An eventful but pretty unproductive week. So we basically had 2 P-Days this week. Monday we had the day long conference with Elder Waddell and tuesday was our real P-Day. Also we have a District Meeting in Quito every day and it takes us about 2 hours to get from here (Yaruquì) to Quito. So we get back home at around 3:30 on thursdays. We also had exchanges on thursday after the District Meeting until friday in the afternoon. Basically we didn't have much time to teach this week =(.
First off, at our mamitas house this thursday she made steak that tasted exactly like moms Puerto Rican steak, dry and tasteless lol. Just kidding mom. Your food is the best =) It was nice to eat something familiar. Somethings that I ate that were unfamiliar were: liver, and chicken liver soup. Neither of which were very good....but I'm alive, but only barely. And this is the best thing that I ate this week. I ate chocolate with hazelnuts (I used to be allergic to them) in it, and nothing happened =). That was a cool moment for me.
So Jorge Robalino (the weirdo) is getting baptized this week for sure. I guess he's reading the Book of Mormon a lot now and he recieved an answer that Joseph Smith was a prophet and everything. He even stopped reading his book of "revelation" Angelorum. So he'll be baptized this week. Hopefully with Ulpiano Saltos. I say hopefully because something happened with Ulpiano. He was living in the coast (in the Guayaquil North Mission) and he was living here with his family for moral support because he took the death of his brother really hard and was drinking more than usual and thought about suicide. And I can see why, his brother had a horrible death. Pretty horrible way to die. I can see why he took it so hard. So he's living with his family for support and he's in a rehabilitation center for alcholics. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and he understood it all and we think he can do it. So what happened is that he went back to the coast to his house. NOOOOOO!!!!! I guess there was something that he had to do there. He'll be coming back, but we don't know if it will be in time for his baptism. We fasted today for him. Hopefully he'll be fine.
But we do have another person with a baptismal date for December 15. 2 months ago we were contacting and we found a lady that didn't have time to listen to us at the time but told us that we could come again later. So we went back a few times and she was always busy so we never taught her. That is, until this week >=D. Before we taught her we knew she was catholic and she seemed like a lamp. A lamp is a person who talks about how they love their religion and they pray all the time, but they don't really do any of that stuff. They just say it to make themselves look good. So with some of the things that she said and how she acted, we thought she was a lamp lol. But we taught her the Restoration and invited her to baptism and she accepted. We also invited her to church. She said that she'll be at church for sure that that she wanted to bring her whole family with her. Guess she's not a lamp after all. She's just a really nice person =).
So a couple of funny things that happened this week. The first thing. We were making tacos at a members house and one of her daughters walked in the front door. So here in Ecuador when people walk into a room it is normal for them to give a casual kiss on the cheek as a greeting. She walked into the room and I was facing away from the door. She walked up to the side of me and kissed me on the cheek. She caught me completely by surprise. I was petrified, I didn't know what to do lol. As missionaries we're not even supposed to have anymore contact with girls/women than a handshake. That was nothing out of the ordinary for her or for the natives there, but for an innocent missionary it was more than I could take, I ran out of the house. Just kidding lol. I didn't do anything. But it was a little strange for me lol. I'll have to be on my guard from now on.......The other funny thing was a dream that I had. I had parachute pants. They were like a pink jumpsuit that was made of flanel and the leg parts were about 4 ft across each. So I would jump of houses and stuff, wait for the wind to catch my parachute pants, and gently land on the ground. I even went so far as to skydive with my pink jumpsuit. Oh, and in my dream took place before my mission. So I got to go skydiving before my mission afterall mom and dad =).
This Saturday we did a service project by on the property of the church/house here in Yaruquì. There is a grass field that we leveled so that we could play volleyball on it. During the service we found all sorts of animals: lizards, frogs, big spiders, giant (for me) millipedes, and scorpions. Quite the variety of wildlife on that little field. And I caught my first lizard here in Latin America =). Now I just need a snake.....
Oh, and another reason that we weren't productive this week was because of this stupid walk that they have. Of couse most of the people here are catholic and they worship the Virgen Mary. They actually worship her here more than Christ and God. Anyways, they believe that the Virgen Mary does miracles and answers prayers and all sorts of apostasy. So they think that if they walk from Quito (2 hours by bus), or for the least faithful lamp people/the people who just do it for a social activity, they walk from somewhere closer like here (20 minutes by bus) to Quinche, where the famous Virgen of Quinche is, they will be forgiven of their sins and she will work miracles in their life. Apostasy lol. So they close all the roads from Quito to Quinche for their Apostasy/lamp walk all day and all night. The most people past Yaruquì at 3:00 in the morning.....how sad lol. So we couldn't go outside Yaruquì for 2 1/2 days because of those fools.
So that's basically what happened this week. Now I have a few random things to say. First off, how future missionaries (Hunter in particular) can prepare for a mission. I would highly recommend reading the Book of Mormon for 30 min every day and a little bit of the Bible if you have time. You might say, "30 minutes every day! That's a ton!". Well, no it's not lol. In the field you have 1 hour to read/have a personal study every morning. Then you have companionship study for 2 hours after that. So 3 hours of studying every day. So yeah, 30 minutes is nothing lol. Also, I would recommend reading the entire Preach My Gospel at least once. Don't just read it just to read it. Read it with purpose and try to understand and comprehend everything that is in it. And read all the lessons (1-5) 3 times each. Pay attention to the order and simplicity of the principles in each lesson. When you teach investigators you divide up the lesson by principle, so you need to know what order all of the principles and what all of them are. When you read the lessons, again, pay attention to the depth/simplicity that they are written in. You don't need to teach any more complex than what is in Preach My Gospel. When talking about the Creation you don't need to talk about how dinosaurs fit in or when talking about the Restoration you don't need to describe to them how the Urim and Thumimn look. Not important stuff. Again, don't go deeper than what Preach My Gospel teaches. So in my opinion, reading the Book of Mormon and reading Preach My Gospel are 2 very helpful things that will give you a headstart in the mission.
One other thing. I never remembered to tell you mom and dad, but when Carter was being baptized, when we were about to enter the font, I asked him a question. I kept forgetting to tell you about it, but I think it's pretty cool. So before we entered the font I asked him,"Are you happy? Yeah. Why? Because when I am baptized I feel clean and I can repent. And it's the first thing that I need to do to be in the Celestial Kingdom." More or less that's what he said. I was pretty impressed that an 8 year old came up with that answer. I wanted to tell you that before I forgot to tell you again.
2 things that I want to ask for. We're doing a food activity with the ward and we're making food from other countries. I would like to make chicken crescents or chilly chicken bake. If you could send me the recipies for those that would be awesome. And the second thing is more music. The London Philharmonic Orchestra album. Another thing to add to Dropbox =). And just so you know I still haven't missed 1 day of writing in my journal. Diligence!
Elder Black
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