We Baptized Shakira!

No seriously, that´s her name!  The first nine year-old I´ve baptized in several months, but still good!  We´re working with several others here, who need a lot of support!

First of all, we have José and Delia Aguilar.  They´re a young couple in their early twenties.  Delia´s brother is a member, and he´s been helping us.  Our only challenge is that José is pretty shy and needs a lot of support.  We´ll be working with him though.

Our other progressing investigator is Olga.  She´s about 30, and has two little girls.  She wants to get baptized, but she works for an old lady who is completly against it.  In reality, she´s more of a slave than an employee.  It´s tough because without work, she won´t be able to support her kids.  So we´re going to see if any of the members need someone to work for them.

Good to hear about the happenings in Roosevelt.  Sounds like lots of soccer and fairs.  Let me know how it goes when school starts!  As for the picking me up, I still think I have plenty of time left!  But still, I think it would be permitted.  One of the elders from Guaranda is getting picked up by his mom.  You could ask about it if you´d like.

Love,

Elder Wallace

Otavalo

How´s it going?

I´ve been transferred!  Like I said before, I´m in Otavalo.  It´s a pretty place, we went up to a waterfall called Peguche today.  The members are really great, and the church is a lot bigger here!  When I arrived I was told that I was only allowed to baptize the indigenous people here.  I thought to myself, ´wow, that´s pretty racist´.  But I discovered why yesterday morning.  The sacrament meetings are in Quichua!  I didn´t understand a thing!  So the ward mission leader said he would help teach me if I teach him English.  So we´ll have to see how that goes.  

We have a lot of potential here as far as baptisms.  If all goes as planned, we should finish the month with 6 or more.  Pretty much everyone has a ponytail, and everybody´s involved in some kind of artisanship.  They get pretty wealthy doing it too!

Well here are some pictures, if I can get them on here!  Enjoy!

I'm Alive!

Hey mom!

Just writing to tell you that I´m okay! We had tranfers today, and I´m in Otavalo now! My companion is Elder Marquez from La Paz, Bolivia. We have an indigenous ward, so it should be interesting! I met our bishop and our stake president yesterday. They both have some pretty long ponytails going on! I will talk more next week!

Love,

Elder Wallace

P.S. Please don´t email the mission offices or all the senior missionaries will chew me out again.

Otavalo

Apurado!

Hey Everybody!

I apologize in advance, we travelled today to play soccer with another zone, so I´m short on time again!  I´m here with Elder Hakes, one of the zone leaders, because he´s going to interview more of our investigators!  Also going to help me with a big family that the other missionaries are teaching.

This week Maria Elena got baptized.  She´s Consuelo´s older sister (see previous emails!).  She is doing really well now, and we had to wait a little longer because of the interviews, stuff like that.  But it all turned out well.  She´s a manager at one of the grocery stores here in Guaranda, so we had quite a few of her fellow employees attending the baptism!  Some of them in uniform.  Ha!  It went well though, besides the fact that somebody disconnected the water heater and the font was cold!  Elder Cruz was telling me how cold the water was as we filled the font, when Maria Elena called me and said she wanted Elder Cruz to baptize her!  He was happy to do the baptism, not too thrilled about the cold water!  All went well though.

My pictures didn´t turn out too well, so I´ll be sending some next week!  We did get to know the new mission president.  He was working in the area offices before in Peru.  He´s a nice guy, so is his wife.  We got interviewed by them both, and they´re really great.  They´re from California, several children, he´s really tall, etc. 

More updates next week!  Off to get some interviews done!  See ya!

Love,

Elder Wallace

Another Good Week!

Buenas Tardes!

Well, I really don´t have much to say this week! We had a baptism, her name is Maira. A kid named ´Whimper´ got baptized as well (from the branch). I asked his mom if she knew what ´Whimper´ meant in English. She does!

We´ve just been spending a lot of time looking for new people. It´s working! Hopefully I´ll be able to send a few more pictures! In the pictures we have Maira and Whimper, with a few other members and investigators. Also one of me playing around with one of those big truck horns with the Ramos family. They´re pretty great. We get lots of referrals from them. I like Brother Ramos´ conversion story as well. He was actually studying to be a Catholic priest, but he read ´unauthorized´ parts of the Bible and got excommunicated! Pretty funny. Everyone has their story, don´t they?

Hope all is well! I´ll write more when I have some more interesting stories!

Love,

Elder Wallace

Explanations

Hey Everyone!

We had a great week this week!  Five baptisms in the district!  The other elders baptized the Saltos family, and Elder Cruz and I baptized Consuelo.  Both have great stories behind them, so I´ll tell you a bit.

A couple of months ago, I was on splits with one of our zone leaders.  We´d just finished a baptism, and we still had about 15 minutes before it was time to be in the house.  So we decided to get hot dogs!  At the hot dog stand we met a lady named Lucy, who was with her two kids buying hot dogs.  So we started talking to her and I took down her name and address so we could visit her.  She lives in the other elders´ area, so I gave them the referral.  Turns out her husband was trying to get closer to God, and was really receptive to the visits of the missionaries.  It all turned out well in the end!  I also got to baptize the son.  The four of them are Remigio (the dad), Lucy, Alicia, and Mustafá (that was a fun name to remember!)

Consuelo was a referral from one of our members.  She´d been through a lot on life and accepted a baptismal date right off the bat.  She was going to be baptized this coming Saturday, but she told me about five days ago, ´´Elder Wallace, why did you put my baptismal date so far away?  I want to get baptized now!´´  To tell you the truth that kind of took me by surprise, because that is really NOT something you usually hear from investigators!  So we rushed one of our zone leaders out to Guaranda and she was baptized this last weekend!  I got to baptize her as well.  

The rest of the pictures are from a presentation that we did in one of the parks in Riobamba (two hours away from my area, but it was still fun).  Also of some of the food we like to make on P-days.  So that´s it for now!  Hope everyone is well, and I´ll talk to you next week!

The church is true!

Elder Wallace