, who cooks us a lunch every day. They change every day.
So my first day in Ecuador/ the mission field was...eventful. The people here eat insane amounts of food. A decent bowl of soup followed by a plate full of rice and meat, then something else like dessert or fruit. And they want you to eat all of it....but luckily they understand when you can't eat all of it....except on the coast; apparently they get affended if you don't eat it all. And they give you even more there....glad I'm not there lol. So I ate it all and then I felt sick and almost threw up, then half an our later....I threw up lol. First day and I barf =), fun. I forgot to describe my area. It's about 1.5 hours away (by bus, always a bus) from Quito. It's a smaller town called Yaruqui. It's not too ghetto luckily lol. It's a pretty friendly town with good members. So mostly we do study and stuff until 12:00 (until 12 for the first 12 weeks in the field), but normally you only go to 11:00. Then we got out and teach. We normally have 2-5 appointments per day with either investigators, less actives, or members. We visit members to strengthen our relationship with them and get references. It's a pretty good system. So on I think...Friday...? After we ate lunch (around 2:00) we went out tracting for a hour. My companion said that it's not really effective to go tracting at this hour because people are preparing lunch and stuff. First door, not interested. Second door, an old lady poked her head our of a window on the second story and after we intruduced ourselves she said she would throw the key down to us to unlock the door.....weird....So she threw it down and we went in. We found out she has Parkinsons and has a hard time walking, so that's why she threw the key....ahh....makes sense now. =) We got started and she said that she had 2 brothers that were members and that she had been Catholic her whole life. We were teaching and she seemed really interested. So I invited her to be baptized and she said yes! Wow. But the only problem is that she wants her brother to baptize her....and he's on a mission....so we're going to have to try and work around that somehow....I'm amazed though at how prepared some people are to recieve the Gospel. After only 1 visit, an old lady who had been Catholic her whole life, accepted baptism. Awesomeness.
The other interesting thing that happened this week was on saturday, baptism day. The first thing.....lunch....it was....gulp....bull hoove and bull...here it is....half a ball. EEEKKK!!! The soup it's self was good. But I couldn't bring myself to eat the...you know what...And that's not all! After the soup there was the plate of meat and rice. The meat had 2 lovely hairs in it....of course....So that was lunch. =)The baptism went great and started an hour late (latin standard time). There were around 15 people there that were there to support, which was good. Then we went over to their...humble home for dinner. Their home is pretty ghetto. Cement walls and cement floors that are dirty, also everything in the house is dirty too. They have a slanted cement slab over a cement tub. On which they do dishes and laundry. The tub fills with water "clean" and then there is a drain at the bottom of the cement slab that drains into who knows what....This is what they use. They also have like...20 guinea pigs. We'll get to them later, dun dun dun....So dinner chicken soup with a chicken toe in it, YEAH! And then after the soup.....guinea pig. Bwahahahaha!! My companion said it was good, but I was too full to eat the plate of food.
Sunday was good. Of course everything is in spanish, and I understood most of it. About 60 members were there, which is pretty good for here apparently. Afterwards we went over to a members house brother and sister Bolivio's house. The food was really good. And, I ate all the food =). Woot. Then we went out and taught less active members for the rest of the day, about 5 hours. We went with 3 other awesome members of the ward. We taught one self-reactivated member who had been inactive for 15 years. He said he knows that the Book of Mormon is true and that the prophet's are true, but doesn't know if this is the only true church. So we taught him to pray to be able to know that the church is true. I told him that I thought that he knows the church is true, but just can't recognize that he knows it, and that he can pray to be able to recognize that he knows it.
So yeah....it's great here....And if whoever wants to write more, feel free. I have an hour to write now and I have plenty of time to read lol. The spanish is coming along great. Some people I can understand everything they say, others...not a word lol. It's the different accents, mumbling, or their just old and I can't understand them sometimes lol.
Ciao,
Elder Black (Negro)
First to answer all your questions. No actually I don't have to cook any of my meals. I don't know if they have ramen because I haven't looked. We have taught....I don't know, 10 people? Yes we had baptisms! 2 Jenny and Diana. They are 12 and 8 years old. Their mom isn't a member but they were golden my companion said. They already had a baptismal date when I got here so I've only taught them once. I baptized Jenny. I'll send pictures next week. My companion is Elder Salazar, from Quatemala. He speaks fluent english, which is a blessing lol. Yes I'm wearing flip flops and doing all the things that I'm supposed to and not doing all the things I'm not. Shoes and socks are working well. We don't cook at all. We have bread, yogurt and fruit for breakfast, we have what is called a Mom-ita, who cooks us a lunch every day. They change every day.
So my first day in Ecuador/ the mission field was...eventful. The people here eat insane amounts of food. A decent bowl of soup followed by a plate full of rice and meat, then something else like dessert or fruit. And they want you to eat all of it....but luckily they understand when you can't eat all of it....except on the coast; apparently they get affended if you don't eat it all. And they give you even more there....glad I'm not there lol. So I ate it all and then I felt sick and almost threw up, then half an our later....I threw up lol. First day and I barf =), fun. I forgot to describe my area. It's about 1.5 hours away (by bus, always a bus) from Quito. It's a smaller town called Yaruqui. It's not too ghetto luckily lol. It's a pretty friendly town with good members. So mostly we do study and stuff until 12:00 (until 12 for the first 12 weeks in the field), but normally you only go to 11:00. Then we got out and teach. We normally have 2-5 appointments per day with either investigators, less actives, or members. We visit members to strengthen our relationship with them and get references. It's a pretty good system. So on I think...Friday...? After we ate lunch (around 2:00) we went out tracting for a hour. My companion said that it's not really effective to go tracting at this hour because people are preparing lunch and stuff. First door, not interested. Second door, an old lady poked her head our of a window on the second story and after we intruduced ourselves she said she would throw the key down to us to unlock the door.....weird....So she threw it down and we went in. We found out she has Parkinsons and has a hard time walking, so that's why she threw the key....ahh....makes sense now. =) We got started and she said that she had 2 brothers that were members and that she had been Catholic her whole life. We were teaching and she seemed really interested. So I invited her to be baptized and she said yes! Wow. But the only problem is that she wants her brother to baptize her....and he's on a mission....so we're going to have to try and work around that somehow....I'm amazed though at how prepared some people are to recieve the Gospel. After only 1 visit, an old lady who had been Catholic her whole life, accepted baptism. Awesomeness.
The other interesting thing that happened this week was on saturday, baptism day. The first thing.....lunch....it was....gulp....bull hoove and bull...here it is....half a ball. EEEKKK!!! The soup it's self was good. But I couldn't bring myself to eat the...you know what...And that's not all! After the soup there was the plate of meat and rice. The meat had 2 lovely hairs in it....of course....So that was lunch. =)The baptism went great and started an hour late (latin standard time). There were around 15 people there that were there to support, which was good. Then we went over to their...humble home for dinner. Their home is pretty ghetto. Cement walls and cement floors that are dirty, also everything in the house is dirty too. They have a slanted cement slab over a cement tub. On which they do dishes and laundry. The tub fills with water "clean" and then there is a drain at the bottom of the cement slab that drains into who knows what....This is what they use. They also have like...20 guinea pigs. We'll get to them later, dun dun dun....So dinner chicken soup with a chicken toe in it, YEAH! And then after the soup.....guinea pig. Bwahahahaha!! My companion said it was good, but I was too full to eat the plate of food.
Sunday was good. Of course everything is in spanish, and I understood most of it. About 60 members were there, which is pretty good for here apparently. Afterwards we went over to a members house brother and sister Bolivio's house. The food was really good. And, I ate all the food =). Woot. Then we went out and taught less active members for the rest of the day, about 5 hours. We went with 3 other awesome members of the ward. We taught one self-reactivated member who had been inactive for 15 years. He said he knows that the Book of Mormon is true and that the prophet's are true, but doesn't know if this is the only true church. So we taught him to pray to be able to know that the church is true. I told him that I thought that he knows the church is true, but just can't recognize that he knows it, and that he can pray to be able to recognize that he knows it.
So yeah....it's great here....And if whoever wants to write more, feel free. I have an hour to write now and I have plenty of time to read lol. The spanish is coming along great. Some people I can understand everything they say, others...not a word lol. It's the different accents, mumbling, or their just old and I can't understand them sometimes lol.
Ciao,
Elder Black (Negro)
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