Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

August 8, 2011 - Last post

2011-08-08T14:07:00.001-07:00

Pues…. Me es dificil creer que ya se me acabaron los mejores dos años……It feels like yesterday I was saying goodbye to everyone in the airport and getting dropped off by Lindsey at the MTC and here I am at the other end of the spectrum about to finish my mission. It really did go by fast. I don`t think I can even began to describe how I`ve been feeling in these last couple days. I just feel straight up weird. I`m happy because I get to come home and see my family and friends but at the same time I feel like I`m leaving family and friends here in Ecuador so its hard. I love the people of Ecuador. It’s been hard to say goodbye to everyone this week.

But anyway, It was a good week. I did my best to show Elder Whitlock the area. And the most exciting news is that we have a baptism coming up this Saturday. I`m sad that I won`t be there for it but I still count him as my convert. His name is Luis Flores. He is the father of Kristina Bonilla Flores (The wife of the family that we baptized last month). He has had a drinking problem his whole life which has caused a lot of problems but hasn`t drank for over a month now and has come to church 4 weeks in a row. He says that during the week he always wants Sunday to come faster so that he can go to church. He doesn`t speak very much Spanish and has almost no formal education so we have been teaching him like we would teach a 4 year old with simple words and really basic concepts. We have been working with the bishop too so that he can translate what we say into Quichua and help Luis understand better. He doesn`t understand much but he says that he feels peace when he prays, in church, and when we teach him. He should get baptized this Saturday.

At the beginning of my mission I thought that God and Christ had done so much for me that going on a mission was the least that I could do to try and repay them but now I realize that my debt to them has grown even bigger because they have blessed me so much over these past 2 years. It really is true what King Benjamin said in Mosiah chapter 2; we will always be unprofitable servants. The more we try to pay off our debt to Christ the more he blesses us and the bigger our debt because. Going on a mission wasn`t a sacrifice. It was a privilege and a blessing. I have gained a simpler but more profound understanding of the Gospel. I feel like I gained like 50 years of life experience with all the people that I got to help and all the problems that I got to see and try and help solve. I got to see and be part of miracles. There was absolutely nothing bad about going on a mission. It was the best decision I have ever made in my life.

I`d like to close my last letter with a scripture. Its in 2 John 1:12. It reads, “Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.”

God be with you till we meet again!

August 1, 2011

2011-08-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I`ll start with the good news… Michelle got baptized and
confirmed this week! It was basically a miracle. Last week we thought
that there was almost no way that she could get baptized this week
because of the opposition with her mom. On Sunday night Antonio and
Michelle had basically told us that if she got baptized that it would
start ridiculous legal problems and would be a very bad situation. We
basically just testified to them of the importance of baptism and told
them that if they really had faith and tried that the lord would
provide a way. Then we went back on Wednesday and they told us that
they didn`t care what the consequences were, Michelle was going to get
baptized. I don’t think her mom knows yet and hopefully when she finds
out it won`t cause to many problems. But they didn`t break any laws
and they did what the lord wanted so he is “Bound” to help them with
whatever challenges do arise. There was some opposition on the day of
the baptism because Antonio had to stay longer at work for some reason
(A work that owes him 3 weeks salary still) and his dad was really
sick and needed to be taken to the hospital. But long story short he
made it to the baptism and michelle got baptized and all is well.
At Church this week an American family showed up that just moved here
and they invited us to dinner on Tuesday. I`m pretty excited.
I got a new companion today. His name is Elder Whitlock. He`s from
Wyoming He was in my district when I was a district leader so I
already know him. He only has a week to get to know the biggest sector
in the mission so hopefully he can pick it up quick.

I finished all my souvenir shopping today and I really hope you all
like what I got you. It was kinda hard to pick stuff out for everyone
but I did the best I could.

Our zone broke the record this month for baptisms. We had 15 between 4
companionships. The old record was 13. And the mission broke its
record too. We had 288 baptisms this month which is ridiculous!!!!
When president Sloan first got here he said the goal was 70 in a month
and know one thought it was possible. And now we baptized over 4 times
that in one month. I`m pretty sure our mission is the highest
baptizing mission in the area. If its not the highest its definitely
pretty high up there. Next month we`re gonna hit 300 for sure!

Well this week is gonna be my last real week of work as a missionary
because next week we have to travel to Quito on Tuesday for zone
leader council on Wednesday and then I have interviews and meetings on
Thursday and I come home on Friday. It feels weird that my mission is
coming to an end. Its kinda surreal still. I don’t really know how to
explain it. I think it might be hard to adjust to normal life again.
Hopefully I can adjust quickly. Thank you all for all the love and
support that you have given me over the last 2 years. I`m really lucky
to have such a good family that supports me and encourages me so much.
A lot of missionaries don`t have that. So thank you! Last week will be
my last letter home from the mission. That’s all for this week. I love
you all!

July 18, 2011

2011-07-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

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.

June 27, 2011

2011-06-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

It’s been a crazy week, that’s for sure! We weren`t able to get much done this week because of all the craziness that has been going on with Inty Raymi. Look up “Inty Raymi Cotacachi” on Google images or YouTube or something if you want to see what it was like. I`m sure they have some pictures or something. We tried to spend as much time out of our sector as possible but we had to run by the house a few times so we saw what it was like. Basically every village has a good of men that walk around stopping their feet on the ground in a specific pattern. They all wear chaps and weird hats with swastikas and other symbols on them. And they are all way drunk. A lot of their wives would walk behind the group to bring beer to their husbands when they wanted and to grab them and keep them from fighting with other groups when they got mad. I felt really bad for the woman. Anyway, they all carry whips and/or big whips and machetes and they go from one corner of the park to the other doing their little dance and yelling and screaming like idiots. The Ecuadorian version of the swat team was there on every corner with smoke bombs and other non-lethal weapons in case any fights broke out. They did get into a few fights but according to what I’ve heard no one has dies yet. The whole environment was just really ugly. When we walked out of the house on Friday morning and the cops were already there I could feel something heavy in the air. I don’t know how to describe it. It was like the spirit had already left that specific place altogether because it knew what was going to happen. Maybe before my mission I wouldn`t have felt it that intensely but I think being on a mission has made me more sensitive to the spirit so I really felt a difference in the atmosphere with all this. It will be the same thing this week because Inty Raymi doesn`t get over until Saturday.

Other than all that it was a great week! Why? BECAUSE WE BAPTIZED THE BONILLA FLORES FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!! Can I just tell you the baptizing a whole family is like that best feeling that a missionary can have. It was wonderful. It was like they have been waiting their whole lives for us to come teach them and baptize them. They will get confirmed next week because this week was stake conference. I`m confident that they will make it to the temple in a year.

Stake conference went really well. President Sloan came and gave 3 talks. And did a miracle…. On Saturday after the priesthood session of stake confidence he started talking with an investigator in the zone that has wanted to get baptized for 9 months but can`t because he is only 17 and his dad won`t give him permission. The missionaries have tried talking with his dad and everything else that they have been able to think of but his dad has been really hard hearted and didn`t want to give him permission. When president Sloan was talking to him he tald him that if he had faith that the lord would soften his dad`s heart. I don’t remember everything he said but I just remember that president promised him that his dad’s heart would soften. The next day he showed up at stake conference and said that his dad had given him permission. I did the baptismal interview and asked him what happened and he said that he went home and prayed really hard so that president Sloan’s promise would be fulfilled, then he went and talked to his dad about it and his dad was still hard hearted but in the middle of the night he came into his room and asked “what do you need to get baptized” and he said “just your signature” and his dad so ok I’ll do it. His dad even showed up to his baptism. It was a really neat experience though to see how president could just promise something like that and see it fulfilled. The kid asked President Sloan to baptize him so he stayed for the baptism even though he had a meeting in Ibarra right after the conference. I guess he just decided that it was an appropriate moment to focus on the one because his meeting was at 1:30 and he didn`t even leave Otavalo until 1:45 and Ibarra is like 30 minutes away. It was a really cool experience to see all that.

We did a special presentation for the conference with a giant book of mormon and we passed out referral cards to all the members as they entered. President challenged them to give referrals in his talk and we ended up getting 28 for the whole zone so that was good. Hopefully some of them will be golden.

This weekend was presidents last weekend in Ecuador. The new president gets here on Thursday, President Ghent. I think he’s from California. Its gonna be interesting to see what things will change with the new mission president.
Thanks for the package mom! I loved it!!!!
That’s all I have for this week. I love you all. Talk to you next week!

June 20, 2011

2011-06-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

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!

May and June

2011-06-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

June 13, 2011

Well i`ll be honest, I don`t really know what to write about this week… It was a pretty normal un-eventful week. I`ll try and make this a good letter but no promises…

The zone has been having a lot of problems lately, in the last 2 weeks we`ve only baptized 1 person and have only found 8 families between 4 companionships. We had a meeting this week with the stake presidency to try and get them to help us because we depend so much on the members here because of the difficulties with the language and with everything being so far apart. We told them about our struggles and asked for there help. Their response wasn`t really what we were hoping for. One of the councilors suggested that we stop inviting people to be baptized in the first lesson because it scares them away. Then the stake president Suggested that when we find a family we should ask them when we can come back instead of saying “can we come back on such a day?” because that scars them away too. They said that in their missions they did things differently. We tried to explain as gently as we could that things have changed a lot since their missions and we explained a little bit about the doctrine of Christ and our purpose as missionaries but I don’t think they got it very well. We told President Sloan what happened when he called us today and he said that he wants us to go teach each member of the stake presidency a special lesson in their homes with their families about the Doctrine of Christ and that the whole zone should teach the same thing to their bishops before the upcoming stake conference. Then in the stake conference in priesthood session he is going to teach the same thing to back us up. On the phone this morning President told me, ”Don`t worry Elder Messer, This won`t be the first time that humble 19 and 20 year old servants of the lord have taught bishops and stake presidents what the Doctrine of Christ really is”. Hopefully it all goes well in these upcoming 2 weeks and we can see a lot of improvements.

The half way good news for this week is that the Father of the Bonilla Flores family went to church. His wife couldn`t make it because their baby daughter got really sick with a fever for the second week in a row and she had to take her to the hospital. But the Dad went and really liked in. if the mom goes to church this week and next week they will be able to get baptized the first week in July. Keep them in your prayers! So far they are the most golden family that I have ever taught in my mission.
Other than that it was a very normal week. So that’s all I have for this week. I love you all and I`ll write again next week!

June 6, 2011

Well this week was good like almost every other week. On Tuesday we had zone leader conference which was fun as usual. It was presidents last zone leader conference before he goes home so it was kinda a tender day for everyone. President Started telling us a lot about his wife and even told us the story of when they met for the first time. It was pretty funny. Then he started talking a lot about marriage and started telling us how important it was to not delay marriage and to start looking as soon as we get back. He said we should apply what we have learned on the mission to finding a wife when we get back. We need to talk with everyone and invite girls in the first date. We should always have 9 progressing girls, but we should always be looking for new girls at the same time… haha it was pretty funny… I guess you just had to be there.

The next day we passed by the mission offices before going home and they had my “Trunky Paper” waiting for me. That’s what they send to all the missionaries who are getting ready to go home. I had to fill it out with a bunch of info like what ward and stake I will be returning to and what airport I will fly into. I filled it out as fast as I could so that I wouldn`t have to think about it too much. While I was in the office a bunch of missionaries were looking up there houses on Google earth so I told them our address so that they could look up our house and it looks like mom got her photo taken by google earth because there is a lady in front of our house that looks just like you mom. Your basically famous in the mission now. Haha

Last week the bishop gave us a referral of a family that works for him. The Bonilla Flores family. We have been teaching them and they are progressing very well. They read and pray and they were gonna go to church this week but their daughter got sick and they had to take her to the hospital on Sunday. Hopefully this upcoming week they can attend church. They have accepted a baptismal date and everything.

Our other investigator that had a baptismal date isn`t progressing quite as well. We went to visit him on Saturday and right as we got there we found him walking out of his house with a huge case of beer. We tried to stop him and ask if we could share something with him but he just said “I`m busy right now” and walked away. He went to the village party (to celebrate a catholic baptism) and got completely wasted. We`ve been trying to help him stop drinking for like 2 months now but he isn`t really showing much progress or a desire to stop so I think we might have to drop him for now.

Anyway, other that that I don’t really have much to tell you all about. I just send some pictures as well because pictures are a lot better than a letter anyway… at least that’s what I think. I love you all!

p.s. a returned missionary from 3 years ago that is back visiting with his wife just saw us and came up and asked to take a picture with us…… that might be me someday haha….

May 30, 2011

Well this week has been a rather busy one. We were only able to teach 8 lessons because we spent so much time out of our sector but I still consider it a good week. On Tuesday we had zone conference which always lasts pretty much all day. It was really good though. We learned a lot about spiritual gifts and the importance of seeking them in order to overcome our weaknesses. I had to direct the conference which was a first for me but it was pretty simple. My companion and I had to teach the rest of the missionaries as well about giving hope to people through the atonement. We taught some fairly simple stuff. We read in Moroni 10:22 and Moroni 7:41 and talked about how almost all of the investigators feel a degree of despair in their lives for the sins that they have committed or are committing. And when we show up with the spirit it only makes them feel even worse. That’s why a lot of them try and “run away” from us and aren`t there when we show up for the 2nd appointment or our busy or decided that they aren`t interested any more. They feel guilt and shame in our presence and it’s easier for them to “run away” and not have to be in our presence. It’s like when Adam and Eve tried to hide from God after they ate the fruit. They felt guilt and being in God’s presence only made it worse. That’s why it’s so important as missionaries to always testify of the Atonement which is the ultimate and only source of real hope like it explains in Moroni 7:41. We have to leave the investigator with enough hope to overcome the guilt that they feel in our presence so that they don`t run away from us and so that they keep listening to us. At the beginning of my mission I always wondered why people were so flakey with us and why they would always hide or give us excuses but know I understand a little more. And In a way I understand how we will all feel arriving to God’s presence if we haven’t repented and taken advantage of the Atonement in our lives. It really will be like Moroni describes in Mormon 9:3-6. Anyway, I always learn a ton when I have to prepare to teach something. On Wednesday we had a normal day.

On Thursday we had a mission conference in Quito. They told us that Elder Scott was going to come but something happened and he couldn`t make it so they sent Elder Gonzalez from the presidency of the 70 instead. It was a really good conference. He basically just let us ask him questions the whole time. It was amazing our much doctrine he could just pull out without having to think twice about it. He was almost as good as Brother Bott with quoting Prophets and scriptures off the top of his head. He was really funny as well. It was a really good conference and I learned a lot. I didn`t really learn that much stuff that was completely new but I guess I just understood better things that I already knew. I feel like being on a mission I have gained a simpler but deeper understanding of the gospel. It’s kinda hard to explain…. I guess it’s just the result of learning from the spirit and not with my own knowledge. Simple principles that I didn`t even think twice about before the mission now mean so much more to me… It’s kinda cool. On Friday we spent the whole day outside of our sector trying to help other missionaries in the zone. In the mission we are “playing swarm defense”…. It’s a defensive strategy in football that says that everyone on the team goes after the person that has the ball. It is different than a man on man defense or a zone defense. Basically it works like this: Whenever anyones investigator in the zone has a problem we go to try and help them even if it means leaving behind our own sector. We have to “follow the ball” and go wherever there is a challenge or opposition. So that’s what we did on Friday. My companion went with one companionship and I went with another and we tried to “rescue” investigators that were having problems.

On Saturday we had another normal day…although Saturdays are anything but normal here in Otavalo… Everyone and their Dog go to the market to sell and/or buy. It makes things hard as a missionary. Sunday was normal as well. The bishop was kind enough to drive us around in his car all day so that we didn`t have to walk hours to all the little villages. He took us to some of his friends as well so now we have a new family to teach. They look like they could have potential. Anyway, that’s about it for my week. This week should be another busy one. We are traveling to Quito tonight and will get back on Wednesday because tomorrow we have zone leaders council. I`m looking forward to it like always. It should be fun. Anyway, thanks for everything. I love you all! Until next week!

May 23, 2011
Well I guess I´ll start telling you all a little bit about last week because I didn´t really get to write last week. It was a good week. We had 5 baptisms so I can´t really complain. Lisbeth, Joselyn, Israel, Kevin, and Maribel. They were all baptized in the ward that the missionaries haven’t gone to in forever. Lisbeth and Kevin are the children of a family that just barely became active again after 8 years. The Sunday that we showed up to church in Carabueala was the first Sunday that they went to church after8 years. It was like we showed up just at the right time. Israel and Joselyn are kids that have been going to church every week for a long time that were of baptismal age but had never been baptized. All we did was show up and ask them if they wanted to be baptized and they said “yes we´ve been waiting for the missionaries to come baptize us”. Maribel is the bishops sister in law. Her husband is a member and she had been going to church for a longtime. She had listened to the missionaries before but didn´t want to get baptized before because she is latin and doesn´t understand quichua so she has no idea what’s going on in church. We showed up at her house one night and taught baptism and invited her to be baptized and 2 weeks later she got baptized. I feel like we had 5 free baptisms. But that’s alright….I like free baptisms. There was some opposition on the day of the baptism though….. The font wouldn´t fill up. We got to the church about an hour before the baptism and went and checked the font and water was coming out and going right down the drain. The person that tried to fill up the font had just but a piece of plastic and a rock over the drain but it wasn´t working…. I´m not gonna lie, I wasn´t surprised. I think probably over 80% of the baptisms that I’ve had on my mission have had problems filling the font. Anyway, we got it figured out and closed the drain so that the font would fill but at 5 when the baptism was supposed to start there wasn´t enough water so we had to delay the baptism another hour. On top of that about half of the ward had gone to tulcan and Maribel went with them so there weren´t many members there and one of the people that was supposed to get baptized wasn´t there either. So we ended up having 2 baptismal services. 1 at 6 and the other at 8. But at the end of the day everyone got baptized that was supposed to so it was a success. Maribel´s husband baptized her and it was a really special experience.
Other than that last week was pretty normal. We did find a guy bathing himself in the chapel though…. I guess he didn´t have running water in his house. It was a little bit awkward when we walked in and he had his shirt off throwing water on himself. Haha

This week was pretty good as well. It was pretty normal but I did have one experience that is worth telling. On Friday I did a baptismal interview in which the guy I was interviewing confessed that he had been unfaithful to his wife (she was already a member). I told him that in order to get baptized he needed to confess to his wife and ask for forgiveness. He said he would do it and I told him that I would be at his baptism the next day to verify that he had done it. So the next day we went early to his baptism and he walked in with his family and his wife was in tears. I took the guy into a room and asked him if he had done what I asked him to do and he began to tell me that he had but that his wife hadn´t taken it very well. We had a very emotional/good conversation and I told him that it might take some time but that he would be able to recuperate his relationship with his wife. When we walked out I noticed that his wife was in an interview with the bishop. It was way dramatic and we were all worried that his baptism wouldn´t be a good experience because of all the drama. The wife could hardly keep from crying during the opening hymn. But then my companion gave a powerful talk about the cleansing power of the atonement and then he got baptized and afterwards he gave a powerful testimony (It was in quichua but I could still feel that it was a powerful testimony). Then after the baptismal service was over we went and shook the wives hand and she started crying and saying thank you to the missionaries that had taught and baptized her husband and said that everything was gonna be ok. Elder Merrill told me today that they were holding hands at church and that they are doing great now. It was a really cool experience for me because I got to witness first hand and be a part of the healing and forgiving power of the atonement. It’s amazing the things that can be healed and made right thanks to what Christ did. That man isn´t the same person anymore. He is a new creature born through the atonement of Christ. All his sins and mistakes and behind him and someday he will be able to be sealed with his family in the temple, thanks to the miracle of forgiveness.

Well that’s all I have for now. I haven’t written this in a while but I really am very sorry to you people that still write me so consistently that I haven’t written in so long!!!!! But thank you soooo much for your letters!!! It makes my day every time I get a letter!!! Anyway, I love you all!

May 9, 2011

Well there’s not really that much to talk about this week since I just talked to you all yesterday. It was a pretty slow week here as well. On Tuesday we had zone leader’s council. It was good like always. On Wednesday we had leaders meeting and on Wednesday night we got back to cotacachi just in time to sleep. The rest of the week went pretty fast. Lisbeth didn`t get baptized this week because her mom still wont give her permission. Bummer! Shes so golden and its so frustrating that we cant baptize her but oh well…. I`m sure she´ll get baptized someday, even if i`m not here to see it. This upcoming weekend we are planning to have 4 baptisms: Estrella, Kevin, Joselyn, and Maribel. They all had their interviews on Sunday and all passed except for Maribel. She has to have an interview with president sloan so hopefully we can get that done this week. Other than that theres not really any big news. I stared buying suvoniers today. So far i have scarfs for like 15 different soccer teams and some other pretty scarfs for Mom and Desi. I already told you this but I guess I`ll say it again… Elder Scott is coming to our mission and we are having a 4 hour conference with him on the 26th of this month. I`m pretty excited. They made it very clear that members are not invited. Its only for full time missionaries. Other than that I dont really have much to tell you. Happy mothers day again mom! It was kinda wierd talking on skype yesterday knowing that the next time I see you all will be in 3 months in person. Anyway, I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!
-Elder Brandon Messer

2011-05-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

May 2, 2011

2011-05-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Well this will probably be a short letter because we have to travel to quito today and we need to get going to make it on time. It was a good week. We have 2 wards in our sector; Cotacachi and carabuela. They are kinda far apart and its hard to work in both wards so for a really long time the missionaries have just been working in cotacachi because that’s where we live and the ward is stronger there. But last week we decided to go see what carabuela was like and if there was any potential so we went to church last week and this week we spent some more time over there. It turns out that there is potential in cotacachi. We found 4 people that go to church every week that aren`t members. 2 of them are kids of an active family that are 9 and 11 that were never baptized when they were 8…. So its basically like 2 free baptisms… although it might not be that easy because he has a ridiculous fear of water…. We`ll see what we can do. Another one is the 9-year-old son of a family that was inactive for 8 years but is now coming back to church. And the last one is the bishops sister in law that has been coming to church for a long time and says that she wants to get baptized. So basically it was like a gold mine for baptisms!
We have an investigator named Lisbeth that comes to church every week, goes to young woman’s activities during the week and is basically a “dry member”. She is everything a member is except for being baptized. The only reason that she doesn`t get baptized is because her dad is CRAZY!!!!!!!!!! He yells at us every time he sees us and hates us and the church. But this week in church she said that she wants to get baptized before the ward goes to the temple next week so that she can go too and do baptisms for the dead. She said that she’s just gonna talk with her mom and get permission from her and do it without telling her dad. That’s what her brother did like 5 months ago and everything turned out good so she says that she wants to do the same. Hopefully it all works out and we baptized her next week.
This week we had 13 investigators at church. There were actually 14 but we didn`t know one of them and didn`t get a chance to meet her and set up an appointment because she left so quick so we didn`t count here. The Sundays when 13 people show up are the Sundays when I feel very grateful to be serving in Latin America. Hopefully all of those people can get baptized. It looks like we have a lot of potential this month.
This week we will be in Quito until Thursday for meetings so its gonna be a busy week trying to get caught up with all our investigators when we get back. But it will be fun to go to Quito. It always is. I always get to see all my friends from other zones and eat in presidents house and play kickball and whatnot.
I`m looking forward to talking to you all on mothers day!!!!!!
Is there anything specific that you guys what me to bring back from Ecuador. I`m gonna make a list now so that I have time to get it all. If you want any movies they cost a buck here so just let me know if you want me to bring back any. Jason the sells scarfs for any of the big soccer teams like Barcelona or real Madrid or whatever team that is pretty popular. Do you want any? They also have pretty scarfs for girls, beanies, llama jackets, jewelry, purses, bags… and a lot of other stuff. Maybe you can look on the internet and find more options. Just look for stuff that they sell in Otavalo, Ecuador. Anyway, if you just give me some ideas or make a list or something I can start buying when I find good prices. Its all pretty cheap and I owe everyone 2 birthday presents and 2 Christmas presents so what do you want?
Anyway that’s all I have for this week. I love you all!

Love,
Brandon

April 25, 2011

2011-04-25T17:17:00.003-07:00

April 25, 2011

2011-04-25T17:17:00.001-07:00

April 18, 2011

2011-04-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

April 18, 2011

2011-04-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well this week was pretty normal I`d have to say. On Tuesday president Sloan came and we had a special training. He talked a lot about what it means to be working with the indigenous people and all the promises that are made to the lamanites in the Book of Mormon. Over the last few weeks I have been reading the book of Mormon highlighting all the promises given to the lamanites and its pretty cool since I go out and work with them every day. When President Sloan was a missionary he was in Bolivia and was on special assignment for his whole mission to just work with the indigenous people. He spoke quechua (almost like quichua but not quite). He told us a cool story. One day he and his companion were getting ready in the morning and an old indigenous man knocked on their door. President Sloan said that by the way he was dressed he knew that he was from a different village because the indigenous dress differently depending on the village that they live in. the first thing the guy said was, “Are you the ones that have a book about the white god that visited this people hundreds of years ago?”. President Sloan asked him who told him that they were there and he said started telling them that before his grandfather died he promised him that someday 2 white men would come that has a book about the white god that visited the Americas and that he had to find them and follow them. President Sloan and his companion taught him for 6 hours straight, answered all his questions, and then he got baptized. It was a crazy story. It’s easy to see how the prophecies about the lamanites are being completed. I think the church is stronger here in Otavalo with the indigenous than any other place that I`ve been in my mission. The people are just so happy and humble and firm. The retention rate here is like 95% which is ridiculously high for Latin America.
We went back and saw Carlos this week. He’s doing really well but he does have a pretty nasty scare on his forehead. He doesn`t speak Spanish so we had to teach through a translator and that’s always kinda hard. He said he might come to church this week but I don’t know if he went because he would have gone to the ward that we never go to. He also asked for another blessing because he is getting surgery tomorrow to fix a hernia that he has.
The Mantillas didn`t end up getting baptized this week because the dad went to work in Quito and his boss made him stay until Sunday. It’s kinda hard with them because they don’t have a phone and there is almost no way to get a hold of them besides making the epic journey up to their house in the middle of nowhere. And it makes it even harder that they don`t speak Spanish very well. But hopefully he`ll come back in time this week so that he can get baptized.
We have another family of investigators that have come to church 2 weeks in a row that live even further than the mantillas. They are the Licinchano Lambchimba family. We are hoping that they get baptized on the 30th but it’s kinda hard with them as well because they speak even less Spanish and live soooooooooooo far away. It takes like half an hour to get there in taxi but we definitely don`t have enough money to pay for a taxi every day so we can`t visit them as much as we would like. The bishop has a car and can take us sometimes but he’s pretty busy and can`t go as much as we want. But hopefully a miracle happens and somehow they can get baptized soon.
We`ve been teaching a family called the Cevallos family for about a month now. The dad used to drink and they had a ton of problems but he had stopped drinking and they have been doing pretty good lately. Yesterday night we went unexpectedly to see if we could share something short and when we got there the dad was drunk and everyone was crying and screaming. It was pretty dramatic. It’s crazy how often I have found myself in situations like that and its crazy how married adults look to 20 year old boys to help them solve their marriage problems. We helped them calm down and basically just talked to the wife about what she could do to help her husband and her family. We didn`t really talk to the dad because he was wasted and I`m pretty sure by now he doesn`t remember anything. It was cool to feel the difference in the spirit that was there when we got there and when we left. It was a complete change. When we got there everyone was yelling and screaming and when we left everyone was calm and felt a lot better.
That’s pretty sad that JoJo died☹. I`m sure she’s loving it in the spirit world though!
Anyway, I love you all! Thanks for everything! Talk to ya next week!

April 15, 2011

2011-04-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Well this week was pretty good. On Tuesday morning we got a call from one of the bishops in our stake saying that the river by his first councilor’s factory had overflowed and that he needed out help to get all the water out. So we hurried and got dressed in our service close, went and rounded up the other missionaries, and went to help. Let’s just say it was the dirtiest service project that I have ever done. There was mud all over the place and in some parts it was almost up to our knees. We just started scooping it up with buckets and dumping it into wheelbarrows and talking it back out to the river. We all got mud all over us (I`ll try and send a picture next week) but luckily when we finished they had a high pressure water gun and sprayed us all off and we went home soaking wet instead of covered in mud.
We had a baptism his week. Geovani Maiwa got baptized. He’s a 17 year old indigenous guy. He was basically more than golden. The missionaries contacted him in the street about 4 months ago and then never saw him again until he came to church 4 weeks ago. We started teaching him and he got baptized on Saturday. He says that he wants to go on a mission. Hes probably the strongest convert that i`ve had on my mission so far. The indigenous people are very loyal. When they decide to join the church they don`t go inactive very easily. I guess its just part of their lamanite blood.
On Sunday night we went to visit the Mantilla family with our bishop. All are members except for the dad and one 12 year old daughter. They live WAY out in the mountains in a little village called Topo grande (Big mole). They don`t speak that much Spanish so the bishop just started talking to them in quichua. After about half an hour of not understanding anything the bishop turned to me and asked if the dad and daughter could be baptized this weekend. I said that if they passed the baptismal interview that they could and gave the baptismal interview questions to the bishop. He then proceeded to verify their knowledge in quichua and said that they knew all the questions expect for a few commandments. The problem is that the dad works in quito all week long and is only home on Saturday nights and Sundays. So this Saturday at 4 we`re gonna go with the bishop to teach the rest of the commandments and at 5 they`re gonna have his interview and on Sunday morning they`re gonna get baptized right before church and then get confirmed. The dad used to be a drunk. A few weeks ago we ran into him in the street and he was wasted off of his rocker. But apparently y hasn`t drank since then and is really repented and wants to get baptized. Hes been coming to church for over a months´. Long story short we should have 2 baptisms th¡s weekend if all goes well. We didn`t even really do anything to deserve these baptisms because we can`t really even communicate that well with these people. All we did was set up the appointment and ask the bishop to come with us and he did the rest. Our bishop is really good. He’s probably the best bishop I’ve had on my mission. Hes way rich too. I think his house is bigger than ours.
I think I forgot to mention it last week but our mission has been doing really good lately. We had 256 baptisms in March which is a new mission record. And until this point we have doubled the number of baptisms from last year. I`m pretty sure we are the best mission in the area right now which is incredible because we used to be one of the worst. Hopefully we can keep it up in the upcoming months.
Well that’s all I really have for this week. Thanks for all your support. I love you all! I`ll try and send pictures next week. This computer won`t let me do it this week.

Love,
Brandon

2011-03-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

March 29, 2011

2011-03-29T12:59:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone! Well I guess i`ll start with the news from last week since I didn`t really write anything last week. It was a pretty good week. On Tuesday we went and did a service helping someone build a house. They had 2 HUGE truck loads of cinder blocks so we had to unload them all and carry them a little ways to the spot where they were gonna build the house. I don`t think my arms have ever been so tired in my entire life. They felt like they were about to fall off. Seriously all we did for like 4 house was carry cinderblocks. We didn`t even get to start building because by the time we had unloaded all the blocks we had to go because we had an appointment.
Later that day we had to do a baptismal interview for a lady that wanted to get baptized in the zone. I did the interview but it wasn`t exactly a normal interview because the lady didn`t speak Spanish. It was an old indigenous lady that only spoke quichua so her grandson had to be there to translate. It was an interesting experience trying to determine whether or not someone was ready for baptism when I didn`t understand her and had to rely on a translator. And it was kinda weird asking such personal questions about worthiness with her grandson as the translator. I guess I really had to try and depend on the spirit to tell me whether or not she should get baptized. After all was said and done I felt like she was ready and gave her the OK.
Last Sunday there was a return missionary that gave a talk in quichua so I didn`t understand anything but then he said “BYU” and about a minute later mentioned “Brigham Young University”. I didn`t understand what he said but it caught my attention that he mentioned BYU. So after the meeting I asked him what he was saying (He speaks Spanish, English, and Japanese as well) and he told me that he had stoped in Utah on his way home from Japan and his ex mission president took him to BYU and that while he was there he just thought it was the best place in the world because the temple is right there and there are a ton of beautiful mormon girls and that his life would probably be a lot easier if he went and studied there but he doesn`t go because the prophets have commanded people to build up zion in their own lands. I thought it was kinda funny…. Other missionaries and some members talk to me about BYU all the time and they always get jealous about how there are so many members there are and all the opportunities there are… especially to get married. Haha
On Saturday we were walking down the street and ran into 2 members from Oklahoma. The guy served his mission here 10 years ago and was visiting with his wife. They said that they have family in Castle rock that live by the outlet mall. Steve and Elizabeth Kramerk or chris and ann Candi… do those names sound familiar. I assume they are in the other ward…. The people that I met were the Bomans.
This week was a good week as well. We had a new family come to church for the first time on Sunday. The Cevallos Narvaez family. They were references that we received from a member about 2 weeks ago and the only way to describe them is golden. They are way open to us and always read the chapters that we leave for them to read. The wife isn`t as receptive as the husband but she is still way receptive. The husband used to be an alcoholic but hasn`t drank since we started teaching them. They have a baptismal date for this month.
Last Sunday a 17 year old guy showed up to church named Giovani, We have been teaching him this week and he came to church again yesterday and has a baptismal date as well. He says that he wants to be a missionary like us.
Basically I love this sector. We have a good program and get a lot of references and things are looking up.
This week Elder Warr and I went to do baptismal interviews for 2 little girls who are older than 8 and their parents are becoming active again. After the interview we both asked them who they wanted to baptize them and they both said us. I tried to convince the one that I interviewed that it would be better if the missionaries that taught her baptized her but she was pretty stubborn so I just ended up baptizing her. That’s why I sent home baptism pictures.
Elder Warr got changed today so now i`m with Elder Quexel. He is from Guatamala and has the same amount of time in the mission as me. I was kinda sad that elder Warr left after only 4 weeks together. He was probably my favorite companion so far. We had a ton in common. But that’s how the mission is. I`m sure i`ll have fun with Elder Quexel! Well that’s all I have for this week. Thanks grandma messer for the package!!!! I loved it!!!!! I love you all. Talk to you next week!

Love,
Brandon

March 7, 2011

2011-03-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

Ali Chishi familiataika. Imanaisha takangichi? Na cani maki faki.This place is absolutely crazy!!!!! This has definitely been the craziest/funnest week of my whole mission. We live in a small town about 2 minutes from Otavalo called Cotacachi. So far I love it. It’s a really nice/clean town. We live right next to a really nice park and have a cool view of a huge catholic church on the other side of the park when we look out or kitchen window. Otavalo and Cotacachi are huge tourist places and there are a ton of Americans that do business down here or that come to do humanitarian aid. There is an elderly couple that lives right around the corner from us that are from Nauvoo. They are called the Howell family. They are members of the church that just came down here to help the indigenous to raise there standard of living. They are really nice and fun. They give us nice home cooked American food whenever we want it. Yesterday we had taco soup for dinner and it was delicious. They are only 2 of the American people down here though. On Saturday we went to eat in a restaurant and some guy from Ohio walked in and was like “Oh you guys are down here too”… then another American guy sitting there said, “of course they are. They don`t let them back into Utah until they have saved enough souls”. It was kinda funny. We talked to them a bit and one of them ended up giving us 5 bucks to pay for our lunch and asked us to say a prayer for his granddaughter that has a brain tumor. Just barely when we were walking to this internet café we ran into 2 professors from Utah State University that are down here on an agriculture project. They were members. Anyway, it’s basically like a crazy mix of tourism, latins, and lamanites (Indigenous people). Sometimes I get confused when I here people speaking English, Spanish, and quichua at the same time.
Our stake is a quichua stake so we only teach people that speak quichua. It’s kinda difficult because there are a lot of Spanish speakers here but we can`t teach them and baptize them because they wouldn`t understand anything at church. If we find Spanish speakers we are supposed to refer them to the sister missionaries in the Otavalo zone but my companion says that they never come to cotacachi because they have their own sector and ours is kinda far away. We are going to baptize a latin this week though because he has been attending church in a Spanish ward in Ibarra. But he has been being taught here and is friends with the Howells so he counts as our baptism.
So Monday through Wednesday we were in Quito for some meetings. I first got to Cotacachi on Wednesday night so I had my first experience with teaching here on Thursday night after district meeting. Our sector is Cotacachi and a bunch of little villages in the mountains that surround us. Most of the indigenous people live in the little villages so we have to go teach them there and it takes a long time to get to some of them. Anyway, we went to visit a family on Thursday and we couldn`t get a member to go with us so we tried to teach them in Spanish. Most of the indigenous people now at least a little bit of Spanish. They speak about as well as I spoke when I had been in Ecuador for about a month. So we tried to teach them in Spanish but it was kinda rough because they didn`t understand very well. All I could think to do was try to help them feel loved and not focus so much on teaching the doctrine. I figured that love was something that you can`t misunderstand. We`re definitely gonna try and go with a member to translate next time. There are actually quite a few indigenous people that speak Spanish so its not always that hard. But its definitely an adventure out here.
I bore my testimony yesterday in church. I started of saying “Ali punja whyki kuna y pani kuna” (Good morning brothers and sisters) in quichua and I think I got a smile out of every single person there. It must be funny/cute watching some white kid try and learn their native language… haha. Speaking of church…..I was soo lost…. 3 hours of quichua was quite an experience.
All the men here have pony tails and I`m not really sure how to describe the dress of the woman. Just look up Otavalo on Google and I’m sure you can find some good pictures of the way they dress. Its hard to tell the difference between little boys and little girls because they all have pony tails and look the same.
The food here is pretty gross. Its usually just rice and potatoes without any type of flavoring and a piece of chicken. Its hard to eat it all when its all so plain.
The people here are literal descendants of the lamanites. Its pretty cool that I am actually fulfilling book of mormon prophesy when I teach and baptize them. Check out some scriptures that my companion showed me that talk about the lamanites …. Alma 9:16-17, Helaman 15:1-16
Its carnival this week so everyone is throwing water on each other outside. Luckily we haven’t been hit yet. Its relatively calm here compared to how crazy it was in Esmeraldas last year.
Happy birthday Desi!!!!!!!!!! Are you really already 12?! Crazy!!!!! Like I say everytime someone has a birthday… I`ll bring you a present in 6 months! Love you!
I can’t think of anything else to tell you so if you have any questions just ask and I’ll try and answer them in my next letter. I love you all. Thanks for everything. Thanks for the letter and the pictures Lindsey! They were pretty gnarley…. I hope I never have to get staples in my head!!! I`ll talk to you all next week!!!!

Love,
Brandon

2011-02-23T11:54:00.000-08:00

2011-02-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

February 23, 2011

2011-02-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

Well this week was a pretty good week. We had a baptism and found 3 new families so I can`t really complain. Our baptism was a 10 year old girl named Nicole. Everyone in her family is a member but they have been inactive for a while. Over the past couple of months we have been visiting them and little by little they have been coming back to church. They have a lot of problems in their home and to be honest are very prideful and hard to help but we have been doing our best and they have been coming to church about every other week. Hopefully Nicole’s baptism will motivate them to keep coming and to keep improving. The baptismal service was good and bad at the same time… let me explain. It was good because that same day we had an open house in the stake center so there were a lot of members there but it was bad because there were only 2 members from our ward…the bishop and his wife. I guess it’s not hard to see why there was only 1 baptism in all of 2010. But hey if you look at it from a positive perspective we`ve already baptized as many people this year as all of last year and its only February! All of the missionaries in the zone were at Nicole’s baptism so we formed a small choir and I played the guitar while everyone sang “Nearer my God to Thee”. It turned out really good considering that almost no one in Ecuador has any musical talent. Here I sing well…. Can you believe that?! Haha
Anyway like I said we had a open house on Saturday. We had been planning it with the high council member in charge of missionary work for a long time and had everything planned out wonderfully…. But it didn`t turn out that great because all the members got there really late and not very many people brought friends. Each ward was assigned to a subject to talk about for 3-5 minutes. For example 1 ward was assigned to the restoration, another to the book of Mormon, another to temples, ect…. The investigators were supposed to come in and go from room to room learning a little bit about each subject. But they all got there late and weren´t organized at all. One ward got there half an hour late and started to set up their room and by the time they were finished 2 and a half hours later the open house was already over. They were supposed to come at 11 am to set up and be ready to start at 2 but apparently nobody thought it was necessary to come that early… I`m not gonna lie…. I wasn`t surprised haha. But at least we learned a lot about how to make it better for next time.
Random Story: My companion and I were walking to an appointment on Wednesday and we ran into a random member from Colombia. He recognized us and came up and started talking to us. He said that he was a member from Colombia and that he used to be the elders quorum president. We asked him where he lived now and he told us that he traveled all around Ecuador selling trash bags on buses and in the streets. I thought that was a kinda weird thing to do but then he explained his story. Apparently he worked for the government in Colombia and somehow was involved in some legal case against a rebel group in Colombia so the rebel group tried to kill him but he escaped to Ecuador but can`t just live in one spot because the rebel group can find him and kill him. He is trying to get all his documents changed and his name changed and he is trying to get a visa to Spain to escape. My companion told me that a situation like that was normal and that almost all the Columbians that come to Ecuador come for stuff like that. Apparently the Ecuadorian government helps them a lot to escape.

On Saturday my companion and I were walking home at about 8:40 pm. We passed by the Chicazia family`s house and as we passed by I had the impression to stop by and remind them about church on Sunday. We knocked on the door and they came out and let us in. It turned out that the oldest son had come home drunk and started beating his mom and the dad had stepped in to defend the mom and beat up the son and called the police and the police came and took the son to jail. We were able to calm them down a little and help them restore peace in their home. It was a cool experience because we weren`t planning on visiting them but the spirit told us that we needed to.

On Sunday My companion and I gave talks in church. The ward mission leader was supposed to give a talk as well but never showed up. I talked about a talk that elder Oaks gave in 2001 called the challenge of becoming or something like that. It talks about how the gospel isn`t just about having a testimony… It is about becoming something. It isn`t enough to just know. It isn`t enough to just know and do. We have to know and do with real intent and real desires so that we become. We can`t just go through the motions and expect to receive eternal life. The gospel isn`t just to know or do. It is to be. I have visited a lot of inactive members that have very strong testimonies. The problem is that they don’t do anything to act on their testimonies. At the same time there are a lot of active members that have testimonies and that go to church and do a lot of good things but they don’t do it with real intent so as to let themselves be molded and changed by their actions. They never become something. Its like it says in Moroni 7…. If a man makes an offering or prays without real intent it doesn`t profit him. Joseph smith waited 2 years after reading James 1:5 before he prayed and received his answer. I imagine in those 2 years he strived constantly to change his desires and to make them pure and real so that he could receive an answer. God will always grant us the desire of our hearts. If we aren`t receiving something it is because the desire hasn`t been etched onto our heart. If we go to church week after week and don’t feel like we are getting better and becoming what we need to be it is because we don’t desire it enough.

Anyway, sorry for that little doctrinal spill…, that’s all I have for this week. But before I finish I want to ask a favor of everyone at BYU that reads my blog. I have to register for classes in April and I don’t really have that much time to research things and pick classes and teachers and all that. I have to take the civilization1 credit, 4 religion credits, and I’m gonna take Spanish 321 and I’m thinking about calc and chem 105. If anyone has any suggestions about what classes to take or which teachers to take them from or which teachers to avoid PLEASE WRITE ME through dearelder and let me know!!! i would be very grateful! Ok that’s all I have for now. I love you all.

2011-02-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

February 7, 2011

2011-02-09T14:27:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone. I had another good week here in Ambato. On Monday we traveled to Quito to have dinner in presidents house and a doctrine class and we stayed the night to go to Zone leader council on Tuesday. It was good. I learned a lot from the other missionaries and we have a lot of new ideas to try here in Ambato. The mission set a new record this month: 206 baptisms. This is the first time that we`ve had more than 200 baptisms since I`ve been here. And it is especially excited considering that last year in January we had less that 80. The mission has changed a ton since I first got here. We are now one of the best missions in the area when before we were one of the worst.
Random story: one of the investigators in Pelileo had a dream about me last week. Apparently she dreamed that she was climbing up a huge mountain carrying a huge weight/burden and she dreamed that Elder Rodriguez (another missionary that used to be in Pelileo) and I came and took the burden off of her and put it on a raft and sent it down a river. I had only visited her once with Elder Rodriguez so it was kinda strange that I was in her dream but I guess that’s how dreams are right? Haha. She’s gonna get baptized this week.
The family that had problems with beating their kids is doing better. They didn`t come to church again this week but at least the mom stopped beating her kids. We went to visit them this week and the mom told us that her other daughter came home drunk this week and that she was about to start beating her but decided not to. She said “What good does it do to beat her anyway. That will just make her more rebellious. I figured it was better to just sit down and talk to her…” That’s a ton different from last week!!!! Hopefully they come to church again this week. “ of the kids have baptismal dates but we`re trying hard to get the whole family baptized together.
This week on Friday we were walking home after our last appointment when we saw a family walking towards us so we stopped and contacted them. They were in a hurry so the contact only lasted for like 30 seconds but they told us to come back the next day. When we went back the next day they let us in and as soon as we walked in we noticed that there was a spirit of contention. We talked about families and told them that if they learned and lived our message that they would be able to have a happy family. As we were walking out the husband talked to us for a little bit at the gate before letting us out and started telling us about all the problems that they have and how he wanted to change and be happier. He has a huge problem with alcohol and has gotten into a lot of fights. He has scars from knifes all over his arms and face from all the knife fights that he has been in. Talking to him reminded me of the Taipe family from Esmeraldas but a little bit worse. Anyway, they agreed to come to church on Sunday so we went to pick them up half an hour before church started. When we got there we heard yelling from outside. They were obviously fighting. We knocked and after about 5 minutes the husband came out and told us that they were fighting and told us to come in. We stepped in and immediately they started whining and yelling like little kids about how the other one was such a horrible person. It was overwhelming to have full grown adults telling us about all their marriage problems and fighting right in front of us expecting us to resolve the conflict. Luckily the spirit helped us out. We just assured them that they could both change and that if they accepted the gospel in their lives they could achieve a happy marriage (They aren`t legally married right now so that will be one obstacle to overcome in the future). Then we sang “families can be together forever” and asked them how they felt and they both said that they felt a lot calmer. We told them that at church they would continue to feel that peace and calmness. By this time it was 15 minutes until church stated so we told them that we needed to go. They came to church and afterwards they told us that they felt a lot better and that they weren`t going to fight anymore. We have another appointment with them tomorrow. They have a lot of things to change and get over but hopefully with time we can help them and see miracles in their family. They are very humble and willing to change but its going to take a lot of work. Only the gospel can save them from their miserable state and problems.
Random story 2: There was a family in church this week that I had never seen before. When we walked in I saw them and was wondering who they were. It turns out they were from my companions stake in Guayaquil. After the meeting they started calling his family so we had to run away so that my companion wouldn`t get homesick. He told me that stuff like that has happened to him his whole mission and that everywhere he goes there are people that know him.
Mom thanks a ton for the Valentines Day package! Thanks Jason and Desi for your letters!! Jason I can’t believe what’s happing in the premier league! What happened with Chelsea and Liverpool?! They are always in the top 4! Crazy! Yes I did get the letters from the high priest group. Please tell them thank you very much!
That’s all I have for this week. I love you all and I hope that all is well back in the U.S! Talk to you next week!

February 1, 2011

2011-02-02T12:48:00.000-08:00

This week was good but crazy but before I get to this week i`m gonna tell you a story from last week so that the pictures that I sent make sense. Last week I was on divisions with some elders in the zone and we went to visit a family that was going to get baptized that week. One of the daughters’ friends was there and he wanted to get baptized too. He had been going to church and institute for a while but just hadn`t had the opportunity to have a baptismal interview. So we decided to take advantage of the situation and I did the interview right then. When I finished the interview I asked him who he wanted to baptize him. He paused for a minute and then said that he had really enjoyed the interview and that he felt like I helped him a lot and that we have to same type of personality and that he wanted me to baptize him. It was kinda weird because the missionaries had been teaching him and that was only the 1st time that I met him. I asked him if he was sure and tried to convince him that it would be better if one of the missionaries that taught him baptized him but he was pretty set on me baptizing him so finally I just gave in and said ok. So that’s why I sent a picture of a baptism. He’s the one that’s all wet.
Next story: So for the last couple weeks we have been teaching a Columbian family. On Friday we had an appointment with them but when we showed up only the 12 year old son was there. We asked if his mom and sister would be home soon and he said that he didn`t know so we decided to just teach him instead of wasting time just waiting there. It turns out that this kid is like one of the smartest kids I`ve ever met in my mission. If you remember anything about Jordy in Esmeraldas… He was kinda like him. He understands and comprehends everything that we teach him and he had even been reading the book of Mormon by himself and he gave us a perfect summary of 3 nephi 11 and started asking about baptism. We taught him about baptism and invited him to be baptized and he accepted and was really excited. The spirit was really strong and we were just about to say the closing prayer and leave when his mom and his 2 sisters got home. As soon as they walked in we could tell that something was wrong. One of the daughters ran to the back room right when she came in. The mom shook our hands quickly and grabbed a belt that was on the table and followed her daughter into the back room. The next thing we heard was a mix between screaming, cloths ripping, and the daughter getting beat with the belt. Whatever spirit was there left within a matter of seconds. It was amazing to feel such a dramatic change so quickly. We went from feeling the spirit super strong to feeling like Satan himself was in the house within a matter of seconds. My companion looked at me and asked what we should do and I said that we should leave so we got up and left as quickly as possible. I didn`t want to spend another second in a place with that kind of horrible feeling. It turns out that the daughter lied to her mom and went to a club and was drinking and her mom found out and went and got her and brought her home. It made me really sad to know that there are parents that beat their kids like that. I feel very lucky and blessed to have been born in a functioning family with parents that use love instead of fear to influence me and help me. Anyway, we went back the next day to see if we could help them. They were relatively humble and recognized that they had to change. We talked about families and what makes a family happy. I think it helped them a little. We invited them to come to church and they came on Sunday. The gospel is the solution like always. We are going to keep teaching them and hopefully they can come unto Christ and change and be healed.
This week we had a special training and interviews with president. My interview was good. President told me about when he found out that I was coming and that the Trounce family and said good things about our family so he was excited that I was coming because at that time he was sending a lot of missionaries home for doing stupid stuff and the mission was struggling a lot. Sister Sloan also told me a story. Her daughter works in a diamond store in Provo and said that someone came in and they got talking and it turned out to be someone that knew me and they made the connection that her dad was my mission president and what not. I have no idea who it was… I thought it was funny… its one of those “it’s a small world” stories.
I have more stories but I`m pretty much out of time so hopefully I have more time next week! I love you all! Betsy I do get the letters that you send straight to Ecuador and I have written back so I hope my letters are getting to you. I sent one last week so it should get there within another week or 2.. I think.
I love you all! Talk to you next week!!!!

January 17, 2011

2011-01-19T09:50:00.001-08:00

This week was probably one of the more successful weeks that I`ve had since I`ve been here in Ambato. It started out kinda rough because on Tuesday and Wednesday a bunch of our appointments fell through but it ended up pretty good because the Suarez family came to church and we were finally able to teach the Nata family again. Let me tell you a little bit about our main investigators:
Suarez Family: This is the family that has a daughter with terminal cancer that the doctors say doesn’t have much time left to live. We weren’t able to teach them that much in December because they were really busy (Everyone here was really busy in December). They live out in the middle of nowhere on a farm. They aren’t very educated which is one of the hardest parts about teaching them. They don’t understand things very quickly and they don’t read very well and understand almost nothing of what they do read. They have come to church twice now and to a ward activity but they still don’t want to get baptized because they think they aren’t prepared and it’s too soon. The daughter that has cancer is surprisingly prideful for the situation that she’s in. You’d think someone like that would be really open to the gospel and the peace that it brings but she seems to find every excuse that she can to reject it. Hopefully something will click really soon with them and they will understand that the gospel is the solution to their problems.
Nata Family: The Nata family has been to church and had a baptismal date a couple months ago but something happened and they were super busy all of a sudden so we couldn’t visit them and prepare them for baptism. We visited them twice this week. They know that what we teach is true and they know that the book of Mormon is true because it changed their lives when they first started reading it. Their challenge is that they are scared to change religions because their whole family is catholic and they don’t like that they are listening to us. They say that by listening to us they are denying their religion and family traditions. It’s hard with them because they know its true but they don`t want to get baptized. I asked them this week why they still listen to us and they said that every time we come they fell something different and learn something new (IT’S THE SPIRIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). The dad even said that every time we visit them its like Jesus himself was visiting them. They just have to forget about their family and do what they know is right.
Those are our main investigators that have the most potential. We are teaching some other families as well and hopefully they can progress as well.
This week for the first time in my mission someone really started contending with us. We knocked is door and he seemed really open to listen to us. He said that they were painting his house so we couldn`t come in but he told us that we could sit and talk in his car which was right outside. We started teaching the restoration. And after we talked about the first vision he started to contend with us. He went in his house and came back with his bible and an anti Mormon book and just started preaching to us all about how you just have to accept Christ as your personal savior and then you will be saved and how we aren`t saved by works and whatnot. Then he pulled out his anti Mormon book and started telling us all about how Joseph smith prophesied things that never happened. First he said that Joseph smith prophesied that a war would break out in South Carolina and that it would spread to the whole country and he said that it was a false prophesy because it never happened. I just chuckled a bit and told him that he should study his history a little bit more because that actually did happen. Then he mentioned about how Joseph smith and prophesied that Albany, Boston, and New York were going to be destroyed if they didn`t repent and he said that it was a false prophecy because they were never destroyed. I told him that Joseph smith never prophesied that it would happen within a certain time period and that it would happen eventually. I said I thought that it might happen at the second coming and he argued saying that if that was the case then it wasn`t a prophesy at all because Jesus prophesied as well that the wicked would be destroyed at the second coming. Then I asked him if he had a problem with someone teaching the same things that Jesus taught. He wanted to keep going but I figured that we would get nowhere so I told him that we had an appointment and that we had to go and we left. I don’t understand people waste their time trying to prove that our church is false. Especially to a missionary. Did he really hope to convince me that the church that I represent is a fraud? It’s kinda ridiculous.
Well that’s all I have for this week. I love you all! Thanks to everyone that still sends me letters and packages! I love getting them!!!

January 8, 2010

2011-01-08T09:57:00.001-08:00

Well this week was kinda crazy down here in Ecuador. Everyone went crazy for New Years. Apparently it’s a really big deal here. They have a lot of very strange traditions. Let me explain… all over the place there were road blocks with men dressed as woman standing in the middle of the road dancing and asking for money. They put ropes up so that cars cant pass and they don’t let anyone pass until they give money to the guy dressed as a woman. If you don’t give them money they dance all around you and touch you and act like they are your girlfriend until you either give them money are walk far enough away. It was pretty crazy. Luckily we took taxis and buses everywhere so we didn`t have to pass them on foot all day. We only had to pass one on foot right in front of our house and I just gave him super dirty look like I was way pissed off to try and scare him away. Luckily he didn`t touch us or anything. We had to be in the house at 4 so we weren`t around when they were really drunk and crazy. There was a huge party right next to our house and they had music blasting really loud until about 1:30 in the morning. I managed to fall asleep at like 9:30 but all the fireworks and explosives woke me up at about 5 minutes to midnight so I got up and looked out the window to see everything that was going on. Another tradition here is that every makes these huge wooden and cardboard dolls and they burn them at midnight so when I looked out the window it was like there was a bonfire in front of every house. I kinda felt like I was in a war zone. It was all pretty surreal since I was still kinda half asleep.
I guess the spiritual story of the week would be that we did manage to find a new family.. The Garcia Salazar family. I was on divisions on Tuesday with elder choez and our 8 o´clock appointment wasn`t there. We had been contacting and knocking doors almost all day and usually there is almost no success contacting late at night because everyone always says that they are busy and that it’s too late. Anyway, I really didn`t feel like contacting more. But the options were to visit a member or keep contacting. I thought about the story that dad always tells about that family that he found in the last house on the street and I decided that the miracles always come in the last minutes so I decided that we would just keep contacting. At about 8:30 we knocked a door and they let us in and we taught the restoration to the whole family. They were really receptive and accepted a return appointment. Anyway it was a good experience to show the importance of working hard and being diligent until the last minute.
Other than that nothing else really exciting happened this week. It was a pretty slow week because no one was working so there were a lot more drunks in the streets and a lot of people went on vacation so we couldn`t teach that much. This upcoming week is gonna be pretty slow as well because we`re going to Quito for zone leader conference and leader meeting.
The picture is definitely PG-13 but I just wanted to show you how crazy new years was. This was a sign left over from the night before at one of the road blocks by our house. Basically what it says is that if you give the guy dressed as a woman 10 cents he will kiss you with his tongue, if you give him 25 cents he will do a strip tease, if you give him 50 cents he will kiss you on the cheek, and if you give him a dollar he will just say happy new year and let you go by…. Scandalous, I know… If I had to make a bible reference to this I would probably compare it to Sodom and Gomorrah… .

December 20, 2010

2010-12-21T16:44:00.001-08:00

Feliz Navidad!(if you don`t know what that means then shame on you). I can`t believe its Christmas time again. I feel like I was just talking to you all from Esmeraldas like a month ago and its already a year later. Christmas season in Ambato is definitely better that Christmas season in Esmeraldas. But everyone says that its not as good as it is in Quito. But hey I’m just glad that I’m not in Esmeraldas this year. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about my week. I think there were 2 main themes for me this week: Talk with everyone and reprove at times with sharpness. Those might seem like 2 random themes but let me explain….
This week I`ve talked with more people than any other week in my mission. Taxi drivers, knocking doors, helping people in the streets, talking to people in the streets. We have been on a frantic search for new investigators. Let me tell you some of our success stories:
1) Rodrigo Garcia: on Tuesday we were hungry so we stopped at a little store (everyone sells stuff out of their house here) to but some snacks. While we were buying we started talking to the guy that owns the store and long story short we set an appointment to come back on Saturday and share our message with him. When we went back on Saturday we started teaching and about 5 minutes into the lesson inside his store he said “let’s go upstairs so my wife can hear too”. So he took us upstairs to his living room and we kept teaching there. His wife wasn`t feeling good so she didn`t come out. Rodrigo told us that she was pregnant but that the doctors said that there was a good chance that the baby was going to die. We started teaching a little bit about prayer and said a prayer with him to bless his wife and their baby. He told us to come back this week to keep learning more. It was interesting that we arrived right in the moment when their family was going through a big trial like that. The lord prepares people in different ways I guess.
2) Marcelo and Carolina: on Saturday we were late to an appointment so we were walking as fast as we could to get there. We walked by a couple that was sitting on a street curb and after we had walked about 50 yards past my companion stopped and said “I think we should go back and talk to that couple”. I said “I think we should too” so we turned around and went back. We felt kinda weird since we had just passed them and didn`t say anything. When we got to them we presented ourselves and asked if we could share a quick message about families with them. You should have seen how Carolina´s eyes lit up. It was like she had been waiting for us. She turned to Marcelo and said “yes we need to listen” and Marcelo agreed. It turns out that they are getting married in January so we talked about how a family established on the gospel of Jesus Christ is more likely to likely to be happy and have success in such a crazy world. They agreed with everything we taught them and we excited to set up an appointment to teach them in Carolinas house. We have an appointment with them tomorrow.
3) One night this week we left our last appointment at like 9:20 and had to take a taxi to get home on time. We started talking to the taxi driver and long story short he gave us his information to visit him at home (He lives in pelileo so it was a reference for the missionaries there) and when we got home he wouldn’t let us pay him and ended up giving us a free ride.
It was cool to see what could happen when we just opened our mouths. The lord really does but people in our paths. We just have to open our mouths and talk to them.
The zone hasn’t had much success this month so my companion and I were talking about what we could do to help the zone and we decided that we needed to perfect the technique of reproving with love like it says in D&C 121. On Friday in the leader meeting that we have every week with the district leaders we talked about how to reprove with love and did some practices. President Sloan is really good at reproving us with love when he calls us every Monday to see how many baptisms the zone had and how many new families we found. When we don’t have a lot of baptisms all he does is ask us questions like “What happened” or make comments like “maybe your missionaries don’t want to baptize every week” and just by the tone of his voice we feel bad and are motivated to help the zone do better. So we have been trying to apply what he does with us with the missionaries in the zone and our investigators. I tried it with the Suarez family and I think it made an impact. We taught about the Sabbath day and they told us that they couldn`t come to church because they were in charge of organizing a new year’s party in their little town and that Sunday was the only day that they could do it. I thought it was a ridiculous excuse considering their daughter has cancer and they want god to do a miracle for them but they aren`t really to make a small sacrifice for him. I said something like this, “that’s fine with us if you don`t want to come to church but I just want you to think… What are your priorities?... Is God one of them?... what do you want god to do for you in your lives?... and what do you think you have to do so that he can do it?...” Then I assured them that god loved them and wanted to help but he can only help us if we help ourselves. I think it made them think. Theres a lot of people in missionary work the frankly just give stupid excuses and they themselves know that their excuses are stupid. In a way, being a missionary is like parenting. I remember when I use to give stupid excuses and dad would talk sharply to me and then come in a few minutes later and reassure me that he loved me. It was effective on me and it is effective on investigators as well.
My new companion, Elder Pincay, is really cool. His dad is a counselor in the stake presidency in his stake in Guayaquil so he comes from a really solid family. It’s interesting to see the difference in companions when they come from a strong family and when they don`t. It really makes a huge difference. He is the first Ecuadorian companion that I have had so I’ve been learning a ton just from watching how he deals with people since he knows perfectly the culture and everything. It’s definitely an advantage to have a native companion.
Random note: There have been crazy parades all over the place since its Christmas time. It’s a catholic tradition that they have here. They worship the “Niño Divino” (divine child). Its totally idolatry. They walk around carrying a doll of baby Jesus with a band playing music behind. The catholic traditions here are pretty crazy sometimes. And it’s a huge obstacle with some investigators. They don’t understand why they can’t worship a doll in remembrance of Christ’s birth
Well that’s all I have for this week. Merry Christmas to all. I look forward to talking with you guys on Saturday!!!! I love you all!

December 13, 2010

2010-12-13T21:15:00.001-08:00

This week has been good. We were busy like always but it was a lot of fun. On Monday we traveled to Quito and were there until Wednesday night. On Tuesday we had zone leader council. Our zone finished 1st this month in baptisms so they asked us to present what we did to have success. It was weird because I didn’t feel like we did that much at all. We just had a few miracle families that just showed up out of nowhere and got baptized. President Sloan seemed to give us a lot of credit which I didn’t really feel worthy of but oh well. We just told everyone that the key to our success was to focus on the families that the lord had prepared for us. We really didn’t do that much. We just were in the right place at the right time and the missionaries took advantage of what the lord gave them. I think the highlight of zone leader council was singing Christmas songs and eating dinner at president’s house.
On Tuesday we had a special training were my companion and I had to teach about the doctrine of Christ and the missionary purpose. We talked about how if we love our investigators we have to teach them the gospel and invite them to be baptized. Later president Sloan talked about the same thing so all together the missionaries got like 2 hours of training just on that subject. I think its probably the most important subject to understand as a missionary. Later we went to a huge park in Quito to practice talking with everyone. Elder Law and I talked with a few families that were really open to here the gospel and took down their names and addresses so that the missionaries in Quito can visit them. After the park we went to presidents house to eat so I got 2 nights in a row of sister Sloans delicious food. It was quite a treat. Them we sang more Christmas songs and one of the APs even dressed up like Santa and came in with presents for everyone. We all got Bone Ice (ecuadors version of otter pops) and study journals.
The rest of the week was normal work in our sector except for Saturday because we went to pelileo to do divisions with the missionaries their.
Nothing that exciting really happened the rest of the week. Elder Law left yesterday and my new companion should be on his way. His name is Elder Pincay. He’s from Guayaquil. He will be my first native companion. I haven’t met him yet but I’ll tell you a little but more about him next week. That’s all I have for this week. Sorry that my letters have been kinda lame lately. I’m always really rushed because I have to send a bunch of stuff to the offices and president. I love you all! 

2010-12-02T22:18:00.000-08:00

November 29, 2010

2010-12-02T22:08:00.001-08:00

Well I guess I´ll start with the most exciting news of this week…. The volcano right next to Ambato decided to get active this week and has been puffing out smoke all week. Don’t worry, I’ll send a picture. I´m not really sure if it’s dangerous. Everyone here seems pretty calm. Apparently it puffs smoke every year at this time. The volcano is called Tungurahua. Look it up if you want.
Other than that this week has been pretty normal. On Thursday we had specialized training where my companion and I had to teach 3 zones-Ambato, Riobamba, El Oriente- about how to plan adequately and how to talk to everyone without fear to find the people that are prepared to receive the restored gospel. It went well I guess. I didn’t even remember it was thanksgiving until the mission nurse mentioned it to me. She came to give flu shots to everyone. We didn’t really do anything to celebrate. We had the zone leaders from the orient and the APs sleeping in our house that night so we just ordered pizza. It was a good thanksgiving I guess…. Even though we didn’t do anything to celebrate it.
Last week we found a family called the Vargas family and we had an appointment to visit them this week. When we showed up one of the daughters came out and told us that her mom was sick and couldn’t attend us. We told her that we would come back another day and left and started knocking doors around the corner. When we were in the middle of a contact the daughter came running around the corner to tell us that her mom did want to see us so we went back. When we walked in we saw here there lying on her bead with bloody toilet paper stuffed up her nose. Apparently she had just started bleeding out of her nose and mouth randomly and the doctor’s didn´t know what to tell her. We taught her about the priesthood and she asked us to give her a blessing so we did. We went back later in the week and she was still having problems but we’ve been praying for her so hopefully she’ll get better soon. It seems like her family and her are really interested in the gospel.
Changes were last week but my companion got changed today for some reason. My new companion is coming from a place in the middle of the Amazon jungle named Tena. His name is Elder Law. He only has 2 weeks left on his mission so I’ll be getting another companion pretty soon. Elder Law is really cool though so I’m excited that he’s gonna be my companion for 2 weeks. He was the mission secretary for 6 months and was studying at BYU before his mission.
On Sunday there was a national Census in Ecuador and no one was allowed to leave their house until 5 PM. All the church meetings in the country were canceled so we didn’t get to take any investigators to church. It was interesting because they had to put military guys with huge guns on all the street corners to make sure that no one left their house. I took a picture of one of them because it was an interesting sight… I had never seen a guy with a big gun on a normal street corner before. It looked like a war zone. Meanwhile all the high school kids went around making everyone do a survey. They asked us a bunch of questions like if we had a private bathroom and if we had a stove and if we could read and where we were from and what languages we spoke and a bunch of other stuff like that. In the states they do a census every 10 years but I think they just do it all through the mail instead of going door to door. They can’t really do that here because a lot of people don’t have addresses and there is no house to house mail system. If you want to send something you have to send it to the bus station and then the person that you are sending it to has to go pick it up. Anyway it was nice to have a break and to be able to take a nap and get caught up on sleep.
Hey mom I have a request for the next package that you send. Could you see if you can find a book with guitar tabs for hymns or other church music? That would be wonderful. Thanks for the package and the pictures that you sent!
I love you all! Until next week!

November 15, 2010

2010-11-15T21:30:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone how’s it going? This week has been pretty good for me. I had a few interesting experiences. Yesterday we were contacting and we ran into a guy that at first seemed golden until we started teaching him a little bit. He knew a ton about the bible and had studied it in Hebrew and was telling us all the interesting stuff that is different when you read the bible in its original language. It was interesting because he was telling me stuff that I had been taught at BYU. He knew a lot of deeper doctrine and at first everything he said agreed with what we believe. But then we started teaching him about the restoration and I told him about the first vision and that we can know if Joseph smith was a prophet by reading the book of Mormon which was his fruit(he had quoted early the scripture that says that false prophets will come but by their fruits we shall know them). After I got down explaining things just started going downhill. He started saying that it wasn`t possible that there could be another book other than the bible and that Joseph smith was obviously not a prophet because no one can see god and not die instantly from his glory (apparently he doesn`t understand the doctrine of transfiguration). Then he started bearing his testimony to us about how his church was church and he had had “real experiences with god”. Then he was like “If you ever want to learn the truth I suggest that you come to my church”. It was interesting because people don’t usually bear there testimonies to us and invite us to “learn the truth”. That’s what WE do. It made me think a lot about how many people there are that are trying really hard but for some reason don’t accept the true gospel. He seemed like he was being sincere and I’m sure that he had really had experiences with god and he had studying a ton and had a lot of truth. He was someone that was convinced of what he was doing and that was trying really hard. He didn`t know what he was rejecting. Of all the people walking through the streets we are the only ones that really have the truth and gods authority but almost nobody realizes it.
This week was kinda rough with the Nata family and Alejandra. We went to their houses everyday but could never teach them and they didn`t come to church this week. Satan is starting to work pretty hard with them… Hopefully we can find them this week and help them to overcome all the opposition so that they can get baptized.
Even without them coming to church this week we had 4 investigators there. It was the Suarez family. They are the reference that we got that lives way out in the middle of nowhere. They came to church this week and afterwards we all went to a member’s house to eat lunch and teach them some more. It turned out to be an interesting experience. We asked them if they had any questions about church and one of the daughters said that she did. In the gospel principles class one of the members had mentioned that god knew that Adam and eve were going to eat the fruit and that everything bad was going to enter into the world. She didn`t understand why god would let so many bad things enter into the world. We tried to explain it but we weren`t getting anywhere. She just didn`t seem to accept any of our answers. She didn`t understand why there was so much suffering in the world. After a while she asked a rather strange question (at least that’s what I thought at the moment). She asked why god would allow that people would have terminal illnesses that made it so they had to live knowing that they were going to die. We ended up finding out that she has cancer and the doctors told her that she won’t live much longer. The whole family was suffering for it and that’s what made them start listening to us because they wanted some time of help and hope. We taught them a little bit about the plan of salvation and the secure feeling that accepting the gospel gives us and about how families can live together forever if they make and keep covenants in the temple. The spirit was there. I testified about how I had lost 2 brothers but that I knew that they were in a better place and that some die I would see them again. We gave hope to a family that had none. The impression that I got during the lesson was that they are a miracle in the making. We have another appointment with them on Tuesday night.
A few weeks ago we asked the Stake President if we could have some sort of special meeting with all the leaders to talk about how to improve missionary work within the stake. He invited us to come to the meeting that he has once a month with all the bishops and branch presidents. So on Sunday night we went and gave a training type thing to all the bishops and stake presidents. I never imagined that as a missionary I would be in a meeting like that teaching bishops and branch presidents. I`m not gonna lie it was a little intimidating. We talked about “The Doctrine of Christ”, Watched a small movie from the preach my gospel dvds, and then talked about the knew families that we have been finding in the zone and how they can help them come unto Christ. We talked about how they can make their executive committee meetings and ward councils more effective and how they should always talk about and make plans and assignments to do 4 things- Finding, teaching, fellowshipping, and reactivating. After we got done talking the stake president got up and supported everything that we had just said. Hopefully it will make an impact. There were some bishops that weren`t even having ward council or executive committee so hopefully they will start,
Today I got a letter that brother McCready sent to me. It was a letter that I had written in primary to myself that was to be sent to me on my mission. It was pretty funny. I gave myself some pretty good advice. I`ll quote some of it for you… “Dear Elder Messer, Congratulations on being called on a mission. I hope you are going somewhere in the USA” (HAHA when I was younger I used to be scared to leave the country) “You are the most handsome guy I have ever seen” (haha....)….. “My Testimony: I believe the church is true. I love my family and I know that they love me too. I know that Gordon B Hinckly is a true prophet.”….”Love, you younger self…….. P.S. If you have a girlfriend then dump her” (haha good thing I don’t have a girlfriend).
Anyway that’s all I`ve got for now. I love you all. Talk to you next week.
P.S. Happy birthday Jason!!!! Like I said last year… I`ll bring you a present from Ecuador in 10 months!

November8, 2010

2010-11-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone. How’s it going. My week was pretty crazy. It was definitely one of the busiest weeks that i`ve had. Last Monday night we traveled to Quito for zone leader council on Tuesday. It was way fun. We analyzed the progress of the mission and all that good stuff. This month we had 184 baptisms which is really good. We were one of the best missions in the area. We got to play soccer as well so that was really fun and they gave us delicious American food. We also had a doctrine class that was really good were we talked about faith with works. On Tuesday night we stayed in quito because on Wednesday we had “leader meeting”. That was good too and they gave us more delicious food. Then we had to stay another night in quito because on Thursday I had to go renew my Censo(Its like my ID while i`m here). We did that in the morning and then traveled back to Ambato in the afternoon. We got here and had to leave right away to go do baptismal interviews in a little town called chiquicha… and let me tell you that was an adventure. Chiquicha is a TINY farming community in the middle of nowhere. Just getting there was an adventure. First we took a 40 minute bus ride to Pelileo. There are no buses or any public transportation that go to chiquicha so we had to hitch a ride in the back of a truck for 50 cents each. The road up to chiquicha is super narrow and sketchy (We ran over a dog at full speed on the way back L)but the scenery was amazing. We could see like 2 volcanoes and were looking down into the valley where pelileo and baños are. The family that we went to interview is a miracle family. They are straight up indigenous people. The speak quichua but luckily that speak Spanish as well so we were able to do the interview. They gave us fried chicken feet while we were there too. It was surprisingly good. Anyway, about a month ago their son died and they weren`t satisfied with the answers that the catholic church gave so they talked to some people that they knew that are members and showed up at church. They family has like 20 people and the branch in pelileo is super small so when they showed up to church the first time the size of the branch almost doubled. The missionaries started teaching them and they found the answers that they were looking for. 6 of them got baptized this week and the rest are planning to get baptized in the upcoming weeks. And everyone in chiquicha knows their story because it’s such a small town and everyone wants the missionaries to teach them. When I was up there doing interviews a bunch of people just contacted us and asked us to visit them and teach them. The family that had their son die is like the founding family up there so everyone knows them and respects them. It’s basically a golden town of indigenous people in the middle of nowhere in the Andes mountains. One of the kids asked me to baptize him so I got to be part of the baptism.
As far as my sector goes… we’re making progress. We had 3 people in church this week. The Nata family came again and they have a baptismal goal for the 20th. They still have a lot of doubts and obstacles with their friends and family but hopefully we can overcome it all so that they can get baptized. It would be a miracle to baptize a family after this sector has had so many problems in the last year.
On Sunday night a member told us that they had a reference for us so they took us out to their friends that live in the middle of nowhere on a farm and we taught them and have another appointment with them on Tuesday. I`m not gonna lie… I really enjoy going to all these places that are in the middle of nowhere. It always feels like an adventure and the scenery is always amazing. That’s probably my favorite part about this zone. Anyway that’s all I have for this week. I love you all! Lindsey I hope you enjoyed your first week in the field. Tell us all about it!!!! Oh and random story. Yesterday in the bus I was talking with an elder that likes football and he randomly mentioned that the coach of the eagles is mormon and I was like “I know. His daughter was my sisters companion in the mtc” haha.
P.S. its indigenous culture to not smile in pictures. i promise they were happy haha.

November 1, 2010

2010-11-01T15:59:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Let me tell you a Little bit about my week. On Monday and Tuesday I was in a little town called pelileo. I was on divisions with on of the district leaders- Elder Caskey. He’s a stud. He is from Arizona and was a forest fire fighter before his mission. It was an adventure to be in his sector because he`s only been there for like 3 weeks and his companion only 2 weeks and it’s a huge sector so its easy to get lost and really hard to find where your going. It includes a bunch of small villages with a bunch of farms. And its right next to baños so its really pretty as well. He had some references that he needed to contact in a little village called Patate. But no one out there has phones or addresses so all we had were names and that they lived in patate. We found the bus that went to patate but when we got there we didn`t have any luck. No body knew any of the names we had. So we just decided to contact. It turns out that Patate is like ridiculously catholic so we ran into some people that weren’t very happy to see us. One lady literally started screaming at us and after screaming just walked away and left the door open. I just said “It was nice to meet you” and we walked away. The best part about my division with elder caskey was that he has an oven in his house so we made peach cobbler before we went to bed. We didn`t have a recipe so we just kinda winged it but it actually turned out pretty good. On Thursday and Friday I was on divisions with Elder Garcia. He’s from Nicaragua. His sector is downtown Ambato so it was a lot different that pelileo. I did a couple of baptismal interviews while I was there as well.
This weekend and today and tomorrow are holidays in Ecuador. Its “Day of the dead”. To celebrate everyone makes this weird drink that they call “colada morada” . It’s this thick purple drink with pineapple and leafs inside. I don’t really like it but I’ve had to drink it a ton. Everyone is like “oh your not from here so you have to try colada morada” no one realizes that we visit like 8 families every day and that everyone else has said the same thing and given us the same drink. It’s been pretty rough to have to drink nasty purple goop so much but I guess that’s part of the sacrifice I have to make as a missionary to not offend people.
This week we broke a record since I’ve been here. We had 4 people at church, a family of 3 and another person. Its not really that big of an accomplishment but considering that the last 2 weeks we had nobody I feel like we accomplished something.
This week we wont be in our sector at all. We’re leaving for Quito right now because we have zone leader council and leaders meeting on Monday and Tuesday and then on Thursday I have to renew my censo to be in Ecuador and then when we get back we`re going straight to pelileo to get started with doing baptismal interviews for a family of 13. This month in Ambato we broke a record with 16 baptisms. The old record was 12. So if this family of 13 gets baptized and a few other people we could break our record again.
Anyway that’s all I have for this week. Thanks for everything! I love you!

October 26, 2010

2010-10-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. I dont have much time so this might be kinda short but here it goes. This week went alright. On Tuesday we went to quito and spent the night there because on Monday morning I had to be in the mission offices bright and early to renew my visa. I have to go back to quito again really soon to renew my censo. Its basically my ID while i`m here and it expires on November 2nd so I have to renew it. The work was pretty slow this week just like last week. WE didn`t have any investigators in church for the 2nd week in a row so that was kinda rough. The longer i`m here the more I find out about the sector and the ward and all the challenges that we have. We definitely need to work as hard as we can to get things up and going good. Its kinda hard though because we have to do so much stuff to help the zone and we`re in meetings a lot so we don’t have much time to spend in our sector. But I figure that if I could have success in my ward in Esmeraldas then I can do the same here.
On Sunday we had ward council and it was an interesting experience to say the least. In the opening prayer the relief society president asked for help to avoid contention. I didn`t understand why she would ask for something like that at first but in about 15 minutes I understood. The primary president was complaining about having too many kids and ordering the bishop to do something about it and the elders quorum president said that he was no good for the job and asked the bishop to find someone else. The poor bishop is only 23 and has only been a member for like 6 years. Hes a great guy but I feel bad for him because he has a huge load on his shoulders. This poor ward has a ton of problems.
On Saturday we had a ward talent show to try and build ward unity and so that people could invite their friends. It turned out pretty good. The missionaries ended up doing like 5 acts. We just did a bunch of skits. It
actually turned out pretty good.
Today we went to baños and rented bikes and rod them to a huge waterfall. It was pretty fun. We rode downhill the whole way on the highway so we got going pretty fast. It was the first time I had ridden a bike in a while so it felt good. The waterfall was really cool. It had a cave that you could climb through to go behind the waterfall. I got some pretty good pictures. I don’t have time to send them right no so i`ll just send them next week.
Lindsey`s letter totally fooled me. On Thursday we went to send some stuff to the offices and when I opened my email I saw that I had a letter from her. I didn`t have much time so I just opened it real quick and only managed to read the first paragraph and then I closed it and the whole week I was thinking that she was going Spanish speaking. I was kinda excited but then I found out it was a joke haha.
Anyway, that’s all i`ve got for now. I hope you all have a good week! I love you all.
 

October 19, 2010

2010-10-19T20:25:00.000-07:00

Well this week has gone by rather slow. My new sector is probably the hardest sector that I’ve had so far. I thought it couldn’t get worse than Esmeraldas but I think I might have been wrong. Let me explain the situation. About a year ago the ward was strong and flourishing. There were over 100 people that went to church every Sunday. Everything was going good until they caught the bishop stealing tithing money. The bishop got ex communicated or dis-fellowshiped or something but over half the ward went inactive. At church on Sunday we filled up about 4 rows of people. I counted 39 people. The bishop is only 22 because there is no one else to be bishop so he has a huge load on his shoulders. He didn’t go on a mission so he doesn’t have all that much experience in the church but he’s learning fast. I admire him for it. This Sunday he set apart a girl as a young woman. I’ve never seen that done before but that’s the kind of stuff that happens when you have an inexperienced bishop. We’re definitely going to try and help him a lot! As far as missionary work goes…. There has been one baptism in the last year which is almost unheard of in this part of the world. That’s mostly because of what happened with the missionaries that used to be here. Shortly after everything happened with the bishop the 2 missionaries that were here got sent home for doing some pretty serious things. I’ve heard stories but I won’t tell you the rumors that I’ve heard. But anyway, I’m pretty sure that the members that were still active lost all trust in the missionaries. I imagine that the missionaries since then have been trying to do things on their own and have probably had some success but that the investigators that do manage to progress get scared away when they hear about the bishop robbing tithing money. We have a few investigators but only one that has been to church. This Sunday was the first time in my whole mission that there were no investigators at church. I didn’t think that was possible here. Anyway, it’s a pretty rough situation. But I’m looking forward to the challenge. The rest of the zone is doing great. We already broke the old record for baptisms in a month and a planning to have like 6 more this week, which would bring us to a total of 19, which is phenomenal. The soccer here is a lot better as well. In my last zone almost nobody knew how to play but here almost everyone knows how to play. There is a new missionary that just got to Ecuador that played on the BYU Hawaii team before is mission so now I’m not the only gringo that knows how to play.

The government changed the visa requirements in Ecuador so I have to go to Quito this week to take a new picture and get it all worked out. I don’t think there will be a problem getting my visa renewed but it has crossed my mind that something could happen and I could get set to the states to finish my mission. I’m pretty sure that’s super unlikely though. But I am excited to go back to Quito this week and eat pap johns again.

Next Monday we’re planning a trip to banes. We’re going to rent bikes and take a trail that takes us to a sweet waterfall. My companion has already been and showed me some pictures and it looks way cool! Last week I went to baños but it was already dark so I didn’t get to see any of the pretty scenery but I’ve seen pictures and it’s gorgeous. Look it up on the Internet. Just go to Google and type in “Banes Ecuador” and you can see for yourselves. I’ll make sure and send some pictures next week though. Well that’s all I have for this week. Once again, I’m sorry for not writing back to people very quickly. Please be patient with me. Or write me more to make me feel bad for not writing back. That works. Seriously. I’ll do my best though. Anyway, I love you all. Thanks for all your support and letters!!!

October 11, 2010

2010-10-12T13:57:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone. I don’t have much time to write so this might be kinda short. This week was crazy busy and we almost didn`t get anything done. There were emergency changes on Monday so we had to organize it all and go pick missionaries up and whatnot. Then on Tuesday it was zone leader councel so we were at that all day. It was way sweet though. We analyzed our progress as a mission and basically we have been seeing miracles in the mission lately. We used to be one of the worst missions in the area and no we are one of the bests. My zone finished 4th out of 15 zones with respect to baptisms so that was good. The we had papa johns for lunch which was amazing and then we went back and analyzed some more and talked about the things that we can do to improve as a mission. Then we had a break to play soccer which was really fun. Its cool to be in a south American country where everyone actually plays decently. We formed a dream team and beat everyone. It was a needed break since we had been sitting in a meeting for like 7 hours. Then we went to presidents house and had a home cooked American dinner made by sister Sloan. She made funeral potatoes and bbq chicken. It was like a little piece of the states. Then we had a doctrine class by president sloan where he talked about our missionary purpose. It was a really good day. On Wednesday I was on divisions with Elder Anderson from Utah. It went well and we actually got a full days work in. on Thursday we had special training and interviews with president. My companion and I had to teach the missionaries about talking with everyone and how to start teaching someone for the first time. Then I had an interesting interview with president. The first things he said was “well elder your not gonna be in your zone for much longer. Have you every heard of Chimborazo”…. “no I haven`t president”…. “well you`ll have a chance to go there pretty soon”. It went something like that. He basically told me that I was gonna be changed on Monday.

On Saturday we had a baptism. His name is Patricio. Hes 15. His mom was already a member that just go reactivated. We`ve been teaching Patricio ever since I got there. The baptism went well so we were excited about that. The asistente called on Sunday and gave me my official change. I`m now in Ambato and my new companion is elder Coc. Hes from Guatemala and seems really cool. He was telling me a little bit about our sector. Our ward had its first baptism in a year on Saturday. Its been struggling a lot! He said that only like 40 people go every week. Ambato is a cool place. It’s a lot smaller than quito so it doesn`t have as many restaurants or American things. Its just has kfc. It feels like a “small town life style here” even though its not that small. Its really pretty. I have to go right now because we have to go to a place called baños to help some new sister missionaries find their house. Apparently baños is like the prettiest place on earth and is full of waterfalls and natural wonders. I`m excited to go see what its like. Its like an hour away. My new zone is huge so I think i`ll be traveling a lot here. It includes baños, latacunga, pelileo, and Ambato. Anyway i`ve got to go. I`ll tell you all more next week! Love you all!

October 4 2010

2010-10-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

This week was pretty crazy and full of surprises. Tuesday was normal. I did divisions so I got to go to another sector and work with another elder named elder Hilden. Wednesday was normal as well. But starting Thursday things started to get crazy. On Thursday morning we did our weekly planning and then when to the mall to eat since we don’t have a mamita on Thursday and the mall is right next to where we have district meeting. When we walked in the mall we noticed that there was only one entrance open in the whole place and that probably around half of the stores were closed. We went into Rusty’s(our favorite restaurant) and noticed that it was empty and that instead of showing espn on the tv it was showing the news. We didn’t think much of it and started eating our food like we always do. Then the APs called us and told us that we had to go to district meeting and tell everyone that they had to go home and spend the day in there house and that they had to call us Friday in the morning for further instructions. Later we found out what was going on. It turns out that there’s an ex president named lucio that got forcibly taken out of his presidency by the people a few years back who is really bitter and hates the new president that Ecuador has. He used to be in a very high position in the army so he has a lot of connection with them and knows how the whole public defense system works. Recently the government passed a few laws, one of which will affect the way in that the police are paid. Lucio used it to his advantage and got the army and the police all riled up against the government. The president just had surgery on his leg so he was in the hospital. The police rebelled against the government and broke in through the roof of the hospital and took the president hostage and were threatening to kill him if he didn’t resign or change the law that he had passed or something like that. The army was on the rebel side as well but apparently someone from the government went and promised them certain things if they would help save the president and fight off the police. So after a while the army showed up at the hospital were the president was being held captive and they got in a huge gun fight with the police. The news was there so all of Ecuador was basically watching a live civil war on tv. Like they would see people die and everything. Everyone that we’ve talked to was watching it. At first the police were winning because they had better weapons and the high ground because they were in the huge hospital shooting out the windows and everything and the army was just trying to enter in and didn’t really have any cover.

Meanwhile, there were no police in the whole country because they were all on rebellion so the country went into a state of chaos and the thieves went crazy. 4 banks got robbed Thursday morning and a bunch of other stores. Needless to say it wasn’t safe to be outside so that’s why they told us all to go home until further notice.

Eventually the army broke in a saved the president and then the president declared himself dictator for 5 days to get everything cleared up. He started making a bunch of weird rules like people aren’t allowed to be in big groups. The police are back to work now but have lost a lot of the publics trust and everyone thinks that they are planning something bigger and will try again
As a result of all this… our baptism that we had planned for this week fell through because we weren’t allowed out of the house on Friday when he was gonna get baptized, we didn’t get to see priesthood session of conference because we weren’t allowed to stay out after 6, and we haven’t been able to visit most of our investigators because they are all home at night time. I think we’ll be playing catch up this week so hopefully all goes well and we can get back to a normal schedule. Oh and our pday activity to go to Cotopaxi (one of the biggest volcanoes in the world) got canceled.

If you want to know more about what happened you can look it up. I’m not sure if everything I said is 100% correct. Its just what I’ve heard from all the people. Luckily I’m in a richer suburb area of Quito so it was pretty calm here. Some of the elders that were closer to the action in Quito called us and told us it was crazy. They said that people were starting fires all over the place and that ambulances were driving by at full speed every second. Anyway, that’s all I have for this week. I hope everyone enjoyed conference! I love you! I’ll talk to you next week!

September 27, 2010

2010-10-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. This week has gone well. Our zone finished the month with 15 baptisms which is pretty good. The record is 17 so we`re hoping to break it in October. The mission set a new record this weekend with 83 baptisms in one weekend so that was exiting. We had 8 of them in our zone.

Elder Archundia and I had some interesting experiences this week. Last week we called a reference that we had received from some other missionaries. They told us that the guy came up to them on a bus and asked for a book of mormon so they gave him one and took down his address and phone number. So last week we called him and set up an appointment. The appointment was this Tuesday and 10 am so we left early to get there on time and everything. He had just told us that he lives in an apartment complex called “puerta del sol” but when we got to where we thought it was we realized that there are like 10 apartment complexes called “puerta del sol” all right next to each other. We were kinda lost but at about 10:10 Marcelo(that’s the guys name) came out and found us because apparently he had been waiting for us and figured that we must have got lost. He took us to his house. The first thing I noticed when we walked in was that he had a huge book shelf full of all sorts of books and some astronomy posters on his wall with pictures of galaxies and universes. And his book of mormon was sitting right there on his table. It turns out that this guy is super smart and reads all sorts of history books and has even written one. Anyway, we sat down and started talking and he told us that he had already started reading the book of mormon and had read the introduction and the first 18 chapters of 1st nephi. Then he started asking us a whole bunch of questions about the historical context of the book of mormon and about somethings that he had read. He even started talking about 1st nephi chapter 13 when nephi talks about “the great and abominable church” and started going of about how he thinks it must be the catholic church because of all the stuff that happened in the dark ages. I don`t think i`ve ever had an investigator that understood what they read from the book of mormon as well as he did. He told us that he thought the Book of Mormon was true and that it made sense that Christ would come to the Americas. We asked him what made him so interested in the Book of mormon when he first saw the missionaries and he started telling us his life story. It was kinda long so I’ll paraphrase it. When he was younger(hes like 53 now) he lived a crazy life and did a lot of stupid things and eventually ended up in the hospital. He never believed in Christ but after all the he had been through he started having desires to believe in Christ. He had desires to fix his life and basically to apply the atonement in his life. But he said it was a really hard concept for him to accept because he had never believed in Christ and just couldn`t bring himself so believe. Someone had given him a book of mormon and so he started reading a little bit. One night when he was sleeping he had the same dream that Lehi had about the tree of life and he said that half way through his dream he woke up but his dream didn`t stop. After that he started believing in Christ. He lent his book of mormon to a friend and never got it back. Years later he was walking through a huge park here in quito and heard someone playing a guitar. He turned around and saw someone on a tree stump playing guitar and said that it was the most beautiful music that he has ever heard so he went to listen to him. When he finished playing Marcelo applauded him and asked him what his name was but the guitarist replied that he couldn`t tell him his name because he wouldn`t understand it. Anyway, long story short… He ended up running into this mysterious guitarist guy in various occasions and every time he saw him it was like something surreal was happening. The last time that he ran into him he asked him again who he was and he said that he couldn`t tell him but told him the he needed to read a book called “The book of Urantia”. Marcelo asked who wrote it and he said that it was written by angels. At this point in the story Marcelo proceeded to stand up and pull and book down from his massive book shelf. It was “the book of urantia” and told us to read the first page. It was kinda weird and said that the book caontained things that couldn`t be explained in any human laungauge but that they had tried to write them in the most understandable way possible. In the table of context I saw that it had a lot of things that talked about melquisedek and Abraham and Jesus. I`m still not exactly sure how everything fits together but something about his dream, the mysterious guitarist guy, and the “book of urantia” is what made him interested in the book of mormon . It was kinda weird because the whole situation was pretty bizarre but he seamed like a really intelligent person. Normally if someone started telling me this I would think that they were crazy but he seamed like a normal person. Anyway, He came to church with his son this Sunday and we have an appointment with him on Thursday so it will be interesting to see what happens. He already believes in the book of mormon so all we have to do now is help him see that if the book of mormon is true then everything is true and he needs to be baptized. I bet he`ll have a ton of questions though so we`ll have to explain things really well and in depth. Stay tuned until next time to see what happens… haha. If you have a few minutes maybe someone can look up “the book of uratia”. I`m kinda interested to see what is in that book that has anything to do with him being so open to the church and the book of mormom…. Or maybe it has nothing to do with it and he is just really crazy… haha…. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

Another interesting thing that happened to us this week was that on Saturday morning some jehovas witnesses rang our doorbell. We have like an intercom thing in our house so when someone rings the doorbell we just answer the phone and talk to them through the intercom. The started contacting us and asked if we could come down so that they could give us a magazine. We said yes and grabbed a liahona to give to them and went down. When we opened the door it was pretty funny to see how fast their expression changed when they saw that we were mormon missionaries. We traded magazines with them and both agreed to read.

Well i`m running out of time so i`ll have to finish here. I love you guys! I`ll talk to you next week.

September 20, 2010

2010-10-03T18:06:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you a little but about my week. Last money we were playing soccer at one of the churches because the have a grass field and we accidentally kicked the ball over the fence into some guys yard. It landed in his tree and did no damage whatsoever but for some reason he got super pissed off and wouldn’t give us the ball back. We went over and we super nice and offered to wash his dogs or do some type of service as a form to say that we were sorry but he didn’t want any of it and refused to give our ball back. It was my companions ball and it costs like 50 bucks which is a ton here so my companion really wanted it back. We called the police and asked for help and they came and talked to the guy and told him to give the ball back and that we weren`t gonna play there anymore but he still didn’t want to give it back. He finally agreed to give it back to us on Wednesday so we had to go back on Wednesday night and get it. He was still really mad but at least he gave it to us. Long story short, we have to find somewhere else to play soccer on pday

This week Elder Archundia and I did divisions with 2 companionships. On Tuesday I was with a new elder named Elder Anderson. He just got to Ecuador 3 weeks ago so he is brand new and doesn`t speak much Spanish. On Wednesday I went to a place called San Golqui with Elder Vasquez(one of the district leaders. His sector is really big and has a lot of areas that are out in the middle of nowhere. We went to a few places with some farms and got lost a few times walking through big forests/rivers/fields. The scenery was really pretty though so that was good. We went to one appointment with a new investigator and taught about the restoration and gave him a baptismal challenge for the 9th of October. When we asked him if he wanted to be baptized he said that he did and couldn’t wait because he new everything that we had taught him was true because he had felt the spirit. It was a cool experience and proof that there are some people out there that are just prepared. We just have to find them.

I met a returned missionary this week that just got back from Guayaquil south that served for 8 months on the Galapagos Islands. He gave us a reference of his sister and her family so we are going to contact them this week and see what happens. He said they were really interested.

This week we had a “capacitacion especializada”(special training) with president and it was really good. He told us a story about how when his kids were younger he had a weed garden in his yard just so that his kids could pick weeds and learn how to work. It reminded me about how dad always use to tell me that when I mowed the lawn that he didn’t care as much about the grass being short as he did that I learned to work. Being in Ecuador has really opened my eyes about the difference that good parents can make in the lives of their kids. I’ve realized that there is a reason that Ecuador is poorer that the United States. It’s because not many people teach their kids good principles and manners or how to work and as a result the culture us really rude and Lazy which makes it hard for people to make money and be successful.

This week we had a new family come to church. We met them last Sunday and only taught them 2 principles: God is our loving heavenly father and baptism, and we gave them a baptismal challenge for the 9th of October and they accepted and came to church this week and are really excited. It’s a pretty young couple with 2 kids. A 6 year old boy and a 5 year old girl. Their kids are really cute and are always really excited when we go to teach them. The only problem is that they aren’t married. We are gonna teach the law of chastity this week and take a the 2nd councilor of the bishop ric and his wife because they weren’t married before they got baptized so they have really strong testimonies of the blessings of being married. If all goes well they will accept a date to get married and will be on track to be baptized the 9th of October.

We might have a baptism or 2 this week. We have a couple people with dates for this Saturday so were gonna set an appointment for their baptismal interviews and hopefully they accept. I’m pretty sure they will try and say that its too soon or something like that but we’re gonna do all that we can and we’ll see what happens.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for everything. I love you all!

September 13, 2010

2010-09-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

This week was definitely one of the better weeks of my mission. On Tuesday we had a meeting called “consejo de lideres de zona”(zone leader council) and it was really good. All the zone leaders came to quito from all parts of the mission. The zone leaders from Ambato and Esmeraldas came and slept in our house. It was fun to talk about Esmeraldas and all the crazy things that happen there. And there were 6 of us so we ordered pizza. Papa johns delivers to our house here. Its pretty sweet. The meeting was really cool as well. We all decided that it was time to raise the goals in the mission. The old goal was 4 baptisms a month for every companionship and now we set a new goal of 2 baptisms every week. Its gonna be really hard but I think its important to set high goals. When the goal was 2 per month the average companionship baptized 1 a month. 10 months after it got raised to 4 a month the average companionship was baptizing 2 a month and now its at 2 a week so I think in a while the average companionship will be baptizing 3 or 4 a month. After the meeting president took us all to a bowling ally that they had rented out just for us and we got to go bowling and play ping pong and pool for like 3 hours. They also brought us really good food from a really fancy restaurant here. It was our reward for getting 200 baptisms in august. I felt kind of bad because everyone else in the zone was hard at work but I definitely don’t have any complaints. It was the most fun i`ve had since i`ve been on my mission. There are 3 other elders from my mtc district that are zone leaders so It was way fun to get to catch up with them and just hang out for 3 hours. Hopefully we get a lot of baptisms this month so we can have another reward like that haha. I think it also helped that president sloans son chad got home from his mission in spain that same day so president was in a good mood to let us have fun like that. The next day was the “Reunion de lideres” (Leader meeting) with all the leaders in the mission (District leaders as well).

Chad was at that meeting with us cool but kinda weird at the same time. Hes my age. He left when he was 18 because his dad is a mission president so it was kinda weird to see someone that was my age that was already done with their mission. Hes starting a BYU this week as well so that made my kinda jealous. I was talking to him for a bit afterwards while we were waiting for everyone to go home. He met one of my friends from byu (Gabby) while he was in spain. She was doing a study abroad thing and ending up in the ward while he was serving and would go to the English classes that he taught. And apparently she ended up dating his companion when he got home or something like that. The mormon world is really small. After all the meetings we went on divisions with the Elders that were staying in our house so that we could cover more ground and visit more people. I went with Elder Mata. He was one of my first zone leaders in Esmeraldas and one of my good friends in the mission. Hes from costa rica and speaks perfect English. But anyways, we went to visit the Itaz family and left at like 9 :15 to get back to the house at 9:30. I`m still new here so I didn`t know that buses stop coming at 9. We were like 5+ miles from the house and there were no buses coming and we didn`t know what to do. But apparently the lord was looking after us because after about 10 minutes of standing on the side of the freeway waiting for a bus a car whizzed by and slammed on the breaks and proceeded to back up (on the freeway). At first I was kinda scared because I didn`t know who it was but it turned out to be a bishop from Taylorsville Utah that was visiting family in Ecuador and he offered to take us home. It was a really random experience that couldn`t have happened at a better time.

On Thursday morning at about 10 am the 1st counselor in the bishop ric called me at told me that I had to give a 20 minute talk on Sunday about humility. It was kinda last minute and its not like I have a ton of time to sit down and prepare a talk. I only had personal study on Friday and Saturday. And on Friday I had to prepare to give a lesson to the zone on how to use the book of Mormon in the conversion of their investigators so I basically only had an hour on Saturday to prepare. An hour definitely wasn`t sufficient so I basically just ended up winging it on Sunday. But its cool being a missionary because the spirit always helps us out so everything went smoothly and I ended up having to cut myself off because I had too much to say and 20 minutes wasn`t enough. Its cool to think that I can just get up and give a 20 minute talk in another language without any problem. The spirit is awesome.

On Saturday the Itaz family got baptized. It went pretty smooth and there wasn`t really any huge opposition other than the fact that It was raining super hard and the family almost started sliding and almost crashed on the way to the baptism. The commented to us that they were having a lot of doubts on Saturday morning and almost didn`t get baptized but were able to overcome there doubts and decided to go through with it. They were really happy afterwards and already gave us a reference of their neighbors. We taught them once and they already accepted a baptismal date so all is well.

Well that’s all I have for this week. Until next week! I love you all!

September 6, 2010

2010-09-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

Alright let me tell you a Little bit about my week and my new sector. I’m in “los Chillos”. Its kinda like a suburb of Quito. There are a lot of people here that have more money than most of the people in my old sector. There are a lot of really big houses and things aren’t as crowded and packed together. There are some houses that look like they would fit in perfectly in The US. My sector runs along the main freeway so all day every day we are walking on the side of the freeway with cars speeding by. We definitely walk a lot more here than in my old sector. This week it rained everyday so we got splashed all day as the cars drove by. I used my umbrella to try and block the water that got thrown at me but it didn’t always work that well and my umbrella got pretty trashed. There is a mall here that is way better than the mall in my old sector. They have a couple of good restaurants. Today we ate at a place called rustys. They sell huge burgers there and it is the only place in Ecuador that sells curly fries and root beer. But the root beet is super expensive. Its like 2,50 per cup. I also so a TGIFridays in the mall so i`m pretty sure that i`ll end up spending a lot of money there in the future. The ward I’m in is really solid. It just got made into a ward from a branch like a couple of months ago and the stake is new as well. It used to be a district. The bishop in my ward is way cool. He served his mission in Quito 6 years ago and was AP for 6 months. We eat lunch at his house on Saturday and Sunday and his wife washing our cloths for free. I took her my cloths and when she gave them back to me she told me that a few of my socks were missing because they had holes and she was going to saw them. They take really good care of the missionaries here.

This sector is probably the best sector that I’ve come to so far in in terms of the work. We’re teaching a family named the Itas family and they are going to get baptized this Saturday. They already passed their interviews and everything. I’m sure that opposition will come full force this week but we’re ready for it. Stay tuned to see what happens this time. We also have another baptism in 2 weeks. It’s a lady named sister llumiquinga. He 2 daughters got baptized last months and now she is progressing and wants to get baptized. She also had her interview this week but had a problem with question 4 so she has to have an interview with president Sloan or one of his counselors. So hopefully everything works out and she can get baptized in 2 weeks. We are also teaching a lot of other families and people. There are tons of investigators in this sector. Enough to last us for at least 3 months. We’re also teaching a young guy named Howard from Colombia as well. He has been to church twice already so this week I think we’re gonna give him a baptismal challenge. His girlfriend is a member that lives on the coast and Howard is a reference from her.
There’s a new elder that just got her that is in our zone named elder Cedeño. He got baptized 5 years ago and is the only member in his family. He’s 25 and was studying to be a doctor and has one year left but left it to come on a mission. He also speaks perfect English. He gives me a lot of hope that someday my converts will turn into something great and become future missionaries and/leaders in the church her in Ecuador.

At church on Sunday the priests challenged us to a soccer game so we played against them today. We won of course. I’m really happy that president Sloan gave us permission to play. It makes pdays a lot funner. Well that’s all I have for this week. If you have any questions for me let me know in your emails but highlight them in red or something so that I remember to answer them. I love you all. Until next week!

August 23 & 30, 2010

2010-08-30T13:19:00.001-07:00

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!

August 23 & 30, 2010

2010-08-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

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!

August 16, 2010

2010-08-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

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….

August 9, 2010

2010-08-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

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.

July 26, 2010

2010-07-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

So everything is going good here in South America. I got my new companion this week on Wednesday. His name is Elder Resendiz. He’s from Mexico. It’s been really nice because he knows how to make Mexican food and it’s really good. He’s teaching me so hopefully by the time I get back I’ll be a master chef. He’s brand new so he still has his full Mexican accent and it’s a lot different from the way people talk here in Ecuador. Every once in a while he says a word that I don’t understand because it’s a word they only use in Mexico. And every once in a while I say a word that is normal here but is a really bad word in Mexico. Its interesting how all the Latino countries speak the same language but there are so many things that are different. For example, the word coger means to catch or grab here so I always say “vamos a coger bus” (we’re gonna catch a bus) but in Mexico it is like the worst word that you can say and its super offensive. If I ever travel to other countries after my mission I’ll have to watch what I say haha.

We have a baptism coming up this Saturday. It’s a 12 year old kid named Kevin. His dad and older brother are both members but for some reason he has been a pretty hard investigator. We’ve been teaching him and his mom ever since we got here and they’ve always been pretty hard. His mom is catholic and I think she has been influencing him a lot to not get baptized. We didn’t know what to do so we asked the young men’s president for help and he talked with him and now he wants to get baptized. I wish all members were like that. You all should be like that. So he’s getting baptized this week. The opposition will come like it always does but we’re ready for it and are gonna do everything possible to make sure that he gets baptized.

This week there is a 3 day conference for all the zone leaders and district leaders in the whole mission. Apparently the first presidency has decided to make a few changes to the way the mission will work. And they must be some pretty big changes because it’s a 3 day conference. I’ve never been to a conference that lasted for more than a day so it will be interesting to see what all is going to happen. Unfortunately that means I won’t be in my sector for 3 days so when I get back I’m gonna have a lot of work to do. I’m excited for the conference because I’m gonna get to see all the elders from my mtc district that I haven’t seen in a long time
There are some elders in my district that are having some difficulties with their bishop. Apparently he wants to do the baptismal interviews for all the people that get baptized which is something that he doesn’t have stewardship over. I might have to go talk to him this week about it so that should be pretty interesting. There are a lot of things that happen like that in Ecuador because the church is still pretty young here and there are a lot of leaders that don’t have a lot of experience. In Esmeraldas there was a bishop that wanted the missionaries to pay tithing.

Mom I got your package. Thanks a ton!!!!!!!!!!! That’s all I have for this week. Take care! Talk to you next week!

July 19, 2010

2010-07-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

This week has been pretty crazy down here in Ecuador. My district hadn’t had any baptisms this months so the zone leaders started getting on my case about it. It was kinda frustrating but after sulking in my pride for a while I finally humbled myself and decided that they were right and that if I was the district leader that I needed to set an example for everyone and start baptizing more. I didn’t know how I was gonna do it but on Wednesday I got the idea in my head that I was gonna baptize at least 2 people this week so I asked the zone leaders if we could do divisions so that they could help me resolve some problems with a few investigators. We were only in divisions for like 3 hours but we managed to give 2 baptismal challenges to 2 people for this Saturday and they both accepted. It was Celeste and Jacqueline. They both were going through some problems. Celeste had a ton of opposition from her family and Jacqueline was still depressed because her dad died but we managed to overcome their problems and got them to agree to be baptized on Saturday. Saturday came and all was looking good but then at 8 in the morning Celeste sent us a message that said that she couldn’t get baptized so we went straight to her house and after talking with her for a bit we managed to convince her that she needed to be baptized. Her problem was that her whole family was pressuring her to travel back to Guayaquil that day and they told her that her baptism wasn’t that important and that she could do it another day. After resolving her problem for the first time we went back to work but about an hour later she sent us another message saying the same thing. She said she wanted to get baptized but her family was forcing her to leave that day. The same thing repeated all day long… she would send us a message and tell us that she couldn’t get baptized and we would run over and convince her that she had to. I think we repeated the process and least 5 times. We finally settled everything once and for all by asking the bishop if she could be confirmed on Saturday so that she could go to Guayaquil so that her family wouldn’t get mad at her. It was a crazy day and it was definitely a miracle that we got everything worked out and that she got baptized. We almost forgot about Jacqueline but luckily she didn’t face much opposition that day. Satan was focusing all his efforts on Jacqueline. So anyway we ended up having 2 baptisms this week thanks to a lot of hard work and a lot of divine help.

One day this week we were walking to an appointment when we saw a little old lady that was going crazy because she had locked herself out of her house. We asked her if she was alright and she told us her situation and asked us if we could climb up a telephone pole onto her porch, break in her back door, and go open the front door and let her in. how could we say no to such a request? My companion climbed up and when he was about to break in he realized that there was an angry dog inside that didn’t like strangers. The lady was like “there’s a shovel up there that you can use to defend yourself so he grabbed the shovel and broke in. luckily the dog didn’t attack him and he was able to get the door opened.

This week I did an interview for a 20 year old guy that was deaf so that he could get baptized. The plan was that his sister was going to translate for me so the 3 of us went in the room and started the interview. It wasn’t long before I realized that the deaf guy didn’t even know sign language. I would ask a question and his sister would open a picture book, find a picture about whatever the question was, point to it, and then point to him… then with a very confused and nervous look he would nod his head and his sister would tell me, “yes he believes” or “yes he understands”. It was clear to me that he didn’t understand because he couldn’t communicate. I didn’t know what to do because I had never had a situation like that. I asked for a few minutes to be alone so that I could pray and ask the lord if he should be baptized. They left the room and I got on my knees and started praying and asking what I should do. Everyone in his family wanted him to get baptized and the missionaries wanted him to get baptized…. Even I wanted him to get baptized because my district hadn’t had any baptism yet this month… but after praying for about 10 minutes I just didn’t feel right about it so I asked them to come back in. I talked to his sister a little more and eventually explained that I didn’t feel like he was ready to get baptized. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty hard to say know but I had to do it because I knew that it was pretty to offend man than to offend God. The next day I called president Sloan and told him about what had happened and he told me that I had done the right thing and that made me feel better. Its pretty hard to tell someone that they can’t get baptized. I wonder what it would be like to be a bishop and tell someone that they couldn’t go to the temple or something like that. Hopefully I’m never a bishop haha.

We had changes today. My companion elder Brailsford got sent to Otavalo and I’m training again for the 3rd time. I still don’t know who my companion is. The new missionaries get here tonight or tomorrow and we’ll get paired up on Wednesday. I’ll let you know next week who my companion is.

Anyway that’s all for this week. I got a package from grandma and grandma Messer. Thanks a ton! Talk to you next week! I love you!

July 12, 2010

2010-07-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

Yes Jacqueline got back from her dads funeral but hasn’t felt like talking to us yet and told her sister that she’s not going to get baptized this week. She’s super depressed because her dad died and everything and just lays in bed all day and doesn’t talk to anyone. I think she still has desires to be baptized but just doesn’t feel like doing anything at the moment. Its kinda a tough situation. At ward counsel yesterday we asked everyone to pray for her so hopefully everyone’s prayers will make a difference. Maybe you guys could pray as well? I remember when I was in Esmeraldas we had a few investigators that had really tough situations and couldn’t get baptized but when we started praying for the everyday multiple times during the day they started to make progress towards overcoming their problems. Then I left so I don’t know what happened to them. But at least I learned the power of prayer.

Other that Jacqueline, We have a couple other investigators with baptismal dates. One is Tarjelia Bravo. She’s Ronalds mom and had a date for the 31 of July but we moved it up this week to the 24th. She has her interview this Saturday so hopefully everything turns out good. Another is Rocio. She prayed to ask which church is true and had a dream that the true church had temples like it describes in exodus when its talking about the tabernacle. We talked a little bit about temples and she agreed to be baptized the first week in august. Her biggest challenge is going to church and keeping the Sabbath day holy because she plays on a soccer team that always plays on Sundays and she really doesn’t want to just stop playing. She came to church 2 weeks ago but didn’t come this week so we’re gonna work really hard with her to get her to go this upcoming Sunday.

We have one investigator-Hermano Mina- that wants to get baptized but has a really big problem with drinking. He has had it for almost his whole life and wants to stop but its really hard for him. He was driving drunk one time and drove off a cliff and almost died and he has a lot of health problems from drinking but he still does it because he’s addicted. This week we talk with him about the power that the book of Mormon has and how it can help him overcome his problem if he reads it everyday. We read a scripture with him (the last verse in ether 8… it think) that says that the book of Mormon was written to take the wickedness out of the hearts of men and persuade them to do good continually and we promised him that if he would read the book of Mormon regularly that the desires to drink would diminish and that he would be able to be freed from his problem. He said he was gonna do it so lets hope he keeps his word.

This week we had zone conference and a bunch of other meetings so we didn’t get as much work done as usually. We had interviews on Thursday, zone conference Friday, mini conference Saturday, and church and ward council(3 hours) on Sunday. Zone conference was really good. They are always good and I always learn a lot but this time was like extra good. President Sloan blew me away with his doctrine class. It was like 2 hours long and it was the most in depth stuff I’ve ever heard about the fall, the atonement, and repentance. It was like a doctrinal feast. The scriptures have a new meaning to me now. He explained things that I had read many times but apparently had never really understood. I wanted to go straight to the temple afterwards because I’m sure I would understand things way better now…. But I couldn’t so hopefully I won’t forget everything I learned in the next 14 months. Its weird that I’m less than 2 months away from completing a year. Time flies.

Special thanks to Torie for sending me all of tanners emails! It definitely made my day to read all about what my best friend has been up to. Thanks!!!

If anyone is waiting for a letter, I’m super sorry that I’m taking so long to write. Ever since I got switched to Quito it seams like I’ve been busier than a worker ant. But I’m working on it I promise! Please be patient with me.

Random story: on Wednesday we were walking into the gate in front of our ward mission leaders house and their neighbors dag came up and started barking at us like crazy like it was gonna bite us or something. It’s a little tiny dog so long story short…. My companion kicked it and sent it flying. Then in ran in the house with its tail between its legs and never bothered us again. It was pretty funny. We were laughing for a while.

President gave us permission to play soccer so today I played for the first time in over 10 months. It was pretty fun even though I am ridiculously tired right now. Its pretty hard to play when your at an altitude 10,000 feet. But it was definitely worth it. Anyway, that’s all I have for this week. I love you all! ¡Que tengan una Buena semana!

June 14, 21, 28, and July 5, 2010

2010-07-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

June 14, 2010
Hey everyone. Another week and another letter. We had 2 baptisms this week and they went really well. We baptized an 8 year old boy named David and an 11 year old boy named Carlos. Their parents are members but were inactive so we`ve been working with them and they have returned to church and are now active so we baptized their 2 kids. Carlos is deaf so his mom had to translate everything to him in sign language. He`s a really smart kid. He even gave his testimony after the baptism and his mom translated it for us. Then their parents shared their testimonies and they both started crying because it was such a special moment for them. I forgot to take my camera this time so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures but I’ll try and take a picture with the family this week and send it home next week.

On Thursday I got to go to a meeting with all the district leaders in the whole mission. It was pretty cool. It went from 8am to 8 pm but that included a trip to the president’s house to eat ridiculously delicious enchiladas. It was the first taste of purely home cooked American food that I’ve had since I’ve been here. They even had root beer floats with the root beer imported from the stated because they don’t sell it here. It was heavenly. Apart from that we just talked forever about a bunch of different stuff. I think we spent like 3 hours talking about baptismal interviews and all the different situations that can come up. It was a really cool meeting and I’m glad that I got to go.

Today we got to watch the world cup. We watched Italy against Paraguay. It was way cool because it was the first time that I have watched TV in 9 months. Next week we`re gonna watch Spain against Honduras. And there`re rumors going around that president sloan is gonna let us play soccer on pdays if everything goes well with the world cup. So hopefully those rumors turn into a reality.

There’s a new sister missionary in my district that is from the Philippines. She’s the only person in the mission that is from somewhere other than latino America and the US. She speaks Cebuano and English already and now she is learning Spanish.
That’s about it for this week. I hope everything is going well back home. I love you all.

June 28, 2010

Hey everyone,
This week has gone well out here in Ecuador. We`ve been working hard trying to help people progress towards baptism and all of that good stuff that missionaries do. We have a baptism coming up this week. It’s a 30 year old lady named Jacqueline. Her sister is a member and she just recently became interested in the gospel. We met her at church like 5 weeks ago and have been teaching her ever since. She`s really excited for her baptism and she doesn`t really have any problems so that’s good. But I’m sure the opposition will come sooner or later… it always does.

This week we took Ronald (a 13 year old kid that we baptized) out with us a few times. He wanted to come with us so that he could fulfill a requirement in his duty to god book. He’s really excited about the church and everything that goes with it. His mom is investigating as well but she is a little harder. She’s been to church twice and now has a baptismal date for the end of July but she still seams kinda hesitant about it so we have our work cut out for us. Her whole family is catholic and Ronald had to face a lot of opposition from them when he got baptized so I think she’s kinda scared of what will happen if she got baptized. Almost everyone here is catholic and they have some beliefs/traditions that are very different so some times its hard for them to leave everything behind and join the church. We have one investigator that says she can’t believe that what we`re saying is true because her family has always worshiped some virgin/saint lady that lives in Loja (some city in Ecuador). Apparently this saint person has done a bunch of miracles and healed a bunch of people. It was kinda weird to hear about…. And upon further inspection we found out that this “saint” isn`t even a person at all…. It’s some doll that they keep in a huge shrine and all the people go worship her and pray to her and claim that she does miracles. It’s pretty much extreme idolatry but everyone that worships her claims that it’s not idolatry at all…… Let’s just say that Satan has confused a lot of people…

And there are a lot of people that don’t accept the gospel because of “the traditions of their fathers”. We talked to a lady one time that said, “Even if I got an answer from god that your church was true I wouldn`t leave the catholic church.” or others have said, “I was born catholic and I’m gonna dies catholic and that’s all there is to it.” It’s kinda frustrating sometimes but that’s how it is so we just learn to deal with it.

Well I can’t think of anything else so that’s it for this week! I love you all!
-Elder Messer

July 5, 2010

Hey!
Things have been going well down here on the equator. It’s been a good week for the most part. We were supposed to have a baptism on Saturday but it fell through because the ladies dad died suddenly and she had to travel to the coast to be with the family and go to his funeral and everything. Depending on when she comes back we’ll either have her baptism this week or next week. Its amazing how predictable things are when someone is about to be baptized. Something ALWAYS happens. I`ve had like 20-ish baptisms so far and I’m pretty sure there wasn`t a single one that didn`t have some type of problem or opposition. We always warn the people when they accept a baptismal date that it won`t go unopposed. We`re at war here with the adversary people! He’s not gonna let you walk straight into the kingdom of God without doing everything in his power to shoot you down. Adversity has never been as real as it has been while I’ve been on my mission.

Tarjelia (Ronald`s mom) has been progressing really well lately. Shes been to church 3 times and says that her enthusiasm to get baptized has been improving. Her whole family is really catholic and that’s our biggest challenge with her so this week we decided to teach a whole lesson just about the great apostasy. We spent like 45 minutes just read scriptures and prophecies about the false churches that were gonna form and all the doctrine that was going to be changed. There’s a scripture in 2 timothy that talks about people that forbid to marry and that forbid to eat meat which seemed to really strike her hard since those are 2 things in the Catholic Church.

We saw something interesting this week. We were walking to an appointment and we saw this old lady with 3 goats walking through the middle of a very crowded street right in front of the mall. It turns out that she was selling goat milk and she was doing it with live goats to make sure it was fresh. People would walk up to her and ask for a cup and she would proceed to bend down, squeeze some milk out of the utter and give it to the person. They would then pay her 25 cents. My companion and I had a good laugh about it.

I hope everything is going well back in the states. Write me letters! I love you all!
-Elder Messer

June 7, 2010

2010-06-07T22:43:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, let me tell you a little bit about my week. We were supposed to have 2 baptisms on Saturday but we ended up only having one(I’ll explain later). We baptized a 13 year old boy named Ronald. We have been teaching him for about a month. He had a few doubts about going on a mission when he was older but we were able to explain things and get over it. He has had a lot of opposition from his family because they are all really catholic. This Sunday his sister was trying to get him to not go to church which would have been bad because he got confirmed on Sunday. They always tell him bad things about the church and tell him that he doesn’t know what he is getting into and stuff like that. But he is really excited about everything so he didn’t let any of that stop him. He has a lot of friends in the young men’s program as well and that helps a lot. And the young men’s president is a really cool guy and has been helping a lot. We organized his baptism so that one of the priests in the ward could baptize him. It was a cool experience for both of them. We have an appointment to go to his house this week with like 5 members to try and help out with all the opposition that he is getting from his family. Celeste was(and still is) really excited to get baptized but ran into some opposition. She has been looking for a job for a few months now and she finally get one on Wednesday and has to work Saturday and Sunday. My companion and I had no idea until Thursday night when we went to visit her. Right after we knocked on the door I turned to my companion and said “I don’t have a good feeling about this, something happened” then he said “I feel the same way”. Then we proceeded to enter and she told us what had happened. We’ve been working hard to help her get everything worked out so that she can get baptized. We’ve been asking around everywhere to see if anyone knows where she can get a job where she doesn’t have to work on Sunday. We even took her to and interview on Saturday morning. They offered her the job but she doesn’t know if she wants to take it. We’re hoping that something works out so that she can get baptized soon.

There were changes this week but nothing happened with my companion and I so we’re staying together for at least another 6 weeks(unless there’s another emergency change).

Today we got free shoes from some lady that has a son on a mission in California. She says that she wants to take care of the missionaries here because she knows that someone else is doing the same for her son in California and she owns a shoe shop so she hooked us up with some free shoes… which I really needed since all of my shoes got trashed in Esmeraldas.

We are planning 2 more baptisms for this week. David and Carlos. They are kids and there parents are members but they were inactive for a long time. We’ve been working with them and they’ve started coming back to church so we’re going to baptize their kids. Carlos is deaf so when we teach him his mom always has to translate it into sign language. They passed their interviews this week so everything is ready for their baptism next week.

That’s about it for this week! I love you all!

May 31, 2010

2010-05-31T23:07:00.000-07:00

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!

May 24, 2010

2010-05-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!!!!!

I hope all is well back in the states. Let me tell you about my week. First off, This week went by really slow because my companion was sick and we couldn’t go out and work for like 5 days. It was kind of like a mini vacation for me since I just got to hang out in the apartment all day, do some extra studying, and learn some hymns on the guitar. My companion is new so it was expected that He would get sick sooner or later. It happens to all the North American missionaries when they get here.

We witnessed a rather interesting/funny incident this week. We live on a street where there are always a million drunks and occasionally they do something funny, like this time. It was like 7 in the morning on a Tuesday and I ran out of water so we had to leave the house real quick to buy some from our neighbor(she runs a little store out of here house. When we got there we saw that there were 2 old drunks arguing right down the street. Long story short there argument turned into a fight. One of the had a bottle and was trying to hit the other guy with it. We thought it was a glass bottle but when he finally landed a blow it turned out to be plastic. Yes that’s right, he was trying to beat up the other guy with a plastic bottle haha. It was super funny because they were super drunk and could hardly walk straight much less fight. They were so uncoordinated. All the neighbors heard all the commotion and everyone came out to watch. It was quite the event and everyone had a good laugh. I kind of felt bad for the guys afterwards because all they do with their lives is get drunk every day. It’s rather ridiculous.

On Sunday I had a really cool experience. It was just a normal Sunday. We got up, studied, and then went to some meetings in the chapel. After the meetings we were walking out and going to sacrament meeting when I saw some familiar faces. The ulloa taipe family that I had been teaching in Esmeraldas and that got baptized right after I left had traveled 7 hours on bus all the way from Quito just to come visit me and tell me that they got baptized and thank me for all that I had done for them. They only stayed for sacrament meeting and then had to leave and go back to Esmeraldas and the whole family couldn’t afford to come so it was just the dad and the 8 year old daughter but it definitely made my day and I’m going to have to say that it was the highlight of my mission up till now. I was super sad when I had to leave before they got baptized and without saying goodbye but I was super happy that they came all that way just to thank me and say goodbye. My joy was full. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to see them in the celestial kingdom.

Later on Sunday, we got asked to give a blessing because some lady in our ward had a sick son. We showed up to give the blessing and when we got there, there were like 20 people there. I’m not gonna lie, it was kind of nerve racking to give a blessing in another language with so many people there watching. I felt like there was a lot of pressure but I just put my trust in the lord and it turned out good. After the blessing the kids dad(who isn’t a member) asked us to come and teach him. It was a good experience and another piece of evidence that the powers of godliness are manifest when the priesthood is used(like it says in D&C)

Last week we contacted a reference and it turned out to be a lady that had been investigating the church in Guayaquil. We went to teach here this week and when we finished the lesson we asked if there was anything else that we could do for her and she said “yes, I want to get baptized”…. We definitely weren’t expecting that but it was a pleasant surprise.

This week I did a baptismal interview for some missionaries in my district. I interviewed the nephew of a family that has 2 sons that live in the US. One served his mission in North Carolina and is now studying in Provo at UVU. The other one is one is mission right now. He started out in the Colorado Springs mission but is now in California… it’s a small world.

That’s about it for this week. I love you all. Thanks for all the support!

May 17, 2010

2010-05-17T21:41:00.001-07:00

Hey Everyone,
Let me tell you a Little bit about my week. This week went really well for us. We aren’t as lost anymore and we’re starting to figure everything out about our new sector. The members have been helping us out a lot as well. We went out with a member 5 days this week which is quite a change compared with Esmeraldas. I was there for 6 months and we never went out with anyone. The only times that a member came with us were when we baptized someone and had them come with us. So long story short, it’s really nice to have so much support from the members. The relief society has been helping us a bunch as well with all our lunch appointments. The president of the relief society is this super nice lady that has a son on a mission in Bolivia so she really likes to help us out a lot! They just reorganized the “mamitas”(the families that feed us) and now we have appointments to eat lunch AND dinner every day. They are really taking good care of us here. It seems like every time we see a member they are offering us food or something. There’s even a guy in the ward that is a professional cook that invited us over and made us this HUGE pizza. Basically I love this ward and this sector so far. It’s a ridiculous contrast with what I had in Esmeraldas.

I gave a talk this week in church about testimonies. I had written it all out and was planning on just reading it but when I got up there and starting speaking I just threw away what I had prepared and just started talking. It’s amazing how much the spirit helps me to remember things and to be able to teach clearly in another language. I know I’ve said this before but the gifts of the spirit are real. I know because I’ve experienced them.
We had a few successes this week.
1) We had a baptism. It was an 18 year old girl named Lucia that had been listening to the missionaries since December. She had been through a lot of struggles in her life and basically grew up without parents. She had to face a lot of opposition from her family and a lot of people that were telling her that she was crazy for getting baptized but she went forth and faith and did it anyways. Her parents even ended up coming to her baptism even though they were some of the people that had said that she was crazy. I didn’t really do that much to help prepare her for baptism… I just kind of got here and she was all ready and all we had to do was make all the preparations. My companion and I played “come thou fount” on our guitars at the baptism and it was a big hit since hardly anyone here has musical talent. haha

2) The ulloa taipe family that I had been teaching for 5 months in Esmeraldas got baptized this weekend as well. I was kind of sad that I couldn’t be there since I had been through so much with them. They used to have a completely broken home but over the last 5 months we have helped them to overcome their problems through the gospel. I saw miracles with that family. I wish I could have been there for their baptism but oh well, that’s how the mission is sometimes.
3) We received a reference from the mission offices this week and when we went to contact it we found out that it was a lady that was about to get baptized in Guayaquil a few months ago but then she moved to Quito. We met here and taught her a lesson on Saturday night and she went to church on Sunday. The only problem that we have to overcome with her is that she doesn’t really have any good friends in the ward yet… but that’s a very small problem compared to others that we have some times
4) We’re planning a few baptisms for next week. One is an 11 year old kid that is deaf. When we teach him his mom has to translate with sign language. I’m not exactly sure how his baptismal interview will be but we’ll figure it out.

What else…. My companion got sick yesterday, but that’s pretty normal for new missionaries. We just stayed in the house after church because he was too sick to go out so that was kind of a refreshing break from walking up and down ridiculous hills at 10,000 feet. That’s the only bad thing about Quito, the hills are killer! But my lungs are getting used to it so I’m sure I won’t even mind in a few more weeks.
Well that’s all I’ve got for this week. I hope everyone is doing wonderful back in the states! I love you all!

May 10, 2010

2010-05-10T15:06:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, sorry I haven`t written in a while. A lot of stuff has happened like internet going out and getting an emergency change. I`m now in the southern part of Quito. My zone is called “zona chillogallo” and let me tell you things are a lot different here. I`m going to make a list of all the positive things about being in quito:

1) I get to shower with hot water

2) Its not 95 degrees everyday. Instead its usually around 70 (perfecto)

3) My apartment is 1000000000000000 times better than my apartment in esmeraldas. It has wood floors and theres no bugs or lizards or mud or dirt. Oh and it has real windows instead of just holes in the wall.

4) I don’t sweat in my sleep. It does get kinda cold over night but I have blankets so its not a huge deal

5) I have mcdonalds, KFC, Pizza hut, and many other wonderful restaurants IN MY SECTOR (that means any time we don’t have a lunch appointment with a member we get to eat wonderful American fast food)

6) There is a ridiculous amount of support from the ward here. We have appointments to go out with members almost everyday this week.

7) Everyone here speaks super clear Spanish that is super easy to understand

Other good news:

1) I have a cell phone now (now when I feel something vibrating in my pocket I know that its not just my imagination or the famous “phantom vibrate”)

2) We just found out that president sloan is going to let us watch the world cup games on Monday

3) I have a gringo companion(Elder Brailsford from Mesa Arizona)that is brand new so we get to experience all the crazy culture shocks together and make jokes about them haha

4) My companion has a guitar and we`ve been learning some hymns. (if anyone has guitar tabs for hymns I would love if you could send them to me)

Basically I like being in Quito so far. Although I was pretty sad when I left Esmeraldas because there was a family that I had been teaching for a long time that was about to get baptized and I had to leave all my hard work behind. But that’s what happens on the mission sometimes. I really wanted to be there when they got baptized but its all good. I saw miracles with that family. They went from being a completely broken family to accepting the gospel and finding joy in their lives. The dad went from being a completely drunk to a loving father. Hopefully I can have similar experiences here in my new sector. This week has been kinda hard since my companion and I are both new here so we`ve been pretty lost. We had investigators with baptismal dates but we didn`t know where they lived so we`ve been working frantically this week to try and find all the investigators and all the members who feed us lunch and stuff like that. Anyway, that’s about all I have for right now. I love you all and hope everything is going good for everyone back in the states. Until next week.

April 19, 2010

2010-04-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Another transfer just ended and my old companion (Elder Lopez) is on his way home. I`m getting a new companion named Elder Chavez. So far I don’t know much about him. Hes from Guatemala and has been out for 3 ½ months less than me. Hopefully hes a hard worker! These last few weeks have been a little difficult because I had a companion that was going home. It made me a little homesick thinking about him going home. But hopefully all of that will wear off as we get back out to work this week. Oh and I got sick this week so that was kinda lame too. I`m not sure what it was from. I think I must have eaten something weird or maybe someone gave me water that wasn`t purified or something like that. I wasn`t able to work Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. But i`m pretty much better now so all is well.

We were going to have a baptism this week but the guy had problems with question 4 in his interview so now he has to wait and get interviewed by president sloan to see if he can get baptized. We`re keeping our fingers crossed.

I don’t really have much to tell about this week since I was sick in bed for half the week…. We did a service project on Wednesday where we helped a lady start to build a new house. We dug a couple of house and put some pieces of wood in them. It was a rather easy service compared to some of the others that we`ve done.

Yesterday there were 3 small earthquakes here. Elder Lopez and I were in our house and it started shaking. The fist thing I did was run outside because I didn`t want to be inside if it collapsed. Luckily the earthquakes were really small and really quick so there was no damage. Hopefully they don’t come back. Our house is only made of cinder blocks and cement… its not all the sturdy... hopefully if there is a big earthquake it will be during the day when we`re not at home.

Anyway, that’s about all that happened this week. I hope everything is going well for everyone back home! Until next week!

-Elder Messer

Jordy's Baptism

April 12, 2010

2010-04-12T14:02:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone! So this week has gone really well… better than most weeks I would say. We have found a few new families that we are teaching that we`re excited about. It’s always a big deal when we find a family that will listen because there are hardly any families here and if we do manage to find a family they usually don`t want to listen. But we have found 3 in the last 2 weeks so we`re excited about that. Also, we had a baptism on Saturday. We baptized a young man named Jordy. We met jordy about 4 months again when I was with the other Elder Lopez (the one that I trained). We were just walking down a street and I had a book of mormon in my hand and jordy saw it and came up and started asking me about it. I showed him the pictures in the front of the book and explained about how Nephi and his family came to the Americas from Jerusalem and how the book of mormon tells the story of their family and of the ancient inhabitants of the American continent. He had tons of questions so we set up an appointment to come back. We started teaching his brother and sister and his mom as well but they weren`t as interested as he was. His mom is really hard to deal with. Her heart is super hard and she gets offended really easily. She has been the biggest opposition to the progression of Jordy. He was going to get baptized a few weeks ago but his mom wouldn`t give permission. Jordy begged and begged her and she finally said yes. On Saturday we passed by jordy`s house to remind make sure that he was going to show up to his baptism on time (here it is very normal to show up 30 minutes to 1 hour late) and we found him crying. Some of his aunts and uncles had come by his house and invited his family to go to the beach. When he told them that he couldn`t go because he was getting baptized they started giving him a hard time and telling him that he had been brainwashed and stuff like that. And he really wanted his mom and his brothers and sisters to come to his baptism but they had decided to go to the beach instead. We gave him some encouraging words and explained that whenever we get closer to God there is always a greater opposition. Its becoming predictable to me. For almost every baptism that we`ve had so far something has happened either right before or right after. Anyway, he got baptized despite the opposition from his family and was confirmed on Sunday. His mom ended up feeling bad for not coming to his baptism so she came on Sunday and watched him receive the Aaronic priesthood.

We have another baptism scheduled for this Saturday. Its for a man named Harlington. He has been to several different churches and has studied the Bible a lot. He has been coming to church for like 6 weeks now and went to all of the sessions of general conference. He is very motivated when it comes to religion. There are still a lot of things that he doesn`t understand perfectly because he has been to so many churches and has so many different ideas mixed up in his head but he has a testimony and believes the book of mormon is true and the joseph smith was a prophet so we`re gonna baptize him next week. His interview is scheduled for tonight.

Random thing that I ate this week: Cow utter……. Surprisingly it wasn`t that bad. They didn`t tell me what it was till after I ate it which is good because if I would have known it might have tasted a lot worse… haha

This is the last week of the change so that means my companion goes home in a week and i`ll get a new one. I`ll let you know what happens next week.

We just found out that the 1st councilor in our bishopric (one of the 4 priesthood holders that we have and one of the strongest members in the ward) is moving this week so that might take its toll on the ward. We`ll see what happens.

Anyway, that’s all for this week! Thanks to everyone who has sent me letters! I`m in the process of writing back right now. I love you all!

Sorry...I'm a slacker...Here's the last couple....SORRY!!

2010-04-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

I'll put pictures on facebook soon! I promise! There's not very many...only like 4...but coming soon!

April 5, 2010

Hey everyone! I hope all is well back home. This week has been good for me. It was full of meetings and conferences. We almost didn`t get to work at all this week. Monday was pday, Tuesday we worked until 3 and then had interviews and meeting for the rest of the day, Wednesday was zone conference, Thursday is weekly planning and district meeting, Friday was a normal day of work, Saturday was 3 sessions of general conference, and Sunday was another 2 sessions. Needless to say we didn`t get much work done this week. We spent a lot of time getting taught and not as much time teaching others. But it was a nice change of pace. It’s the closest thing to a vacation that i`ve had since i`ve been on my mission. But its over now and this week will be full of hard work. Conference was good though. I liked elder oaks talk in priesthood meeting about giving priesthood blessings and I liked elder hollands talk too… like always. I just like how he speaks. I especial liked his joke about tea. It was pretty funny I thought.

In zone conference we studied alma 32. President sloan spent a lot of time talking about “the poor in heart”. He said that the poor in heart have no dreams or goals and have the philosophy “I was born this way so that’s how ui`m gonna stay forever” faith doesn`t exist for them because they don’t think change or better things are possible and they have no hope. Then on Thursday (the day after zone conference I met someone exactly like that. I was waiting at line in the ATM and some guy came up and started talking to me. He told me all about how poor he was and how jesus taught that we should give to the poor and that obviously if I was a representative of jesus that meant that I should give him money. Then he went on about how he doesn`t have a house and how he sleeps on the beach and gets wet by the waves everynight. I wanted to say, “That’s sucks, if I was you I wouldn`t sleep on the beach.” He didn`t understand that he could change his situation. He thought that since he was born sleeping on the beach and getting wet that that is how he had to stay forever. We told him that if he wanted our help that he should come to church Sunday and we would teach him there how HE could change his life.

Were taching a lesson this week in a little store of one of our investigaters when all of a sudden someguy walking by got tackled and taken away by the police. The police were really rough with him and had their guns out an everything and all the nieghbors left there houses and surrounded to watch. Then he got taken away in the back of a police truck. Apparently he had robbed someone earlier so they took him to jail. I wonder what the jail is like here. I`m pretty sure that jail in the US is nicer that how a lot of people live here so I wonder what the jail conditions are like her. Probably not very good.

We were knocking doors on Friday and ran into the uncle of Antonio valencia (a soccer player that plays for manchester united). It turns out that he is a member but inactive. He said that he used to be the elders quorum president and we was a ward mission leader. He said that when he went to church there was 150 people every week. I am curious to no what happened between then and now because now we are lucky to have 60 and there is no elders quorum president or ward mission leader. But anyway, I thought it was cool that I ran into the uncle of a soccer player that plays for my favorite team. Apparently antonio valencia is from esmeraldas. Hes a person that has done something with his life. To go from esmeraldas to professional soccer player for one of the best teams in the world is quite an accomplishment I think.

Anyway, that’s all for this week. I Love you all! Until next week!

March 29, 2010

Hey everyone,

Let me tell you about this week in Esmeraldas. I think I told you last week about Jordy.. He`s 12 years old, really smart, has been reading the book of mormon everyday from the beginning, and really wants to get baptized but his mom didn`t want him to. The good news is that this week we managed to get his mom to sign the baptismal form so now he can get baptized. The semi-bad news is that they went out of town this weekend so he couldn`t get baptized this week end and next weekend is general conference so now he has to wait to more weeks. But that’s not that big of a deal. But it’s kinda frustrating for him because he wants to get baptized right away. You should have seen him when his mom signed the form. He was super excited and started hugging and kissing his mom and telling her thank you like 100 times. It was also a really big victory for us because we`ve been trying to win the confidence of his mom for a really long time. She got super offended a while ago because she offered us tea and we told her that we couldn`t drink it. Its taken a lot of work and diligent kindness to win her confidence.

We did a service project this week where we had to hike to the top of a huge mountain and then clear out a huge spot to grow crops. The grass was like 4 feet tall so we used machetes. It was kinda fun but really hot and it was hard work swinging a machete for an hour straight.

Random: Have you seen the picture at the beginning of chapter 14 of the new gospel principles book? Everyone here thinks that the guy on the right is me. Like they seriously think its me and ask me how I got in that picture. And for all of you from BYU last year; the guy kneeling down in the middle kinda looks like spencer cleg…. At least I think so.

The only other exciting thing that happened this week was that I ate cuy (guinea pig) for the first time. I got to see the whole process from it being killed to eating it. It was quite the cultural experience and I took lots of pictures. There were 3 of them and it was kinda sad because 2 of them were pregnant(we found out when they were pulling the guts out and found babies) and one of them had twins that were about to be born in 2 weeks. It actually didn`t taste that bad. Its not like chicken or beef. Its unique. I don’t really now how to describe it. Maybe i`ll make some for everyone to try when I get back…kidding(unless you really want to try it)

I`m really looking forward to this week because its zone conference Tuesday and Wednesday and general conference on Saturday and Sunday. I`m praying that i`ll be able to watch conference in English. For the Christmas devotional they had an English room for the American missionaries so i`m hoping it will be the same. If not….. at least the music is in English. I should be able to understand the talks in Spanish, its just a lot easier and more comfortable in English.

My companion goes home in 3 weeks so hes starting to get a little trunky… haha. I`m not gonna lie; him being trunky is making me a little trunky. Sometimes I catch myself thinking about the day a land back in the states and I have to stop myself and get refocused.

Well that’s about it for this week. I hope all is going well for everyone back home! Write me letters and keep me updated on everything!

-Elder Brandon Messer

March 22, 2010

This week has gone well for Elder Lopez and I. It was filled with challanges but we also had some succeses. The biggest challange lately has been with the members. We havn`t had a ward mission leader in a while so this week we asked the bishop if he could call one. He told us that he didn`t know who to call and asked us for suggestions. We started naming people but every person that we named isn`t allowed to have a calling right now. Other than the bishop ric there is only one other melquesidek priesthood holder that can have a calling and we all agreed that it would be better if he wasn`t called as ward mission leader because he tends to cause a lot of controversy. So for now we`re just going to keep doing the best we can without a ward mission leaders. We`ve also had some problems with some recent converts that don`t want to go to church because they feel like they are being judged constantly by the members. For example, 2 of them have told us specifically that they don`t like being bothered for not wearing a skirt and they dont like how some of the members make comments about it. Elder Lopez and I are trying to work things out the best we can. We asked the bishop if we could have a few minutes in the next ward council to teach a little bit about “hermanamiento”(befriending people) and we asked the Zone leaders to come this Saturday to talk with all the ward leaders as well. We`ve also been concerned lately because our investigaters aren`t feeling the spirit very much at church. Sacrament meeting is good but the gospel doctrine class and priesthood aren`t exactly going so well. For example, this Sunday in priesthood there was an argument on weather or not cain and able were the first children of adam and eve that completely destroyed any spirit that was there. They asked us for the answer so we turned to moses and read with them where it says that adam and eve had many children before cain and able… but that only caused a bigger controversy. One of the counelors in the bishop ric said something like this, “well it says here (in moses) that they had other children first and I respect the scriptures …but the bible makes it very clear that cain and able were the first children of adam and eve.” Meanwhile in my head I was screaming “the bible was translated by men and has errors . Thats why we have the Book of mormon and the pearl of grand price. If the bible was perfect we wouldn`t need any more scripture.” It was frustrating because now we are going to have to try and explain to our investigaters that the guy from the bishop ric was wrong and that the pearl of grand price really is a true book. Also. This week the 1st councelor in the bishop ric (the same guy the started the adam and eve controversy) told us this week that he doesn`t understand why he isn`t bishop yet. He told us all about how the bishop is a bad leader and how he thinks that he should be called as bishop. FULL APOSTASY!!!!!! Haha.

This week has been difficult with a few investigaters as well. We`re teaching a family (the taipes) and this week there 16 year old daughter ran away with her 22 year old boyfriend. Later that week we read the proclamation with them and the dad broke down and started crying because he was failing at being a good husband and father. They told us that they have been living together unhappily for 16 years and that they didn`t think there was any hope to save they`re family. We taught them that through the gospel of Jesus Christ all families can be happy even when they have problems and that there was hope and that we are going to be there for them to help them become a happy family. I feel bad for the kids. They have an 8 year old daughter and a 13 year old son that have to watch all the problems. Their parents aren`t married and the dad was a drunk. Hes better now since we`ve been working with him but the mom doesn`t want to forgive him and she has lost all hope and just wants to separate. They made it to church this week which was good and we`ve seen a lot of progress since we`ve been teaching them but they still have a long ways to go.

I saw a 9 year old buying beer this week and drinking it on the way back to his house to give his to his dad. I`m not gonna lie, this is the most wicked city i`ve ever seen.

Other than all that the week was well. We have one baptism scheduled this Saturday. He was going to get baptised last week but his mom said she wanted to wait another week before she would sign the ficha. We`ve also been trying to work a lot with the people on our baptismal goals for next month and we`re excited to see them keep progressing. I`m looking forward to general conference as well. It will be a good oppurtunity for some of our investigaters to listen to the prophet and apostels and a good oppurtunity for me personally to refill spiritually.

I love you guys! Thanks for all your support! Until next week.

-Elder Messer

March 15, 2010

Hey everyone! I hope all is going well. This week has gone good for me. Its been pretty normal with no huge surprises or big events. First things first, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DESI!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 years old?!?! Its gonna be crazy when I get back in 18 months and you will be 12 and like 2 feet taller than you were when I left. And don’t worry, i`ll bring you a birthday present from Ecuador when I get back in 18 months!

I ate cow feet this week. It was gross. I didn`t know it was possible to eat cow feet but apparently it is. The lady that made it for us was taking to us the whole time while we ate it telling us how good it was. I didn`t agree at all. It was hard to keep a happy face and I had to lie to her and tell her I liked it because she asked me like 3 times…. The things I do to not offend people haha. At least it wasn`t fish eggs this time and at least it didn`t make me sick. One of the people that I baptized in January said that they were gonna make cuy(guinea pig) for me next week…. Wish me luck.

Everyone here is paranoid that an earthquake and/or tsunami is going to hit Esmeraldas. Apparently and earthquake here like the one in Chile would cause devastating results because the buildings here aren`t that strong. The beach was even closed the other day because they were so convinced that a tsunami was coming. One lady was talking to me about the earthquake in chile and asked me if the U.S. shared a border with chile haha.

We might have a baptism this week. We`ve been teaching a 12 year old named Jordy and he wants to get baptized but we just need permission from his mom. Jordy is one of the smarted kids I`ve ever met. He understands and remembers pretty much every word that comes out of our mouths and he reads the book of mormon and the Bible everyday. If he gets baptized and stays active he has a lot of potential in the church. My biggest concern right now is that he will get baptized but then go inactive since hes only 12 and theres not very many deacons in the ward right now. The ward isn`t exactly the strongest ward you`ve ever seen. Only 60 people show up on a good Sunday, theres now elders quorum presidency, no ward mission leader, and no young mens program. On a normal Sunday we bless the sacrament, lead the music, sometimes give a talk, teach the gospel doctrine class, and teach elders quorum unless someone from the stake shows up. Needless to say there are lots of opportunities to serve. And that’s what we`re here for so its all good.

Thanks again to everyone that has sent me letters and/or packages! I love getting updates on everyone from back home! I love you guys!

March 8, 2010

2010-03-10T16:46:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone!
sorry I didn`t send this yesterday. the internet went out and we had to go before it came back. but here is my letter this week...

I hope all is still going well back home! This week has been good for me. We had changes yesterday but I didn`t get chaged so i`m still in esmeraldas with Elder Lopez. Our zone got split so know there is zone esmeraldas and zone san rafael. I`m still in zone esmeraldas but now there are only 11 missionaries in the zone instead of 26 like before. Also, i was kinda dissapointed to find out that 2 of the elders from my mtc district got transfered so now i`m the only gringo in my zone… oh well.

This week I had an interesting experience with a man named washington. I dont really know how to explain washington…. He`s very unique haha. Hes from esmeraldas but has lived in and has wives in the united states and mexico. Hes crazy… seriously… there is something wrong with him mentally. He speaks english. His face is deformed and he only has sight out of one eye. Hes rich. He says that hes a member of the church but I dont believe him. And for some reason all the girls want to marry him (i witnessed a woman propse to him that he had just met). I`m not sure why i`m telling you about this guy …… but there it is. There are some wierd people here… haha

I had a cool experience when we were tracking this week. we found a lady named ana maria that let us in and started talking to us. After we had talked to her for a little bit she told us that she had cancer and had to go in for surgery today and that she wasn`t expecting to live for that much longer. Then she told us that she had been praying a lot and that when we came to her door she knew we were an answer to her prayer. She went in for surgery today but hopefully we can find her again when she gets out of the hospital so that we can teach her more of the plan of salvation.

On Sunday at our lunch appointment there were tons of ants in the juice that our mamita gave us. It wasn`t hard to see that there were ant so i`m not sure why she still gave it to us to drink. It was kinda wierd. I was dying of thirst though so i just fished them all out with my spoon and drank it.

Other than that nothing really exciting happened this week. we`ve just been working hard trying to get our investigaters ready for baptism and trying to find the elect.

Thanks to everyone who has sent me letters and packages! I love to hear from you all!

Pictures!

2010-03-02T19:59:00.000-08:00

For Pictures go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=125090&id=713547841&l=c79747f802

I hope that works! But its such a hassle to post them on the Blog sometimes....I try tho!

Feb 29 and March 1, 2010

2010-03-02T19:49:00.000-08:00

Feb 29, 2010
Another week as come and gone in Ecuador. This week was normal for the most part. Elder lopez and I have been working hard to try and get things set up and finalized for a couple of baptism that we have coming up. Elder Lopez was under the impression that he was going home at the end of this change but his flight plans still haven’t come yet so now he’s thinking that he’s gonna stay for one more change. So that means there is a chance that I could get changed in 2 weeks. But I’ll just have to wait and see.

So on Tuesday night at about 2:30 in the morning we were awaken by someone knocking on our bedroom window and yelling at us. I had no idea who is was or what they wanted so it was kinda sketchy at first. But it turned out to be our neighbor from downstairs. Apparently his ceiling was dripping water so he come upstairs to see what it was and stop it. It turned out that a house in our bathroom had broken and water was being sprayed everywhere. The whole house was flooded. We had to find the key that shut the water off to the bathroom house and it turns out that that is the key that shuts off the water to the whole house. So we haven’t had water for a week… well we’ve had water but it only comes out of the hose that connects to the toilet in the bathroom. So we’ve been showing with buckets and washing dishes with water bottles. Its been kinda annoying but that’s how things roll down here in ecuador. We’re trying to get it fixed though so hopefully we won’t have this problem for that much longer.

I’m not sure if I already wrote about this but every Thursday night we get to watch a movie in the chapel. Its a missionary activity so that we can bring investigators to make friends with the members so the bishop asked that we be there. So basically I get to watch a movie every Thursday. And the best part is that its always in English with Spanish subtitles. So far we’ve seen, jhonny lingo, mobsters and Mormons, the home teacher, and beauty and the beasy (a later day tale). They’re all movies produced in Utah by members of the church. There’s a lot of jokes about Utah and Mormons so.. sometimes I’m the only one that gets them… its kinda funny.

This Saturday we had a zone activity where we all went to the park, set up big signs about the church, and contacted people. The signs all had a picture with a thought provoking question. For example, mine had a picture of Christ in the Americas and the questions was “sabia usted que cristo visito las americas”(did you know that Christ visited the americas). Another one had a picture of christ and his apostles and the question was “jesucristo organizo su iglesia con 12 apostales, donde esta su iglesia ahora” (Jesus Christ organized his church with 12 apostles, where is his church now). It was surprisingly successful. They signs caught the attention of a lot of people and we were able to get some good contacts. We’re gonna start doing that activity every 2 weeks to try and find the “escogidos” (the chosen ones)

I was able to end a few letters this week so if you’re expecting a letter from me it might get to you soon. Thanks a ton to anyone that has sent me anything since I’ve been here! It always makes my day to here from people! Que vayan bien hasta la proxima semana. Les amo.

March 1, 2010
Hey everyone, let me tell you about my week. It was pretty good… a little more eventful than usual but still nothing huge.

On Monday night we went to an appointment with an investigator that got baptized on Saturday and his mom. After we finished teaching the lesson his mom invited us to eat dinner. We were hungry and you cant say now when people offer you stuff so we accepted. When sat down at the table and she brought out the food. I had no idea what it was. We asked her and she said that it was “huevos de pescado”(fish eggs)…. And it must have been from a HUGE fish because it was bigger than any egg i`ve ever seen before and I only got half of one. Long story short it was disgusting but I managed to get it all down… but… it made me ridiculously sick. I was up all night throwing it up and I was sick the whole next day. But all is well now so no worries. Hopefully no one else tries to feed me fish eggs!

On Tuesday we had interviews with President Sloan. It was good to see him again. I hadn’t seen him since the day I got here. He’s doing a lot better. He still has trouble breathing a little bit since he’s missing half a lung but other than that he seems to be doing pretty good.

On Wednesday we had zone conference which was really good. President Sloan taught a class about what it means to have real confidence and the zone leaders taught a class about verifying commitments. Something odd happened when we were eating lunch though… there were a few members there with us because they wanted to come to the zone conference. We were all sitting down eating when president Sloan walked in and just started looking around. All of a sudden he got a worried face and walked up and started talking in a whisper to the elders sitting behind me. He had seen one of the members (a 20 year old girl) and he didn’t like the way she looked so he was telling the elders that they weren’t allowed to have any contact with her whatsoever. It turned out that this girl was a ward missionary and would help the missionaries all the time and that her mom was one of their mamitas so normally that ate lunch at her house once a week. Later president Sloan told us that he did it because he would rather offend the girl and protect the missionaries than have something happen with the girl. I thought it was kinda odd how he just looked at her and didn’t want the missionaries to talk to her or anything, just from looking at her… I guess that’s just one example of mission presidents being inspired.

On Saturday night we got home and our neighbors that live above us were having a party and being really loud. They were really drunk and it sounded like they were having a huge fight. They were yelling a lot and one girl was screaming her lungs out. It was weird because normal there’s only one guy that lives there and he’s always super quiet. I asked one of the neighbors about it and he said that the people that are living there right now are thieves and that they live somewhere else but that they only come and stay with their dad every once and a while when they’ve done something big and they need to hide and lay low for a while. It could just be rumors but that’s what they told me.
We had a baptism on Saturday and it went well. We baptized a 19 year old guy named Ronny. He has a lot of enthusiasm for the gospel and always wants to learn more. He’s excited to come out with us to help us teach. He also was able to receive the priesthood on Sunday and we’re planning on having him up his with the sacrament next week. His mom has a baptismal date for this month so we’re going to try and arrange things so he can baptize his mom.

Today for pday we went on an adventure. We went in search of a waterfall that we had heard about. Long story short we ended up having to walk for 3 hours before we finally got there but it was pretty cool so it was worth it. We didn’t want to walk 3 hours back so we ended up hitching a ride with some guy that was driving a truck with some bulls in the back. We had to hang on to the side of the truck and dodge all the branches sticking out into the road. We were driving through the jungle so there were a lot of branches. It was sketchy but that’s how everything is here. It was my first hitchhiking experience though so that was cool haha.

Feb 8th and 16th

2010-02-16T20:17:00.000-08:00

Feb 8, 2010

This week has been good. We had a baptism on Saturday where we baptized a 10 year old boy named Ryan and an 8 year old girl named Dana. Ryan’s parents are members but they are both inactive and they aren’t married. We’ve been working with the whole family to try and help them as much as possible. I think it was good for the parents to see their son get baptized. They’ve been at church the last 2 weeks which is good and they’ve been making a lot of progress. We’re gonna keep working with them to try and help them stay active. Dana is 8 and her mom is a members so it didn’t count as a baptism for us but we still baptized her because there is no priesthood in her family. Her mom is one of our mamitas… that means that she makes lunch for us every week. Dana bore her testimony about her baptism on Sunday and it was way cute haha.

We don’t have any baptisms planed for this week but next week we have 2. Violeta and Rodney. I``ll write more about them when they actually get baptized.
So there’s a senior missionary in our mission that served his mission in Mexico and has some CRAZY stories about it. I heard one and thought it was worth telling so her it is:
He showed up in a little town once and as soon as he got there all the people ran up to him and started asking him if he could baptize them. He didn’t understand how they knew who he was or why they wanted to be baptized so he started talking to them. They told him that a few years earlier 4 men came and taught them everything but that they said that they couldn’t baptize them but that others would come that could baptize them. They already new all the doctrine and everything and there were 80 that wanted to be baptized. Because there were so many in one place at one time the church sent Marion g Romney to make sure everything went smoothly and to make sure that all the people were really prepared. When he got there he said that they were all ready so they baptized 80 people all at once. Then later Marion g Romney pulled the elders aside and said “congratulations, you just baptized some of the people taught by the 3 nephites and john the revelator”. I thought it was a cool story. Oh and one more random story. my companion is from Mexico and he said that there’s a huge stone there in some ruins that has a picture of Lehi`s dream on it.

My companions “trunky papers” got here this week, aka his paper that he has to fill out before he goes home. Hes leaving at the end of this change… so in 4 weeks. I`m not gonna lie, its making me a little trunky to have a companion that’s going home so soon haha. But luckily he still wants to work hard and finish out his mission strong.
We ran into a guy that was SUPER drunk yesterday… I mean i`ve seen drunk people but nothing like this guy. He couldn`t walk straight and he was absolutely crazy! He started asking us how to walk with god so we tried to explain that the first thing he had to do was stop drinking. He didn`t quite understand and just started cussing us out. Luckily I don’t understand cuss words in Spanish haha.

One last thing, the rules changed on sending packages… they can know be up to 8 pounds. Before it was only 4 pounds but it just changed. Just in case someone wants to send me something.

I hope everyone is doing well! Until next week…

Feb 16, 2010
Well, another week and another email, although this week my email is being sent on Tuesday because pday was changed this week because of “carnival”—a ridiculous south American holiday when everyone goes crazy for a few days. Here in Esmeraldas it’s a giant water fight. Everyone just gets drunk and throws water on whoever they can find. Normally the missionaries don’t leave their apartments during carnival but president Sloan had us go out and work anyway. So basically if been getting water thrown on me for the last 3 days. I’ve had little kids, crazy teenage girls, and crazy drunk guys all throw or dump water on me. One girl just walked up to us as we were walking down the street, poured water all over us and then just stood there and watched as we walked away. She didn’t even say anything. Another guy approached us as we were walking and asked if he could pour water on us. We told him no so he waited till we passed and then threw water all over us anyway. Another time we were walking down a street and a truck drive by with people in the bed and they all just chucked water at us as they passed. People don’t seem to care that we are wearing shirts and ties or anything. And yesterday we saw one girl that was passed out from drinking to much being carried away to the hospital. And we found one of our best investigators wasted out of his mind. It was disappointing. We talked with him and asked him why he decided to drink and he said that he was weak and that Satan had already won the battle and that he didn`t think he could stop drinking. He started crying and everything. We told him that we were there to help him and encouraged him to not give up. We’re going back tonight to see how he is doing.

It’s been raining a lot lately and as a result all the houses on our street have flooded. Luckily we live on the 2nd floor though so our house didn’t get flooded. Also, there were only 27 people at church on Sunday because of the rain. Nobody wanted to get went so no one came to church. It was kinda disappointing.
Anyway, there’s not much else to say. We might have a baptism this week depending on weather or not one of our investigators got married. I was going to send letters today but the post office was closed for carnival so I’ll have to do it next week.

I hope everyone is doing well! Until next week!

Sorry for the lack of updates! Jan 25th and Feb 1st

2010-02-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

Jan 25th
Hey everyone,
This week has been good. We had changes yesterday/today. I stayed in my same area but elder lopez(mycompanion) left. My new companion just got here and his name is Elder Lopez too. Our investigaters are gonna laugh when they see that elder lopez left but that another elder lopez came. My new companion is from mexico and he only has 3 months left on his mission. Hopefully he`ll be able to teach me a lot with all of his experience. Its nice to finally have a companion that is experienced at being a missionary.

Other than changes not much happened this week. It was pretty normal. We did manage to offend a lady really bad though. We went to teach a lesson to this one family and in the middle of the lesson they brought out some type of tea for us to drink. We weren`t sure wheather it was the kind of tea that we cant drink or not so just to be safe we explained the word of wisdom and told them that we couldn`t drink tea. Then the mom got mad and just flat out called us out on it. She had invited us to eat before but we told her know because we had another appointment. Anyway, she just got really mad and started asking us all these questions about why we always reject their food. She thought it was because we thought her kitchen wasn`t clean and all this other stuff. The whole time I was just thinking “is she really that mad about something so stupid” but I guess that’s just there culture. Someone told me that in otavalo if you reject food you might as well not even go back to the house because the people will never forgive you.

I had to speak in church yesterday on “hermanamiento” which means being friendly I guess. I`m not really sure what the direct translation is. The bishop told me like the day before so I only had an hour in the morning before church to prepare. But it went alright I guess. Its always hard for the bishop to find people to speak because there aren`t very many active members.

Thanks to everyone who sent me letters! I`m trying to write back as fast as I can. Thanks for all the support and prayers!

Feb 1st
This week has been good in Esmeraldas Ecuador. My new companion and I have been working hard trying to find and teach the Lords chosen people here. Elder Lopez is a really solid elder. He’s been out for a long time and knows a lot of stuff and is a really good teacher. I’ve been learning a lot from him. We have a baptism scheduled for this Saturday. A 10 year old boy named Ryan. His parents are members but are inactive because they are living together but aren’t married so they’re embarrassed to come to church. Anyway, we’ve been teaching Ryan and we even got his parents to come to church with him this Sunday so that’s a good sign. The biggest problem that we have to face as missionaries here in Esmeraldas is people that have broken families. In the whole ward there are only 4 married couples. My new companion Elder Lopez as served all over the country (Quito, otavalo, baños, Ambato, Ibarra, la Concordia) and he said that its not like this in other places. He said that in his last ward the average attendance at church was 180- that’s like 3 times the size of our ward here haha. But seriously, its all because families almost don’t exist here. Kids just grow up in broken homes and its normal to them so then when they are older they have kids and raise them in broken homes as well. Life is seriously sooo much better when we live the gospel inside of families. Its hard here because even if we can get a convert they usually don’t have a family to support them so its hard for them to stay active. They really have to be self motivated to gain and maintain a testimony.

Ok culture shock time,
1) We knocked a door this week and a lady came and answered without a shirt or anything. It was kinda awkward. She just opened it, looked at us, then closed it and when and put a shirt on and came back and opened it again.
2) On Sunday we went to eat lunch with a member and they gave us rice with some sort of meat. I tried it and thought it was good. It tasted kinda like beef. Then after we left my companion told me that it was some sort of cow organ that we just ate. Its probably better that I found that out after.
3) There’s an elder that just got transferred to Esmeraldas that has a huge ponytail. He’s from otavalo and apparently if he cut his hair it would be like denying his heritage and really bad so they let the otavalo missionaries keep their long hair. They make all sorts of weird exceptions in the rules for them
Other than that not much else is new this week. I did manage to convince one of our investigators that I speak Chinese though. It’s this 12 year old boy named jordie that has an obsession with learning languages. He always asks me how to say something in Chinese and I just make some weird noise and he believes me. It’s kinda funny. Oh and it’s been raining a lot lately which is good because now the rivers are filling up and we don’t have power outages anymore but it’s bad because my shoes and clothes are getting destroyed by the mud. My companion slipped and fell in a bunch of mud, but luckily I haven’t done that yet.

Thanks to everyone that has sent me letters or packages. I loved getting them! I’m working on writing back. I’m gonna try and send some letters next week if I can get them all written.

January 18, 2010

2010-01-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

This week has been really good. ON Saturday we had 2 baptisms. Rocio and Fernanda Martinez. Their baptisms went well (despite the fact that Rocio and to try 3 times before she was successful, I think she was scared to go under or something like that haha). Rocio is the mother of Fernanda and Adriana(one of the people we baptized on December 26th). I’ve been teaching them ever since I’ve been here. Adriana made a lot of friends in the church and gained a testimony really quick so she was a little easier. Rocio and fernanda on the other had were a bit harder. We challenged them for a baptism a few times and they didn’t really give us a straight answer. We finally ended up just going to an appointment with them and just bearing pure testimony that they needed to get baptized and that baptism is what God wanted for them. We found at that they were scared because all of there family is catholic and they didn’t know how their family would take it if they got baptized in our church. We just testified again and asked them to pray and ask if they should be baptized. We went back the next day and they said that they wanted to be baptized. So now the whole family has been baptized except for the Dad. Every time we try to talk to him he kinda puts up a wall. He’s a really nice guy, he just doesn’t like to talk about church stuff and it always seems like he just feels awkward when we try and talk about church stuff with him. But its nothing we cant take care of with a littler patience and longsuffering!

Ok I have a few scary stories this week:
1) On Monday night we were at an appointment when the energy went out. We were just finishing so the people asked them where we were going next so we told them that we were going to barrio unidos somos mas. Then they told us that we shouldn’t go there when the lights were at because it’s a dangerous area. We told them that we had god on our side and weren’t worried. So we went anyway. While we were walking to our next appointment we came around a corner and saw some people sitting outside on a curb. When we walked past them they started to sing/chant “Los mormonas, vamos a matarles” (the Mormons, we’re going to kill you). We just looked at them, smiled and waved, and kept walking. Then the next day we found out that 2 people had been killed in that neighborhood the night before. Haha it was kinda sketchy… (but don’t worry mom, there was never any real danger. I promise! We have the spirit with us which is the best protector you can find.)

2) On Thursday night I woke up to find a man standing right outside our window. He was tapping on the window so we went and opened the door. It was some random person that we didn’t know but he knew us. He said he was a member and that he needed money to get home. Anyways, long story short, he was begging for money and we had no idea how he knew where we lived or how he got in the gate in front of our house.
This week we were at a lesson with a 15 year old boy named jimmy. He told us he didn’t have that much time because he had a ton of homework to do and he had to wash the dishes and clean the house so we offered to help him out. We ended up doing the dishes and I thought it was funny because they only materials they had to clean were a sock and laundry detergent. Haha they definitely do things differently here.

Usually we never take dinner but on Tuesday we decided that we were hungry and wanted to. So we went back to our apartment. When we got there, there were 2 white guys knocking on our door. When they saw us they turned around and started speaking in English to us. It turned out that they were missionaries from some non denominational Christian church and were in our area knocking doors. We talked to them and got to know them a bit. One of them had been a missionary for 25 years and had been in Ecuador for 9 straight years. They started telling us about themselves and how they decided to be missionaries and stuff. I’m not gonna lie, I got a really creepy feeling when they were talking. It was weird. They said that god started talking to them when they were little and told them that they needed to be missionaries. I don’t mean to disrespect them or anything but I just knew that they weren’t serving God. It reminded me of the story in the book of Mormon where Korihor says that and angel came and told him to preach against Christ but really it was an angel of the devil. I think its like alms 30 or something like that.

On Wednesday we went on divisions with the Zone leaders and the one I was with told me what was going to happen next week when we have changes. I don’t know if he has inside info or if he was just guessing so I’ll have to wait till next week to find out. I’m still hoping the president gets inspired to send me to Quito where I can feast on McDonalds, pizza hut, taco bell, ect… everyday. Haha I get to go to Quito tonight though so i´m excited about that. I have to take all the new missionaries back to get there documents to stay in the country.

Thanks to everyone that wrote me a letter or sent me something. I’m trying to write back as fast as a can! I love you all!

Jan 11, 2010

2010-01-11T21:45:00.001-08:00

This week went well. On Monday Elder Lopez and I went on splits with the APs (they were here for zone conference) and they helped us out a lot. We were able to finally get one of our toughest families to commit to baptism and we made a lot of other progress with some other inactive families.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we had zone conference and that was good. It felt like it was missing something though because President Sloan wasn`t there. He`s still trying to recover from his surgery but one of the APs told me that he`s been doing really well and they`re expecting him to be there for the next set of zone conferences.
Our ward just started a home teaching program which we`re really excited about. The biggest problem here is that there are like 500 members but only like 40 to 60 show up to church everyweek so we`re hoping that the home teaching program can help to reactivate some of the inactive members. We`re been visiting a lot of inactive members lately as well. A lot of them have testimonies and good desires but they just don’t act. I think its because the culture is so lazy here. No one wants to wake up on early on Sunday morning to go to church.
This week we started on a service project for an inactive member named hermana mina. She doesn`t have any running water in her house and she doesn`t have a lot of money so we`ve been talking with a contractor to try and get the materials as cheap as possible and then we`re going to do all the labor. She is short by about 30 bucks right now so we`re just waiting for her to find enough money so we can start. I wish I could just give her 30 bucks but it’s against mission rules to just give money to people so I can`t. But I guess important for people to learn to provide for themselves.

On Saturday we had a baptism. Her name is Nicole. We`ve been teaching her for a while and shes wanted to get baptized for a long time but there were a few obstacles that we had to get over. At first her dad didn`t want her to get baptized. We had to talk to her mom and her mom said it was ok and since she doesn`t live with her dad that was all that we needed. Then it was hard for her to get to church a lot of the time because there would always be parties at her house on Saturday night so she wouldn`t be able to sleep and didn`t wake up in time for church. But eventually she got to church enough times so she could be baptized. It might be hard for her to stay active since she doesn`t really have much support from her family but one of her best friends is a member and has been helping her a lot. We`re teaching her mom but she has a lot of problems that she has to get over that are going to be challenges.

This week we have 2 more baptisms- Rosio and Fernanda. Rosio is the mom of Adriana (the girl we baptized a couple weeks ago) and Fernanda is her sister. We`ve been teaching them ever since I got here so its exciting that they finally decided to be baptized. Now we just have to baptize the dad (the dads are always the hardest part) and the whole family will be members. I`ll let you know how it all went next week!
Thanks to everyone that sent me something for Christmas or any other letters! It makes my day every time I hear from someone back home. You guys are awesome!

January 4, 2010

2010-01-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

Happy new year everyone from Ecuador! New years is definitely celebrated a lot different here. Everything was closed all day on new years and the only people out were drunk people that had been up all night and hadn’t gone to sleep. There was one time when we were walking to an appointment and we got stopped by some drunk people that wanted us to teach them. We told them that we had an appointment but that we would come back later (which we weren’t really going to do). We went to our appointment which was right down the street and about half way through the lesson we heard a lot of noise outside so we looked out the window and a huge fight had broken out between all the drunk people. Then one of the kids ran outside to watch and then came back in and shut the door and told us that one of the guys had a knife and was trying to kill the other one. It was an interesting experience. A few minutes later the cops showed up and I’m pretty sure no one really got hurt so its all good. I’m sure they don’t even remember know that they sobered up.

We had 2 baptisms this week. Eleanor and Alexander. They are brother and sister and their parents are inactive members. Eleanor is 13. She’s just a normal 13 year old girl and was excited to be baptized. Alexander is 14. We gave him the Aaronic priesthood on Sunday so now they ward has more that one youth to pass the sacrament. He told us that he wants to serve a mission one day so we took him out with us yesterday to give him some practice.

We have another baptism this week. We might have up to 3 but we’re still not sure about 2 of them. We have to go visit them tonight to try and encourage them and set up a time for their interview

This week we met a crazy guy that was locked in his house and asked us if we had a saw to saw down the bars and let him out. It was kinda a weird situation. We didn’t know what to do at first cuz we didn’t know why he was locked up or what the deal was. We asked someone else near by and they told us that his family was out of town and they locked him inside while they were gone because if he gets out he likes to run around naked and be mean to little kids. Haha we told him that we didn’t have a saw but that if we found one we would come back and help him. Poor guy though, his family just left him all alone locked up in the house.

On new years eve a bunch of the little kids started hustling people. They set up road blocks so that cars couldn’t pass and then when a car came they wouldn’t move their roadblock until the car gave them money. They tried to get money out of us a bunch of times but we would just tell them no and walk around.

Anyways, there’s not much else to tell you. This week is zone conference so we’re excited for that but we’re kinda bummed that president Sloan wont be there because he’s still recovering from his surgery. I have to give a spiritual thought about exercising faith to accomplish the mission norms (4 baptisms a month). Anyway, I hope everyone is doing good and had a happy new year!
-Elder Messer

December 28, 2009

2009-12-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

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!

December 21, 2009

2009-12-21T19:42:00.001-08:00

I hope all is going well back in the states! This week has been good for me
On Tuesday I traveled to Quito to pick up my new companion. Luckily we didn’t get pulled over and searched this time. His name is elder Lopez. He’s from Colorado Springs but he was born in Puerto Rico and he speaks perfect Spanish. It’s been fun to have another American as a companion. And it’s really nice to be able to speak in English once and a while. We’ve been working hard and have 3 baptisms set up for this Saturday and we should have a few more next Saturday as well. We have a goal to get 12 baptisms this change. It will take a lot of hard work but I think we can do it.

This is the 3 trainers from Esmeraldas in Quito picking up our new companions. Elder lopez is the one on Brandon's right (the navy blue tie)

On Friday we went and painted a members house so they offered to feed us lunch. It was a bit of a culture shock when they came out with the soup and I noticed that it had 5 huge chicken feet in it. Even the Latin missionaries that were there were shocked when they saw that. It didn’t taste too bad the so that was good. It was basically just a bunch of fat.

I don’t have that much time left so I have to end now. Thanks for all your support! I’ll try and take more pictures to send this week!

December 14, 2009

2009-12-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,
How are you all doing. This week has been good for me. We´ve been teaching a lot and we now have 11 investigators with baptismal dates. Statistics say that they won’t all get baptized but we´ll see what we can do about that. Its been amazing to see how much help we´ve gotten so far and I’m sure we´ll continue to receive the help we need as long as we put in the work. I´m excited to see what happens within the next few weeks.

Well I guess the biggest news this week is that we had changes yesterday and my companion left for another zone. I´m staying here in Esmeraldas and I was called to be a trainer. So I have to go to Quito tomorrow to pick up my new companion and bring him back here. It was a pretty big shock to here that I was going to be training after just 6 weeks. Especially since I still don’t speak Spanish very well. Hopefully my companion will be native again or else it will be pretty rough. Theres one other elder from my mtc district that got called as a trainer as well so at least i´m not alone. We´re definitely gonna be pushed to our limits in the next 6 weeks and we´re definitely gonna learn a lot! I´m still not sure which was more overwhelming, when I first got here, or when they told me I was gonna be a trainer. I´m just gonna work as hard as I can and put my trust in the Lord and i´m sure he´ll continue to help me. If theres one thing that i´ve learn so far since i´ve been here its how to really trust in the Lord.

So remember the picture that I sent of the me holding the chicken last week? well… I don’t really know how to say this softly… Elder larrea killed it this week. Apparently it stopped laying eggs so the family decided to just kill it and eat it…. And unfortunately we were there when it happened. They brought it out right as we were leaving and my companion decided that it was an opportunity for service so he volunteered to kill it for them. I´m not gonna tell you how he did it. It was pretty sad. It was one of the culture shocks of this week

So latelty there have been a lot of fires here. Like right next to where i´m at. I´m not sure how they start or if they are intentinal or what. Everyone else doesn´t even think twice about it so I guess its normal. But it makes the air quality horrible! Theres huge ashes everywhere. When we got back to our apartment one day our floor was covered in ashes because they had all come through the whole that we have in our wall above our door. I remember once in California there were fires and they wouldn´t let us go outside for lunch because the air was so bad. But here its practically like breathing smoke and everyone is just outside. Its pretty gross.

On Wednesday night we got done with our last appointment earlier so we decided to knock some doors until it was time to go home. On our last door of the night we ran into a guy that is tau (that’s super rare here) and he let us in and when we tried to teach him he just started preaching to us about how the universe is run off energy and how there are 7 demensions and we´re in the3rd dimension and how we have 7 bodies and how Christ ascended out of hell to come to this world. It was rather bizarre. Then he started telling us about how the sun receives its energy from a more glorious star and how that star gets its energy from a more glourious star and he started naming the stars. I was hopeing that he would say that one of them was named kolab but he never did. Anyways, it was just a bizarre experience.

Thanks for you support and your emails and letters! I love you guys!

December 7, 2009

2009-12-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

Sorry! Its finals week, but here's his e-mail this week!

Hey everyone, I hope all is well at home. Let me tell you about this week in Ecuador.

On Monday night at midnight all the new guys and a few others that had to renew their visas got on a bus headed for Quito (its about a 7 hour drive from Esmeraldas to Quito). We were all really tired and fell asleep pretty quick. But at about one in the morning we were awaken when the bus came to a stop and some cops came on and told us all that we had to get off. I wasn’t sure what was going on so I just went with it. When I stepped off the bus I noticed that we were in the middle of nowhere and there were a bunch of cops with big assault rifles with there fingers on the triggers. I asked another missionary what was happening and he said they were checking for drugs since we were coming from near Columbia. Anyways, then they made us all line up against the bus and started going down the line checking everyone one by one-patting them down searching there bags and checking there IDs. That’s when I realized that I didn’t have any ID on me whatsoever. I asked one of the missionaries what I should do and he just said to tell them that I was going to Quito to get my censo and that I was a missionary. When they got to me they asked me for my ID and I said I didn’t have it and they started to get really mad. So then one of the other missionaries tried to them but that just made them madder. Then one of the Cops with the big assault rifles starts walking towards us (that was pretty scary) and started talking to the other cops. Anyway, long story short the guy with the gun ended up convincing the other ones that we were their friends and they let us go. It was pretty scary for a while though.

Quito was really cool though. I remember when we first landed there and got out of the airport and I thought it was the most ghetto place I had ever seen. But after being in Esmeraldas for a while and going back it seemed like one of the nicest places I had ever seen. All of us Esmeraldas guys were way excited to be there. We had donuts for breakfast and McDonalds and pizza hut for lunch. And we went to the mission office and I got 6 packages and a bunch of letters. I wish I could write everyone that sent me something to tell them thanks you but I don’t have the time. So can you please extend my thanks to everyone that has sent me something- both sets of grandparents, the Rowes, the Gromans, and there might be more that I cant remember right now. But anyway, Quito was way awesome. I definitely won’t complain if I ever get sent there. They have pretty much everything that we have in the states.

So other than my trip to Quito the rest of the week was normal. We have 10 investigators with baptismal dates for the 26th so were working hard to make sure we can prepare them all. Sunday was fast and testimony meeting and right after it started no one was getting up so I decided I would just break the ice and went up and bore my testimony first. Then it was good after that. One of our investigators got up and bore their testimony about how they’d been searching for the truth their whole life and finally found it and how they wanted to share it with all there friends and family. His name is Emiro. He really wants to get baptized but is trying to save up enough money to go to Columbia and divorce someone so that he can marry someone else that he’s living with now.

We went to the Christmas devotional last night but the satellite didn’t work so we didn’t get to watch it. I was bummed because I had been looking forward to it all week.

We found a huge rat in our apartment and my companion told me that it was big enough to eat our feet so hopefully that doesn’t happen. Haha

Anyways, I love you all. Thanks for your emails, letters, and packages!

p.s. Lindsey, can you tell everyone that has written me that I’m trying to right them back as fast as I can and I promise I will get back to them eventually! Oh and if you haven´t already, you can post my pictures on facebook or on my blog. Thanks! :D

November 30, 2009

2009-11-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

I finally got a whole e-mail from him today! I didn't have to piece anything together. I apologize for the lack of an update last week. It was a crazy week and I didn't get a whole e-mail from him so it wasn't really easy. But here's this week's e-mail. At the end I'll have some information about packages again, so read through to the end....

~Lindsey~

Hey everyone.
This week was pretty good. We were busy all week and taught a lot of lessons and did a huge service Project. On Tuesday I went on divisions with my district leader and that was really good. He’s American too. I was amazed at how much we got done. We were working hard all day and actually accomplished all our goals (that usually doesn’t happen). And we were in my sector so I had to lead and plan everything so it was really good practice and I felt like I learned a lot.

I found out this week that one of the girls were teaching is an escapee from terrorists in Columbia. Her and her family had to move to

Ecuador

because there was a group of terrorists trying to kill them. They were hiding in a mountain for a while in Columbia but decided it would be safer to move to

Ecuador

. But her sister didn’t want to move so she stayed there and is still living in hiding.

Baptism - 9 year old boy named Washington

We went to a meeting with the bishopric this week and they were talking about who they could call as a Ward misión leader to help us out. They started talking about one guy in particular but eventually decided no because he talks to fast that some people cant understand him (that was fun for me to hear because if native Spanish speakers cant understand him how in the world am I gonna understand him…. I hope there’s not many people that talk like that haha)

Baptism - Maria

Were teaching a 12 year old boy that reminds me a lot of Jason and I was talking to him about Jason and how he likes soccer and stuff. He is a Barcelona fan and asked me what team Jason like and I told him Barcelona and real Madrid and he said that you cant like both of those teams so I said I would ask which one he liked more. So Jason, what is your favorite team in Spain?

I found out this week that there used to be 5 stakes in Esmeraldas but something happened a couple years back and it all fell down into just 1. So I guess now were trying to build it all back up.
I spoke in church on Sunday. I talked about missionary work and how all of our friends and neighbors our really our brothers and sisters that accepted gods plan before coming to this earth and how we all have the

responsibility to teach them the góspel and the plan of salvation. I hope everyone understood everything I said. I think they did.

We had a service Project this week. We poured concrete in front of someone’s house and had to scrape a bunch of cement of there walls and said them down so that they can paint them. They made us lunch in exchange for our service.

this is the little boy that was at the service project. he liked to be help by the tall white people

A few days ago they opened a mall here in Esmeraldes. Its basically like a mini versión of park meadows (very mini). But it basically made my life to go there today. They have a food court with a kfc! All us gringos were more tan excited about that. It means that we can eat kfc once a week on pday. And it has a huge grocery store with almost everything that we wanted. I bought a bunch of goodies and some pancakes and syrup. I’ve been eating pancakes this week but they were some Ecuadorian brand and I had to make my syrup myself and it was pretty sketchy. But this week I have aunt jemima syrup and pancakes so I’m excited about that. And tomorrow ill be in Quito to take care of some visa stuff and the other Americans said that well be able to go to McDonalds there so I’m way excited about that. Haha I never thought id be excited to go to McDonalds again….

On Saturday night we got home and were trying to go to bed but there was a party going on the 1st floor of my apartment (we live on the 2nd floor right above the party). They had music BLASTING… like my bed was literally shaking. And they were all drunk and screaming super loud and they didn’t stop until 4 in the morning. And there was nothing we could do about it. I don’t know how I did it but I managed to at least get some sleep while all this was going on but my companion didn’t get any. So we were pretty tired when we woke up at 630 on Sunday. Apparently they don’t have any laws here about loudness because stuff like that happens every weekend. Usually its not right below us though.

We taught a guy this week that thought I was a spy at first (that’s not that uncommon here, some people think that any American that comes here is a spy). He almost wasn’t gonna listen to us but then I started teaching him about families and he ended up telling us that he felt good when we were teaching and was gonna listen to us more. Then after the lesson we started talking about soccer and I told him about how dad and I went to England and saw all those games and he was really interested and started asking me all these questions and told me that he used top play professional in Quito. Anyway, it was just cool because he thought I was a spy at first and then ended up warming up to me and allowing us to teach him more.

Right now we have 5 investigators with baptismal dates for December. Caterina, we originally challenged her to get baptized the last week in December but she wanted to do it sooner so we moved it up to the 3rd week. She still has to come to church 2 more times and get married or move away from the guy she’s living with. Maite, she’s 16 and her grandma is a member. She’s not sure if its all true yet but she has a date for the last week in December so were gonna keep teaching her and helping her gain a testimony. Nicole, she is 12 and wants to get baptized but so far her dad isn’t willing told et her so were gonna see what we can do about that. Fransisco and Isabel, they’re Chinese but there mother left them here 2 years ago and a lady in the Ward took them in. We don’t really have any problems with them though. We just have to teach them more and strengthen their testimonies. And we have a bunch of other investigators that are progressing really well so basically the work is going good. Were just trying to work hard and do as much as we can to support the Ward and our investigators.

I haven’t gotten any packages yet. I got 7 letters on Friday which made my day! Getting letters always makes my day. I just have to find time to write everyone back. If you send anymore packages can you stick some pictures in it so I can see how you all are doing. I just realized the other day that when I get back Jason and Desi will probably have grown like a foot each. Anyway, I love you all! Thanks for your letters and support!!!

-Elder Messer

So I told Brandon about a friend of mine that also poured ants out of his cereal one day on his mission in OGDEN, UT...and this picture was Brandon's response to me..."Steven may have had bug problems, but let me assure you, mine are different."

Ok...in the last week we have sent Brandon quite a few packages in hopes that they will get there for Christmas. It is quite expensive to send them through DHL, Fed Ex, UPS, etc - However, that would be the guaranteed way to get it there. We've sent them through the US postal service which will then go through to the local mail service in Ecuador to the mission home. We're not sure yet whether or not the mail system can be trusted and we're hoping that everything we sent him will actually get there...In order to get the green sticker that needs to go on the package it needs to be under 4.0 pounds. Anything above 4 pounds and the post office requires you to use a white one. So just so you're aware if you send him a package it needs to be under 4 pounds and it MUST carry a GREEN sticker not a white one. Thanks for all your prayers and support! Our family is very grateful to you!

~Lindsey~

November 16, 2009

2009-11-18T12:57:00.000-08:00

This week we got a couple different e-mails so I tried to piece them together as best I could - Sorry if some things seem out of order.

~Lindsey~

Hey dad, thanks for you emails. Thanks for all the advice. Things have been going better. Each day gets a little better but its still tough. my personal study in the mornings is saving me. I’ve been reading through first Nephi and it seems like everything in there applies to me right now. I’m sure with a lot of hard work and struggling I’ll be able to learn the language and stuff. its just frustrating right now because everyone keeps telling me that it takes months before you feel comfortable. but I’ll just keep working and praying and I’m sure everything will turn out alright. I think the physical stress of everything is the hardest part right now but I’m slowly getting used to it.

Thanks for all the advice about the apartment and living conditions. I’ll definitely have to try some of those. I was gonna buy a bunch of cleaning supplies and zip lock bags today but we didn’t have any money so I’ll have to wait for next week. we were supposed to get 90 bucks today but it didn’t come. I only have 10 bucks left because my companion used all his money so I’ve been loaning him money for like a week. (another north American told me that Latin’s do that a lot and if I’m lucky he’ll pay me back. but I’m gonna make sure he pays me back. I still have 60 dollars of my own but I didn’t have it with me when we took the bus to the store because we’re not supposed to have a lot of money in case we get robbed and because I was expecting to withdraw money when we got the downtown area. And yea I’ve mastered the shower technique so don’t worry about sending that solar thing I’ll just tough out the cold water for now. Maybe ill get transferred to Quito soon where they have hot water. who knows. Everyone keeps telling me that I’ll probably stay here for like 7ish months.
And don’t worry about sounding like a preaching dad because that’s what I need right now, good fatherly advice. I’ve been trying to just do my best to testify powerfully. its hard sometimes because elder larrea really focuses on being friendly because that’s the Latin culture. He’s almost more interested in being friends and having fun with people than preaching the gospel. But I’ve been trying to keep him focused a bit. Its kinda tough but I’ll keep working on it.
We were supposed to have zone conference tomorrow and Wednesday but president Sloan is in the hospital with pneumonia so he’s not coming. But tomorrow we’re going on splits with the APs so I’m sure they’ll help out.
Anyway, thanks for all the advice and love! You’re an awesome dad and you’re always there for me! I love you!

We had the baptism on Friday and it was good. The girl that got baptized is named Maira and she’s 22. she had been investigating the church for 6 months before I got here she already knew almost everything and I didn’t have to help much with teaching her. the guy that was supposed to be baptized last week still wants to. The thing here is that no one takes schedules seriously so he said he would be baptized but then he had to go to school that day so he couldn’t make it. we’re trying to work out another time for him to get baptized though

I’m in a super ghetto part of Esmeraldes. Its just west of the river. One of the elders I know is serving right next to the river and he has to take a 3 hours canoe ride once in a while to get to one part of his area haha. But yea, I haven’t seen any nice places yet. Some places are nicer than others but everything I’ve seen is pretty poor. The ward I’m in is called Propicia. I don’t know if you can look that up or something.

I’ll let you know when i get the packages! Thanks for sending them! Also, you can send packages through dearelder.com that might be cheaper. I’m not sure. But I definitely know that they get here faster. i think you can just send food and goodies in those though.

Everyone here will listen and a lot of people will just be baptized. The problem is that the retention rate is really low! a lot of times people are baptized but the culture is so lazy here that they just go inactive in like a week. Even some of the ´´active members´´ only come like every other week. We had like 50 people in church yesterday and that was considered a lot. I had to bless the sacrament and lead the music. I would have had to play the piano but they don’t have one right now.

If you send packages make sure and put a green sticker on it and follow the instructions that we got from president Sloan. if you transfer money to my account put it in checking’s. They don’t have much familiar food here. Oreos, Doritos, cereal. Not much. You can send food through dearelder.com and it might be cheaper but I’m not sure. Just keep emailing me and I’ll start printing them in the morning and then emailing you back later after I’ve read them. I have a calling card but I’m not sure how it will work yet. I’ll let you know when I find out.Anyways, right now any type of American food/candy/treats would be good. Thank you so much for you support! I love you!

Mom thanks for your email. It always makes my day to hear from you. it seams like all the new guys are having a hard time right now so that makes me feel a bit better to know that this is normal. I’ve been trying to just push through it and do what I know I need to even when it’s hard. And its definitely helped a lot! Every morning I wake up sick and run straight to the bathroom but that’s been getting better and better day by day. I just force myself to study and to go to work and that always helps. Its funny that you should mention that picture about Christ hugging a black child because most of the people here are black. In fact I’m scheduled to baptism a little 9 year old black boy next Friday. His mom is a semi inactive member/recent convert so we’ve been teaching him and he decided to be baptized this week. Every time we teach him it’s in his tiny backyard sitting on stumps with chickens, ducks, birds, and dogs running around everywhere. Its always fun to go teach him. we’re also teaching a little 12 year old boy and he wants to get baptized but his dad wont let him so we’re working on that. In the mean time we’ve just been taking him to church and I’ve been helping him with his English homework.And the advice about music is really good. I started listening to my efy music every morning and it really helps a lot. So if you send more music i would love it!And I loved how you compared my situation to Nephi’s family because that’s what I’ve been reading during my personal study and it’s really helped me a lot. Anyway, thank you for you support and love and advice! I love you!

Random things about this week:
some kid told me i was Wayne Rooney’s brother
my companion has started making a blow torch with his deodorant and matches to kill the bugs.
Happy birthday Jason! sorry I’m a little late! I’ll bring you a birthday present in 2 years!
at least once a day the lights go out and when it happens at night we have to hurry and get to a safe area so we don’t get robbed or hurt
The lights went out during a baptism on Saturday so we had to use candles. it was cool and I thought it made it prettier
Yesterday we taught a family of 11 that lives in a small shack that is about half the size of my room at home. they kept telling be to speak English and one of the girls gave me one of her rings (haha not sure what that means)
Everyone here listens to American music so i always hear familiar songs when I’m walking down the street. And everyone’s stereo is worth more than there house. their priorities are a littler messed up haha

Letter From Mission President

2009-11-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

MISIÓN QUITO ECUADOR
Robles 640 y Amazonas
Casilla 17-03-078
Quito, Ecuador

6 November 2009

Dear Brother and Sister Messer,

Sister Sloan and I are pleased to tell you that your son has arrived safely and has begun his missionary labors. We spent some time becoming acquainted with him and want to compliment you on raising a worthy missionary. We also thank you for your willingness to sacrifice so that he can serve the Lord during this time in his life. Rest assured that we will treat him as we would our own sons.

You may be wondering how you can best support your missionary while he serves. We suggest that you write a letter at least weekly. Express your love for him. Tell him about the positive things that are happening at home. Encourage him to work hard and to be obedient. Ask him to devote all of his time and attention to his mission.

Prayer is a powerful means of support. Please pray for your missionary every day, for his success as a teacher, for his protection, for his health and well-being. Ask Heavenly Father to help him live worthily so he can find, teach and baptize Heavenly Father’s children.

Participate in your son’s mission by looking for your own missionary experiences. Pray that you will be able to find friends, relatives and acquaintances with whom to share the gospel. Invite your own local missionaries to teach them in your home. Share your missionary experiences with your son in your weekly letters. You will strengthen eternal family bonds as you engage in Heavenly Father´s work.

Again, thank you for sharing your son with us. Together, let us make this experience one that will bless and strengthen him and your family for the rest of your lives.

Sincerely,
Presidente Timothy Q. Sloan
Misión Ecuador Quito

Elder Messer's Address

2009-11-09T14:06:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone! So here's his address for now. The postal system in Ecuador, I'm guessing is pretty sketchy, so it would probably be best if you sent letters through dearelder.com or the pouch system - dearelder.com goes through the pouch system, so its free and you don't have to worry about all the details or paying for a stamp . However, if you would like to hand write a letter to him through the pouch system you can only use one sheet of paper and write on only one side. You have to fold the sheet in 3rds (as if you were going to put it in an envelop) and put one piece of tape on it to hold it shut, then write his address on it and put a stamp on it like you would a normal letter. They don't allow envelopes to be sent through - if you put it in an envelop, they will send it back to you. Here's the address.

Elder Brandon Messer
Ecuador Quito Mission
POB 30150
Salt Lake City UT 84130-0150
USA

If you want to send packages or send normal letters with pictures and suff in it in a normal envelope here's the address you can send those to. And Packages sent from the U.S. to Ecuaodr may not exceed 4.4 pounds and must carry a green sticker, even if the post office workers suggest you use a white one.

Elder Brandon Messer
Misión Quito Ecuador
Casilla 17-03-078
Robles 640 y Amazonas
Quito, Ecuador

Note on this address - I have looked it on up on several different websites and each one gives me a different order than the one here, but this one was the most common and I believe as long as its all on there, it will get to him. When he sends an updated one I'll post it.

Please write him! and please PRAY for him! As you can see from his letter below, conditions are less than ideal. It would cheer him up to hear from friends and family and prayers ALWAYS help!

Thanks all!

~Lindsey~

November 9, 2009

2009-11-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone!!!!

How are you all doing? good i hope! This first week in ecuador has been crazy!!! its sooo different here! I never imagined it would be like this. My first area is on the coast in a city called esmareldes. Its super hot here all the time! like around 90 everyday. let me tell you about my living conditions. mom, if you thought the budget inn was bad you would die if you saw where I live. Its horrible!!! Its super dirty and gross! the windows are basically just holes in the wall so bugs fly in and crawl in all over the place. we have to sleep with bug nets so we dont get bitten. but at least we have lizards too to eat the bugs. no joke! my house is basically a small jungle! haha. I went to pour some cereal this morning and it was full of dead ants. i tried to keep it in the refrigerater to keep bugs away but aparently the bugs are in the refrigerater as well. The bathroom is pretty gross as well. get this, in ecuador they dont flush the tiolet paper, they just throw it in the trashcan. and since theres not a solid wall between the bathroom and the rest of the house it makes the whole place smell really bad. the only plus about the bathroom is that I never have to wait for the shower water to get hot becuase theres no such thing as heated water here. so basically i take a freezing shower every morning. But I definitely have no room to complain because compared to everyone else I live like a king. Most the ppl we teach dont have furniture so we always end up sitting on plastic stools or chairs. and a lot of ppl dont even have showers. one lady we taught only had 3 walls on here house. and we visited one family that lives in a wooden shack that is less than a quarter the size of my room back home. Theres wooden shacks and huts everywhere and almost everywhere we go we walk on little dirt roads. a few people have cement walls and some couches and maybe a table or something and we taught one family that had a computer but most of the people have nothing.I never imagined it being this different! These people need the gospel soo bad!!!!! Finding people to teach is never a problem. almost everyone will let us teach them. its not like the states where missionaries spend all their time looking for investigators. All we do is teach. My companion is a native from Peru. his name is elder larrea. He doesn´t speak any English but i can understand him pretty well. Its super hard to understand everyone else though. They talk super fast here and drop a lot of letters from their words so its super hard to tell what people are saying. The only time I ever understand is when we´re talking about gospel things. I can ussually catch the main idea in other things but I miss a lot of details so I´m confused a lot.

Anyways, these first few days have been pretty rough. Its been hard to adjust to everything and its frustrating to go all day barely understanding anything. I wake up everyday depressed and have to force myself to go to work. It ussually gets better once we leave the apartment and go to work. please pray for me as much as you can! I need all the help I can get! This is definitely the hardest thing i´ve ever done!!! Hopefully i get used to it soon and ill pick up the launguage quick. Once that happens i´ll love it for sure!

now i´m going to write in bullet points so I don't have to organize my thoughts.
-Driving here is crazy! pedestrians don't have a right of way ever so cars never slow down for people. A lot of times we´ll just cross a street and barely miss getting hit by a car or bus going 70 mph. but thats normal and every is just used to it so its no big deal. they dont have speed limits here either. theres police but they dont do anything. my companion told me that the police like to drive around looking fro pretty girls and then give them rides on thier motorbikes! haha

-we walked by an orthodantists office the other day and the othadontist was just sitting in his office without a shirt

-a lot of people here claim that they have dreams/visions here or claim that they´ve seen spirits before and apparently thats normal.
-we were suppose to have a baptism on friday and I was going to baptise the guy but he didn´t show up (for the second time). we have another baptism this friday and i´m pretty sure this girl will show up.

-The ward i´m in is tiny! there were around 30 to 40 people their on sunday. We met with the stake president afterwards and he said that we need to try and build it so it doesn´t get demoted to a branch. he said that president sloan said that he was going to send 2 of his best missionaries there becuase it was struggling so much. which makes no sense becuase we are definitely not the best missionaries. i´m new and cant speak the launguage yet and my companion has only been here for like 4 months. And apparently this is one of the hardest areas to be in.

-the food here is way different! they only eat like 1 meal a day for lunch and its always massive amounts of rice with beans or meat and soup. the soup is like chicken broth with potatoes and a chunck of meat thrown in. I sware they just cook the chicken whole, chop it into huge peice and throw it in the soup.. bones and all! Ita ussually not to bad though and I can ussually eat it. But i think i've already lost wieght since we only eat once a day. i dont know how they do it! My companion never eats breakfest or dinner and he never drinks anything all day except for like one cup of juice at lunch. i drink water all day becuase its so hot and i try and eat something for breakfest and dinner. but sometimes i dont have time to eat breakfest or dinner

-being on time here doesn´t matter at all. you can be an hour late and its no big deal. people are really laid back and don´t have schedules. a lot of people just sit at home all day and do nothing

-pretty much the only thing that is keeping me sane right now is when i get to see people from my mtc district. luckily there are 4 of us here in the same zone and we get to see each other once and a while. we´re all struggling right now trying to adjust to everything

-as far as my address goes, i dont have it with me right now but i posted it on my blog before i left so check that. or if people want to send letters it might be easier just to do it on dearelder.com or to use the pouch servive. ask lindsey about that if you dont know how to use that.

anyways, I love you guys so much and pray for you everynight!! please email me back and tell me how your all doing! pray for me!

i think i made it sounds worse than it really is so try not to worry to much! i´m sure i´ll get used to it soon. if you ever send me packages make sure you follow the directions in the letter that president sloan sent. if you dont have that letter look on my blog.
www.misionecuadorquito.blogspot.com note from Lindsey - This is all in Spanish
thats the mission blog. check it out if you have time. i haven´t looked at it yet.

i´ll send pictures as soon as i can. i´ve only taken a couple so far.

I love you Dad, Mom, Lindsey, Jason, Desi!

Cuidese (take care)!

November 2, 2009

2009-11-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

Hey family!I arrived in quito last night and suffice it to say i'm definitely not in the U.S. anymore. And its awesome! I hardly understand anything anyone says but all is well. i'll catch on. I dont know my first area yet but should find out soon. President and sister sloan and super nice! I love them!

anyway, i'll update you more in my next email about ecuador and all that stuff but I just wanted to let you all know that i'm here safe and sound.
I love you all!

-Elder Brandon Messer

October 30, 2009

2009-10-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! How have you all been?! i hope you've all been good! Thanks for the letters and packages this week! It always makes my day to hear from you all! I sent a package to you today with a cd of all my pictures and my old planer so i can always remember my time in the mtc. Mom, no i don't have nancys address so you can't send her anything. all i know is that she lives in pomona california

I'm gonna to call that number that dad gave me at 4pm miami time 2pm your time so be ready! and dad, no worries if that doesn't work or something. i bought a calling card so if that number doesn't work i'll just call you with that! In case you want to keep track of my flights i'm flying on american airlines on flights 416, 1208, and 967. I think you can use those to make sure my planes are on time or something, if you want.

so those mormon messages that i sent you were from me and they didn't have any viruses. on lds.org they have an app where you can send those videos to people. so on wednesday when I was waiting for some new missionaries to finish their gym orientation i was watching some mormon messages and thought about you all and decided to send some to you.

So I heard you guys had some crazy weather lately! Hopefully it doesn't end up over utah and interfere with my travels!haha. It snowed here a tiny bit yesterday and today but none of it stuck and it was only for like an hour. I'm glad i'm getting out of here right before winter though!

So this week was good. On monday tanner left so that was kinda sad but it was really cool at the same time. He's somewhere in el salvador right now speaking spanish and preaching the gospel. oh and this week I saw grant and tyson so that was pretty coolon tuesday Elder L. Tom Perry came and talked to us. It was cool to get to see another apostle before I left.We got new missionaries on wednesday in our zone so elder noe and I got to go help them out on wednesday and thursday and it went well. They all seemed like they were excited to be here.other than that we've just been studying a lot trying to get ready to hit the field running. I'm way excited to get to ecuador! I'm kinda nervous about the launguage barrier and all that jazz but i'm more excited than nervous so all is well. we talked to a guy from quito yesterday and he wouldn't stop bragging about what an awesome place it is! he said the missionaries there a spoiled and live better than the missionaries in the provo mission (thats where he served).

I"m excited to meet my mission president and find out what my first area will be! I'm excited to meet my companion as well. i'm curious to know weather i'll have a native companion or a gringo companion. I think either one would be cool but i'll be honest i'm kinda hoping for a native just because I think it would halp me pick up the launguage faster. But whoever it is will be great i'm sure. Its gonna be an adventure no matter what happens, thats for sure!!!I think they'll let me email you when I get there just so you know i arrived safely. but anyways, I dont have much more to say other than I love you all and hope all is going well! You can start replying via email now since letters and dearelder would take to long. plus i have an hour to email when i get to ecuador. anyways, I love you and i'll talk to you on monday!

October 23, 2009

2009-10-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!Thank you for your letters and packages this week! It always makes my day to hear from you guys! Congratulations on your new calling mom! Your gonna be awesome! Hows everything else going back home? Whats the weather been like? Its been getting colder here but it hasn't snowed yet so thats a plus. Mom, The lady in the trc just wasn't the nicest person last week. I think she was having a bad day or something. I'm not sure. But she turned out to be nice in the end so that its all good. And yes your definitely right about learning the laungauge. We can only learn so much here. I'm sure when we get to ecuador our pace of learning will start to pick up a little. We just finished our last grammer principle yesterday so hypothetically we know everything. We just have to put it all to use and remember every single grammer rule on the fly and learn a bunch more vocab. I'm not really sure on ideas for christmas... I'll have to think about it and get back to you. I liked the ideas you had though about ctr rings in spanish and book markers. I think pictures would be a good idea to. speaking of pictures, i'm gonna burn a cd this week and send it to you. I haven't taken that many pictures but theres quite a few. I'm not sure about that water filter thing either. It sounds way cool but i'll have to ask when i get down there and see. They gave us instructions about how to purify water and they looked kinda sketchy. Like we have to boil it and then put bleach in it. and some other wierd stuff. i'm sure i'll find out more when i get there though. and yea i've gotten stuff from all the grandparents and i'm all loaded up! You all know how to take care of me! :)I dont have my ecuadorian address right now but i think its posted on my blog. if not i'll give it to you next week or when I get there.

We got our travel plans today. It was pretty exciting. We leave monday morning (nov 2). We fly out of salt lake at 6 am land in dallas at 9:35 am then leave for miami at 11:25 am. We arrive in miami at 3:10 pm and then we leave for quito at 6 pm and arrive at 9:55 pm. so I can call you either from salt lake, dallas, or miami depending on what time is best for you all. please let me know this week and i'll finalize it with you in my email next week.

anyways, this week has been pretty good for me i guess. last saturday night some elders in our zone tried to have a sleepover with like 14 guys in the same room (they're only suppose to fit 4) so elder noe and I had to break it up. Some of them were kinda mad at us at first. we told our branch president about how we felt like some of them were a bit mad at us and he just smiled, and said "welcome to leadership". haha it was kinda funny. then he told us that sometimes we just have to lay down the law no matter how much ppl dont like it. Mom and Dad I'm sure you know all about that as parents.On sunday we had to teach preisthood meeting because the branch presidency had another meeting to go to. We taught it on personal revelation. We taught for an hour and it went pretty well considering we only had an hour to prepare for it. i'm getting used to just teaching on the fly with no preparation. I guess thats a good skill to develop as a missionary. Its something that I never would have though i could do before my mission but now its just like normal.

On monday we got to leave the MTC! It was pretty much the most exciting thing thats happened since i've been here haha. An elder in our district had to go to physical therapy so elder noe and I had to go with him. Everyone saw us and started talking to us. it was kinda cool. We talked to one guy that served his mission in canada when president monson was the mission president. He told us all about it.

On wednesday we went to the RC. I made some outbound calls in spanish and was able to send a couple church DVDs to some people in puerto rico. I also got an inbound call from a lady named nancy. She asked if I could pray for her because her and her 3 kids had been homeless for a while. She asked if we had a service that could give them some food and I gave her some phone number from lds.org. Then I told her about God's love for her and talked to her about her family. Long story short I sent the missionaries to her and she is excited to hear the message they have for her. I hope it all works out for her! Can you all pray for her?I did sealings in the temple today and it was awesome! There are very few times in my life that i've felt the spirit that strong!anyways, i'm out of time but I love you guys! have a good week! and let me know when is the best time for me to call next monday

!Espero que ustedes tengan una semana fantastica!

October 16, 2009

2009-10-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!Thanks for your letters and packages this week! Thats for the jerky mom! I have a few packs now so i should be good until I leave. If you send something this week could you send some type of healthy snack food. maybe like wheat thins or something.The swine flu is gon from my floor so i'm not at any big risk anymore. But i'll keep taking precautions like you said mom! Thanks for all the info about it and all the herbs and stuff.

Jason, I have an assignment for you. fing the aug. ensign and read the article starting on page 46. its about WOW haha

Dad you seriously worked 174 hours in the last 2 weeks?!?! Thats ridiculous! Thats pretty much working all day everyday with just enough free time to sleep! Hopefully your proposal will go good and you'll be back to normal hours soon!

My flight plans should come in about a week from today. either on thursday or friday, Hopefully. They might let me call you when i get them but i'm not sure. I'm not sure when i'll be able to call your from the airport either. I dont think it matters. I might even be able to call you from salt lake and from wherever else we stop at. I'm not sure though so i'll let you know when i find out. as far as the length of the call, I think i'll be able to talk for at least like 30 minutes. But once again i'm not sure so i'll have to let you know when I find out for sure. I"m way excited to talk to you guys though! I miss you all! and mom, I miss your cooking a lot. The food here is getting so old. I can only take cafeteria food for so long.

Dad, yea spanish is different wherever you go and it will definitely be difficult to understand and talk when i first get there. I've talked to a few people that have been to quito and they said that everyone in quito speaks really slow and pronounces everything very clearly so thats a good sign! Apperently in the jungles and by the coast they speak super fast though. But I'll probably be lost wherever I end up serving when I first get there.

This week we did calls in the RC in spanish. It was pretty scary. I would introduce myself and then they would say something back to me and I would only understand parts of it. I think its harder to talk over the phone because you can see body language or anything. We're going back this week to practice some more.

Oh and i'll be gone before bernie gets here. New missionaries come in on wednesday and old ones always leave on monday or tuesday.This week was pretty good for me. we went to the trc on monday and taught lesson one in spanish. The lady we taught was kinda mean at first and we weren't sure how it would end up going. We just went in and did our best to teach with the spirit. Then when the lesson was almost over she just opened up to us and told us her whole life story about how she used to live in california and drink and spoke but then the missionaries taught her and changed her life. Then she said that she had never felt the spirit so strong as when we were teaching. It was cool becuase I actually got to make a difference in someones life and help them feel the spirit and make there day better. I can't wait to get to ecuador and do that all day every day.

On wednesday we got to host new missionaries. We had to stand out on the curb and help them with there luggage and take them up to there room and then to there class. When they were teaching us how to host they made sure to emphasize that we needed to be really kind and friendly to the parents when they were getting dropped off so that they felt good about letting go of their son. A couple times I had to stand there and watch whole families cry for 10 minutes. It was pretty sad. I almost shed a tear at one point. This whole missionary drop off is brutal. Its just like pull up to the curb, get out and say goodbye, and get back in the car and drive away. It was definitely better that we just said goodbye at the airport.We got a new district in our zone on wednesday. They're going to texas, denver, and paraguay. Elder noe and I got to talk with them and take them on a tour. It was basically the same thing we did last week. one of our districts is leaving on monday so we might get another new district on wednesday but i'm not sure yet. I think Grant is coming in on wednes day so maybe he'll be in my zone. that would be cool.

Hey mom, can you send me everyones shirt size? I want to buy you all some ecuador shirts that you can wear and when people ask you about them you can tell them about me and it will be a missionary opportunity.
Thats so cool that jason gets to go to sea camp and desi gets to go to washington dc. Make sure and tell me all about those trips!
anyways, my time is almost up so i have to rap it up. I love you guys! Dad, mom, lindsey, jason, desi, and jojo. Write me and tell me about your lifes!

-Elder Brandon Messer

October 9, 2009

2009-10-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I hope You're all doing awesome! Thanks for the packeges mom and thanks for the watch. Its perfect! Your pretty much the perfect missionary Mom! This week has been pretty good.
Conference last weekend was awesome! We watched every session and loved every minute of it. My favorite talks were Elder Hollands talk about the Book of Mormon and I think it was Elder Hales who talked about how God's love doesn't supercede his laws. What were your favorites? Everytime they talked about families I thought about you guys and how much I miss you all. And during priesthood I thought a lot about Dad and Jason and how Dad and I used to go to priesthood together and go out to Dinner after.
On sunday night we had a fireside all about music because apparently they played a lot more music this conference than they have before. The mission presidency sang to us and they had a bunch of missionaries say their favorite songs and why they liked that song and then we sang a verse of it. It was a pretty cool fireside and it was nice to get to sing instead of just sit and listen like we had been doing all weekend. The guy playing the organ was sooooo good!He would always just add in extra notes and just like change keys in the middle of the song.
On monday we went to the TRC and taught lesson 1 in spanish. It went suprisingly well. We struggled over saying some stuff but all and all we were able to get the message across. I can't believe i'm gonna be doing that for real in a few weeks. I'm so excited to get to Ecuador! It feels like I've been in the mtc forever! It's kinda starting to feel like a prison now since we can't ever leave. I get excited when I get to go across the street to play volleyball or go to the temple. we get excited when we see cars or when we see someone walking a dog. Its kind sad haha.
Devotional on Tuesday was pretty good. We had some guy that used to be a member of one of the quorums of the 70. I heard him speak once at BYU and he gave the same talk again so it was really familiar to me. He told a story about a guy he met in south africa that owned a multi-billion dollar diamond bussiness but sold it to move to Utah when he read the Book of Mormon and heard about the Gospel. He was actually at the meeting so we got to listen to him tell his conversion story. Its amazing how much the Gospel can change someones life!
On wednesday we got a new district in our Zone. There are 12 elders in the zone: 9 going to el salvador san salvador east (the same mission as tanner), 2 going to guatemala, and 1 going to costa rica. Elder Noe and I got to talk to them for a bit and then take them to their rooms and help them get setteled in. Then on Thursday we got to teach them for an hour about planning, using time wisely, and having strong companionships. Then we took them on a tour of the Mtc and explained all the rules to them and all that good stuff. They all seam happy and excited to be here.
So basically the MTC has swine flu again. I don't think there are that many cases but there have been 2 on our floor right down the hall from me. Both of the Elders were Quarentined so hopefully it wont spread. It seems like everyone is getting sick though. One Elder in our district has the regular flu (I just took him to the doctor to confirm that it wasn't swine flu) and a bunch of other elders have colds, including me. I've pretty much been sick all week but it's nothing too bad so don't worry. I've been taking all the medicine and stuff that mom gave me before i left and it seems to be helping. I showed everyone "the spice of live" and they all thought it was super wierd. But then they took it and it helped them so they're believers now haha.
I can't believe I only have 3 weeks left in the MTC. That means we'll probably get our travel plans in about a week and a half-ish. When I get them I'll let you guys know. I'm allowed to call home while i'm in the airport so you guys have to make sure and be home or answer your cell phones when I call. We'll figure something out.
Anyways, I love you guys! Keep writing me and telling me about your lives! Thanks for your letter mom telling me about the disasters in Indonesia and somoa. It was cool to hear about that because we don't get any news from the outside world.
Espero que hay angeles en sus vidas!

October 2, 2009

2009-10-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

Hey Family!

How are you all?!?!? Thank you for the package Mom!!! I loved it! and thanks for the letters everyone!!!!

This week has been pretty busy for me. On Sunday Elder Noe and I got called as zone leaders so now we have a bunch of meetings that we have to go to every week. Our branch president told us that our biggest responsibility as Zone leaders is to love everyone and be a good example to them. Other than that we have to plan church on Sunday, Meet with new missionaries in our zone and talk to them about a bunch of stuff and give them a tour, Direct Zone activities, interview all the District leaders once a week to make sure everyone is doing ok, and meet with the branch president every week and give him a report. And a bunch of other things that I can't remember right now. basically we just have to make sure everything goes smoothly and make sure there are no major problems in the zone. Right now we have about 40 elders in our zone going to Ecuador, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Chile, and all over the United states. And we're getting a new district on Wednesday so that should be fun!

On Monday we went to the TRC and taught the plan of salvation. Luckily this time they let us do it in English. It went really well! The spirit was way strong! This week we have to teach lesson one in Spanish so that should be fun. I can't wait to get to Ecuador and actually do it for real!!!!!!

On Tuesday we had an elder in our zone decide to go home. It was really sad and his whole district was crying. Elder Noe and I went over to there building and talked to them about it. We shared a scripture and said a prayer with them. It was really hard for them because they loved the elder so much and didn't want to see him go

On Wednesday we went To the referral center and I talked with a guy named Julio. He was from Brazil and was really interested in the church. He was asking about eternal families and told me that he is married and has 6 kids. He didn't speak very good English and asked if I could speak Portuguese. I told him I could speak a little Spanish but no Portuguese. I didn't know any Spanish though so we just kept talking in English. He seemed like he was really interested in the Church and was really looking for the truth. I had to leave so I transfered him to someone else before we finished but I hope he decides to meet with the missionaries and learn more!

So all this week we've been speaking Spanish all the time. All of our classes are just in Spanish now. Its kinda hard sometimes but I understand almost all of what our teachers say. They even started teaching us spanish in spanish which doesn't really make sense to me but whatever haha. I'm sure it will be really hard when we get to Ecuador so this is probably good practice. We talked to someone that went to Ecuador on his mission and he said they speak really slow in the mountains and really fast in the jungles and by the coasts. So I hope my first area will be in the mountains.

I went to a meeting this week and got to shake hands with someone that had shook hands with someone that had shook hands with Joseph Smith. So basically I'm 3 hand shakes away from Joseph smith haha.

Anyways, Do you know who the knew bishop is yet?
Jason and Desi- How is school going?
Lindsey- I love your letters! please keep them coming!
Mom- It sounds like you've been staying busy! How are Lucifer, Rasputin, and Obama doing? and How is JoJo doing?
Dad- How is work and scouts and all that good stuff?

I love you guys!!!

-Elder Brandon Messer

September 25, 2009

2009-09-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! first off, Thanks for the package with the pictures and candy mom!!!! That was awesome!!!! I love getting any type of mail or packages or whatever. as far as what kind of stuff I want.... well snacks would be good... like as close to real food as you can get. I don't need candy or anything like that. oh and could you send my a cheap watch? mine broke. possibly the one you gave me for Christmas a while ago if you can find it on my desk and figure out how to set it. And yes mom I got the copy of my blessing! thank you for sending that!!!!!!!!!!
Whats this I hear about getting a new bishop? thats kinda sad. Bishop Lindsey was one of my favorites! He was un hombre de dios (a man of god). you'll have to write me and tell me who the new bishop is when you find out!

So this week has been pretty good! Elder Noe and I had an interesting experience at the TRC on Monday. We were supposed to go do this whole situation where we pick someone up for church and get to know them in Spanish on the way to church. after we did that we were supposed to go back and teach them the plan of salvation in english. But when Elder Noe and I went back to teach our investigator he wouldn't let us speak english. He was an RM and spoke perfect english so I don't know why he wouldn't let us speak english. it was kinda weird. But anyway, We ended up just teaching for 45 minutes in spanish. It was pretty sketchy but we made it through ok. I was suprised at how much spanish we already knew. I'm sure we made a lot of mistakes but it was cool that we were able to get the point of the lesson across. We're not even suposed to start teaching in spanish until week 5 and that was our 3rd weeks so we got a jump start i guess. Hopefully this monday we'll get to teach someone that will let us speak english.

After this monday everything switches to spanish though. Like our teachers will start only talking to us in spanish and we have to answer in spanish and all that jazz. I can't believe that next week i'll be half way done with the mtc. its kinda crazy.

On a lighter note, I saw Betsy last Sunday. She was helping out in the referral center and I saw her leaving just as I was walking back from the temple. I yelled at her and said hi and stopped and talked with her for a bit. it was kinda cool to see someone I knew.

And on an even lighter note, When BYU has football games its pretty much the biggest distraction ever for missionaries because we can hear all the noise from the stadium. They were playing on Saturday and we saw some elders standing by the fence just listening to the game. And then a little kid on a bike pulled up and told them the score. apparently they recruited this kid and were paying him to ride back and forth and get the score of the game for them. I thought it was kinda funny.

Mom, An elder in my district got a letter from his mom this week asking "is there an elder Messer in your district because his mom just joined the missionary mom website" or something like that. haha
anyway, I hope you guys are doing awesome! your in my prayers everyday! I love you all!

September 18, 2009

2009-09-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

Hola familia! Como estan! espero que todo estan muy bien!!!
Mom gracias para los cinnamon rolls!!!! fueron muy delicioso!!!

This week was pretty good!!! last weekend I was feeling really frustrated because I have so much to do and not enough time to do it. I've been finding out that missionary work is really hard. Its non-stop work all day. I think its probably the hardest thing I've ever done. last weekend i was feeling like i wasn't learning Spanish fast enough and like i wasn't learning all the lessons fast enough and like i wasn't teaching good enough and it was really frustrating and i was wishing that it wasn't so hard. Then on Tuesday we had a devotional and there were rumors going around that it was going to be an apostle so we went like 2 hours early and got really good seats. It ended up being elder Holland and his talk was exactly what I needed. He started explaining how missionary work is always hard and there is never an easy mission. He said it has to be like that because salvation has never been easy. When Jesus Christ performed the atonement that was in no way easy and as missionaries we are his disciples so it shouldn't be easy for us. Elder Holland said that everyone on their mission has to go through there own Gethsemane and carry their own cross to calvary, otherwise how can we say that we are really disciples of Christ? It made me think about how hard salvation really is and i started to consider how hard it was for the savior to do what he did. then elder Holland said that when we go through our own gethsemani and carry our own crosses it gives us a small taste of what it was like for Jesus and helps us grow closer to him. Anyway, the talk was really good and it helped me a lot!

On Monday elder noe and I went to the TRC and had to make contacts in Spanish and teach the first lesson again. we ended up teaching to this old Latino man named Napolean. but long story short, he ended up teaching us the lesson. he was supposed to be an investigator but when we started talking about prophets he just went off and started bearing his testimony to us about how he knew Joseph Smith was a prophet. and it was like that the whole lesson. we would teach for like 30 seconds and then he would bear his testimony to us for like 5 minutes. He was a cute old man that was really excited about the gospel but he didn't really let us teach that much haha.
We went back to the referral center this week but instead of making calls we did online chats. it was interesting because some people would come on with real interest and we would kinda teach them but some people would come on just to insult some of our most sacred practices (temples and other stuff like that) and try and talk about really deep doctrine with us and try and prove us wrong. when people do that we just have to either steer the conversation the other way or if they're really bad we just don't talk to them at all. I did a few calls too and I talked to one guy that said he was having struggles in his life so i testified to him of how the gospel could help him and he agreed to let me send missionaries to teach him. I hope it all works out for him!!!!

I can't wait to actually go to Ecuador and start doing real missionary work all the time!
Can you guys send me some pictures of the family and jojo and stuff? I don't have any and I want to use them to 1) show to people when I teach about families and 2)hang in my room so I can remember you guys!
mom- if you want to send me any packages I would love them but you definitely don't have to! The cinnoman rolls were really good! thanks again!

I Love you all! Dad, Mom, Lindsey, Jason, Desi, and of course jojo!

September 11, 2009

2009-09-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

Hey!Mom, Happy birthday!!! I hope all your birthday wishes came true!!!
thanks for the letters dad and desi!

ok let me try and answer all your questions real quick:

i ussually just feed the mice about every other day but i dont think it really matters much if you feed them everyday. just as long as they have enough water and dont go too long without food.I saw tanner today just as he was coming out of the temple and i was going in. It was way cool! we talked for a bit and i wrote him a letter so he's gonna write me back and we'll have to talk mostly through letters. I haven't seen boyd johnson yet. idk if i will. we'll see. i saw andrew kinney the first day i was here and i think i saw sam later that night as well. I get to practice the piano every once in a while when we have free time. luckily my companion doesn't mind listening to me for a few minutes! my companion (elder noe) took two years of spanish in high school so he knows a lot. we try and talk to each other in spanish as much as we can. and my p-day is on friday so you can expect emails from me around 4ish on fridays. i'm not allowed to write on anydays except p-day and i can only email on p-day for 30 minutes.

ok now let me tell you about my week:

-on monday we went to the trc for the first time. we had to talk to a bunch of people in spanish and get to know them and teach a short message and ask if we could come back later and share more. it went pretty good. one guy that we talked to was amazed that we had only been there for 5 days and could already speak such good spanish. after we made teaching appointments in spanish we had to go back and teach them the first discussion in english. It went sooooo good! the spirit was soooo strong!!!! Elder Noe and I were really nervous at first but we trusted that the spirit would guide us and it definitely did!!!! its crazy how much help we're getting!!!

-on wednesday we went to the RC (refferal center) for the first time. we had to call people that had ordered stuff from the church and confirm that they got it and ask if they would be interested in learning more. we were there for an hour or so and all i did was call person after person but no one answered for like 55 minutes!!! then right when we were about to quit I called one more person and someone finally answered! I started introducing myself and right after i said my name she said "hold on" and went away from the phone. I was on hold for like 8 minutes but i didn't want to hang up because I really wanted to talk to her about the bible that we sent her. everyone else was already packing up and ready to go back to class but i just waited for her and she eventually came back after like 8 minutes. I asked her if she had recieved her bible and she said yea and we talked about it a little. then i started telling her about the book of mormon and how it was a second testament of jesus christ and i asked her if i could send some missionaries to her house to share a message about jesus christ and she said yes! it was awesome! her name is shiela and shes from georgia.

-i went back to the RC on thursday and once again no one was answering. but i kept calling and eventually got someone to answer. i asked for the person that i was trying to call but he wasn't home so i just started talking to the person who answered. it turned out to be the guys brother and long story short i asked if i could send missionaries to his house to share a message about jesus christ with him and he said yes! his name is zak and hes 17 and from ohio.-we had a devotional on tuesday and got to her from president hinckley's son and his wife. They were so bold with some of the stuff they said!!!! it was so crazy! dad, all that stuff we used to talk about as not being offical doctrine- they just flat out talked about that! it was sooo cool!!

-so i definitely have the gift of toungues!!! its sooooo crazy!!! yesterday i swear i was almost fluent for like 15 minutes! it was so wierd cuz i was speaking perfect spanish for like 15 minutes and then all of a suden i couldn't anymore. and i was saying words that i didn't know and then i looked them up and they were right!!!! it was soooooo cool!!!!!

-one last thing, i official hold the mtc juggling record now haha.anyways, my time is almost up so i'll write again next week, oh and it would be easier for me if you would dearelder me your responses as well as email them to me so i dont have to try and read your emails and respond during my 30 minutes of email time.

I love you guys!!!!!

9/5/09

2009-09-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

Here's his first e-mail!!!

Familia!!! como estan?!?! how are you all?!?! i miss you all so much! mom, dad, lindsey, desi. I hope you guys are doing awesome! i only have 24 minutes left to write this so i'm gonna use bullet points so i don't have to organize my thoughts...

-The past 3 days have been crazy!!! all we do is go to class, study, eat, and play in the gym for an hour a day. we're always doing something and theres never any time to rest.

-my companions name is elder noe. He's soooo cool! we get along great and hes a hard worker so its awesome! we always quiz each other on spanish and practice bearing our testimonies in spanish to each other-so far we've learned how to pray and bear our testimonies in spanish. we're not very good but we're working hard to get better! the gift of tongues is already kicking in though and its awesome! I keep remembering random words that i haven't even thought of since i took spanish in high school. its sweet!

-our district is made up of 9 elders all going to quito and we're all becoming best friends. one of them is named elder hirschi and hes really good at soccer. we practiced juggling today and got up to 617 together. i think thats a new mtc record.... maybe.

-i've learned that time in the mtc is like the lords time... that is, every minute seems a thousand times longer that it is. the days go by so slow. but we're doing good stuff so its all good.

-all the elders on our floor are spanish speaking elders and they all speak in spanish a lot and its really funny because 1)they have horrible accents and sound SOOO white! and 2)they always try to say things in spanish and think we can't understand becuase we're new, but the stuff they say is super easy so i always understand it. they do some pretty crazy/wierd stuff too. like today they were playing "super ninja". its some wierd game and i dont really understand how its fun but whatever floats their boat haha.

-if anyone wants to write me letters they can send it to:
Elder Brandon Messer
MTC Mailbox #95
ECU-QUI 1102
2005 N. 900 E.
Provo, Utah 84604-1793

me gustariacompartir mi testimoni. yo se que dio nos ama y jesucristo nos ama. porque dios nos ama, El restauro el evangelio y el sacerdocio a traves jose smith. el libro de mormon es la palabra de dios y recibimos bendiciones cuando lo leemos. la iglesia de jesucristo do los santos de los ultimos dias es verdadero!!!!!! digo estas cosas en el nombre de jesucristo amen.

I love you all!

-Elder Messer

MTC Address

2009-09-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

Hello!

I'm Lindsey, Brandon's sister and I'll be the one posting his e-mail updates on here.

I picked Brandon up from the airport today at 7:30am and took him everywhere he wanted to go around Provo before dropping him off at the MTC. It was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do...just drop him off and he walks off one way while I drove the other way, crying, and knowing that I would not get to see him or hug him again for 2 years, knowing that a lot changes in two years and who knows what kind of life I'll have or person I'll become during that time. Even though I'll miss him more than words can express, I'm incredibly proud of him and I KNOW he'll be an incredible missionary!

His specific MTC address is....

Elder Brandon Scott Messer

MTC Mailbox # 95

ECU-QUI 1102

2005 North 900 East

Provo, UT 84604-1793

You can send letters for free through http://www.dearelder.com/

If you attend BYU they have a same day delivery service for packages to the MTC at the pack-n-ship in the basement of the bookstore for a reduced rate. Take advantage of it while you can cause once he gets to Ecuador there's a weight limit and no guaruntee that it'll get there.