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

Here Comes Conference!

Well it´s been quite the week here, with a lot of challenges!  But we´re working things out!

We´re getting ready for tons of things right now!  We have a zone conference tomorrow, as well as General Conference.  I got really lucky this time because the chapel is two blocks from my house!  

This week we spent a lot of time helping the other missionaries out.  We spent a day up in Tulcan, which was COLD!  Really neat though.  Besides all the students who were rioting... some kind of protest I think.  We ran for it when we saw a cop coming with a gas mask hanging around his neck.  Nothing bad happened though.  To us anyway!  The elders in Tuclan are doing great, considering the place was kind of a mess when they got there.  Now they have a lot of families listening to them, and the district president is very happy with them.  Here in Ibarra is going well too, we just have to get the members more involved because the investigators tend to get scared a lot.  But we´re working on that.  Our hope for this week is that Luis gets baptized.  He´s an investigator who has attended church for the last four months, but hasn´t made the decision to get baptized yet.  But he´s close!  He asked for an appointment this week with the branch president, and he also asked us if the water in the font was cold.  We took him there and showed him, then said, ¨we´ll fill it up for you right now if you´d like!¨  Might have scared him just a bit!  We´re also working with a lady named Maria and her two kids.  Also very close, she just has some things she needs to take care of first.  So I should be able to send a few good baptism photos over the next few weeks!  

That´s the news for now!  I forgot the charger for my camera in Guaranda, so I´m still waiting for the missionaries there to send it to me.  Hopefully soon, eh?  I want to take some photos!

Love,

Elder Wallace

Here We Go!

It´s that time again!

We´ve started the transfer off well!  The zone had 3 baptisms this week, one of them ours.  A guy named Marlon, who pretty much taught himself about the church over the internet.  I wish everyone was like that!  But it went well for us.  Ibarra is a good place, and there is a lot of potential here.

Our goal is to help the branch become a ward and for the district to become a stake.  For that to happen, we have to get a lot of new priesthood holders baptized or activated.  We should do well, because our Elders´ Quorum president is really great, and helps us out a lot.  I´ll send more details as well as pictures later when there is more time. 

So to sum things up, I´m enjoying Ibarra.  It´s a nice climate here, and my house is the nicest one I have been to since I started the mission.  We even have a microwave.  Oh yeah!

Love,

Elder Wallace

Zone Leader In Ibarra

Transfered Again?

I´ve been transferred!

Kind of a shock to tell the truth.  I only had six weeks in Otavalo, but now I´m on the move again.  My new zone is Ibarra, which isn´t terribly far from Otavalo.  My companion is Elder Resendiz, from Mexico.  I´m excited to work with him because we were in the same zone before, and now we´re companions.  We´re also going to make tons of Mexican food!  Ibarra is a district, so it´s all branches here.  We have five companionships in the zone, which goes all the way to the Colombian frontier.  I´ll probably get to check that out when I go work with the missionaries there!

Well, that´s kind of all for this week.  I´ll send a bunch of photos though because we had an open house this last Wednesday!  Enjoy!

Love,

Elder Wallace