September it is!

Dear Ludlam Family,

Elder Ludlam will be ending his mission on September 4^th! We were able to get him a later flight. I have sent the information to President Jones to be able to coordinate his release. Feel free to write if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Elder Johnson

Mission President´s Secretary

Ecuador Guayaquil South Mission

Phone: 011-593-4-228-2454

An Official Notice

Dear Ludlam Family,

Two years has gone by quickly! On the 7^th of August, 2012, your son, Grant Ludlam, will return home. We are very grateful for the service he has given in our mission. We are also grateful for the support you have given him. I have attached his flight plans for your convenience. President  Jones  is already aware and will be in contact with you to coordinate his release. We appreciate your response to this letter.

Sincerely,

Élder Johnson

Secretario del Presidente

Misión Ecuador Guayaquil Sur

Tel 04.228.2454

Glad tidings of great sadness

Well, Glad tidings of great sadness.

Elder Johnson just called and informed me that he was not able to
conseguir (acquire) another ticket to go home in Sept so I will be seeing you
all very soon.  I have not been able to averiguar (find out) if I will be able to
write next Monday.

Loves,
Mr. Officially Trunky

Grant requests an extension

Dear Family,

How are you all this fine day?  Centenario has been great.  Contacts are a little hard, but we have great members to work with.  The houses are all practically fortresses.  In the richest neighborhood I was surprised to see that there were actually less security measures taken than in a regular Guayaquil house until I found the huge sniper tower in the park in the middle of the neighborhood.  Go figure.  But it is all really clean and safe, so don’t worry.  I am already missing the dark, scary streets of the Guayaquil I know and love.

Elder Ovalle's birthday with Elder Gomez and Chaque

This probably sounds funny, but I had the most exciting ward council I’ve ever had in my whole mission last week.  I have always wanted to learn to work with members better and could never figure out how to use well my time in ward council.  Usually all the different organizations say what they want, but then nobody really makes a plan to try and fix it.  I like how this ward had kept a record of all the assignments and problems from the last week and they all reported on if they had been completed or solved.  Everyone gave good reports on their assignments and everybody contributed great ideas on how to help people in their progress in the church.  It was exciting.  Everyone knew the investigators and was willing to help.  The only problem is that everyone has pretty tight schedules.  Our ward mission leader is also an ex-stake president and he’s great, too.  It made me not want to leave.

Which brings me to my next point.  I hope you all won’t want to kill me for what I am about to tell you.  Brother G decided he wasn’t quite ready to stop being a missionary and asked President Montalti if he could stay until the rest of his group left at the end of the month.  Elder Johnson is looking for a plane ticket right now.  We still aren’t sure if it is going to all work out, but I will try to get back to you later.  Please don’t be angry.

Recently, I have been trying to put into practice PMG's (Preach My Gospel Manual) advice to write all the commitments that you make in your agenda to verify if they are being completed the next day.  I have discovered a fascination for checking off tiny boxes.  It gives me such a sense of accomplishment when I get to take out my little red pen a make a definitive check or X.  Missionaries are weird.

Oh yeah, Elder Piño came to give us multi-zone conferences, so we got to have him up close.  I think pictures are soon to come.  ¿Was he president of Rosario, Argentina, before of after tu, mama (you, mom)?  He told me to say thanks to you for taking me to piano lessons.

An ATM machine robbed me $240 two weeks ago, so I’ve been trying to live on just $35.  It came down tight, but this month’s money came in and it feels so great.  Ice cream for everyone on me!

Well, I love you so!
Mr. Viktorly

Cordero Grosero is Transferred!

Changes!

It looks like I will be spending my last two weeks in Barrio Centenario.  My new companion's name is Elder Gómez de Guatemala, Guatemala.  I was glad to find they had a program here because this sector is known for being kind of hard.  They changed Elder "Arroyos" también (Brooks also).  He’s going to Loja.  He’s happy about that.

Elder Gomez.  Doesn't he look like German from the District 2?

Well, I wasn’t really expecting this, but I am glad to have one last area.  Elder Fares is taking over Solana.  We left him a few good people.  I don’t know why, but for a few days this past week, I was just really happy.  One night I just went to bed super content.  I just felt really good about what I had done and what I was doing.  The next day, I was all smiles.  It was weird.  I even got this really grumpy evangelica (evangelical) who is always brava con nosotros (contentious with us) to give me back a big toothy one.  You never would have known she had a pretty smile.  I’ve since calmed down to regularity, but it was a good lesson.  It seemed like everyone was so much more willing to pay attention to us when we were so downright cheerful.  Smiles open doors.

This past week, we’ve been trying to get this elderly gentleman to get married.  He is the grandpa and father of some members in the ward and has been attending forever but hasn’t ever accepted baptism.  We finally got him to accept, but then learned he needed to get married to a companion.  He doesn’t want to, but has been really interested another viejita (older sister) in the ward, so we thought we’d help them get together.  While all of this was going on, these past few weeks, Elder Brooks has been trying to get several pairs of pants redone.  The sewing guy we took them to took forever to get them done.  We later learned that he had also asked the very same viejita (older sister) to marry him, but she had said that he needed to join the church before she would consider it. We have suddenly found ourselves tangled in a very strange love triangle.  I’ve had lots of drama issues with converts and ward members, but I never thought it would be a problem for people in the 60-80 year old range.

Well, Elder Brooks still hasn’t gotten his pants back yet and has been trying to make plans for someone to get them to him all the way out in Loja.  I think he is going to have to do the exchange when Elder Piño of the Seventies comes to conference (he’s finally coming!)  Anyway, Elder Brooks and I had a good time singing, "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match" as we walked through the streets these past few days.

As I’ve been trying to keep focused, I’ve realized I don’t think I really need to worry about what I will need to learn or gain here in the mission in order to be better prepared for the "after" life.  When I just focus on getting done what I need to do right now, then I will always have everything I need.  That scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 15 (vs 6) has popped into my head a lot this last week about what is of greatest importance to thee, is to bring souls unto Christ. “…the thing which will be of the most worth unto you will be to declare repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them in the kingdom of my Father.” That is my anxiety-relieving thought for the week.

Well, love you so,
Love Elder Cordero Grosero (lewd-lamb)

South American Culture Story

A lot of parents here tape Virgin Mary stickers all over the packages to their missionaries here because then the postal people are too scared to open it up to steal stuff.  My companion's family sent him a huge box of candy, covered in virgin stickers a couple of weeks ago.

As we were walking around town, this lady sees the box from across the street and calls for my companion to stop.  She comes over and points to the box and says, "Can you please give me one of those?"  My companion asked what she wanted.  She said, "I want some of those stickers. Do you have any more in your box?"  My companion told her he didn't have stickers in the box.  "What do you have in box, then?" she asked.  "They are books about the Bible, aren't they? Can I have one, please?"  My companion said no, it's just a bunch of candy.  The woman looked at the ground confused for a second and then said, "Oh...can you please give me one?"  We gave her a Book of Mormon.

Plantains Ahead

Hello Family,

And still the move goes on.  I hope you are all hanging in there.  At least no one has had heat stroke this time.

Today a sister in the ward showed us how to make some Ecuadorian recipes.  We learned how to make colada, a drink with oatmeal, carrots, tomato, and Maracuyá. Delicious. We also learned how to make  menestra de lentejas. That’s something we eat almost every day and is a personal favorite of Elder Brooks.  She asked us what we wanted to learn, so I asked for these because I thought we could get the ingredients state side.  (I hope you are ready to eat a lot of plantains in the coming months)

Diego's Family.  We were surprised to see his inactive
father and mother, Angelica, at the baptism.

Here is a picture of Diego’s baptism.  He has been ready for a while, but we have waited because the zone leaders were worried about people supporting him because his entire family is inactive.  Here in the photo, they all came to support him at his baptism.  He has been going to seminary all by himself for almost two months now.

Diego was baptized by his cousin, Stalin Velastegui

We did pretty well this last week.  We got the family with the inactive dad to church and I think it was a really good experience.  His wife didn’t make it, but he brought one of his kids.  Gary and his son also made it (by himself) to church.  He is a cousin of some members and recently had an industrial accident.  Some ward members knew him from an out-of-church setting and were really happy to see him attending.  It was just proof that all the members are just loaded with references that they don’t want to give us.  Just kidding.  The missionaries need to find better ways of asking.

Love, Elder Ludlam