Success!

Buenas Tardes!

We had a great week this week! All of our persistence has paid off! We had the baptism of Jose Gramal. Pretty significant because he had been listening to the missionaries for over a year, since his wife got baptized. He would always go off subject during the lessons, talking about Mayans and whatnot. The previous missionaries had written in his teaching record, ´he says we´re never ever going to convince him´. But hey, look what happened! His wife was very persistent with him, and he had read the Book of Mormon and gained a testimony of it. He´s going to be a strong member, even if he´s a bit of a silly guy (you´ll notice that he´s trying to put bunny ears on Elder Robinson!)

Our members here are also doing great! I´m not sure what happned to them but I´m not going to complain one bit! They´re suddenly on fire, helping us a lot and giving us referrals. We are now working with a total of ten investigators that are preparing for baptism. My worry now is that we might get spread thin! We should be able to work things out though!

Sounds like everybody is doing a lot of camping! Hope all goes well and that nobody freezes to death!

Chao!

Elder Wallace

Lots of Travels, Little Time

Hey everybody! 

This will be a short letter because I don´t have a lot of time!

Yesterday night I helped out with some interviews here in Riobamba (we´re waiting for the bus right now!)  The zone leaders finally have a family that is going to be baptized, a family with 9 people.  Needless to say, the district leader here felt a bit overloaded, so they called me to help out.  I interviewed the mom and the three little girls while he interviewed the dad and the oldest son.  I think I got the easy end of that deal!

We stayed the night here in Riobamba, but now we are heading back.  Sara is doing better with her smoking problem.  She´s also having issues because her ex-husband keeps coming by, he seems to want to pretend that they´re still married.  But he´s been convicted once of abuse against her, so we talked with her about what she should do.  If the man comes back, she will call the cops and he´ll get sent to jail.  Hopefully sooner than later, because she´s more tempted to smoke when he´s bugging her, and it also makes her daughter more suceptible to epilepsy attacks.  Hopefully we can get it all worked out!

Enjoyed all the letters!  I´ll be writing back as soon as I can!  Elder Cruz and I didn´t get changed either!  Six weeks more!

Love,

Elder Wallace

A Week Of Improvement

Hey everyone!

Nice to get your emails! It was also nice to have a better week! We have two more people with baptismal dates. One is a lady named Sara. The other is her daughter Ipatia. Ipatia is 40 but lives with her mom because she has epilepsy. She still understands well though. Sara told us that she and her daughter were going to be baptized, but didn´t because the missionaries got transferred and the new missionaries never visited them. But now we are picking up where the other elders left off! We just need to help Sara quit smoking. She´s down to just two cigarettes a day, so we should be good by the 25th. She doesn´t smoke when she´s with her 1 year-old grandson, so she´s been doing a lot of voluntary babysitting! We also call her every day to help her. That´s the investigator news of the week!

We went and made lunch with the Suarez family today. They´re Elder Robinson´s investigators who need to get married. They´re really great and come to church each week. They´re even going to sell their nightclub (Colombia Billiards!) to be able to have less spiritually-destructive jobs! We were cooking and heard the first counselor of the branch talking on the radio (he is one of their announcers). So Luis (the husband) called him and told him to announce the missionaries on the radio! And they did! This is what we heard...

...´´and Elder Robinson, Wallace, Arriaga, and Elder Cruz!´´ (at this point we all cheered, but then came the next part...)

...´Sending you their greetings from Colombia Billiards!´

That was pretty funny! We were at their house, by the way, and not at their nightclub. Hopefully nobody was listening! haha

Well that´s all for now! President Sloan´s last zone conference tomorrow! More to follow next week!

Love,

Elder Wallace

The Sloans Are Going Home This Month

This is from Sister Sloan's blog...can you spy Elder Wallace?

What a wonderful day - we had the whole mission together for a special conference with Elder Gonzales, Elder Hooker, and their wives. We had over 200 missionaries in the chapel at once. We will never forget this happy day!

A Week Of Trials

Hey everyone!

This week was a tough one! We walked a LOT! (We were searching for all the referrals we got at our presentation!) We haven´t had a lot of results yet, but we´re getting there! We spent a lot of time out in a place called Vinchoa, which is basically a lot of cows and a lot of cornfields. Our challenge right now is the branch itself. Lots of challenges as well as offended members. We spent a lot of time putting out fires, in a manner of speaking. This week will be much better, we´re already counting on that! Elder Cruz is doing well, and is ready to start the last part of his training: directing our program! So these next two weeks I will be playing junior companion while Elder Cruz leads. I have all confidence in him, so we shouldn´t have any problems! We kind of have to go now, but I´ve attached some pictures! Take care!

Love,

Elder Wallace

PS - The pictures are of the plaza presentation, the pizza we made today, and the delicious-looking specimen we encountered in the meat market a while back!

No More Trips!

Buenas Tardes!

This week was pretty great! We had a conference in Quito with the entire mission! Walter F. Gonzalez spoke to us, and we learned a lot of great things. He told us that when we have a personal conversion, we feel joy; so will the people we teach, if we do it correctly. I would like to download some pictures, but we couldn´t bring our cameras! Not my fault this time! But I´ll tell you, Elder Gonzalez is a pretty funny guy. Great sense of humor. The trip made me tired though because we got stuck in traffic and didn´t get home until 2 a.m.!

This week we knocked on a lot of doors. We also got rejected a lot. But life goes on! We did a presentation in the center of Guaranda with two more companionships from Riobamba. So there were 8 of us all looking for new people. Our zone leaders told me a couple of nights before to think of a way to make the presentation really creative. So in district meeting we all put our heads together and thought about what catches the attention of the public. Then it came to us... TV screens and large speakers! So we took the TV from the chapel and borrowed a nice big sound system from the members. Then we burned a whole bunch of MormonAds onto a DVD, and there you have it! Tons of people came and listened to us! A couple of cops came to see what we were doing, so some of us went and took care of them. Elder Hakes has a picture of the two cops walking away, each toting their own Book of Mormon. It´s great! I´ll have to get that picture from him.

It´s great to hear that everyone is doing well! Aside from the hailstorm and the tomato-killer wind! Great pictures of the mini marathon! Nice to hear about Lake Powell. Thanks for trunking me out!!! (no, just kidding! We watched the best two years as a district today!) Let me know all about how it went! Talk to you all next week!

Love,

Elder Wallace

Long Trips And Large Statues

Hey everyone! 

I promise to write a bit more this week!  Just a bit...

So this week we challenged two more people to baptism!  Well, we actually do that in every single visit, but we had two that accepted dates!  Their names are Ximena Gavilanez and Narcissa Caspi.  We are getting them ready for the 11th and the 18th.  We also found an older couple who are inactive evangelicals!  They´re actually really receptive, and I was really surprised.  Turns out their daughter suffers from depression and they are looking for a bit more peace in their lives.  Good thing that we have just the right solution for them!  They´re even coming to church this next week!

We had our zone conference and our district conference this weekend!  So we spent 3 days in Riobamba.  Actually, we travelled back to Guaranda on Friday night, and went back Saturday for the district conference.  A lot of wonderful talks, and a lot of motivation.  Our district is actually pretty big!  We all got interviewed by President Sloan, though that was kind of sad because they will probably be our last interviews ever.  He´s going back home in June, and we have to be ready to receive our new mission president.  

Right now we just got back from Santa Fe, where there is a big statue of Christ.  It was quite the hike getting up there, but I still enjoyed it.  Now we have to get our hair cut because we´re going to Quito this Thursday!  Walter F. Gonzalez from the presidency of the seventy is going to talk to us.  We´re all excited and a bit disappointed at the same time.  Excited because one of the seventy is going to talk to us!  A bit disappointed because we thought that Elder Scott was going to come.  But still, it will be a great experience.

Well, I hope everyone has a great week, and that all the activities go well.  Is it summer already?  Well enjoy it!  I can hardly tell the difference because we really don´t have seasons here!

Love,

Elder Wallace