July 18, 2011

Posted on 4:05 PM by Elder Messer | 0 comments

Well this week was pretty normal and seemed to go by pretty fast. On Thursday we had a special training and President and sister Ghent interviewed all the missionaries. Sister Ghent talked to me a lot about BYU and about dads work. They are from Manhattan Beach and say that they know a lot of people that work for Boeing in Huntington Beach. My interview with president Ghent was pretty laid back compared to the interviews that I had with President Sloan. President Sloan would always ask like soul searching questions and was very direct but president Ghent just asked about my family and my life and basically just how I was doing. He said that the last month of the mission in like the last quarter mile in a marathon. Your legs are tired and you are completely exhausted but you can see the finish line and you just have to make your last sprint to the end. I thought it was a good analogy.

We did a service project on Saturday where we piled up a ton of corn stock. I`ll send a picture or 2. It seems like every service we do is something different.

On Sunday we had a rather interesting experience. We were on the bus going to church and when we got off at the church there was a guy that followed us of the bus and he stopped us and started talking to us. It was obvious that he was from Colombia from his accent. He told us that he had been having some weird dreams with weird symbols that he didn`t understand and that one of his friends from Mexico was a member of the church and told him to talk to us about it and that we could help him. He just saw us on the bus and got off where we got off just to talk to us and ask for our help. It was kinda weird but it’s not every day that someone contacts us and asks for help. We invited him to come to church with us but he said that he had some stuff to do so we sent up and appointment for right after church. He said that in his dream he was an angel covered with mud walking through a forest and that in distinct parts of his dream he saw symbols and didn`t know what they meant. It was always the same dream with the same symbols that had been haunting him for years. He drew the symbols on the chalkboard. They were pretty weird. The whole situation was kinda weird. We ended up just giving him a blessing and inviting him to church next week. He probably won’t come though… he seemed kinda crazy.

Lately we`ve basically been on a desperate search for investigators because we don’t really have any good progressing investigators. We found like 8 this week but still no golden ones. My goal is to baptize again before the end of my mission. We`ll see if it happens.

So last week I started buying souvenirs for everyone. I`m already done buying everything for Jason but the rest of you are hard to shop for! I`m gonna buy some more stuff today. I hope you like what I get you all. If anyone wants anything specific please let me know. I decided I’m gonna buy another suit for myself as well. I just have to find somewhere that sells fabric to make a suit.

Well that’s all I really have for this week. I love you all and I`ll talk to you next week!

July 11, 2011

Posted on 1:14 PM by Elder Messer | 0 comments


On Monday night we traveled to quito for Zone leader council on Tuesday and leader meeting on Wednesday. It went really well. I got to met president Ghent for the first time. He`s a really good guy. The first thing that everyone noticed about him is that he is really tall which is a big difference because President Sloan was pretty short. He is a lot different in a lot of other ways as well. He is very calm and laid back which is like the complete opposite from President Sloan. He talks in such a calm humble way and doesn`t really show that much emotion. Sister Ghent is really cool as well. She is learning Spanish and was trying very hard to speak with all the latin missionaries. She is way nice and every time I said thank you to her for something she was like “no, thank YOU, for being on a mission”. They are from Manhattan beach CA which apparently is pretty close to where we use to live.

While we were at zone leader council my whole group got together and started talking about our date to go home. Some were scheduled to go home on the 12th and others on the 19th. Some of us who were scheduled to go home the 19th decided that it would be better to go home on the 12th instead so that we could have more time at home before going to school. A few of us went and talked with president Ghent and he was like “yea I completely understand. When I was stake president we had a few cases where missionaries got home on a Friday and had to leave for school on Monday and it was just not a good situation”. He decided to just send our whole group home on the 12th. Then on Friday the secretaries called me and gave me my flight info. For those of you who don’t know yet here it is: I leave quito on Aug. 12 at 6:40 am and get to Miami at 11:50 am. Then I have a 5 ½ hour layover in Miami until I leave at 5:20 pm and then I get to Denver at 7:30 pm.

Other than that this week was pretty normal. Nothing exciting really happened. My companion goes home in 3 weeks and I`m not gonna lie its kinda hard being in a companionship like this where we both go home really soon… haha. Anyway, I love you all and I`ll talk to you next week.