Great Seeing You All

So I had a better subject planned for this email, but I forgot. But today official marks the 5 month mark in the mission. Crazy how since I've been in Ecuador its gone decently fast, but at the same time feels like I've been out for like 10 months. Weird how that works. So talking to you all was the best! You all wrote me about homesickness after the call: I really wasn't that bad for some reason after the call. It was something that was more so just needed to get me through these next 5 months. However, Mothers day is going to be difficult without you all being in the same house so you'll have to plan that out by getting everyone on the same screen so I'm not making multiple calls. Anyways, to inform you on after the call, I about died. If I knew how to use dropbox I would send home a funny video I made of mid dying: by dying I mean I got deathly sick: just as sick as I was my first week here except only half the time: (my period just stopped working so these letters might be punctuated horribly) I was having real bad stomach problems and my head hurt sooooooooo bad worst in my life I had a horrible fever and couldn't move I was honestly dead: anyways Marcia took real good care of me: her son is a doctor and so he wrote me and my comp out a bunch of prescriptions and she went and bought them for us (cuz he was dying too) so that was very nice! So I took those and just passed out all day yesterday: I'm feeling wayyy better today tho! 

Okay missionary stuff: I REALIZED LAST WEEK I wrote you saying that Ebed, whose name is actually Abdon, knows the church is true, but I was misinformed. That's whats keeping him from being baptized: He said once he receives an answer to his prayers then he will stop walking in the Catholic procession and be baptized: so this week is going to be a lot on prayer possibly even a fast, we will probably save that for Sunday tho haha. BUT YEAH he had an hour and a half interview sooooooooooooooo long haha our DL said he just told him his whole life story in that interview. haha but hes awesome. About the familia Coloma: they are progressing very well. She doesnt want to get baptized till her husband does so we need to wait till he gets his 3rd assistance. So that baptism will be next Saturday the 9th I think it is. Theyll both be ready for then. Anyways not much new has happened since we last talked just been lyin in bed sleeping cuz I was so sick. But anyways I feel good now. 
That phone call was the best! I'm super pumped for mothers day! start thing NOW of what you want to say so we don't get any awkward silences and waste that precious time! I love you all! Keep writing me! Talk to you next week! 

Testimony of Christ

We had the opportunity to video chat with Matt on Christmas Day.  It was wonderful to see his face and talk with him and know he is doing well!  He bore his testimony of Christ before signing off (see video).  We are all so grateful for our Savior and all that He has done for His children. 

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, I AM!!!

I'm pretty sure the only one who is going to get that quote is Dustin haha. So today we WENT BOWLING FOR PDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So awesome! we got to leave the mission, no joke its on the other side of the street of the boundary line, but we got to go! So much fun! Except for the fact that I lost my touch. I only bowled a 115 :( I didn't do the booty shake, the hop, or the proper walk up before I bowled cuz I feared of being made fun of :( I think that's where I went wrong. But after I had a strike one game I turned around and yelled the subject line to some other elders bowling in my lane and they all just looked at me. Its so frustrating quoting things and no one understanding. Normally when I did that back home I could just go find the video and pull it up but now I can't and people just look at me like what the crap and I'm just cracking myself up. HA goteeeem no one gets that one either UGH! But at least i got to go bowling so I'm doing great. The next dream however is Ice skating! Me encanta esta!

So onto missionary work. So this week i decided ain't no way I'm doing that again and contacting 100 people and finding 0 news. Still nothing has come of those 100 contacts. But however we did find two news this week. However both are leaving for the whole month of January. one to go mine gold, the other to go try out for some soccer teams so he can go pro. But anyways the guy we taught that's leaving to mine gold, I don't know his name i asked him he said something weird so i just made a similar noise back and asked if it was correct and he said yes. Spanish is easy. so anyways hes a reference from an investigator. Hes awesome and besides him leaving i think he would get baptized eventually but hes not taking his family with him to mine gold so we are going to teach his wife and kids while hes gone! About Alejandro. He dreams of playing pro soccer. we found him by looking in the carpeta for old investies and found his mom. so we went to teach his mom he said she wasn't there so we asked to teach him. He said he didn't believe in God cuz hes never seen him but after about 2 scriptures he said he believes there is a God. Another easy task. But like i said hes leaving for all of January. But i think if he gives up on his soccer dream he will get baptized. But anyways he told us to come back tonight so we could teach his mom. so we came back and man was that fun. The dad comes to the window and just starts chewing us out! Just yelling at us cussing us out and saying you guys just come here with all you money knocking on our doors rubbing it in. Don't come back till you bring me money. so my comp tells him, "alright when you want to find God call us" so I don't think the guy liked it so he spit on us. he missed but he still hawked a loogy like dustin does and tried to hit us from upstairs haha

So speaking of bad contacts I decided while on divisions i would take my DL to the shovel guys house and contact him again. I was so scared haha. He walks outside. sees me and just starts chewing me out again hahaha he just starts calling me all these names and says I told you not to come back haha and so I said that wasn't me and he said I know it was you then rips a bush out of his yard and THROWS A BUSH AT ME! A BUSH! haha what the heck! anyways I told my zone leaders about that and they wanna do divisions again this change and go to his house. Since I don't really wanna knock the house again I'm gonna hide and film him and my comp doing it haha. I don't know when that'll happen tho. 

So ebed is awesome. He has 4 assistances now and his baptism is this saturday and his interview is on wednesday i believe. The only issue he has is he said I know the church is true, I want to get baptized, I just wanna walk in a catholic procession for the next 2 years tho cuz I promised God 3 years ago I would walk in it for 5 years so I want to finish that. We are just gonna tell him its not a good idea to do that and you aren't even the one carrying the cross so no one is going to notice that you are gone. Easy fix 

Anyways my week was good! SOOOOOOOOOO EXCITED TO FACETIME YOU GUYS THIS WEEK! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! I LOVE YOU ALL! Thanks for writing me! Talk to you on Friday!!!

BEST PDAY EVER

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WE ARE HERE OOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo PDAY IS HEREEEE!!!!!!!!

Normally that is sung at about 5 on sundays and I just start singing it to my companions except the last bit of pday is almost here, but I'm so happy cuz MY PACKAGES ARE HERE BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! I opened one up today, good thing I did, the one that said pants so I can start wearing them, but you lied there were no pants in that package but good thing I did open that one cuz it had all my letters from Ivy and the first one to open is today so I can't WAIT!!! The next one is opened on Christmas eve and the other 2 for christmas. I also got all my money out from western union so today has just been a fantabulous day after a long hard week!

So about my week.... 100 contacts to 0 new investigators about sums up my week. such a hard week. Everyday before lunch contacting cuz we had no citas then after lunch contacting until our first set cita. It was beyond frustrating this week. But I made it fun so that way my comp wouldn't hate me haha but yeah it was rough. Anyways Ebed, Marcias husband, got his 3rd assistance this week! His fetchya is for this saturday, but due to our lame consejo and corilations at night with the word we have only been able to teach him 2 times this past week so he still needs a lot more lessons before his interview so i dont know if itll happen this week but we are going to try super hard to make it work! Hes ready! His son, Henry, is doing good! He worked way late saturday night when we last taught ebed so he wasn't there and since he got home late and had to work sunday since its a busy time of the year he couldn't come sunday. So he is now for the 2nd of january. But whats awesome is that if we get Ebed baptized this saturday he can baptize his son on the 2nd! that'd be pretty neat. 

Hna Coloma is cool. I don't know if i have ever talked about her to you guys but she is doing good! She has two assistances and is a good investigator! She doesn't exactly i think fully understand everything but she does our invitations and when we teach her husband hes like deaf so we have to yell and then he just smiles at us the whole time so honestly i don't think he understands at all but he isn't progressing because hes ALWAYS working and hasn't come to church. That will change tho.

Other than these 3 those are our only progressing investigators so as you can see we desperately need to find news and no thanks to the help of our members. They don't help us out at all! Its a very hard sector. Everyone admits to that but I'm working hard. For all you guys back home, if the missionaries ask you for anyone to visit, please give them someone because i feel in some way it will boost my luck that they help us out with references. Also because everyone needs to hear the gospel so Christ can come again! I love you guys! Pray for me! Thanks for writing me! I love you all

Notha Week

So this week was good. Not much honestly happened this week. It was my first week with my new comp and man was it different. We get along fine its just different. So this week since i stayed in my sector I'm showing my new comp around the sector. Its a little hard especially since i was left with literally nothing to work with. We contacted our heads off this week just trying to get some return citas and get some news. SO our ratio last week was a little ehhhh we had 82 contacts with 1 new. Garbage. That new came from an old investigator we went and taught and her brother happened to be there. So I don't know how much they will progress. It's just been kinda a hard week especially following a baptism week. I'm showing the sector around and it's just a little hard because my companion isn't that positive. I'm trying to get us into lessons but no ones home when they say they will. Throughout the days he's just like man this day is terrible and I'm like dude we gotta work to find news lets go. He hates contacting but likes getting into lessons so it doesn't add up. You gotta learn to enjoy the process of finding the news. This week we did divisions with the ZLs and so my homie elder Heyrend came up to my sector with me. He taught me a couple new techniques to finding news. So after lunch we got to work. So what we tried at first and my favorite one was shinning shoes. You just walk up to people and say hey we are missionaries shining shoes for free. Then once they say yes i would start shining the shoes and heyrend would contact them. It was a lot of fun! He also taught me about blessing houses which is going to be my go to move to getting into houses on Christmas. So blessing houses is when you contact a house but instead of the typical door approach you say hey we wanna put a blessing on your house. He said they will always be yeah of course come in. So since Christmas is such a hard day in the mission with lessons and stuff I found the key to getting into homes haha! I'm excited for this week especially because tomorrow I'm in Quito all day with my zone because we have our Christmas dinner later that night at their house! This week should be good I'm excited to get working and find our news! 

I love you all and love reading your letters! Talk to you all next week! 

Me and my boy Nelson  

Some other missionaries and I at papa johns for thanksgiving - all you can eat!