#54

I received my precious daughter, mijita! Her name is Hermana Alacama, and she´s from La Paz, Bolivia. The second she told me where she was from I proudly told her all about Grandma and Grandpa Skousen.  She´s awesome though. She´s the only member in her family, and she got baptized in March of last year, so she´s still a recent convert. Cool huh? She´s got guts. It´s cool though, but there´s a lot to learn! It´s been really fun though. And all the newbies and the trainers went through the temple together, which was awesome. I love the temple. I´ve official been through the temple twice as many times in Spanish than I have in English.

1.  What exactly are your responsibilities as a trainer?Well the church has this dope program that´s called 12 weeks. The goal of this program is that the person being trained can be ready to train in 12 weeks. Each week, they have goals that they should meet and I as a trainer have to teach them certain things every week, as well as how to do all of our daily tasks.  You´re basically teaching all day, every day, from 6:30 am to 10:30 pm. So far, she has met all of her goals (So proud sniff sniff! They grow up so fast!) and this week we are going to learn how to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and what we should do in the first lesson with someone. And other stuff but I don´t remember. We have an extra hour of study time in the morning and we have to do practices adn stuff like that with the zone leaders once a week to verify how the progress is going. That sentence sounded awkward, but you understand me.

2.  How do you recognize the Spirit teaching and guiding you as a missionary?
Ahhh I love the Spirit. The Spirit communicates to me mostly through ideas as I´m teaching. For example, I did not know what to say to an hermano that we´re teaching. I felt that we had already taught everything and I wasn´t sure what to do, but out of nowhere I though of a scripture story and decided to share that with him. I know that it was the Spirit because I would have never though to apply that story in that way with this investigator. It´s fun. My own knowledge is very limited, but with the Spirit I am able to be a much better teacher and I´m able to recordar the things that I have studied.

3.  What are the best qualities of the Ecuadorian Saints/people?
They are very giving. We have called people and told them that we didn´thave lunch and they tell us to come on over in half an hour and they´ll have lunch ready for us. Tons of hermanas have told us that if we never need lunch or anything, to not hesitate to call. And they mean it. So we call. They are always very willing to give of what they have.

4.  How do you express your love for the people?

Um........ I think just talking to them is how I express my love. You guys know that before the mission, I wasn´t the type to go sit by the old people in church and ask them about their week, but now, that´s what I do. Listening sincerely. I guess I kinda do physically too for the women, but when you greet everyone with a hug and a kiss, a hug doesn´t mean quite as much here as it does there. 

So yeah! That´s been my week! It´s always fun to be in a training with the President. My companion from the CCM, Hermana Fox, was my companion and spent the night for a day, because she´s training too right now and had to come to Guayaquil for the training meeting and to get her new companion. SO we reminisced a little bit. That was fun. It kinda freaked me out though because every once in a while I realize how much time I´ve been out on the mission and I have a ministroke. So yeah. Imma send fotos now.

 

Love you all! Thanks for the prayers and thanks for those that wrote me!
>Hermana Rust 

 Our first pday together! 

I didn´t get the memo that we were supposed to be cute and normal. My cameras going south, so all of my fotos are kinda blurry.

 Hermana Deforest, Hermana Alacama, Hermana Mckee (Kylee´s sister) and Me doing a peace sign, which we all know is not like me at all. 

I knew right off the bat that me and my new companion would get along. Why? Because when I suggested ordering pizza, she agreed right away.. and then encouraged us to buy two.