A Family of Eight

Most beloved family,

How are you all today?  I passed by the office the other day to renew my visa so I got some early mail.  I got the most recent letter from the 9th.  I am still missing letters from three weeks before that though, so I will probably be hearing about your pre-sibling reunion activities soon. 

It was an interesting experience getting my visa.  Elder Heaps and I both came to the office to get them renewed on Wednesday, Oct 12.  I think that was the same day I arrived in Guayaquil exactly one year ago.  At about 11:30 am, as Elder Heaps and I began climbing the stairs to go up to the mission office, Elder Heaps told me, “At this time exactly one year ago, we came up these stairs for the first time.”  A lot has happened since then.

Well, we had a good week here.  We have about finished up with all the investigators from the last transfer and are starting to look for new people to work with in November.  The less active family strategy is still giving fruit.  We have some good people; we are just having some problems getting them to church.  We are going to try and involve the ward council more in our teaching appointments this week.

Elder Johnson had to go downtown today to get his censo (census) and identification.  They also gave us portable DVD players to watch the Preach My Gospel videos as part of our study sessions.  Aniñado, I know.  Somos pelucones aqui en Guayaquil Sur (We are big shots here in Guayaquil South).

I was able to talk to Elder Liberato today.  His companion was also getting his censo.  He told me something really cool.  On our last night together, we found a new family.  We did not have anything to do that night, so we decided to just contact and look for new people.  We saw an elderly man outside his house so we started talking to him and he invited us in.  He liked the message and accepted a baptismal date.  After they pulled us out of Los Esteros and brought in the sister missionaries, his whole family, eight people, were all baptized and they were able to remember Elder Liberato's name and track him down in another part of Guayaquil to ask him to baptize a few members of their family.  In all our 2.5 weeks together we worked with quite a few people, but none of them continued with the lessons.  It was literally our last hour together that we found them.  I guess that right when we finished up everything we had to do -- we got pulled out.  I thought it was interesting.

Well, I hope to hear from you all soon.  Hope everyone is reading their scriptures.  Je Je

Su Guayaco favorito,

Nannel

The ward is good

Clan Dudlan

How are you all?  How has the first few weeks of school been for you?  Hopefully I’ll get some mail tomorrow to know how you are all doing.  Sorry, I have no idea were the ceremonial get up garb is.  That is not Elder Johnson’s first name.  Trevor is my zone leader from back in Cuenca, but he’s long gone.  He was cool.

Antonia (Douglas Madre), Ivet, Duvan, Douglas, Moroni, ---, Maria del Rocío (Moroni Madre), Jaquelina (Duvan Madre), Misioneros

We have had a great first week here in Amazonas 2.  President Montalti has been asking the mission to try to implement a new finding strategy.  He wants us to look for really inactive families with little kids, reactivate the parents, and baptize the whipper snappers.  That way, the ward is happy with us and we get baptisms.  I am still warming up to the idea.  The last two elders were really into it.  Amazonas 2 is the land of the inactives, so this strategy works really well here.  It is a small area, so it has been combed over and over.  There is already a Libro de Mormón in almost every house and everyone knows a member somewhere in their family.  We have several families that we are working with.  We are actually having lots of success, both with plan pingüino and with finding more mature investigators.  I still am a little sad I got transferred though.  Eating all my hazelnut cookies by myself without Elder Fares, Kartchner, and Anchundia kind of made them feel stolen.

The ward is good.  There are several ward missionaries here.  They are really good.  A lot of them are RM’s (return missionary) and the other is the seminary teacher.  We had a big member training meeting.  We talked about some of the past general conference addresses.  There was one by Elder Uchtdorf where he talks about how his family tried to talk about spiritual experiences they had over the weekend with their non-member friends in open and casual ways.  We also talked about Elder Perry´s talk from last week, too.  Then we practiced (like missionaries) starting friendly, spiritually-oriented conversations with friends that can lead to deeper conversations about doctrine.

Love,

brother nano

Well, this is a new breed of companion, unlike I've had before.  Se cree Jesucristo.  There is a new rule.  We have to watch each other's monitor while we write.  More information later.

A quick email later that day:
I've never really liked that thing some people do where they say to little kids, "You are the best generation there has ever been.  You are going to do what they never could.  Now missionaries think that people a few years ago did not know what teaching with the spirit is because they did not have Preach My Gospel.  I think that is happening again with Preach My Gospel 2, which just came out.  

The new missionaries are all here to teach us how to teach people, not lessons.  I have been told that I need to change how I teach because I am not looking for the investigator's needs.  I guess it was a blow for my ego, but it is kind of aggravating because he goes around telling the members that they need to straighten up because he's on the scene and they have never seen a missionary like him.  

We were able to get special permission from a mom who did not want to let her son get baptized because of her personal  grudge against the church (which is evidence, I guess, that we are special).  It made me think a lot about being back with Elder Salvioli.  He was a really good missionary and a hard worker, but I always felt we could be teaching better.  I think he could tell I was frustrated with how it worked, too.  I didn't try to pretend that I knew what the solution was to our problems, though.  I don't know.  We will try to figure it out together.

AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

I would like to invite you to join me in a mass groan of frustration because I have yet another transfer.  This makes 8 areas and 8 companions.

I got the hump day package.  Actually, Elder Fares and I got our packages the same day.  It was funny, because his family sent him a photo album and a bunch of camel pictures, too.  They sent him a ton of junk food.  We have a picture of him lying on his bed with all his stuff all over him.  Thank you so much for the picture though.  (FYI, buscear is like deep sea diving and not swimming pool diving.  A lot of people have asked about that.)

Elder Fares and I had a very lovely General Conference.  I actually only got to see sábado por la mañana (Saturday morning) and the Sunday sessions.  Our zone leaders told us only selfish missionaries go to General Conference and that we should be working.  For some reason, all my zone leaders have said that and then I see them watching Conference.  I guess listening to the prophet is a privilege for only the best missionaries.  As Miss Trunchbull would say, "much too good for children."  I have a plan, though.  I am planning on getting the sessions I missed downloaded onto the MP3.  Je Je

We were able to get a few people to come and listen to Conference, and I think the investigators heard some things that will really help them.  We had a really good week with Nancy, a recent convert.  She was pretty unsure about joining the church but has told us that she has been so pleased with her decision.  She has already made a lot of changes in her life.  She said that after her confirmation, for some reason all her family has started eating their meals together.  She told us that before everyone would eat in separate rooms at the same time, but that now they are together.  Her brother came to visit a few days ago and was really surprised to find everyone together, so now he wants to investigate the church.  We have also gotten the mother to come to church a few times. 

I guess Elder Fares and his new companion will have a lot of success there.  We also had a good experience with Vicente.  He lost his wife about a year ago and it left him pretty devastated.  He got hit by a car and hasn’t been able to work recently so he has kind of secluded himself to the 2nd story of his mother-in-law’s house and doesn’t really converse with anyone.  The other day, we taught him a little lesson and then afterwards he invited us to see his pictures of his family that I think he kind of broods over all day.  It was really good for him to let us share that with him.  Hopefully, the members will be able to get the same kind of confidence with him that we have been able to get.  The Elder’s Quorum has already come to his house and washed his car.  I will try and get you the picture.  We took it on the Zone Leader’s camera and they were going to give it to us today.  Oh well.

Elder Johnson

My new area is Amazonas 2 in Centenario, right across the river from Amazonas 1, which is where I was in early summer.  My companion’s name is Elder Johnson from LA, California.  From everything I can see, he is super pilas.  They seem to have a pretty good program here.  I sure will miss working with Nancy and her family.  I guess I should never get too comfortable in an area because that means I will probably be transferred.

Well, I hope to hear from you soon,

Love-- Elder Lovelumps

A Twix Moment

Dear Family,

How are you?  Good news. Elder Anchundia got a weird bump on his finger and went to go see the nurses.  While they were in the office they were able to get a bunch of letters as well as Lesson 1 pamphlets, tiny hymnals, scripture covers and other such useful things we have been waiting months to receive that the office has been hoarding.  They just got back a few minutes ago.

We had another interesting week.  We were going to have this guy and his sister be baptized soon, but the guy had some problems he didn’t tell us about so we had to postpone him.  Later events (edited for privacy) reminded me of a string of Twix commercials I saw before I left.  Someone would make a really dumb comment, the whole world would slow down, he’d pull a Twix out of his pocket, take a bite, and then think of something really clever to say to blow smoke and get himself out of trouble.  Anyway, Elder Fares was pretty quick on his feet, so it all turned out happy.

This week we found this guy who has had a terrible sad story to tell.  When he was 13 years old, he was drafted into the army to fight against the Peruvians and the Japanese in WW2.  He was a support gunner, but received very serious back damage from having to carrying around over 50 pounds of ammunition.  He could not afford medical treatment, but somehow, someone helped him get to Cuba, where they were able to save his life by injecting him with spinal fluid or something.  He went back to Manabi where he was able to get a finca (rural property) and lived there for a while.  Now he is all alone.  We hope to be able to help him, but his church is giving him a little bit of support money and has forbidden him to talk to us.

Things are going well with Elder Fares and me.  Transfers are next week, so I hope we will get some more time together.

Well, talk to you soon--

Nan-man

I haven’t received any picture emails for the past several weeks until the 22nd with the picture of the girls on the teeter totter and Livi and Luci off to school.

Noche en Blanca incident

Dear Family,

How are you all this week?  I had a great first week in Salado 2.  

This week was Stake Conference.  They tried to plan a lot of fellowshipping stuff for the investigators after the conference, but I don’t think it was planned too well.  They wanted to have a large baptismal service (Noche en Blanca) shortly after conference so that many of the investigators could attend and have a positive experience with baptism.  Most of the investigators already acquainted with the church and our activities were wise enough to run for the hills when they heard there was going to be a non-member focused activity after the meetings.  So, the only people they roped in were the people whose first exposure to the church was this conference.  Since most of these people showed up unexpected, nobody knew who most of them were.  

We herded them into a back room to try and sort them out and assign them a missionary until we realized the baptismal font was flooding the entire chapel.  A bishop from another ward tried entertaining the investigators by handing out free Young Women stationary and seminary study materials while about 12 missionaries from our zone ran around the chapel trying to stop the flooding.  I guess some member had turned on the font pump during stake conference to get it ready for the Noche en Blanca but they locked the compartment that had access to the pump knob.  They forgot to turn off the pump, so we had to fill up buckets from the font and then flush them in the bathroom to stop the water from continuing to spill into the halls.  It was lots of excitement.  I felt bad for the investigators.  During the commotion, most of them had looks on there faces saying "Why can’t I go home?  Is the flooding serious?  Will someone please tell me what is happening?”  After we cleaned up, we had a nice baptismal service.

Anyway, we have a few people who are progressing.  The first is Vicente. He’s had a rough past few weeks so he’s been hard to get a hold of, but he’s certainly confident in his decision to join the church.  We are also working with familia Buenaño.  They have a long time in the program but have finally accepted a baptismal date and are also ready to be members.  They all were able to come to conference and enjoyed the experience. (although none of them witnessed the Noche en Blanca incident)  We have one or two other families that we have only visited once or twice, but we hope they’ll continue to progress.  Well, I’m sorry.  I guess this kind of sounds like my carta to presidente (weekly letter to the mission president).  

I talked with Elder Carnese.  He is the mission secretary which I guess means he is the only office missionary.  President Montalti thinned the office staff out a little bit.  Elder C was glad to hear I knew Forest Grove and asked me if I knew an ice cream place there. That is my report.

Elder Fares’s camera is damaged, too, but we usually go out with Elder Kartchner and Ayundia and they have cameras.  I haven’t been able to get my camera fixed.  You should know there is a new mission policy that we can only have permission to leave our zone once every transfer so most p-days we have to just hang around Salado 2. Guayaquil is not as great for P-day excursions as Cuenca.

How is everyone doing in the new school year?  I’m kind of disappointed I won’t be receiving any pictures today from the famfam.

Well, talk to you all soon.  

love brother nanito

First gringo companion...sort of

Greetings from Salado 2!

Elder Fares

I am on the move again. I think I just need to visit El Cisne and I’ll have been in every zone in Guayaquil. I have a wonderful new companion, Elder Fares. He is actually from my MTC group. He is originally from Miami, but has moved around a lot from California to Utah. First gringo companion. Actually he’s gringo-latino. His family is from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. With some of my other companions I kind of lied through my teeth to talk them up, but I can honestly say my new companion is awesome. I am excited. So far, I only have two days here. I got here on Saturday. They pulled both me and Elder Liberato out of Esteros. We are living in a foursome with Elder Karchner (AZ) and Elder Anchundia (Manabí, Ecuador).

More exciting news: Elder Uceda of the Seventy in new regional presidency came to visit Guayaquil yesterday. He talked to us about having more effective study time. He made a cool illustrative example. He drew a four by four grid on a white board and asked the missionaries how many boxes they could see. Some said 16 and some said a few more. He showed how you could find more boxes by making groups of 4, 9, and 16 boxes. He said that sometimes when we study, we say there are only 16 boxes and skip over a passage because we think we know it, but if we take it slower and ponder important words, we can find 17, 21, or 30 boxes.

Anyway, I am still getting to know the investigators, but it sounds like we have some good people. We have a really good ward mission leader, Hno. Saenz. He was bishop in the past so he knows how things work. No more of this lazy unmarried RM business. Hno. Saenz likes gospel trivia.

Well, hope to hear from you soon.

Love, Nane
(Is LaFawnda the new phone?)

Hope you have a good dinner with the new biker-buddy DeGooyers.  Pres. Montalti says hi, Bup.

I like members...

Hola Familia,

Bueno, I hope you get everything out of your last hours of summer. I guess you still haven’t gone in yet. What did Lia give her talk on?

This week we had a couple of meetings with President Montalti. I got to see the new guide for training a new missionary. The church has a new study plan for the first 12 weeks a missionary is in the field. It goes through the new Preach My Gospel lessons that I’ve never really been able to see. Presidente Montalti has taught them to all the missionaries in leadership, but they have never taught them directly to the other missionaries. I liked how they focus on really teaching the basic and most important parts of the gospel and how we can help them get past the general problems they have with reading, praying, and going to church. President gave a conference on how our attitude is a reflection of our faith. I need to make sure Elder Gruñón does not come and visit Ecuador.

This week we worked with a young woman named Faviola. She is the sister of a recent convert. She had a great time at church and is already friends with all the girls her age. So far the only potential problem is her cranky serrana mother. When we went by her house to pick her up for church, she was all ready to go but her mom did not want to let her leave. We tried persuading her, but eventually gave up. We passed by the house of another member family, Familia de la Torre, and told them what happened. The sister said, "Her mom won’t let her go. Just leave this to me." Fifteen minutes later we were pleased to see Faviola arriving to the chapel with Fma. de la Torre. I like members.

Anyway, I hope to hear from you tomorrow at district meeting. I am about 4 weeks behind. Elder Liberato told me that there are only two missionaries working in the office right now. He does have a camera but is looking for a charger. I have heard that there are some good people here who fix cameras. I may try and find someone to look at mine and see if it is salvageable. I also have damaged a few other expensive possessions. My shoes are going to have a blow on the heel any day now. Should I just buy some Ecuadorian shoes? I may be able to get a good pair at the mall. My shoe size is always the largest they carry in any shoe store.

My good pair of glasses broke. That is old news, but I had them kind of fixed and now they are really broken. If I get someone to try and solder the frame, will that damage the lenses? The nose piece is what is broken, right next to the lens. The only problem with the Zach pants is that they need to be dry cleaned. I’ve already had a few pairs of pants damaged by mamitas so I am afraid to use Zach’s a lot. They fit well though. I actually have inherited another 3 pairs of pants from missionaries who have left their clothes behind, so I don’t need any more. I’m good in the clothes department til the end of the mission, I think. Just socks, but I can get those easy here.

Well, Talk to you later
Elder Ludlam