Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

Well first things first… Happy Fathers day dad!

This was a good week. The Bonilla Flores family seems to get more golden every day. They are seriously the most golden family that I`ve taught in my whole mission. This week they went to church and had their baptismal interviews and are getting baptized next week after stake conference. I`m really glad I didn`t get changed today because it seems to be a repeating occurrence in my mission that right when I’m about to baptize a family they change me. It happened when I left Esmeraldas and they got baptized the week after I left and they baptized a family that I had found in Ambato as well. But for once in my mission I didn`t get changed and I will finally be able to experience the joy of baptizing a family. This week we taught them about temples and eternal families and they are already way excited to go to the temple in a year. SO GOLDEN!!!

This week we had a special training with President Sloan and it was the last training that we will have with him. It was kind of sad and really “trunky”. At the end we sang “God be with you till we meet again” and then we all lined up and sister and President Sloan said goodbye to everyone one by one. Sister Sloan even gave all the elders hugs…. First time I’ve hugged a female since hugging Lindsey right before going into the MTC…kind of weird. When I was saying bye to them Sister Sloan was like “Oh you`re going to be at BYU right? We`ll see you in a couple of months then.” And president was like “yea we`re going to have mission reunions every weekend”. It was kind of weird because it was like saying goodbye but not really because they live like 20 minutes from Provo.

So this week is Inti raimi. That means “Sun god” in quichua. It’s a huge party with a bunch of crazy indigenous traditions… especially in cotacachi right where we live. There is a park right in front of our house and every year for Inti raimi all the indigenous from the different villages come to the park and play music and dance. Each village has a specific hour that they are suppose to dance. But there are 2 villages that are like enemies and they always try to dance during the other village’s time and it always turns into a big fight with rock throwing, whips, and guns. According to what everyone has told me people die every year and the police can`t do anything. They just show up and throw gas bombs and then leave and the indigenous people just stay and keep fighting each other. Our bishop used to live in the house that we live in and he said that it was like watching a war scene in really life from the window. I talked with the missionary that was here last year at this time and he said that he saw someone die and that the tear gas from the bombs got into the house. I`m not sure what we`ll do. I think we might just go work with other missionaries in their sector on Friday and Saturday because those are the worst days. This week in church the bishop gave a very direct talk about traditions and told the members that they shouldn`t go to the park this week to participate in the music or dances. He spoke in quichua but I understood like 50 % of what he said and it was a powerful talk. Anyway this week should be interesting but don`t worry there’s not really any danger for us. I would just prefer to not see people dying.
Well that’s all I have for this week. I love you all! Talk to you next week!