Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

We had 3 baptisms this week. Adriana, Isabel, and Francisco. Adriana is 15. We’ve been teaching her and her family ever since I got here. She wanted to get baptized a while ago but her family didn’t want her to. So we just kept teaching them and working with them and eventually they gave her the OK. We’re still teaching the rest of the family and the mom wants to get baptized now but is afraid of what her extended family will think because they are all devout Catholics. They also have another 18 year old daughter named Fernando that has been progressing very well. We haven’t taught the dad that much because he is always working and doesn’t like to take a break and listen to us but we’re going to try and focus on him now because if he can gain a testimony then its likely that the rest of the family will get baptized. Isabel is 11 and Francisco is 9. They are brother and sister. Their mom is a prostitute and left them with one of the ladies in the ward. They’ve been through some rough stuff in their childhood. Francisco was too young to remember anything but Isabel has memories of horrible things that her mom did. It will really help them a lot if they keep coming to church and keep learning more and more. The problem is that the lady that takes care of them has back problems and can’t walk to church. The only way she can get there is if she takes a taxi but she never has money for that. And we can’t go pick them up every week because we have other investigators that we have to pick up. But hopefully they’ll be able to come a lot and keep learning and progressing

(Baptsim - Isabel and Fransisco)
This week we have 2 more baptisms scheduled for Saturday. Eleanor and Alexander. Their parents are members but inactive so the plan is to baptize the kids and then keep working with the parents to try and re-activate them. The gospel works best in families so if the whole family can become active they’ll be set. We were supposed to have another girl get baptized this week but she wasn’t able to come to church this week so now she has to wait until next week.

(Baptism - Adriana)
Elder Lopez and I have been sick all week. We think we got a parasite from drinking some bad water. It’s been kinda miserable but don’t worry, we’re ok now. We took “the bomb” which is a series of pills that cleans out all the parasites. But now we have to be careful because you can only take the bomb so often so if we get parasites again soon we’ll just have to deal with them.

(Bus Station in Quito)
I had to go to Quito on Wednesday because all the new elders had to go back for their censos and they couldn’t go without a senor companion so the zone leaders made me go with them. But then when we got there we found out that we couldn’t get their censos for a couple more weeks so basically the trip was a waste. But we got to go to the nurse and get “the bomb” and we got to eat pizza hut for lunch so I guess it wasn’t a complete waste

(Merry Christmas from Esmeraldas!)
A few days before Christmas we had a zone activity where we went and sang Christmas hymns in a big park in the middle of downtown Esmeraldas. We got some weird looks and not that many people came to watch us sing but it was still fun. Christmas isn’t a big deal here. Its almost just like a normal day. A lot of people just celebrate by getting drunk the night before and then sleeping all day. Oh and all the kids here got airsoft guns-ALL OF THEM! They’ve been running around having wars for the last couple days. One of them even decided it would be funny to shoot the tall white guy in the head…. Haha but no worries, it didn’t hurt because they don’t have very powerful guns.

I met a guy this week that offered me a full time job as an English teacher. He just saw me and started speaking English to me and telling me that he is in charge of the English department and some school and that they are looking for teachers. I had to tell him that I can’t do that because I’m a missionary but that we have English classes twice a week at the church. Oh and speaking of English. I met a lady in the mall today that is from Chicago but lives here because she married an Ecuadorian guy. She’s lived here since 1997 and has 2 little girls that speak English and Spanish.

Anyway, I hope all is going well back home. I sent a few letters this week. Thanks to everyone that has written me so far! If I haven’t written you back yet, write me again and demand me to write you back and I will eventually! I hope everyone had a merry Christmas. Happy New Year!