Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

Hola familia! Como estan! espero que todo estan muy bien!!!
Mom gracias para los cinnamon rolls!!!! fueron muy delicioso!!!

This week was pretty good!!! last weekend I was feeling really frustrated because I have so much to do and not enough time to do it. I've been finding out that missionary work is really hard. Its non-stop work all day. I think its probably the hardest thing I've ever done. last weekend i was feeling like i wasn't learning Spanish fast enough and like i wasn't learning all the lessons fast enough and like i wasn't teaching good enough and it was really frustrating and i was wishing that it wasn't so hard. Then on Tuesday we had a devotional and there were rumors going around that it was going to be an apostle so we went like 2 hours early and got really good seats. It ended up being elder Holland and his talk was exactly what I needed. He started explaining how missionary work is always hard and there is never an easy mission. He said it has to be like that because salvation has never been easy. When Jesus Christ performed the atonement that was in no way easy and as missionaries we are his disciples so it shouldn't be easy for us. Elder Holland said that everyone on their mission has to go through there own Gethsemane and carry their own cross to calvary, otherwise how can we say that we are really disciples of Christ? It made me think about how hard salvation really is and i started to consider how hard it was for the savior to do what he did. then elder Holland said that when we go through our own gethsemani and carry our own crosses it gives us a small taste of what it was like for Jesus and helps us grow closer to him. Anyway, the talk was really good and it helped me a lot!

On Monday elder noe and I went to the TRC and had to make contacts in Spanish and teach the first lesson again. we ended up teaching to this old Latino man named Napolean. but long story short, he ended up teaching us the lesson. he was supposed to be an investigator but when we started talking about prophets he just went off and started bearing his testimony to us about how he knew Joseph Smith was a prophet. and it was like that the whole lesson. we would teach for like 30 seconds and then he would bear his testimony to us for like 5 minutes. He was a cute old man that was really excited about the gospel but he didn't really let us teach that much haha.
We went back to the referral center this week but instead of making calls we did online chats. it was interesting because some people would come on with real interest and we would kinda teach them but some people would come on just to insult some of our most sacred practices (temples and other stuff like that) and try and talk about really deep doctrine with us and try and prove us wrong. when people do that we just have to either steer the conversation the other way or if they're really bad we just don't talk to them at all. I did a few calls too and I talked to one guy that said he was having struggles in his life so i testified to him of how the gospel could help him and he agreed to let me send missionaries to teach him. I hope it all works out for him!!!!

I can't wait to actually go to Ecuador and start doing real missionary work all the time!
Can you guys send me some pictures of the family and jojo and stuff? I don't have any and I want to use them to 1) show to people when I teach about families and 2)hang in my room so I can remember you guys!
mom- if you want to send me any packages I would love them but you definitely don't have to! The cinnoman rolls were really good! thanks again!

I Love you all! Dad, Mom, Lindsey, Jason, Desi, and of course jojo!