#5 Letter From Ecuador

I wouldn´t have even known that Thanksgiving was coming up if a member hadn´t asked me about it yesterday. It doesn´t feel like November (almost December whaaa?) so I completely forgot!

Luis is baptized! The little stinker didn´t make it easy either, but he has been baptized and confirmed and he´s excited to read the Pearl of Great Price of all things. I´m telling you, this kid is brilliant. The best way I can describe him is as an older Gary Bolton. He´s amazingly smart, which is dangerous because he´s also incredibly mischievous. But the Young Men´s president was telling us that in Young Men´s, he knew the answers to all the questions and he was absolutely blown away by what he knew. I don´t remember if I mentioned this, but this kid had 5 baptismal interviews. Five, because he always thought of some reason or something that made him wait to be baptized. So he knows a ton, and when we explained the PGP and Doctrine and Covenants, he asked us when he could read them. So yeah. He´s an interesting fellow. I´ll send a picture of us at the baptism.

Remember Ronaldo? Remember Milena, his sister? She´s attended church every week since we met her and is stoked for her baptism this saturday! I´m stoked too, because she will be my first, in that every lesson has been with me. With all the others, other missionaries taught, and with Luis, we only went over certain points again, not all the lessons, because he had already learned everything. She´s really sweet, and her brother is going to baptize her, which is really cool. Steven referred and baptized Ronaldo, and Ronaldo referred and will baptize Milena. If we could get the adults as excited about the work of salvation as the youth!

Yesterday we had a training with all the members of the ward counsel. It was a broadcast training for the entire area, given by the area seventy. It was so good, and was all about the work of salvation. My favorite part was when they said that the Obra of Salvation isn´t a new program of the church, it´s the reason for the church. It was much more eloquent in Spanish, but you get the gist. Holly and Beebz! Share the gospel!! It´s important!! Do it before the mission, because if you don´t, you´ll definitely wish you did once you see how essential the cooperation and support of the members is.

Let´s see.... we went out with the ward mission leader to visit less active families, and Victor mistook one house for another and we ended up talking for a hour with a woman who had gone to three different churches looking for truth. Jackpot! She talked to us about how she felt uneasy about lots of teachings in the Jehovah´s witnesses, and she just thought the Evangelical chuirch was bizarre. She asked us about the Holy Ghost, how we feel the Holy Ghost etc. She´s an older woman with lots of family, so we hope to be able to teach all of them together. 

Johana Pasmiño also invited us to teach some of her neighbors in her home. The parents don´t want to hear (as is always the case) but they are fine with their kids learning and taking the discussions. We´ve only met two of them so far, one is Luis (many Luises...) and he´s 11, and Jairo who is 14 (side note, Jairo is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen.). They´re both really smart and while we´ve only had a mini lesson with them, they understand things really well and they liked the idea of being baptized the same way Jesus was baptized. How many young kids would think that?

 So that´s what´s going on! We have another FHE (we´re changing the name and day of the week because FHE is for families on mondays) tonight in the Torres´ home, and these are always great. 

Wednesday, we had a seventy, Elder Alexander Mestre come! We traveled to Babahoya and it was swell. He called on me to read a scripture out loud to everyone. I was scared to death. Also, his accent was difficult to understand and his tres sounded exactly like trece, so I had to clarify like 4 times which verse I should read. So that happened. But I learned a lot and it was great.

At the end, when I went to kiss Hermana Amaya goodbye, she told me that my face was hot and then gave very detailed instructions on what we need to do if we take my temperature at home and it is higher than a certain degree. It was. I had me a pretty swell fever. I used the converter on our cell phone to change the Celcius to Farenheit and apparently I was at 102.4. I´m not sure how bad that is but people seemed pretty worried. I felt fine, just my face was hot, but that´s nothing new, but anywho I bring this up because A) Hermana and Presidente Amaya care about us missionaries so much. B) My zone leaders care about me so much. C) My district leader cares about me so much. D) My companion cares for me so much. Everyone was making sure, more than was necessary as far as rules go, that I was okay, that I was doing the things I needed to, that I would go to the doctor if needs be (I fought my companion on this one, there was absolutely no way I was going to go back to that miserable little hospital for a fever). I did not need to go to the doctor, I was absolutely fine the next day, 

Anyway, things are swell, the church is true, I love you all, and please please please, help the missionaries out!
Love,
Hermana Rust

This is a picture of Luis. He was begging me to take a picture with him, so I don´t know why he wouldn´t smile. Trust me, he was happy. 

Luis´s Grandma, his uncle who baptized him, Leonardo, and Luis.

# 4 Letter from Ecuador

I can hardly believe it´s P-Day again. The days are long but the weeks go by so fast! I know it´s what everyone says, but things are very "rollercoaster" on the mission. One day will be amazing, the next day will be ... nothing.

Last Monday, me and my companion took on the task of finding me some black shoes, because the black shoes I brought are truly hideous. Here's the thing though - Ecuadorians have small feet. I think the largest shoes we found were an American size 8, which as you know is not nearly big enough. We went to store after store and all of the store owners tried to force my feet into size 8 shoes. Hermana Diez is convinced that we will find some shoes, but I have given up hope.  My Spanish that day was really good though, I was able to converse a bit and I explained many times that I do not dye my hair (I´ve gotten really good at deciphering this question).

The next day was district meeting and verification. These meetings are both the best and the worst. Verification is when we meet with one of the zone leaders and go over how my training is going in the 12 Semanas program. I´m supposed to initiate lessons and contacts and many things and uapsodfiuasdlkfjsdañlkfj I feel like it´s too much! It´s the same goals for people learning a language and fluent speakers. So  I have to do practices with the zone leaders (who are awesome, but it´s very intimidating) and I have to explain in my pitiful Spanish how things are going and I greatly dislike it. Also, we have lots of practices when we meet as a district, and because my companion is a machete of a missionary, our companionship has been picked every week to be the example companionship and give a lesson in front of the rest of the district. Let me remind you that the Spanish still isn´t here yet, and everyone else in my district speaks perfect Spanish. Also, when they give the directions and explain the practices, I don´t completely understand. So district meetings are the best because I learn a lot, and it´s fun to meet up with the other missionaries, and they´re the worst because I usually make a fool of myself in front of everyone, multiple times. 

After our meeting ended, the Zone leaders asked to meet with us and lo and behold Hermana Diez is the new sister trainer for the area! Told you, she´s a machete of a missionary. 

This means that we traveled to Guayaquil for the big meeting with our district leaders and zone leaders. We were going to put me on splits with someone or do something so I wouldn´t have to go, but it didn´t work out so I went, and I saw Hermana Seaver! I don´t think you know Hermana Seaver, but we hung out a lot at BYUI and it was grand. 

The meeting was difficult, because Presidente and Hermana Amaya speak Colombian Spanish which is different Spanish than the Ecuadorians and different Spanish than my companion. I´m trying to learn four types of Spanish right now (the fourth being gringo Spanish)! I picked up bits and pieces of what was going on, but for the most part I was just trying to stay awake. Sometimes Spanish is white noise to me, and boy do I get tired! Also, we did practices (we all know how I feel about practices) and Presidente Amaya lingered closer to our practice than I would have liked.  But it was a good meeting, and Hermana Amaya is a powerhouse of a woman. We were in Guayaquil all day, so we didn´t teach any lessons or contact that day. The hermanas have to be in their apartments at 8:30 because it´s dangerous, so yeah. We went straight home. 

That´s been something that has hindered the work. We can´t be out late, but that´s when all the people are out and about! Lots of them sleep all afternoon, and it´s almost impossible to do anything in the afternoons, especially when it´s more hot than usual. Also, knocking on doors doesn´t help, we really rely on member references. They haven´t been giving us much, so we´re going to work on reactivation and receiving references that way.

Let´s see... The day after the meeting was one of the good days. I swear, some days my Spanish is pretty good and the next day I don´t understand a thing. This was one of the days when I felt pretty good about my Spanish. We spent the day with a lot of youth. Luis! I need to tell you about Luis! Luis is 12 years old, and an incredibly deep thinker (not even just an incredibly deep thinker for a 12 year old, I mean this kid blows my mind!). His mom is a recent convert, but he never wanted to be baptized and he went to church occasionally begrudgingly.  Hermana Diez told me that he would run away and be really unfriendly whenever they talked to him, but we stopped by one day and asked if he was ready to learn more and he said yes. From what I understand, the mom of his friends talks to him about the Catholic church all day and another about Evangelicos, so he came to us with tons of questions like why does our church baptize by immersion and others by sprinkling, and how exactly do prophets receive revelation and what does it mean when we say we´re the only true church and how does the priesthood work and what is the Holy Ghost and tons of questions like this. He´s 12. But he´s ready to listen! He´s already heard most of the lessons so we just have to do overviews and answer his questions, and he had his baptismal interview and his baptism is this Saturday! He was very preoccupied about repentance, and so he requested a non-white Elder for his interview so he could talk freely, and our zone leader Elder Suarez is awesome and helped answer tons of his questions, especially about the priesthood, and he helped animate him for his baptism (I know the word isn´t animate, but I can´t for the life of me think of the word in English. I can´t speak Spanish, can´t speak English...). So yeah, that´s Luis. He found a picture book in English and he wants to give it to me because he doesn´t like English. He taught me all the jungle animals in Spanish. The kid´s got an attitude, but he´s sweet too. 

The next day was Zone meeting, where the zone and district leaders and the Hermana leader teach what happened in the big meeting with the President and yeah. I left this out before, but Hermana Amaya started out her section of the training by saying "Elderes y Hermanas, English is not an option. If you do not speak English, you will learn. In the next meeting, we will call on you to say the prayers, and they will be in English." (All of that was in Spanish by the way...) So to start out the meeting, Elder Suarez asked me to pray in  English, and then explained after the prayer that all prayers will be in English from now on. Anywho, I bring this up for two reasons. First, this prayer was hard. Since day one of the CCM, all of my prayers have been in Spanish. Personal, food, companionship, and all other prayers since then have been in Spanish. I could not remember how to use thee and thy and thou and I kept accidentally saying "y" instead of "and" and my grammer wasn´t wrong, but my sentences just sounded weird. I´m glad only one other person in the room probably realized how off things were. It was weird! The second reason I bring this up is because now I am teaching Hermana Diez English. She hates it haha and she gets so flustered because she doesn´t understand how to make the sounds. My favorite thing is to make her say frog, because she can´t do it. I´ve taught everyone this word, and I haven´t met a single Latino yet that can make the "guh" sound. It´s so fun to learn the languages together. I also taught a bunch of the youth to say "what up, how it do?" so this is usually their greeting to me. Here´s a fun fact worth noting, Hermana Diez told me that I´m the first gringo/a that can pronounce the r sound perfectly. Not the rr (even though plenty have trouble with this sound too), but only I can pronounce just the r right. Apparently when they listen to English speakers, what stand out is the hard r sound. I get complimented on my pronunciation a lot, so yeah, I got that going for me!

We had an investigator named Belgica this week too. Her son is a convert that is recently reactivated. She´s had all the discussions and even a baptismal interview, but didn´t get baptized. We´re working with her, but it is difficult because she lives in an especially dangerous part of town. It´s dangerous to go there even before the sun sets. Her son was robbed just two days ago and it wasn´t even completely dark yet. She also works until early in the morning, and we can only meet with her in the mid to late afternoon. We have to keep visits short, and if we don´t have a guy with us, we can´t go. David (Knows Coop, was David Archuleta´s zone leader) helps us out a lot and is an amazing missionary, and Steven (recent convert, baptized Ronaldo, is dating Emily) accompanies us on a lot of appointments too. Steven wants to serve a mission! He´s been thinking about it a lot and had a dream that he opened his call to New York. He´s only 17, so he´s got a little bit of time, but I´m so excited for him because he loves the gospel so much and he´s already doing a ton of missionary work with us. So things are slow with Belgica, the woman´s got a lot of things on her plate. 

Ronaldo also told us that he wanted us to come teach his little sister, Milena. We met her, and she came to church, and we set a baptism date!

She´s also going to come to FHE tonight (which is being held at a part-member home). Mondays are the best, I love our FHEs! Last week we played some bizarre game after and I was very confused and everyone was laughing but it was fun. Good times.

 HOLY HANNAH IT IS HOT!

I´m rocking a fairly sweet tan already and my bangs are bleached white.
At lunch yesterday at the Torres´s house (David´s family), a granddaughter/niece was talking to me about how I look like a doll and was touching all the parts of my hair saying "this is yellow, this is brown, this is yellow, like a doll" and I have blue doll eyes. It was so cute, and after a sister or cousin or aunt or someone (there´s so many people in the house at once, I never know the relationship) went through my hair for a few seconds doing the same thing, and she´s an adult. My hair is also often put up to other people´s faces to see how they would look blonde.
My personal bubble is disappearing fast.

I love it here, I love the work, I love the people, I love the food!
The church is true, be good, I love you all, help the missionaries!
Hermana Rust  

Juice is so cheap here, and this entire gigantic aisle is dedicated to juice. I thought it was worth noting. This is in a big mall that has a grocery store in it....

Letter #3 from Ecuador

 Also, because I forgot in the last email, my branch president was President Jewell! We talked about Logandale and I have a picture with him and his wife. They´re awesome!

I forgot my notebook full of things to write about... This is gonna be difficult.

 

Monday was the family night, and it was so great! Once again, we have 20 or so youth crammed into a house, and there was a lesson, and then Celita announced that she was going to ask five people to bear their testimonies, because it was getting late. So she asked five people, and they bore their testimonies. But it didn´t end there. Everyone ended up bearing their testimonies, just like the week before. Mondays are my favorite, because it´s P Day, and because I get to clean and do laundry, and because the Noches de Hogar with the youth are so great. There´s always a few nonmembers. Glorita´s father gave the opening prayer, with her help, so we´re hoping that with each spiritual experience, his heart is softened and they will want to learn more.

I still can´t understand too much, but I have been able to see my progress. Sometimes, Hermana Diez will ask me to give the opening prayer, and because I can pray in Spanish, they think that I can understand Spanish. So whenever I pray, I usually get asked a question directly after that I cannot understand. My favorite and most used phrase is "Repita por favor, más despacio". If I still can´t understand, Hermana Diez dumbs down the Spanish into more basic words and if I still don´t understand I just smile and we move on. I do talk in lessons though, I have taught big portions of the Restoration and I always bear my testimony. I think that sometimes the things I say have nothing to do with the lesson, but Hermana Diez told me that the "norteamericanas" that can´t understand Spanish always say what the investigator needs to hear, because they have to completely rely on the Spirit to communicate and know what to say. So that was nice haha.

 As for my health, I am just fine. It´s pretty common for the Americans to have some issues with breathing here, because there is so much dust in the air. It´s kinda funny, I´ll look at my hands and think they´re clean, but then I wash them, and the water that comes off of them is gray. There´s just tons of dust, but it´s perfectly acceptable to spit in the street, so I do what I gotta do and now I´m just fine. Every once in a while, the Pasmiños make me have a terapia treatment, but I think they only want me to do the treatment partially for my health, and partially because they have plenty of opportunities to tease me.

 

That reminds me, I made my first funny comment in Spanish this week! I missed making people laugh, and it was nice to have people laugh at something other than my confusion haha. It wasn´t really that great, they just asked me if I knew how to shuffle and play poker, and I said I didn´t, and they said "but you´re from Las Vegas!" and I said, "I´m mormon! I didn´t go to the casinos, I went to the temple!" Of course all of this in Spanish. They got a kick out of that. 

Saturday, we had a missionary activity, that I was really excited for. Every family was to bring their best dish for everyone else to try. Also, we went around making sure that people invited their non member friends. We then visited these non-members, and invited them again, and again, and again. We have a family we´re teaching again. I say again, because they´ve had all the lessons, and they´ve been attending church for 7 months. They just won´t get married so they won´t get baptized. No one here is married. Anyhoooo, this family brought their nonmember friends, and that´s it. No one else. We talked to the nonmembers that they´ve brought and they said yeah, they like the church, and the activity, but they´re Catholic. So it was a fun activity, but not successful. 

But you would be very surprised if you saw me at this activity. You know I don´t like germs. Well, Heavenly Father has helped me to get over this reeeaal quick. For instance, at the activity, everyone got a spoon and a tiny plate. No one really used the plates, it just went from platter, to spoon, to mouth. And I did the same thing. Who woulda thunk. And it was gooood food too! I made pancakes... I didn´t have time nor ingredients for anything else. 

We have been trying to stay busy this week. It´s been hard, because appointments are dropped and contacts don´t help. Without references, we don´t really have opportunities to teach. We´ve been trying to get references from the members, and we´ve gotten a lot of help from the youth in the past, but we really need to teach families. No such luck. Hermana Diez was telling me that converts are very likely to go inactive if they don´t have friends in the church, and people that we contact don´t want to listen. Members are so essential to missionary work!! I cannot stress this enough. 

We are teaching the older sister of Luis, the first baptism. She has many struggles, and I don´t really understand everything, but I love her. The same with a family we met with yesterday, I knew that they were sharing some serious things, and I didn´t understand what they were saying, but I bore my testimony of Jesus Christ, and of the blessings that we receive from the gospel, and that´s all I can really do right now. But I love them! 

It´s also been difficult because lots of people have wacky sleep schedules.The city is pretty active in the morning, but I feel like everyone sleeps all afternoon and then is up all night. 75% of the street will not be in their houses or will be sleeping. What can you do.

I don´t have much time, so I better get going with some photos.
Thank you so much for the letters and photos and prayers.
All is well, the church is true, and the work is for everyone.

Love, Hermana Rust. 

This is what the president of the Relief Society brought to the activity. So good!

Cangrejo! 

Baby Hamilton. He has my heart. He´s part of my beloved Pasmiño family. 

Paulina at the activity. I believe she is baptized, but we´re still working on the rest of her family. They like the church and attend from time to time, but aren´t members. Her brother is the only Ecuatoriano taller than me. He´s like 15. We were supposed to take a picture together at the activity but we forgot. Her mom promised to make me cuy to try haha. 

Johanna Pasmiño, momma to Hamilton. She is so sweet, she was getting ready for a wedding (the reception started at 930pm and went for a few hours! Whaaaa?)

Hermano Reyes. He likes to make fun of me and he tries to twist my words to make it sound like I think his wife is a bad cook. He made sure that I took a good photo of him, so I think he would want me to share this. He speaks so fast, and drops his S´s and slurs everything together. I don´t understand a word he says. 

Hermano Celso. He´s accompanied us in a few lessons, and he owns a restaurant and the missionaries eat there, free, once a week.He´s a sweet man! He also made the best hamburger I think I´ve ever had. I also had some darn amazing Peruvian french fries today....

Hermana Reyes, who has been attending for months, but won´t get married. She is an amazing cook, and they love to feed us. (Usually late at night, with plenty of Coca Cola. It´s a miracle I sleep. I truly mean that, it´s a miracle. Everyone gives us Coke or some other soda to drink, and they eat dinner at 8 sometimes.I think the caffeine is also the source of some of my stomach woes!)  

My district with Presidente y Hermana Jewell in the CCM. 

#2 Letter From Ecuador

I don´t want you guys to worry, but I think you should know that I haven´t plucked my eyebrows in a while. They are in desperate need of care, but alas, there is much else to be done. This week was full of highs and lows.

Monday after I wrote last week, we had a family night with the Familia Pasmiño. I don´t remember if I told you guys about them yet, but I love this family! Anywho, in this ward there are tons of youth that have been baptized, but whose families aren´t members. So this family home evening was open to all these kids. There were about twenty kids there. One of the main purposes of this fhe though was inviting the parents of Celita y Glorita, (Glorita who was baptized last week). The parents came, and it was such a great night! We had a short lesson and what not, and then every single one of the jovenes there bore their testimony. They weren´t your run of the mill testimonies either, almost every one of them (as far as I understood) shared how they came to know the gospel was true, and how their lives have improved with the gospel etc.. We talked to Glorita´s father afterwards, and he said he liked how it felt in their home. Afterwards, I was surrounded by all the youth and everyone tried to teach me new words and get me to teach them English and most of the time everyone was just laughing. I got lots of "pobrecita" said to me so I think it´s safe to assume that there was a fair amount of teasing going on as well. I love it though, I am happiest and learning most when talking to the youth.

The next day was one of the lows. I couldn´t sleep, and had chills and pain and I was just not great the next morning. I was also coughing up a storm. So we went to the clinic and lo and behold I got me some bronquitis. You might think that translates to bronchitis, but I´m pretty sure it actually just means white-girl-with-a-cold. We discussed our options and either I would get medications that I would have to take for a couple weeks and return back every day to the clinic, or I could stay for a day or two on an IV. Apparently, IV´s aren´t a big deal here, it´s just a different way to take medicine. So don´t be worried, it really wasn´t a serious thing. I did have blood drawn, and I had an IV in my arm for 3 days and I didn´t pass out once! Woo! I´m really really proud of that. So I loafed around in the hospital for 3 days, and now I´ve just got some medicine I take twice a day. I also am supposed to be doing some respirator type therapy junk at the clinic every so often, but my beloved Pasmiño family is a family of nurses, so I just do what I gotta do at their house. I love them, they really do take good care of me. 

Everyone takes really good care of me in fact. Everyone is very willing to share their remedies. Just yesterday, Steven and Hermano Pasmiño came up to me with what looked like chapstick. I figured it wasn´t chapstick though when they tried to shove it up my nose. It was actually a little vaporub type inhaler, which I´m sure had been in many a nose before mine, but it works really good and I love that little thing!

As you can see, the mission has already changed me. Some other things that have changed... well... I always have someone´s hands in my hair or on my face. Always. Usually my companion´s hands, but investigators and members take their turns too. Also, every female above the age of 12 or so is greeted with one of those European type cheek air kisses. You guys know how much I like my bubble, but personal bubbles cannot exist in Ecuador. Sometimes we have to remind some of the younger guys that missionaries don´t do the cheek kiss thing. It really is an honest mistake on their part though, because that´s just what they do. It´s so sweet to see the young men kissing the old ladies when they walk into sacrament meeting.

Chicks here don´t chirp or peep, they "pew." Hmm...  what else. My feet are hideous now. I don´t even know what happened, but my feet look like Daniel´s now. We´re not allowed to ever be barefoot, so I´m not exactly sure what happened but my feet are gonna need some TLC after 17 more months of this. Speaking of Daniel.... I´m constantly reminded of him because all the men out here sit outside their houses with their shirts hiked up and their bellies out! They just chill there, talking with their friends, bellies proudly displayed. I couldn´t stop laughing the first time I saw it, but I´ve seen it many times since them. A few days ago, we walked past a guy sleeping on the sidewalk in front of a little store. I´m not sure if he was sleeping or passed out, but it didn´t even phase my companion. The guy´s head was dangerously close to a pile of dog ..offerings. What a weird place. Also, apparently it isn´t a big deal if the ladies don´t shave their legs, so Ecuador is more advanced than the US in this aspect.

It must be some sort of big dishonor if you don´t graffiti a wall for your loved one´s birthday, because there´s birthday graffiti everywhere. Speaking of birthdays, Happy Birthday Holly! I forget that it´s November seeing as it feels like July, but one of our investigator´s birthday is the same day as Holly´s. Hope your day is swell!

Friday we had another baptism, a young man named Ronaldo. He was so excited. The baptism was completely run by and attended by youth. They gave all the talks, prayers, lead the music, and Steven, a young man who is a recent convert who shoved that thing up my nose, baptized him. I have some pictures from that night, I really love the youth!

Food. So much rice. I am a fat lard already. I usually only eat lunch every day, but it´s huge! And it always starts with soup. It´s really tasty though, they have the best seasonings on the meat. This coming Saturday, we´re having a potluck, and I´m so excited to try more things. So far, I love me most some fried bananas. I also had some sort of rice with some sort of yellow oil with seasonings and bell peppers and onion that was delicious. There hasn´t been anything yet that I haven´t eaten with the utmost enthusiasm, and you can tell Derrick that my stomach has been just fine as well.
Yesterday there was a soccer game between two Ecuadorian teams, Barcelona and Emecer. The entire town shut down.  I´m serious, there weren´t taxis in the streets or anything. Some people put their TV´s outside and attatched speakers and blasted the game, so we ended up at the Pasmiños house again. All the jovenes were gathered there to watch the game. The Pasmiños are such good people! After the game, they fed everybody and brought out a cake and everything. I was instructed multiple times to tell everyone that I am an Emecer fan, and not to forget it.

Everyone wants to listen to me speak English. Every once in a while, I speak English with one of the Elders, and they all try to listen and understand. I bring this up because they are trying to get me to sing in English. I refused yesterday, but we made a deal. Tonight, if they bring the missionaries references, I will sing a hymn in English for them.

Oh yeah, tonight! Glorita and Celita are having a noche de hogar at their house, and they´ve invited everyone. Their parents (who aren´t members, remember) have invited everyone because they said they liked what happened. So we´re having a ndh in their home and we have some investigators coming and I´m just really excited, because Gloria and Celia´s parents are starting to show interest. We really want to teach their entire family together, and Gloria and Celia are already teaching them and sharing their testimonies with their parents. The youth are so great! They come with us to lessons and they get their friends and try to involve their families. We set a baptismal date for Luis Guachiculca´s older sister. Luis Guachichulca was the ym baptized the same day as Glorita. My challenge for the little girls is to offer to go with the sister missionaries to some appointments! I believe so strongly in the faith and strength of the youth. After all, Joseph Smith was only 14. Get involved in the work, references from members are what keep us busy!

This week is going to be a good one, I can tell. Be good!

I love you all, thanks for all the messages and prayers!

Hermana Rust