Back in the Horno! (oven)

Hello Family,

Guess what!  I just got transferred back to Guayaquil!  My new area is called Los Almendros in la zona La Pradera.  Elder Sánchez, my old district leader, is my new companion.  We got here on Friday and have been getting to know the members and the sector.  I am opening another area that the sisters had just left and, yes, there are girl shoes all over the place here, too.

Goodbye to Elder Nuñez

Up in the Sierra, I had almost forgotten how different everything is here in the Costa.  I had forgotten the Guayaquil accent, the food, and everyone's general attitude towards life.  Last night, we were walking around when we ran into a member and her daughter, who offered to accompany us for a few lessons.  They were so happy and eager to help and participate in the obra misional (missionary work) you never would have guessed that they were recent converts of only a few months.  Fellowshipping is something they do really well here.  It was certainly refreshing to meet the ward at sacrament meeting.  It made me more eager to go find more investigators, point to the members and say, “Don’t you see what you can become?”  They are just happy.

This week we are having the Area Seventy come to talk to the mission.  We have a big chapel clean-up planned for this Wednesday so everything will be ready for when he comes.  I am preparing myself mentally for the long dark mail-less night that I know I can expect.  It will probably be a few weeks until they stop sending my mail to Cuenca and another few weeks to send it back to the office and then send it to my new area.  Oh well.

We had a cockroach problem here because we forgot to take out the trash

Recently it started to rain buckets and we took shelter under the gate of the member we had just visited.  A large part of our area is a navy vets-only neighborhood, so there are some pretty moody guys here, one of which is the husband of the member, who is also very antagonistic to the church.  He kept on telling us to get a taxi and get off his property, but Elder Sanchez kept on trying to start a conversation with him through the gate.  I thought to myself, "This guy is going to punch your lights out and I am just going to laugh."  But what surprised me was eventually the vet started to open up and started telling us about the different years when the neighborhood had flooded and how high the water got and we waited for the rain to let up.  I had misjudged the man and through some way, completely inconceivable to me, Elder Sanchez had been able to touch his heart. 

My bed

I don’t know how things were in Argentina, Mom, but here the rain here is kind of magical.  It is the only time anyone turns off the heat.  I am now finally able to understand why Gene Kelly liked dancing in the rain, something I never was able to understand growing up in the Northwest.  I used to think this guy is pretty twitterpated if he doesn’t mind that he is going to freeze to death.

I wait to hear from you soon (or not).

Love, Elder Ludlam

Ding! Watching the light go on!

Farewell to Elder Carillo, front farthest right

Hello Fam Fam

Elder Sanchez and Elder Palacios fix their knot

We just taught a new family, la familia Quesada.  We kind of got shanghai-ed into helping them move.  They just moved into our area the week of general conference.  After morning session of conference last week, our district leader approached us and said, "Hey, we have a reference for you of a really great family in your area", which I guess is Huancayano for "Do you have three hours to help us move one of our investigators?"  They are two young parents who have been most interested in having the spirit in their home as the raise their children and are long time friends of some members from the area they just moved from.  They want to know what their friends did to raise such well-centered children.

Bienvenidos to Cajas National Park

We also had another really good lesson this week with a family named Flores.  They have a big family who all like to listen to us but it is really their 17-year old son, Cristian, that is the most interested and has been the most diligent completing the reading we leave him.  This particular week we had left Alma 32.  The focus of our lesson was to realize why the restoration was so important and encourage them to seek a testimony of the Book of Mormon.  As we were explaining the personal commitment necessary to receiving an answer to pray, Cristian said, "This is kind of like my reading you gave me, you elders have come here and planted a seed, but if I want to know if it good seed, I need to nourish it by praying, studying, and going to church."  Ding.  I love watching the little light go on in the investigators eyes when they make the little different connections.  Yes, Cristian, that is exactly what you have to do.

Anyway, today we just had a fun zone activity.  We went to a lake called Cajas about an hour out of Cuenca.  Most people go there to fish.  We have wanted to go up there for a few months, but the office just now gave us the permission to go as a whole zone.  There is an abuelito in one of the families we eat lunch with who has wanted to go for a while.  He thinks Elder Badger promised to go with him during our week-long interchange.  Every time we come over for lunch, he asks us when the elder from Azogues is going to come again.  "I got the car and the poles all ready to go whenever you are ready."

Our bus had to stop on the way back to town
 to wait for a llama crossing

We are hoping for some mail tomorrow.  We have a new zone leader coming in, but we don’t know who it is yet.  Our other zone leader just left today for Guayaquil to go pick him up.  The plan is for him to pick up our mail off the desk of the comisionario so we don’t have to wait for him to send it to us.  Hope to hear about how your conference went. 

Zona Cuenca

Until next week,

Mister Elder

Realms of Esoteric Thought

Hello everybody,

The paquete de marzo (March package) got here last week.  A little more timely than the last one.

Well, it was another great Conference.  I was a little worried it would not be the same listening to a translation because the translators just don’t flow like the original speakers do.  It was actually pretty cool, because most of the Spanish-speaking general authorities all pre-record their talks in Spanish, so it is like listening to them actually give the talk.  Elder Scott did his in Spanish.  I knew he spoke Spanish, but this was the first time I actually listened to his speaking in Spanish.  He sounds the same as when he speaks English.  It is weird, because whenever I read one of the old conference addresses in the Liahona, I still hear the voices of the original speakers in my head, except they are speaking in Spanish.  It is rather strange.

We taught a lawyer this week.  It was a different experience than the average lesson.  It is nice to have the confidence that the investigator is going to leer y meditar (read and meditate).  Every once in awhile here in Cuenca you run into some professor or other well-read person.  Usually they just want to compare Mormonism against the other religious philosophies of the world.  I can’t remember what we were talking about, but our investigator said something about how our beliefs differed from nihilism and I remember thinking, "Well that’s an insight I will never hear on my mission again." 

I have to admit, I was a little more than willing to discuss Nitzche, Des Cartes, Freud, and the like.  We jumped around a little bit.  He had actually talked with the missionaries before, so he was ready to jump into what I think we can consider "deep doctrine."  "So if God created more worlds than ours, doesn’t that make it necessary to have more than one Savior.  That is what the Kabbalists believe."  Elder Nuñez and I just kind of looked at each other and said, "We really don’t have any specific doctrine on that, the Lord has not deemed it necessary to reveal that to us at this time.  But you know what he has revealed..."  (I think that is Judaism, anyways)  If he is really interested in that question, he can bring it up in a High Priest group meeting.  I am sure he can find many people with definitive opinions on the matter.

Anyways, back out of the realms of esoteric thought ...

I hope to hear from you all tomorrow if we get mail at district meeting.  Looking forward to writing again next week!

Love, Elder Nannel

Conference = Christmas

Hello Family,

Well, this week we have started to teach some of Carlos’s friends that came to live with him from Loja.  They all seem really interested and like what we teach.  One of them even has already made a little protective case for his Book of Mormon.  We took them to see a baptism of some of the other missionaries and they really liked what they felt.  Hopefully, they can continue to progress if they can get married to their partners.  It should be really easy if it doesn’t take two years, based on their previous voting record.  I don’t know if I told you before, but Ecuador has recently passed a bunch of laws in the year or so that really slows down the marriage process.

 

I hope you are all looking forward to General Conference this week.  As a missionary, it kind of feels like Christmas again.  (I’ve learned to not associate holidays with the weather any more.)  Hopefully we can get our investigators to realize what an incredible opportunity it is to hear the Lord’s mouthpiece address the world this weekend.  The last conference sure helped me a lot in the CCM as I was looking for ways to explain particular concepts to investigators.  I have certainly made good use of all the material from the October session.  I have started a little collection of conference Ensigns (church magazines).  The other day I found one from '98.  I had forgotten how awesome Elder Maxwell was.

L to R: Elders Church, Despot, Keebles, Nuñez,
Ludlam, Nelson, Miller, Guanchaj (too short for pic!)

The members enjoyed our missionary activity.  Elder Nuñez, our branch mission leader and I made hundreds of little brochures for the members to hand out with pamphlets of the missionary lessons and an invitation to General Conference attached to the back.  We went over to mission leader’s house, designed the invitation, stuck in Men of the MoTab, and started manufacturing the brochures.  I think the members liked the activity.  They want to do another one.

Anyway, as part of another branch activity this week, we watched this Mormon comedy about how two young men escape from this military correctional camp and rob a car of two missionaries.  While waiting for a chance to leave the state, they pose as missionaries for a few days.  Unfortunately, after watching that movie, the members haven’t quite looked at Elder Nuñez and me the same again.

Well, I look forward to talking to you again next week.

Elder Lamslud

Apocalypses and Cheese

"Beware the Ides of March" 
Grant celebrates by eating a little Caesar salad

Hello Family,  How are you all this week?  The branch has an activity planned for this Saturday where all the members are going to go through their neighborhood and invite everyone to General Conference.  They seem excited to go out.  We are still working on getting more invitations and pamphlets for them to hand out.  We are also hoping to get a few good references, too.

This week, a lot of people have stopped us and asked us to go through and explain Apocalypses to them.  Everyone has moved into a little apocalyptic frenzy after the Tsunami in Japan.  This week, there was also a weird phenomenon where a halo appeared around the sun, which was visible in a few parts of Ecuador. A lot of people took this as a sign of the second coming, so I guess people wanted to know what to expect.  I guess the people do this a lot here.  It also happened after the earthquake in August and again when that 2012 movie came out, but the crazes usually only last a few days.

Elder Nuñez and his camera

Elder Núñez is going through a little crisis right now.  He accidentally erased half of his photos off of his camera, so he has been trying to figure out how he can get in contact with his old companions, members, or anyone who might have duplicate photos.  He moans every now and then, "Mis Fotos."

We have a Family Home Evening tonight with our super reference-generating abuela I told you about before.  Recently, she has been inviting us every week to pass by her house so that she can give us a brick of cheese.   We usually pass by her house about every other day anyway, but she specially sets up these cheese visits.  She knows it is against the rules to call us directly at our house so she calls our ward mission leader "to ask the elders to pass by the house for un quesito."(a little cheese)  I am not sure why she decided we needed more cheese, but we gratefully enjoy cheese sandwiches every night!

Well, hope to hear from you tomorrow at District Meeting.  Take care.

Love, Elder Ludlam

Coastal Elders Flee Tsunami Up to Cuenca

Hello Family,

How are you all?  This last week I got a big load of letters that had been building up.  I think I am updated up until Feb 20 or so.

The two elders farthest to the left,
Elders Soto and Winterton, stayed with us

I am guessing you heard about the big Tsunami that hit Japan.  On Friday, Zona Machala 2 came up to Cuenca because they put the whole coast on alert.  They gave the Machala elders 10 minutes notice to arrive at the bus terminal the morning of the Tsunami.  They had to pack pretty light.  Elder Soto and Elder Winderton stayed in our apartment in Totoracocha.  Because Elder Soto was so unaccustomed to the cold after spending his whole mission in the coast, he had to resort to wearing some of the left over sisters’ clothes for a few extra layers of warmth in the night.



Elder Ludlam shanked it one too many times!

We had a few problems with Carlos this week.  He has problems believing that he can keep the law of chastity.  I think he got ashamed because he tried for a while to hide from us.  I guess he realized we just wanted to help him because he eventually let us talk to him again.  He wants to make the necessary changes in his life, but is afraid it will be too hard.  He has a distinct ring tone and it goes off a lot, which has been very helpful in detecting him when he tries to leave the house.  He also lives in the same building, next door to a member, so whenever she finds us waiting outside Carlos’s door, she says, “Is Carlos hiding again?  Let me take care of this.”  She then marches into his house like his mom or something and says, “Carlos, get out here.  The missionaries are waiting!”  I am pretty sure that she has had a lot of direct talks with Carlos.

Elders Palacio, Sánchez, Ludlam and Nuñez

Anyway, we also found a new investigator who really likes LDS artwork, and has made a business of making reprints and selling them.  I think if she does not want to come to church next week, we may have to teach ‘Honoring and Sustaining the Law,’ especially copyright law.  It is, after all, a PMG (Preach My Gospel) lesson.

I did not really understand what your ‘cottage meeting’ was.  I really enjoyed the articles you have been sending me.  It really is true how as you start your mission, the Lord gives you an idea of the type of missionary he wants you to become, but is up to you to implement the things you know you need to do.

Well, until next time.  I will be waiting tomorrow to know how you all were on Feb 27.

Sincerely, Maldul Redle

A Week in Azogues

"Wherever I go, she is watching!"
 (Virgen de las Nubes in background--in Azogues)

Hello Family,

We just had our transfers yesterday. Élder Nuñez and I are on for another six weeks here in Totoracocha. We have been trying to keep a low profile as the Carnival Chaos continues.  If we stick to the back roads we usually stay pretty dry.  The only problems we have run into are marauding bands of super soakers on the way back home to re-outfit.  The primary danger is people hurling water ballons from their cars from the main roads.  Luckily, soccer is Ecuador's favorite sport and not baseball.  

Carlos, the young man I told you about last week, continues to progressing rapidly. Our only concern is that he will manage to survive el feriado (the holidays).  He left town to visit his family in Loja, so we won't hear from him for a few days.  He had another good experience at church even though half the branch took off after sacrament meeting to beat the mass exodus out of Cuenca.  Everyone from the Sierra goes to the beach during Carnival and everyone from la costa comes here to visit family and to escape the Carnival mayhem.

I really enjoyed my week long exchange with Elder Badger.  Azogues is having a lot of success recently.  A member just moved there from Guayaquil because he had the impression that he needed to come and help his family accept the gospel there in Azogues.  He got all of his family together for a family home evening and invited the elders over to share a short spiritual message and, lo and behold, the Azogues missionaries found 15 interested investigators in a single night.  Elder Badger was great to work with.  He is really excited about the work and has a way of winning the confidence of everyone he talks to.  I learned a lot from his example. He played safety for Notre Dame.

Thank you for the picture of Lia.  It was exactly what I was hoping for.  When I get back, Lia, we need to have a drag race.  You can have the Pontiac Grand Prix and I'll take the Nissan Rust Bucket.

Hope to talk to you all soon,

Élder Dudlán