#69

Whale whale whale.

This week has been marvelous. I can`t really put my finger on what made it so good, but it was just a really good week. We had stake conference and Presidente Riggins gave a two talks that blew everyone´s minds and we have a goal of 4 baptisms this week if my dear Familia Collantes gets married (if you guys want to pray that they can be able to get all their paperwork figured out to be able to get married this week, I wouldn`t mind. Their last name is pronounced Coh-YANT-tez.)

What else can I tell you? I`m sending some pictures from when I went to Valencia.

 I`ll just say that being in the mission has been and is the best experience that I have ever had, and so very necessary for me, personally. I feel much better prepared to make decisions in my future thanks to what I am learning here. 

SDJFÑLKSDJñlaksjks

I`m sorry, I literally have no idea what to tell yáll. 

And I haven`t even written anyone else. And there goes my time.

I love you all!
Hermana Rust

#68

I got to do an intercambio en my beloved Valencia this week! It was fantastic!" The only bummer is that I had some serious eye issues going on so my eye is either crying or halfway closed in every single picture that I took. In the picture with Lina my eye is normal, but you can see the rocky mountains bursting out of my forehead, which is a bummer.

Also, I didn`t get to see the Bishop and his family which was very disappointing, but the sister leader said that we can probably do another intercambio before I go.But it was great! It was like I never left, I still remembered everything and everyone and I was so excited I was shaking most of the time haha. 

But this week has been wonderful! It`s Carnaval right now, which means we have to tell the people in the street to please not throw water and paint on us, but so far they`ve all been obedient haha. They respect the badge. 

It`s been a wonderful week. I`ve been able to see the Spìrit working with us and helping us help others. We`ve found people with lots of weird ideas about the Church and we`re helping them receive testimonies. It`s a grand feeling. 

I can`t say that I have had any movie-worthy experiences, but the most wonderful and terrific thing that anyone can do is help someone to put the Atonement into action in their lives and change and accept the truth. So... that`s pretty fantastic. Holly, you`ll be able to do just that, and it will be marvelous. 

Darn it my camera doesn`t work with these computers, so I`ll be sending pictures next week. I love you all! Thanks for writing! 

#67

Well the wonderful family that wants to get married so they can get baptized made bollos this week, which are a liquidy mixture of plantains and fish and ground peanuts cooked in banana leaves ..... not my favorite haha. I still bought a ton though to help out. It was kinda fun though because we walked around with all the bollos we bought and went and gave them to some of the more humble families.  

We´re really excited because we´ve been finding more families to teach. My goal is to have 15 families to teach before I go, and we´re halfway there. I really like contacting, it`s just that we´re working the two of us where there were two companionships working, so we have a lot of area and not much time between lessons to contact, but I like talking to the people in the street.

It is RAINY! I love it! The weather rotates between torrential downpour and blazing sun. I prefer the rain. When the sun comes out, it turns everything all vapory and it isn`t too fun. But the rain thunders down all night and I sleep like a baby and when it rains I am happy as can be.  My companion is not fond of getting wet though haha and it shows. Poor thing. A few nights ago the rain was falling so hard that the water coming off the roof had higher water pressure than in the shower... so I went ahead and washed my hair outside in the tube with the roof water (it had already been raining hard a few hours so it was clean water). My companion thought I was bizarre but she took a picture. You can`t see just how hard it was raining but just trust me -  there was a lot of water.

Our cute little new house. It`s small and perfect and I love it. Upstairs is the bedroom, under the bedroom is the kitchen and under the stairs is the bathroom. The bedroom has air conditioning and it is relatively cockroach free so I`m happy. The bishop owns the apartment and so he put those big gospel art printouts of Jesus´s baptism, of Christ in the Americas, and in the bedroom there´s Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. by far my favorite missionary house. I thought I`d show ya. 

This is a park near the chapel. Big fish. 

Thanks for writing!
I love you all!
Hermana Rust

#66

I totally forgot to tell yáll last week that my companion is no longer a caterpillar, but is now a full fledged butterfly as she has completed her training. It`s kinda funny, one of her goals in her eleventh week of training was taking the initiative in every situation, and her 11th week was our first week here, so everyone thought that she was training me haha because she was in charge of everything that week. 

What can I tell you about this week?

We have been running around like crazy. Our sector is huuuuuge, and beforehand it was divided and was shared by two companionships, and we figured that another companionship would be arriving in a few weeks, but nope. It`s just going to be us. So we´re covering the area that two companionships covered beforehand. There is a lot of work to do. Lots of people that joined the church when the church was still new here but still haven`t gone to the temple to be sealed and invested, lots of people that are attending church but living without being married, about 450 less active members.... Lots of work! But I love reactivated. That is the funnest and most challenging thing for me in the mission. It`s fun to teach people the same things that they`ve heard for years about the Book of Mormon and Jose Smith and covenants (things that they`ve heard but never developed a testimony) and invite them to act and know. There are lots of opportunities here. 

The lovely family I told you about that wants to get married and baptized is going to sell something called bollos this week to raise the money (it`s like a Ecuadorian fish tamale with peanut and stuff... it sounds funky but it`s pretty good). And I will buy every single bollo if I have to so that they can get married and baptized in the next two weeks. We`re pretty excited because we already have half of the bollos pre-sold, and once we advise the other missionaries in the zone, I imagine that they`ll be helping out quite a bit as well. So get ready for some pictures! I don`t have pictures to send this week because I don`t take my camera with me (it`s a little sketch here). 

What else... umm....  

We`re moving to another house. The church was renting two apartments but now they just need one so we`re going to live in a cute little apartment that the bishop build specifically for the missionaries. It looks like a beach house on the inside.
We`re excited about that. We`ve been cleaning and packing all morning.

Yup. 

Pa, I loved what you wrote. I have been thinking a lot about that very same scripture this week, la esperanza de un mundo mejor. It`s been a little hard on me and my companion as we`ve seen the suffering of some families and we`ve felt that we haven`t been able to help them too much. It`s hard, but there´s a reason why we keep visiting these families. I really do know that if we live the gospel, everything works out, and everything is okay. It seems like such a basic, non profound statement, but when you think about it, it`s a miracle. I think of the blessings we`ve received as a family, and with everything we`ve experienced, with every trial, everything has worked out. We`ve all been okay. That is nothing short of a miracle.

 

I SAW MEET THE MORMONS. You guys saw that right? It`s going to be coming to Ecuador in a few months and we`re going to use it as a missionary tool. That movie contains tons of miracles stories of people who have seen miracles because they have lived the Gospel.  I looooved it. We watched it in a zone conference with the mission president on Saturday. So good. Watch it. Love it. 

Well, my time is far spent.

I love you all! Thanks for writing!