Hello world. So I'm writing tuesday night because we were traveling to Quito for a zone leaders meeting and we didn't have time to write. So we got permission to write today =). 

So this past week has been great. We've been able to find a couple of new investigators and we even had 3 investigators in church =). 

So I'll start out with Diego. We found him through a less active. They're brothers and the less active is named Leandro. He's been inactive a long time and has turned to drinking. We visited him a couple of times this week and he said that he wants go get back into the church and fix up his life. Then he said that he wants his brother Diego to listen to us. Sweet. So we taught him and he's really good. We were walking down the street one day and we saw him sitting down reading a pamphlet on the Plan of Salvation. Nice! Then this sunday we were going to pick up him and his brother Leandro to go to church together, but they had already left together and went early. That was super awesome to see =). He also accepted a baptismal date for November 16th. 

The other golden boy we found this week is named Pierro. He's from Peru and is 10 years old. He looks just like the little Boy Scout kid on Up. Exactly the same lol. So he's probably the most mature 10 year old that I've ever met in my life. He's pretty sharp too. He's super prepared and he says that he likes to read scriptures and learn about God in his free time....Well...Fine with me =). He went to church all by himself this week and we didn't even have to pass by. We have high hopes for him. 

I also found out that Yarina from San Roque got baptized this week! Yes! My first convert in 5 months! Too bad that I wasn't able to see it though...but that's okay. The important thing is that she got baptized =). 

We also have an investigator called Enrique. He's awesome but he's having a hard time with a lot of things. He's going through a lot of changes in his life and he doesn't have anybody that supports him. His wife doesn't support him too much and he doesn't really have friends because nobody trusts him. Us, the missionaries are his only friends. He's really repenting though. He says that the changes in his life are slow, but he notices them. We would appreciate it if you could all include him in your prayers =)

Overall it was a great week. All of the less actives that we visited went to church this week, we found some really good investigators. In total about 8 investigators, 4 of which have great possibilities. Me and my companion are getting along great and we're working hard. Also this week me and my companion did the training in the Zone Leaders Council. We did it on the daily verifications. I'll send all of you the hand out that we made. Maybe it'll help some of you with future trainings. So the 2 dot thing is kind of cool. You hold the page horizontally and cover your left eye. Then with your right eye you look at the left dot and then move the paper farther or closer until the dot on the right disappears. Keep focused on the left dot. It's supposed to show that as missionaries we have blind spots and can't see everything. We use the verifications to fill in our blind spot just like our brain fills in the blind spot so we don't just see a black dot =). 

Todo bien, 

Elder Black

La Sensación de la Verificación en Toda Nación

Ejemplo: Nuestros “Puntos Ciegos” en la obra misional

No es posible ver a todo lo que está pasando en la obra, por eso, necesitamos tener verificaciones muy eficaces.

Éxodo 18:13-20

Todos tenemos muchas responsabilidades, y no es posible ni sabio intentar a hacer todo solo

Si aprendemos compartir las responsabilidades mejor, tendremos más éxito.

Éxodo 18: 21-26

Moisés usaba un sistema de “filtros”, dónde delegaba el trabajo entre muchas personas en vez de él sólo. Nosotros debemos hacer la misma cosa en nuestras verificaciones diarias y semanales; delegar las responsabilidades.

              Hay tres veces cuando debemos utilizar el “filtro”:

Misionero               Líder de Distrito       Líder de Zona           Asistente

Tal vez el filtro más importante es el filtro entre el líder de distrito y el líder de zona. Nosotros ya sabemos, más o menos, cómo filtrar la información. Queremos ayudar a todos a ser líderes mejores y al ayudarles a enfocarse en las partes más importantes de la obra. Podremos ayudar a los misioneros en una manera mejor al tener verificaciones más eficaces y cortas.

Las claves de un filtro eficaz en la verificación

• Orar antes de que llamen los misioneros (cuando sea posible) PME página 97
• Anotar las cosas que el misionero dice
• Enfocar en “la carne” durante la verificación (sacado del paquete de líderes)
  • El estado del misionero
  • Personas con fecha (contacto diario, estado/progreso)
  • Otros investigadores (progreso)
  • Nuevos investigadores (Nombre, Fecha, cómo le encontraron)
  • Trabajo con los Miembros/Menos Activos (Referencias)
  • Diligencia (Contactos, desafíos bautismales, etc.)
  • Compartir ánimos y fijar metas
• PME página 162
• Analizar los informes (Pasar la información por el filtro)

La verificación los domingos debe ser en esta misma manera, solo enfocamos en los números también.

Eventful 2 Weeks!

Well...eventful 2 weeks. So the week when I didn't write. I'll start by saying what happened. So up until wednesday I was staying with some missionaries, waiting to get my son in Quito. On thursday I picked him up and all good. He's from Guatemala and was pretty cool. We got along great. We worked hard until sunday night and I was giving the numbers and my Zone Leader told me that I had emergency changes.....NOOOOO!!!! I did not want to leave from San Roque at all. He told me that I would be going to Esmeraldas and a Zone leader. Esmeraldas is on the coast, actually I can see the ocean from our sector. It's about 30 minutes walking distance from our house. So on monday I spent my whole day traveling. 12 hours in total. So that's why I didn't have any time to write...

So in the short time that I had with my son a lot of things happened too. We have an investigator that's called Yarina. She's so awesome. She's reading and praying. She's even reminding her less active mom to do it too; and sometimes her mom doesn't understand the scriptures and then she explains them to her. She's so prepared. We were in a lesson with her and then the zone leaders called me and said that they had good news for me. They told me that we got the good to go to move into the new house. YESSSSSS!! After the visit with them we went to the house to get packed up and get over to the new house. It's awesome. The owners are even going to buy a brand new washing machine and oven just for us =). The bad part is that I was only in the house for 2 nights before I left so I didn't get to enjoy anything =(.

Anyways. Now I'm here in the coast. Here there's lot of blacks and it's pretty dangerous here. It's humid and hot here, but it hasn't been too bad because right now it's winter. My companion is Elder Thomas. He's an american from Minnesota. His dad is a cardiologist in the Mayo clinic and my companion wants to work there as well as a surgeon. He's pretty cool and we get along well. He just barely got to the sector too so we're basically opening the sector together. Since we don't know anybody here we've contacted a lot. It's also super easy to get new investigators because for every 2 contacts you have you have 1 new investigator. The problem though is that a lot of times they don't progress. That, and NOBODY here is married. About the only ones that are married are the members lol. But I like it here. Good food and good people.

Investigators....They're all new lol. We got here and there was nothing =(. We have a couple of decent ones, but nothing worth talking about for now lol. If something interesting happens with them I'll let you know. 

And I realized something this week....I didn't wish any of you happy birthday....Sorry. It's not on purpose, but the time really does go by fast and I forget important dates. Still love you, but happy late birthday to everyone =)

Congratulations Parker and Katarina on your new found lovers. Keep up the good work. =)

Funny thing of the week: Here...the people are crazy....a lot of them are druggies or drunks. So one day we were leaving our apartment and we saw a fist sized rock fly by our heads. We looked and it was a teenager throwing a rock at another black guy. I don't know why he was throwing rocks at him, but the guy got really mad. So it was a crazy looking black dude and he had a machete in his hand. Then he started chasing the teenager and started throwing rocks at him. He was furious and went after him with the machete. The teenager escaped, but I have no doubt that if the mad guy would have caught up to him he would have hurt him or maybe even killed him with the machete. Me and my companion thought it was pretty cool =).

Pics: surprise! There aren't any! My camera broke because it got wet. It turns on and everything but it makes a humming noise and doesn't focus. =(

Say hi to my new grandpa for me =). I still think it's weird though.....

Elder Black

The Zone in traditional clothes.

Gayky (pronounced Why-kee, means brother) Black 

Us getting mad at Elder Ramirez because he was the only one who didn't dress up...

Us trading Rafael Alomoto a picture of Christ for his Virgen Mary pictures. He's opening it up like a birthday present =)

Sup,

This was a good week here in San Roque. We were only there for 2 days, but we were able to do a lot. Right now we have person with baptismal date and his name is Aaron Cando. He's the son of a less active family that we have here. He's progressing well. He was forgetting to read, so I told him that if he read and then told us what he learned, that I would give him chocolate. I bought it today. Hopefully he remembers =).

As far as our other investigators they're doing well. In total we had 3 investigators that went to the General Conference: Marco Diaz, Tito Tituania, and a new investigator that's called Gladys. She's also the daughter of a less active sister in our ward. Her mom is the daughter of one of our families from Crecimiento Real. We went by their house for the first time this week and we found her at the door. She talked to us and said that she wanted to get back into church, so we invited her to conference. We were pleased to see her and her 11 year old daughter in one of the sessions.

So this conference I had to watch it in spanish.....I can understand, but it's just not the same =(. But I really like Pres Uchtdorf's talk. He pretty much machetied my ward lol. I feel like sharing it with everybody now =). Also, for the conference the zone dressed up in traditional clothes. Here's a couple pics. Enjoy =).

Let me explain something about the new house....So last week we didn't have water, about 4 days, so on tuesday we went to the new house to wash clothes and study. We got there and I tried to open the front gate and I didn't have the key to the lock. Then the sister of the lady that rented us the house (she has a house there and stays there on the weekends) came up to us and said that she needed to talk to us. A long story short she said that her sister didn't have the right to rent us the house, that she needed to have the permission of all the inheriters before doing anything. She told us that some of her brothers were against anybody living there. Turns out that that house is like their vacation home. When the family comes into town to have a family reunion they all stay there. So that's why they don't want anybody to live there at all. One of the brothers found out that we were going to live there and he told his sister to change the locks so we couldn't get in. So she did. She was really nice with us and actually still wants us to live there. She's just following orders...Luckily though she at least let us in to wash our clothes =). After the incident I called the secretaries of the mission to tell them what happened. Supposedly I'll be getting the answer today if we can still live there or not.....Hopefully =)

Other than that everything here in San Roque is going good. We're finding investigators and we'll be having a few baptisms in the coming change =). And finally I'll be getting my new companion this thursday. I'll be training a brand new missionary =). Finally!

Elder Black