Happy Halloween...?

It´s kind of an up-in-the-air kind of thing here in Ecuador, Halloween.  Apparently President Correa banned it from all the schools because the Ecuadorians are supposed to celebrate ´El día del escudo´.  (Day of the coat of arms, or something like that.  I think it has something to do with that little do-hickey on their flag). Interesting stuff.

So this week Andrés got baptized!  He´s 22, and has some really good neighboors who are members.  They helped us out a lot with their testimonies (they brought cake to the baptism as well, which wasn´t too bad either!)  Just goes to show that testimony is a lot more powerful than any knowledge of doctrine that we have.  Knowledge is important, but it´s not everything.  He was a bit nervous at first, but we helped him out!  He´s really great and we´re going to help him receive the priesthood as soon as possible.

We also had a full weekend of conferences.  First, the zone conference among missionaries.  I had to direct the conference, give a training, and organize a musical number with a musically-challenged zone where half the missionaries just barely arrived.  That was interesting.  But it all went well.  I directed just fine, the training went well, and we sang ´´I´m trying to be like Jesus´´.  Simple song, even we couldn´t mess it up!  President Ghent spoke to us, and gave us a lot of good counsel.  On Saturday and Sunday we had district conference, so we had even more meetings this weekend.  Lots of chances to get our investigators to church.  We went with the Benavidez family, a newlywed couple that we´re working with right now.  They´re great!  Their boss is a member who lives in Quito, so we have a really good fellowshipper right away!  When we got to their house, they were barely getting up, and the husband said that they probably wouldn´t be able to go because they hadn´t showered, his wife was making breakfast, and the floor was all dirty and needed to be swept.  I told him to go shower while his wife made breakfast and while I swept. Persistence!  The four of us had a great time at church!  

This week will be interesting.  Lots of people to find, lots to teach, and lots to baptize.  We´ll see how it all goes!  The photos of today are of Andrés, and also of Vinicio and his aunt Mercedes.  See you all next week!  

Love,

Elder Wallace

Change It Up!

Transfers today!

Luckily, I didn´t go anywhere!  Our zone sure took a beating though.  We lost half the missionaries that we had, and they took both the missionaries out of one sector.  They will put in two new ones.  Kind of rotten luck, but we´ll do what we can!  Right now Elder Adams is with me and my comp.  His companion is coming all the way from Puyo, which is pretty much one of the other extremes of the mission (the orient).  The good news is that I got a call this morning from Elder Cruz (my greenie in Guaranda).  He´s got a greenie of his own now!  Cool stuff.

This week´s news... we had another baptism!  That always makes us happy.  Just an 11 year-old this time, but a really cool one.  His name is Vinicio.  His aunt Mercedes is a member and she is the one who is legally responsible for him.  She was afraid of her catholic mom getting mad at her if she let him get baptized.  But we encouraged her and now she´s doing great!  I´ll send photos next week (forgot my camera).  But Vinicio is a future missionary.  We asked him about his Book of Mormon reading and he proceeded to spout off an entire history starting with Moroni and ending with the publication in 1823 (even I didn´t remember that!).  He´s very ´pilas´, as they like to say here.

Other Ibarra happenings: We have district conference next week, and President Ghent will be coming!  Hopefully there´s a good tongue-lashing in store!  (President Sloan always taught us that if someone truly cares about us, they will give us correction!).  Then the beginning of November, Elder Uceda is going to visit our mission (from the area presidency).  That should be pretty cool.  Our branch president started an activity where we all pair off in companionships and visit the people who weren´t at church.  We do that every Sunday afternoon.  We´re happy about it, now just have to keep bugging him about having branch counsel!  We had a movie night this last Friday, which we used as an opportunity to give some of our newer investigators a tour of the chapel.  It went well (we put on Kung Fu Panda 2!!).  The district president supports us a lot when we want to do activities, so it´s pretty easy to do them.        

So... in response to some of the questions and things like that...  In a package... how about a a nice jar of peanut butter?  Haven´t had that in a while.  The crunchy kind.  If not, then perhaps some m&ms.  I also have a question.  It appears that the people´s names are being censored from the blog.  What´s going on there?  I´d prefer not to lose their names!  I´ll remember my camera next time because there´s always more to talk about when there are pictures involved!  Here´s one my comp sent me.  Maybe I need to change my preaching techniques...  

Well, until next week!  I´ll be enduring to the end!  (although the word ´´endure´´ makes it sound like something painful!  I assure you I´m enjoying the work I do!).

Love,

Elder Wallace

Happy 20 Months To Me!

Well, this email should be nice and long because I have a whole bunch of pictures!  

First of all, Luis got baptized two weeks ago.  It was something really exciting for us because he had been listening to the missionaries for four months without any visible progress.  It turns out he was just afraid of getting baptized, and now he is really happy and should be getting the priesthood soon!  I´m really glad we were patient with him because it seemed for a while that he didn´t want to do anything.

The next week, María and Dennis got baptized.  They live REALLY far away, so it was kind of tough to teach them.  She´s really humble though, and even taught us to make awesome little scone-type things (that´s my smiley face that I made!).  Her husband just got back from working far away, so he should be home more frequently now.  We only met him about twice before, once to get to know him and once so he could aprove of his wife getting baptized.  We´ll see how things go with him now.  

Things have been going well in the zone, and all three of our companionships here in Ibarra are having baptisms.  Tulcan is beginning to do a lot better as well.  There´s a picture of our district in Ibarra at a baptism the sisters had (left to right - Elder Adams, Sister Figueroa, Sister Garcia, myself, Elder Resendiz, and Elder Dipiton).  We´ve also been busy helping out all of our missionaries so that they have success.  I went on splits with Elder Adams, who is from American Fork.  I had no clothes with me, so he was kind enough to lend me some of his.  As you can tell from the photo of me with his clothes, he´s a pretty big guy!  We´re also working a lot on working with the members of the branch.  There´s a photo of us at Maria´s house with Gladys and Kevin, two of our members who help us out.  Kevin is a convert of about 3 months who can go on a mission in about two years, so we take him with us a lot.  Gladys is one of our branch missionaries who is sending in her mission papers very soon.  When I got here, it was kind of difficult working with the members because branches are so tiny!  But now we are having a lot more success, and the district president is being very helpful.  We´re getting a movie night ready for this Friday!  We hope to get a lot of referrals from it!

Today we went to Peguche!  Second time for me, because it´s close to Otavalo.  I was pretty much the only one in the zone that was against the idea, but I had a great time anyway!  We went and checked out the waterfall there, which was pretty awesome.  We got back and had pizza!  So all in all, a good day.  I´m happy and ready to work.  So thank you all for your emails, and for the support you give me!  I´ve got to go!  It´s time to start working.

Love,

Elder Wallace

I'm Tired!

Elder Thomas and Elder Wallace

Hey everyone!  Ready for another week?

So this week was a hectic one!  Here´s what we did...

Monday: We left in the morning for Quito with María, who needed to be interviewed by President Ghent.  Picked up some things from the mission offices, and went to the house in Quito where all the missionaries stay when we have meetings.

Tuesday:  A full day of meetings with President Ghent, lots of things to remember, and lots of goal-setting for all the zones.

Wednesday:  More meetings with more people.  We made it back to Ibarra at night, and enjoyed a night of sleep in my own bed.  

Thursday:  We ran around trying to get our area in order, checking up on the people who needed to be baptized and confirmed.  Didn´t look too great.  Luis said he wouldn´t be able to make it to church for his comfirmation, and María wasn´t at home.  

Friday:  We got put on splits by our district leader, so I spent the day and that night in his area with his companion.  Totally took us by surprise.  I didn´t have a single change of extra clothes with me, but the day went well and we found a lot of great people.  My companion and our district leader found María, and everything got arranged for her baptism!

Saturday:  María got baptized along with her son Dennis!  (I got to baptize him).  The sisters also had a baptism in their branch, so we also attended that.  Also, we found out that Luis had visited with the branch´s Relief Society preisdent, who is a good friend of his.  She CHEWED HIM OUT!!!  He called us to tell us that he WOULD make it to church the next day to be comfirmed!

Sunday:  María, Dennis, and Luis all got comfirmed.  Afterwards we had a brief meeting with the district president to talk about the mission work.  Then we got a call from the district leader in Tulcan telling us that he needed baptismal interviews.  So we travelled the 2 1/2 hours to Tulcan, did the interviews, then made it back to Ibarra just as it was time to be back at the house.  We planned quickly and went to bed early.  

Now we´re ready for another week!  We made burgers as a district today, and they were tasty!  Now it´s time to check up on the families that we found last week and see what we can do about getting them baptized.  I think I should be greatful that I´m not travelling 6 hours in Australia like Grandma and Grandpa Wallace!  I can handle the trip to Tulcan (even when the bus gets stopped and checked for cocaine every now and then!).  Good job on the 22 mile walk in the mud, the garden and all of its produce, BYD, the dance, and running cross-country minus one toenail.  (You´ll get used to stuff like that in the mission, my feet are in pretty rough shape right now!).  Thank you all for supporting me, and I´ll talk to you all tomorrow!

Love,

Elder Wallace

P.S.  Elder Thomas told me that he heard from his mom that she heard from my mom that my mom had said that my emails are too short.  What do you all think?  haha

Good Ol' Conference!

Well hi!

Well, conference weekend was great!  I got lucky too, because there´s a little cable hook-up next to the baptismal font that I hooked a TV up to so we could watch in English!  Everything worked out great, and we had a lot of success getting investigators to the conference.  We also got Luis baptized!  He said later that he was nervous, but that he feels really happy now.  Today we travelled to Quito with Maria Mora, one of our investigators, so she could get interviewed by President Ghent.  She passed and will be baptized along with her son this next weekend!  

As far as other activities... we did an ´invasion´ in Tulcan, looking for new people.  It went great!  We even found a long-lost church member who had been out of touch for a while because there is no church in his city.  He was great though.  He told us he knew that Joseph Smith was the first prophet in the latter days, and that he knew that Spencer W. Kimball is the present-day prophet (just a LITTLE out of touch, wouldn´t you think?).    

So now we´re in Quito, and we have a couple of meetings tomorrow and on Wednesday.  As for visits to places when it´s time for me to leave... I would like to visit some people in Quito and in Guaranda.  I´m not sure about Esmeraldas because it´s a little out of the way, not to mention dangerous.  We´ll see.  I´d like to check out Baños, maybe a bit of the Orient.  If we want to climb a mountain, there´s Chimborazo as well as Cotapaxi.  We can decide which one later.  We can check out Otavalo as well.  So there are some ideas.  Hope they´re of help!  See you all next week.

Love,

Elder Wallace