Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

Hey everyone! It’s been another good week in Ecuador! First things first, I finally got the Easter package that the grandpa and Sarah sent. I think it got to Ecuador around the beginning of April but it got stuck in “mail jail” because it didn’t have a green sticker. They are pretty picky here about all that stuff. But thanks a ton for the package!

This week has been good. It’s been pretty normal but I’ll tell you about the highlights anyway. My companion got bit by a dog… haha. I wasn’t with him because we were on divisions with the zone leaders when it happened but I thought it was funny when he told me about it. He said it was a little tiny dog that just kinda grabbed onto his ankle. It doesn`t really surprise me though because there are dogs everywhere here and most of them are crazy!!!!! The always bark like they’re going to kill us but we’ve just gotten used to it.

2 of our investigators had their baptismal interviews this week and they both passed so we’re expecting 2 baptisms this weekend. Their names are Ronald and Celeste. Ronald is 13. We met him at church like 4 weeks ago and the first thing he said to us was “I want to get baptized” so we’ve been teaching and preparing him. He has had some opposition because everyone here is catholic and he was only a few weeks away from being confirmed in the Catholic Church when we met him. His mom wouldn’t let him just give up the Catholic Church so he’s been going to both. His mom says that in order to come to our church he has to go to the Catholic Church first. So every Sunday he goes to the Catholic Church first and then comes to our church at 11. We’ve been teaching his mom too and she seems pretty open to the gospel so we’ll see what happens. Maybe she’ll end up getting baptized someday too. Celeste is 26. She used to live in Guayaquil and was listening to the missionaries there and was about to get baptized but then she moved to Quito so she couldn’t. But she found the church headquarters here and they sent us the reference so we found here and have been teaching her for about 3 weeks.

We were going to have another baptism of a boy named Kevin but he couldn’t have his interview because he had his appendix taken out on Wednesday. He was fine and then all of a sudden out of nowhere he started having really bad pains and had to have surgery. When we found out we went to the hospital to visit him. He was on the 8th floor so we started going up the stairs but when we got to the 3rd floor there was a guard there that wouldn’t let anyone passed. We told him that we just wanted to visit someone that had had surgery but he didn’t care and wouldn’t let us pass. Right when we gave up and started to leave my phone rang and it was his grandma. She was in tears and was calling to ask us to go give him a blessing because things were getting worse and his fever was rising. I explained to her that we were at the hospital but couldn’t get up to see him. She gave us the phone number of his mom so that she could come down and let us in. we called her and she came down but when we tried to get passed the guard he still wouldn’t let us in. it was kind of frustrating and we explained to him that we wouldn’t be that long but he still wouldn’t let us pass. We finally gave up again and I just said a little silent prayer and we left. He’s doing a lot better now and is recovering quickly.
On Sunday we got to teach a combined priesthood and relief society class with the ward mission leader. My companion and I talked about befriending new members and converts and then the ward mission leader talked about befriending each other within the ward. He talked very strongly… as we say here he “macheted” them. He said that he was tired of seeing the missionaries work so hard and then have all the converts go inactive because of stuff that the members do. He said that the ward had way to much gossip and a bunch of stuff like that. Needless to say, a lot of people got really pissed off. It was really dramatic and I didn’t really like it. It caused a lot of contention in the ward. Hopefully it won’t affect the wards progress and hopefully everyone can get over it quickly.

Anyway, those are the highlights of my week. I hope everyone is doing good back home. Once again I apologize for being so slow at writing everyone back. I’m working on it though, little by little. Thanks to everyone that writes me. I love your letters! Until next week!