#51

This week was a little better. We were able to find a few more people to teach, but they still didn´t attend church. Which means that we´ve gone way too many weeks without bringing a single person to church (you RMs know how that feels). Well, one family came but they only stayed for the sacrament meeting, and we no longer count attendance to just the sacrament meeting. So that's been a bummer, but we´re starting a new planner, which is always nice, and we´re going to do things in a completely different way. It´s been really fun to see the differences that the new mission president has brought. To be honest, it feels like I´m starting my mission over again because we are doing absolutely everything different. It feels a little overwhelming at times, because I´ve already got (gulp) 13 months in the mission (how gross is that¿) and I´m learning completely different ways to teach, find, and work with the ward. Everything´s different, but it´s been really fun too. I´ve been able to learn a lot about myself and I´ve learned a lot about our Heavenly Father. I´m definitely learning more and more about Ether 12:27. He wasn´t messing around at all when he wrote that verse, it´s definitely true that as we come unto the Savior, we´re going to be shown our weaknesses, but if you put your trust in Him, we can overcome our weaknesses and they will be made strong. I like to think that I´m in that process. I´ve also been studying more and more about the Atonement, and I just finished reading Jesus the Christ for the second time. I loooooooove that book. It´s so cool. I really love the Atonement.  I was able to share my experience with the Atonement with two less active girls that had stopped attending church because of some comments that an hermana had made to them and some things that had happened to their family. Usually when people tell me that they don´t go to church because of other people I hit them hard with the doctrine of the baptismal covenant and say that we go to church because we love the Lord and stuff like that, but I felt impressed to share with them my process of learning to apply the Atonement of Jesus Christ in order to be able to forgive someone. I think that lesson was one of the most powerful lessons for me personally, because I was able to see that a process of repentance and applying the atonement was necessary for me, even though in this situation I hadn´t done anything wrong, and that truly, any injustice in this life can be made right through the Atonement. I really love lessons with the Spirit, because you can see the Spirit testify to them, and even though I was the one talking, I was also learning, because the Spirit helped me to understand things that I hadn´t fully understood before. The Spirit is cool, right?

Anyway, that´s my experience for the week! Sorry that my letter have been lacking, it´s just that Ecuador is very routine to me now and I forget that what I do all day every day isn´t exactly normal haha. 

 I love you all! Thanks for the prayers (keep em comin!)

Hermana Rust

Me and Hermana Espinoza with Pizzahut. We love pizzahut. We were SO tired, can you tell?

And yes, I´m rocking a side-pony. 

There´s a school here with cartoons on the walls, and walking past it for the millionth time this week I realized that there is a little girl holding a chicken with a leg coming out of her face. So I took a picture. I was really bewildered and I thought it was funny.