Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

August 30, 2010

Hey everyone. Let me tell you a little bit about my week. I guess i`ll start with the biggest news…. I got changed. I`m still in quito but more to the northeast than where I was at before. My zone is called “Los Chillos”. I`m a zone leader now. My companion is named Elder Archundia and he his also from mexico which is good because that means I will get to keep eating a lot of Mexican food. Elder Archundia was my zone leader for like a month in Esmeraldas and has 5 months left in his mission. Hes a cool guy so i`m excited that hes my companion. This change was kinda interesting because I knew that where I was going 2 days early. On Friday, one of the elders from my MTC district called me and said “Hey elder messer, I have some news for you” and proceeded to tell me that he new what the changes were gonna be and that I was coming to his zone. Then on Sunday it was stake conference so president sloan came and spoke. Afterwards he came up to shake my hand and said “Elder messer, I hate to take you out of the zone but I need your leadership. I`ve got a special calling for you. You`ll find out later tonight.” So that basically confirmed all the rumors that I had heard. I`m glad that i`m still in quito so that I can keep enjoying all the wonderful food and whatnot. Apparently theres a restaurant in my new zone called Rustys that is super good. Rumor has it that they sell curly fries there….. I have a feeling that i`ll be eating there a lot.

The bad news of this week was that I got super sick. I think I ate something that gave me some type of bacterial infection in my stomach or something like that. The nurse has me on antibiotics and i`m feeling a lot better now. But I haven`t eaten anything but Gatorade and ritz crackers in the last 4 days so i`m still kinda hungry and week. Anything I would eat would just come back out. I did manage to eat a chicken sandwich from mcdonalds today and and still doing pretty good so that’s a good sign.

So we went to the offices today and a sister was there that was about to go home that was in my old sector in Esmeraldas. She gave me some good news and some bad news. Apparently the ulloa taipe family is having some big problems. Their daughter ran away from the house with her boyfriend again and the husband and wife are fighting because they both think it’s the other persons fault and apparently the husband moved out. I`m kinda worried about them but this happened before and they were able to solve their differences so I still have hope. I`m gonna give them a call later and see if I can help them a bit. The good news is that Harlington(one of my converts) and his neighbor (who I also taught) are the ones that bless the sacrament every week which is huge because when I was there there wasn`t anyone to bless the sacrament so the missionaries had to do it every week. And apparently they have formed there own little missionary group and go knock doors and try and share the gospel with everyone. Also, jordy is still active even though he has no support from his family and apparently he brings his friend to church every week. Rocio Martinez is active as well which was really good to hear because had gone inactive when I left but apparently she came back and goes to church every week now. Speaking of converts….. 2 weeks ago Ronald went to the temple and did baptisms for the dead. He`s only 13 but hes one of the strongest converts that I have. He has no support from his family but he is in church every week passing the sacrament and is at every young mens activity. And all the young women want him… Hes basically a stud!

I don’t know anything about my new sector but apparently we have a golden family that is gonna get baptized this month and a few other golden investigaters. I`m looking forward to meeting everyone this week and seeing what I have to work with.

Well that’s all I have for this week. Hasta luego!


August 23, 2010
This week has gone well for Elder Resendiz and I. We`ve been working hard all week to find new investigators to teach and were able to come up with 8 new people. I think thats the most that i`ve gotten in one week since i`ve been in Quito. Before I think my record was 4. In esmeraldas we got 18 one week but that really isn`t that hard in Esmeraldas. We knocked a lot of doors and talked with all sorts of people. Some were rather strange. We were teaching a lesson at a door one day because there was no man there so we couldn`t go in and all of a sudden in the middle of our lesson we heard someone from down the street Yell “Chicos… Chicos” so we turned and saw some guy sticking his head out the door. He asked us to go to his house after we finished our lesson. So we finished and were thinking that it would be an golden investigator but when we got there it turned out to be a half crazy guy that was building a church in his house and that was gonna be a pastor. He gave us some juice and bread (the “bread of life” as he called it) and started talking to us. He wanted to know what we did to find people to teach and was asking all sorts of advice . Then he started preaching to us and Reading to us from the bible and after every verse that he liked he would say “amen, thank you Lord”. Then he started telling us about how he used to do all sorts of stupid stuff like drink and do drugs but how the lord sent angels to protect him because the lord new that he was gonna use him to help other people. Then he showed us his guitar and asked if i knew how to play and I told him yes so he asked me to teach him so that he could play songs in his church services. All in all he was kinda crazy and it was a rather interesting experience. He was from columbia which explains alot because everyone that i`ve met so far from Columbia has been kinda different. We also ran into a 20 year old lady that is already a member but just moved to quito and didn`t know where the church was so she hadn`t been going. We took her to church on Sunday along with her husband who isn`t a member so hopefully we can work with them.

My birthday was on Friday. It was pretty much just like any other day. No one knew that it was my birthday. One person did know and gave me a card and some chocolates. All in all it was a good day. Thanks again to everyone who sent me a letter or package for my birthday!

Next week are changes so I have a chance of getting chaged but I dont think it will happen. I bet i`ll be here for at least 6 months like I was in esmeraldas but we`ll see what happens. 27 new missionaries are coming this change which is a lot (last change there were 8) so there are gonna be a lot of changes. 27 people are gonna be training so thats 27 changes garrenteed and like 7 zone leaders are going home so thats another 7 changes and those are just the changes that have to happen. There will likely be more so we`ll see what happens. Well thats all I have for this week. Thanks for everything. I love you all!

This week has gone well for Elder Resendiz and I. We`ve been working hard all week to find new investigators to teach and were able to come up with 8 new people. I think thats the most that i`ve gotten in one week since i`ve been in Quito. Before I think my record was 4. In esmeraldas we got 18 one week but that really isn`t that hard in Esmeraldas. We knocked a lot of doors and talked with all sorts of people. Some were rather strange. We were teaching a lesson at a door one day because there was no man there so we couldn`t go in and all of a sudden in the middle of our lesson we heard someone from down the street Yell “Chicos… Chicos” so we turned and saw some guy sticking his head out the door. He asked us to go to his house after we finished our lesson. So we finished and were thinking that it would be an golden investigator but when we got there it turned out to be a half crazy guy that was building a church in his house and that was gonna be a pastor. He gave us some juice and bread (the “bread of life” as he called it) and started talking to us. He wanted to know what we did to find people to teach and was asking all sorts of advice . Then he started preaching to us and Reading to us from the bible and after every verse that he liked he would say “amen, thank you Lord”. Then he started telling us about how he used to do all sorts of stupid stuff like drink and do drugs but how the lord sent angels to protect him because the lord new that he was gonna use him to help other people. Then he showed us his guitar and asked if i knew how to play and I told him yes so he asked me to teach him so that he could play songs in his church services. All in all he was kinda crazy and it was a rather interesting experience. He was from columbia which explains alot because everyone that i`ve met so far from Columbia has been kinda different. We also ran into a 20 year old lady that is already a member but just moved to quito and didn`t know where the church was so she hadn`t been going. We took her to church on Sunday along with her husband who isn`t a member so hopefully we can work with them.

My birthday was on Friday. It was pretty much just like any other day. No one knew that it was my birthday. One person did know and gave me a card and some chocolates. All in all it was a good day. Thanks again to everyone who sent me a letter or package for my birthday!

Next week are changes so I have a chance of getting chaged but I dont think it will happen. I bet i`ll be here for at least 6 months like I was in esmeraldas but we`ll see what happens. 27 new missionaries are coming this change which is a lot (last change there were 8) so there are gonna be a lot of changes. 27 people are gonna be training so thats 27 changes garrenteed and like 7 zone leaders are going home so thats another 7 changes and those are just the changes that have to happen. There will likely be more so we`ll see what happens. Well thats all I have for this week. Thanks for everything. I love you all!

This week has been pretty normal and uneventful. I don’t even know where to start because nothing exciting really happened this week. We’ve kind of hit a rough spot in our sector. All the investigators that we had have either been baptized or we’ve dropped them because they weren’t progressing. So basically our biggest problem right now is that we don’t have anyone to teach. We’ve been knocking doors and contacting people like crazy all week but we haven’t had much success yet. We met a lady that has 2 nephews on missions and her whole family lives in Utah and her brother is a bishop but she doesn’t want anything to do with the church. We also met a family of Jehovah witnesses that only wanted to debate with us. I didn’t understand them at all….. Their doctrine is really strange and doesn’t really make sense to me. We’ve met a lot of people that “Were born catholic and that are going to die catholic no matter what” and a lot of other types of people. Knocking doors in Quito is a lot different than knocking doors in Esmeraldas. In Esmeraldas it was easy to get in a house and teach. Like every 10th house would let us in. In Quito it’s a lot harder. I think I’ve only gotten in 1 house since I’ve been here and it was someone from Esmeraldas. The people are a lot more closed here. But the good thing is that when we do find someone to teach they are serious about it. In Esmeraldas nobody was serious about anything. Life is a lot different here in Quito.
I’m not gonna lie. Things have been kinda rough lately. My companion is having a really hard time. He’s been here for 4 weeks and he is super homesick. He talks about going home a lot and is really frustrated with everything. He says that he hasn’t been able to sleep since he got here and that he just wants to go home but that something inside of him tells him that he should stay. Its been kinda hard because I already have all the weight of my sector and district on my shoulders and now I have the weight of my companion as well. But I guess that’s what the mission is all about… going through rough experiences and learning how to depend on the Lord to overcome them all.

A new mall just opened up in my zone. It’s the biggest mall in Ecuador. It’s pretty cool. I felt like I was in the states when I was there. It has a bunch of good American food. I even got some baskin robins. It was pretty tasty.
Well sorry that my letter is so short this week but that’s all I’ve got. I can’t think of anything else that would be interesting. Until next week….

Hey sorry that I couldn’t write much last week. I’ll get you all caught up right now. Last week was pretty crazy I was in meetings everyday and hardly got any work done. Monday was pday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday there were meeting for all the leaders in the mission that lasted all day, Friday was weekly planning and district meeting, Saturday we had a mini conference with the zone, a service , and a baptism, and Sunday we had church executive committee and ward counsel. I think we only got to teach like 12 lessons last week. But we did manage to have a baptism so that was good. We baptized a 12 year old kid named Kevin. Is dad and brother were already members but for some reason he has been really hard to get through to. I’ve been teaching him since I got here and the missionaries before me were teaching him as well. Usually it’s not that hard to get younger kids baptized. Usually they can’t wait to get baptized but for some reason it was really difficult with him. Luckily we have a really good young men’s president that helped us out a lot. He talked to Kevin and managed to overcome all the doubts that he had and all the things that were stopping him from getting baptized. His biggest doubt was that he was afraid that his parents were going to pressure him too much and that they were going to get angry with him if he didn’t want to go to an activity for some reason. That’s what he had seen with his brother who was already a member so he didn`t want the same thing to happen to him. But anyways, he finally got over it and got baptized. Now his mom is the only member in the family that isn’t a member and we’ve been working with her a lot. This week we managed to uncover one of her biggest doubts. Everyone has always talked to her about getting married in the temple so that she can be with her family forever. This week she told us that the reason that she doesn’t want to get baptized is because she still doesn’t want to get married in the temple. She has passed through a lot of struggles with her husband and says that she doesn’t believe that true love really exists. Basically she doesn’t love her husband enough to be married to him for time and all eternity. We talked about it with her and are going to continue to visit her and work with her. We’re thinking about taking some members that have happy marriages to their house. We’re gonna do everything we can so we’ll see what happens. She has always been a pretty tough investigator.

Alright I don’t really want to explain all the stuff that happened in the 3 day conference last week so I’m just gonna make a list

-Normally we have interviews with the president and zone conference every 6 weeks but now we’re just going to have in every 3 months

-Now we have a new meeting with the president and the APs every month that is called “capacitacion especializada” (I’m not sure how to translate that)

-There is a new meeting for all the leaders in the mission that will happen every 2 months

-They also taught us a lot of teaching skills that we have to teach to all the missionaries in our zones and districts…. For example: we no longer plan what we are going to teach in every teaching visit. Now we just show up and start talking to the people and let the spirit guide us. There’s a scripture in D&C 84:85 that says “take no thought beforehand for what you shall say, but treasure up the word continually and it will be given to you in that very moment the portion that will be meted to every man” (or something like that…. I have it memorized in Spanish so that’s a translation)

Those are the biggest changes that they are making. We’ve already started to put it all into practice and its working very well.

Last Monday our whole zone went on an excursion to a huge waterfall in the middle of the jungle. We hired a bus to take us as deep into the jungle as he could and then we walked for like a hour before we got there. It was really pretty. The whole time we were walking next to a huge river and through trees. We even had to cross a wooden plank bridge like the ones you see in the movies and one of the zone leaders got bitten by a crazy dog. It was quite the adventure. I sent pictures so enjoy.
This week has gone good as well. We had “Capacitacion especializada” and zone conference so I learned a lot. In zone conference President Sloan taught us about how having a testimony and be converted are 2 completely different things. Having a testimony is knowing that the things are true but being converted is a process of becoming something. We read a talk that was called “the challenge to become” (I can’t remember who it was by). It was a good talk though. When someone is truly converted they literally become charity since charity is a condition. President told us that if we don’t feel the desire to share the gospel everyday its because we haven’t experienced the atonement in our lives and haven’t really been converted. The Sons of Mosiah were such powerful missionaries because they experienced the atonement in their lives. They experienced the love of God and wanted to share it with everyone else. They used to be vile sinners but repented and felt the joy of the atonement and wanted everyone else to feel it as well.

President Sloan came to our ward this week as well and spoke in sacrament meeting and said the same thing. He told all the members that if they were scared to talk with their friends about the gospel it was because they weren’t converted and hadn’t experienced the atonement in their lives and that they needed to repent…. He spoke very boldly and he even made one lady cry (the most prideful lady in the ward) but it was good and hopefully we’ll see some results and start to get some more references.

Anyway that’s all I have for now. Thanks to everyone that keeps sending me letters even though I’m really slow at writing back. You know who you are. I love you all! Until next week.