Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

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!

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.

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!

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!

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

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!

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!