#12

I didn´t get to watch the broadcast, I have far too much work to do! They might print it out in Spanish and give it to us tomorrow in the meetings.

OH HAPPY DAY I DIDN´T HAVE TRANSFERS!
I really really really wanted to stay in Bellavista at least two more weeks because my querida familia is going to get baptized if all goes well this Saturday!! And I think I just might be staying. There´s the slight chance that one of us will get called to train this Tuesday when the new missionaries arrive, but I am very positive that I will not be training, at least until I can understand what people are saying to me more.I don`t think Hermana Chil will be leaving to train either because she just got here. Don`t get me wrong, I can communicate myself, it´s just that they speak so fast and the accent is so muddled that it`s hard to understand what they say back to me. I hate to think how things went with Trav, because apparently Ecuadorian Spanish is nothing compared to chileno. That job sounds great for Travis, I hope he loves it.

I got packages! Right after we emailed the zone leaders called saying we had mail. Me and my compañera had a swell time opening packages from the Kims, Merciers, and you guys! Thanks to some severe stomach issues for both of us, we haven`t been able to eat the candy but we do use it as thank you gifts when member accompany us on citas.

Speaking of stomach issues.... I´ve lost weight. I´m almost willing to let whatever has been going on the last week keep going for another fifteen or so pounds though. One of the Pazmiños told my companion that she`s just getting fatter while I`m actually getting skinnier. They`re pretty open about stuff like that. But I have been adopting a diet of just white bread and these cutesy mini bananas they´ve got here and if things don`t start... getting better... soon, I might have to see a doctor. I don`t want that though, so send me some prayers! It`s been cool to see though that even though things have been not pretty, we´ve always been able to work and do what we got to do, and almost all of the times I´ve had issues with my stomach have been in the morning or at night after we`re done working.

I love love love love love the mom and daughters that we`ve been teaching, and who are getting baptized this week. It took a few weeks for me to figure it out, but she is so much like Aunt Alyssa! It took me a while to figure that out because of the whole  she-doesn´t-speak-English thing, but she has the same sassy zesty attitude that Aunt Alyssa has. I love her, and her daughters are so sweet. I also mentioned the other investigator last week. He`s progressing well, even though after every lesson his Jehovah´s Witness grandpa tells him that every thing we said was a lie. He told us that he doesn´t listen, and that he feels good about the decision he made to commit to baptism, and that he feels ready to be baptized. He went through some really difficult trials this last year, and so on new years he prayed that God would help him change his life and be happier. Three days later, he meets us! He said that normally he would have never accepted an invitation to go to another church, let alone actually attended, but he felt that we were his answer.

Cool huh!?! I just love it when someone accepts the gospel and when you can see how it really is changing and blessing their life. 

I have to keep this short, (mostly because I`m not sure what else to say) but I really hope that you take President Messer´s challenges seriously. The missionaries will absolutely love you, the people that you invite to come unto Christ will love you even more, and Heavenly Father will be so proud and happy as you accept the calling he extended to all members to be involved in the work of salvation

. 

Holly and Beebz! Don`t make this a goal that you forget about in a week! It`s too important! And it`s easier than you think. Take advantage of the opportunity you have to share the gospel in English haha. And I`m telling you, invite your friends to a family home evening, and if they accept the invitation, invite the missionaries. The noches de hogar have helped so much because they demonstrate how the huge gospel message works in small and simple ways to bless the family. Okay. I`m done preaching to you. But seriously, do it! Sharing the gospel is the best. 

Urgh okay we came to a junky cyber and it`s not wanting to read my camera or my memory card, but I only had two pictures anyways. For the noche de hogar last week, we taught them to play ninja destruction (after the lesson of course, we didn`t just play ninja). They didn`t catch on quite as well, and I definitely would have won except I was wearing a dress, and we had to leave before they finished. Actually, I don`t really think the dress would have stopped me from winning. But the pictures are kinda funny because Manuel and Victor got all sassy with their poses in the background.

Manuel es el gordo posing. I´m not being mean by the way, literally everyone calls him el gordo.  My camera doesn`t take great pictures now because the lens doesn`t move and I can`t zoom or anything, so that´s why I haven`t taken many pictures. I did break my camera out for a bit though because I thought this was going to be my last youth noche de hogar like this.

#11

Oh boy what a week!

The Ecuatorians know how to party. I never remember what I wrote the previous week, so I will just explain things again and if I´m repeating myself, sorry!

 So everyone has been building these paper mache figurines, some of them are small, like the size of teddy bears, and then there are giant ones (I have a picture of me and Hermana Chil and a giant Thor that I will be sending...) and they set them on fire! They work on them forever and they are super legit, and then they just burn them jaja. They´re called monigotes or año viejos. Me and Hermana Chil were pretty bummed that we weren´t going to be able to be out and about for all of the festivities, but we decided to go out onto our roof terrace type dealio to watch the events unfold. First of all... it was loud! Everyone was setting off fireworks and flares and bombs and when they lit all the monigotes on fire, the video I took could probably double as news stock footage of riotings. If I hadn´t known it was a holiday I would have thought that someone shot the president or something. It was so fun though! We went inside shortly after midnight but the parties were still going until like 7.

The day after, the entire city was shut down. There weren´t cars, there weren´t people outside, there wasn´t anything. It was kinda creepy. It´s funny that everything was open on Christmas Day, but literally everything was closed on New Year´s Day. In the late afternoon, some parties started again but we didn´t go outside because everyone was drunk, and I get way too much attention from drunk people. Also, our president told us that this was a day of rest so we weren´t expected to work that day, which was good because we literally wouldn´t have gotten into a single house. 

There was a youth activity that night in the house of a member that we went to that was so fun! The person that was supposed to give the lesson fell through or wasn´t assigned or something, so me and Hermana Chil gave the lesson. I really don´t like teaching in front of the members. When I´m explaining a gospel concept to an investigator, if I make a mistake or say something ina  way that is difficult to understand, my companion backs me up and fixes things, but I feel like I shouldn´t be speaking in front of members because they can do things so much better than me. So for me to speak in front of twenty something members, even though I didn´t teach so much as just testify and do my little bit at the end, it was progress!

This Sunday was fantastic. We have been having problems with people coming to church, and we´ve had to drop a lot of investigators just because they wouldn´t come to church. But we fasted, and every single one of the investigators who we made plans with to attend actually attended. That never happens. It was awesome. We also got a new investigator when a less active member invited him to church. The less active member didn´t come, but his friend came anyway and we had one of the best lessons ever yesterday with him. That lesson was like the lessons you see in the church movies where the investigator asks really deep questions and we answer them in the way that they need and then they say that they feel something they´ve never felt before and all that. It was seriously so cool. He also told us that he was looking forward to church next week (whhaaaaaaat?!) and that he would like to come every week. That seriously NEVER happens. It also seems really sincere coming from him. We are meeting with him again  tonight.

We´ve also been teaching a mother and two daughters. After our fifth visit or so, she told us that whenever we came over, it was always during a time when something negative had happened, and that she always felt better afterwards. She is amazing, because she´s had some trials start very recently (after we started teaching her recently) and so many people would use that as a reason to not attend church, to not read, to not pray, and instead she´s decided to continue firm in the decision she made to attend church and be baptized. I´m pretty sure that I´m going to be transferred next week, because my training will be done, and I will be really sad if I won´t be there for their baptisms!

I think I´ve just really liked this week because it´s cool to see the difference between any investigator and someone who is truly ready and needful of the gospel. Don´t get me wrong, being able to teach anyone at all is great, but it´s so amazing to see when the gospel provides that specific something that they were looking for.

 

I´m starting to get into the stride of things here just in time to be transferred I feel like! I reallly really reeeeealllly hope I don´t leave next week!

I love you all!

I´ve gotten packages from the Boltons (my companion was really excited for the hot cocoa packets haha and the socks have come in handy. Just  most of the time not on my feet :) )
Aunt Sylvia (I think the bugs don´t like the essential oils, so I use it liberally. Also, me and Hermana Chil just think it smells really good so we use them like perfume)
Pa Rust - Embodiment of Rust Christmas.
Dan and Em - The card is proudly displayed on my desk and the granolda is almost gone...

I really think the packages will get here, they just take a while.....
But tell everybody thanks, and that they brightened me and my companions Christmas and New Years!

Me and Hermana Chil with the family we are teaching. It was Amy´s birthday. Yes, I´m rocking a sock bun. It was hot, okay?

Our Zone! Elder Erickson made his own ghetto monigote, which is what the hermanas are holding onto. Do I stick out or what?

This is a Thor monigote. Which is now ash. Cool huh!

Also, because it is so hot, I purchase cheap dresses when available that have sleeves, no matter how hideous they are. I call this my funky grandma dress.

We have fun together.
Another recently purchased dress....
There´s a good chance I´m going to give away all my old clothes are replace them with cheap dresses. 

My goal is to have seven dresses and wear my Monday dress on Monday and so on and so forth.

My camera isn´t great, but this is one of the photos I took from the roof of the burning monigotes. We could only see a dozen or so from where we were because there are too many tall buildings, but there were hundreds. Today is the day of the magi or something, so tonight they´re going to burn all the left over monigotes. 

#10 Letter From Ecuador

Christmas was tranquil. We slept in, and I made some kickin´ salsa. Me and Hermana Chil are addicted to salsa so I´m going to make a huge batch today to last us for the week. Together, we can eat one of those glass bowl´s worth (you know, the size we usually make for the entire family) in about a week. Our favorite thing is to scoop up a bit of cream cheese then salsa and just eat it like that. We plan on getting very fat.

Christmas day we met up for a little bit as a zone because we did a secret santa type dealio. The missionary whose name I had got transferred the day before, so I had to buy something generic for someone that I didn´t know. I felt kinda bad about that because everyone else´s gifts were personalized to them, but what could I do? We played some game with two ties and one tie is a mouse and the other is a cat and I don´t know that I could explain it too well, but if the cat catches the mouse, the person with the mouse tie has to do whatever everyone else tells them to do. For instance, when I got caught by the cat tie with the mouse tie, I had to sing the national anthem in front of everyone. I don´t know why I was so nervous, seeing as only 3 other people there even knew the national anthem, but they all video taped it and it was super awkward and I was nervous laughing half the time. So just know, that somewhere out there, there are like 12 recordings of me embarrassing America. 

After that, we went and bought a few bags of candy and put them into smaller sandwich bags, and then we wrote a scripture about the birth of Christ and put that in the bags and distributed them to some of the member families and our investigators. That was nice. That night, there was a special noche de hogar in the house of the obispo. When we got there, the Pasmiños all asked us where we had been all day that day and the day before. Turns out they were waiting for us to show up all day....
We didn´t know, they didn´t actually invite us to come over and spend Christmas with them, they just assumed that we would come haha. I just love them! They told us that we are to spend New Years Day with them, so we are going to be there probably all day Wednesday.

We´re starting to see a bit more success!° I don´t really like to talk about specific people or lessons or anything, because if things don´t work out with them I don´t want to be asked about it haha. But just know that things are looking up and por fin we are starting to fulfill some of our goals.

 

One thing that happened this week worth noting just to explain how awesome the Pasmiños are... We´ve had two investigators talk about Grandpa Pasmiño and how he has something special, that he´s always happy, and that there´s something special in their house. And it´s so true! I think that´s why all the youth flock there, because there is so much love in their home. Grandpa Pasmiño and Hermana Petita his wife are probably my favorite thing about Ecuador. And here´s a precious fun fact: the Pasmiños are the grandpa, the son and his wife and all of his kids, and the married son of the son and his kids. Four generations living in one house. All this time I thought they all lived together because they had to, but Hermano Pedro, the son, told us that they have a house a few minutes away, but that his kids didn´t want to live "so far away" from their grandparents. It´s really only a few minutes away from what he said, but that they wanted to all live together. So they do. I don´t even know why I´m telling you this, I just love them and I feel like when I´m done with my training in two weeks I´m going to be transferred and I´m going to miss them. 

Yesterday was my first Ecuador rain! It was glorious. Me and Hermana Chil got thoroughly soaked and even a little cold. Once the rain is done though, it gets hotter. Not as fun, and today is sweltering.

Also, yesterday I got paid the highest honor and compliment that an Ecuadorian can give, and I was given it by 20 or so youth. But to set up the scene....

So all the kids are on vacations from school, so everyone´s home and they have soccer games in the middle of the street. One street even has goals that they put right in the middle of the street and if you want to drive there too bad. Anyway, me and my companion were walking past this game where 20 or so young men were playing and more were watching, and the goalie looked at me and then faced the all the kids playing and yelled STOP! (In English, which I thought was weird) and he yelled stop until everyone stopped. And then they all just watched me walk by .

They literally just stopped their game to watch me walk past. That was the only reason. I was red and a little ticked off and trying to speed walk past because hello! Uncomfortable! But Hermana Chil was just laughing and couldn´t believe that I actually stopped a fútbol game. TO my embarrasment she recounted the story to two other member families who were also very impressed.

Also, I loved all my packages!! Thank you, thank you to all of you! Mor granolda plz....

I´m going to send picture with some comments so yeah this is the end.
Love you all! 

Me and Hermana Chil at the present swap Christmas Day. I´m slouching big time. 

Our Christmas Day feast! Usually, people use Christmas day as an excuse to eat really unhealthy food, but instead we splurged on salads and gorged ourselves on salsa. Those yellow things are patacones, my favorite things here. Basically fried plantains, but they are so good!

Me and Hermana Chil with two daughters of a family we are teachings. The minion is like a giant paper mache doll. There are tons of these of all sized everywhere, Batmans, lots of minions, people just make them for something popular that year or someone that was big or something I don´t know. I didn´t understand everything, all I know is that there are tons of these everywhere. There´s a fifteen foot Batman in front of a store that I think we´re going to take pictures with today. At midnight on New Years they burn them. Some of them have fireworks inside too. I´m kinda bummed that all of this is going to be going on and me and Hermana Chil will be in the house... We´ve asked people to take pictures and record though. 

We celebrated Christmas with scrunchy side ponytails. It was glorious.
Note that I am sweating like a pig on Christmas day. 

They´re big on pineapples here. This is a giant fountain near downtown. Hermana Chil is making my pineapple gang sign. Represent. 

Elder Maddock was transferred, so we had to take a final pineapple picture with the missionaries that were in the ward when the pineapple sign was formed. 

#9 Letter From Ecuador

Due to our Christmas call  from Natalie tomorrow evening, she only sent pictures this week.

Foto 1
Me and my beloved compañera Hermana Chil outside of the temple. I look like a giant.

Me and my companion with Elder Gray from Australia. He does this hand gesture and says Success! and me and my companion have adopted it. I´m just sending random stuff now because I don`t know what to say...  

#8 Letter From Ecuador

I forget it's Christmas because Holy Hannah it's a scorcher out there. Yesterday, it was very likely that I would die. But all is well!

I absolutely adore my companion! This week we went to the temple! We traveled to Guayaquil Wednesday night (and ate Pizza Hut what what) and then went to the temple early Thursday morning. (It was cool because they've finally translated the new presentation into Spanish and so most of the missionaries were seeing the new presentation for the first time. My companion included. We had a lovely whispered chat in the celestial room about how great it was).

 

After the temple, we had a capacitation with Presidente and Hermana Amaya, and then after that each zone (ours included) performed a short christmas themed skit that has to do with the obra de salvacion. I played a curtain.... yeah... 

Anyway while we were there it was pretty apparent to me that our zone lacks the same amount of unity that the other zones had, and this could be why we are one of the zones that has the most trouble meeting it's goals. Me and Hermana Chil got to thinking about this and decided that if we weren''t unified as a zone, who better to start fixing things than us?! So that's exactly what we're doing haha. We have prepared little things to give each companionship to brighten things up at our lately dismal district meetings, and this morning, we requested a meeting with the zone leaders to discuss our other ideas on how to unify the zone more. Let it be known that no, we have no leadership callings in this zone whatsoever, but we decided to not let that stop us. So we met with the ZLs this morning and told them what's up and they were really thankful and I believe we're going to implement some things in the meeting tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that goes. I love that she's a go-getter. If something isn't working, we as a companionship aren't going to sit idly by and hope it gets fixed, we're going to request a meeting with the ZLs! I love that I'm starting to feel more like myself in Spanish haha. 

What else what else.....

I got packages and letters! From Padre Rust, Dan and Em, Aunt Silvia, Uncle Spencer and a letter from CTR 7! I don't know if I should wait until Christmas or what but I'm excited! I smell essential oils in Aunt Silvia's package.... :)

I don't really know what else to say. We're working hard, but waiting to see the fruits of our labors haha. We're trying to figure out ways to get the members more involved.

OH YEAH HOW COULD I FORGET!
I spoke in Church yesterday. In Spanish.
Like, a real talk. In Spanish. About the obra de salvacion. In Spanish.

I made it through pretty well I think until the end when I could for the life of me remember how to say "I say these things" to say amen and then I got really flushed and David Torres started laughing at me so up until that point I think it went pretty well.

Yeah. I don't really know what else to say so I'll start sending the pictures and add bits and pieces if I remember something to say

Love you all!

This is from three weeks ago, me and the only Ecuatorian taller than me, Irwin Ordoñez

THe noche de hogar from a few weeks ago. I love all of them!

One of my favorite pictures. There are I believe 5 very funny things happening here. See if you can spot them all.
Friendly reminder that no one reads English too well here.... :)

The conferencia por la Navidad. This is all the hermanas in five zones with Hermana Amaya. Hermana Chil (Mi querida compañera!) suggested this pose and surprisingly (to me at least) Hermana Amaya was all for it haha.

My zone with Presidente y Hermana Amaya.
Hermana Chil asked if we could do a funny picture, and the asistentes told her that they´ve never seen Presidente agree to a funny picture. He didn´t do anything funny, but still it was surprising. Milagro is famous for it´s pineapples, which is why me and Elder Maddock are making pineapple signs with our hands. It´s a little something I invented that has spread like wildfire with the youth in my ward. They all know how to say pineapple jaja.

Elder Lizana just says I am pineapple whenever we´re speaking in English and he doesn´t understand anything. It´s swell.
The time is far spent. Love you all!

#7 Letter from Ecuador

Oh my goodness I love my companion! I was so excited to email and say that things are going just swell companion-wise. She is so fun and bubbly and we are already basically best friends. I was worried that my Spanish would suffer because there`s such a strong temptation to speak English, but I`ve found that it`s easier to speak Spanish with others and not be afraid to make mistakes in front of a good friend.

This Wednesday will be my three month mark since I reported to the CCM. Whaaaaa¿? I feel like it`s been two days.... Time is funny.

Here`s more great news, my zone going to the temple Wednesday! We`re also spending the night in the temple apartments which means I get one night with a warm shower! 

I think a Cambio was exactly what I needed, and Hermana Chil is exactly what I needed. When Hermana Diez left, I was freaking out because I still didn`t know my sector very well and I was pretty sure I was just going to fall apart. Buuuut I didn`t! I had to really step up and now I know how to get places and I talk to taxis and I haven`t even had one try to rip me off too bad yet! I also had to be the one to talk to the members and remember names and introduce my new companion and now I feel even more at home here. I`m really glad I`ll be in Milagro for Christmas! 

We have had some issues that have slowed things down in our ward. Every once in a while, the members or the youth will have references, and without fail, they live in the elder`s sector of the ward. Basically, right now, we don`t have anyone progressing.¨

We received permission from the parents to baptize Jairo and Allan, but we`re not sure if it`s the right thing to do, because their family refuses to listen to a word from us, and we`re not sure it`s a good idea to baptize these kids.... I mean, if they have a real testimony, then it would be fine, but we`re worried that they`re only attending church and all these other things because they like the activities and they like my hair, and those aren't good enough reasons to make a sacred covenant... so we`ll see. I`m trying to not let my monthly goals motivate me to push someone towards something they`re not ready for.

Did I tell you about Digna? I think I did, but anyway she didn`t attend church and her husband won`t let us talk to her more than twice a week... He`s a little bizarre.... He`s super catholic but he likes reading the Book of Mormon and we`re just not really sure what to make of him haha.

Since we don`t have many investigators, we have had to resort to contacting (which any missionary I`m sure agrees is the absolute worst thing ever). It`s not great because you can talk to a contact for half an hour and they`ll say thanks for the conversation, it`s all interesting and I like that you talk about Jesus, but please don`t come back again. Ehhh what can you do? So one day we were out contacting, and I swear everyone on that street was ticked off about something. We were getting ready to call it quits and head somewhere else, when Hermana Chil looked up and saw a guy on the second floor of a house just looking out the window. So we called up to him and started talking to him. He couldn`t leave his house right then because he shattered his leg in a motorcycling accident and he was hooked to an IV thingy, and we couldn`t go up because he was home alone, but we fixed an appointment to meet up with him and we would bring a member with us. We went and he told us that he had been in the hospital for a long time, and that he vowed to change his life for the better. We`re excited to see where that will lead

. 

We need more people to teach! Contacting just doesn`t work! Right now, we`re really focusing on rescuing. We are looking for the home of the less active families and teaching them, as well as recent converts. Elder Mestre said in the training meeting that the more we rescue, the more we will baptize. We`re putting that promise to the test! We were able to finally meet with one family that before always refused to meet with me and Hermana Diez. We were just walking in the street when we saw their grandson, who always likes to call out and say hi to us. I just felt like we should ask if his parents were home, and they were, so we went, and through some miracle they agreed to sit and chat with us. Me and Hermana Diez always tried to talk to them, and they always had their kids tell us that they weren`t home. Miracle I tell you!  We`ve met with them twice, and we`re not really sure why, but they are just not ready to come to church (well, at least that`s what they feel. We know they`re ready). But we stopped by after church and met with them again, and part of their family came to the Christmas devotional last night! Also, we invite everyone to church and we invited tons of taxi drivers etc. to the Christmas devotional, and one of these contacts actually came! We don`t know how he felt about it yet, because we had to skeedaddle because the devotional ended an hour after we usually are supposed to be at home. But we`re going to try and meet with him too and see how he liked it and hopefully teach him more.

I don`t have too much to say right now, but I have pictures that I wanted to send last week and one or two for this week, so yeah, I`ll send those. I love you all!

Wait hold up I got the most bomb package from the Notoez! I was so excited! If there`s food in the packages, we can open it during the district meeting, so my ZL opened it up and took out the candy for me, and I shared with everyone and it was great. Also, I loved the knee-highs. It`s nice to have knee highs that are actually knee high haha. So please tell them thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU! Muchìsimas gracias. I will try to send them a letter, but I don`know when I`ll be able to, because as of right now I do now know where the correo de ecuador is.....

Yeah I love you all, thanks for the prayers and the emails!
Hermana Rust

Apparently I picked the one computer in this cyber that doesn`t have a USB port...
Guess you`ll get three weeks worth of pictures next week...

Ergh. ´

Yeah.¨

#6 Letter from Ecuador

Transfers came. Last night I went to bed relieved because they call Sunday nights to inform us of transfers. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning to a call from my Zone Leader. He asked how things were going with my companionship, and I told him they were great and that I love my companion, and then he asked if I would still love her even if she left... I just groaned and got really not happy.

 

So we had an hour and ten minutes to pack her stuff up and go to the bus terminal this morning. I am so sad, and boy am I nervous! My new companion is Hermana Chil. She`s from Florida if I remember correctly. But Hermana Chil is really happy and I can tell that I can learn a lot from her. Anyhoo... I`m nervous because I still don`t know my way around this sector!

Elder Remington, one of the APs, told us to take the Ruta Milagreña back to Milagro, and so we did. Well this bus doesn`t stop at the bus terminal like Expreso Milagro does, and while we were on the bus I had no idea where we were. After a ridiculously long time on the bus, we asked where  we were and when we found out we were a long ways from where we needed to be. I felt so bad because poor Hermana Chil hadn`t eaten all day and oh boy I felt so dumb! A man on the bus really helped us out and after 3 hours, we succesfully completed what should have been a 1 hour trip. Also, I couldn`t find the right cyber to email in, so right now we are in the dumpiest cyber with the slowest internet ever. Also the keyboard sticks so I might not write too much today.

This week was good though! Last monday, we had a fantastic FHE, and the elders were able to get some great new investigators, but this week the jovenes didn`t have anyone for us. I think I already told you about the kids, Jairo y Allan y Humberto y Vicente? Yeah well anyways they love talking to me and I love talking to them. They love trying to say "Rust." Jairo especially likes to be taught, and he enthusiastically participates in our lessons. We have permission for Jairo and Allan to be taught, but we haven`t talked to Humberto and Vicente`s parents yet, but they love going to the youth activities. Every Tuesday they play basketball and soccer at the church and on Thursdays they meet up at the Pasmiños house to ride bikes. The Pasmiño`s house is the happening place, there`s always youth gathering there. On Sundays, Alex Pasmiño takes his truck around and honks outside the youth`s houses whose parents either aren`t members or aren`t active and dozens of kids and teenages pile into the back of his truck to go to church, and then he goes back and picks up his own family. I absolutely love how dedicated these youth are, even though they don`t have examples in their own homes to follow.

This sunday was testimony meeting, and you best believe that the youth took the majority of the time giving real testimonies, not just relating stories or giving shoutouts to their friends. It was swell.

I completely forgot about Saturday! Saturday, Milena was baptized, and her recent convert brother, Ronaldo (my second baptism I believe) baptized her. Steven referred Ronaldo, her brother, who referred Milena, who invited some of her nonmember friends to her baptism, who are not being taught by the elders. All of the references lately live in the elders` sector....  I`m trying to attach pictures but this dumpy little computer isn`t working with my camera! Also it`s making a beeping sound and I`m not sure what`s going on... I had a lot of pictures to send this week too darn it! Anyway....

Yeah I`m going to need lots of prayers this week .I`m expected to introduce her to our investigators and get her caught up to speed so we can start working, and I`m not entirely sure how to do that but I know it can be done!

Yesterday, Emelec played in the championship and won. The streets were a mess. Tons of drunks. The second the game was over everyone left into the streets to form a caravan with the team flags and horns blaring and all sorts of noise, and then everyone got drunk, so that happened.  Honestly this week was a blur and I`m trying to remember things.

Hello I`ve almost been gone three months. Whaaaa? The spanish is off and on, one day I`ll understand almost everything, the next day I won`t understand a thing. I`m not sure why this happens, but oh well, it is what it is.

They have been celebrating Christmas here almost since I got here. It feels so weird to see a Christmas tree or blinking Christmas lights when it`s swelteringly hot outside. It doesn`t feel one bit like December. I completely forgot about Thanksgiving, and in our companion prayer, Hermana Diez remembered the it was the Dìa de Accion de Gracias, and she felt so bad that she didn`t do anything for me for Thanksgiving, because I was probably so homesick and so sad that I was missing Thanksgiving and so on and so forth. I told her I didn`t feel like I was missing anything because it feels like July still. She made me pancakes the next day anyway so I could have some American food for my American holiday :) I thought of Grandpa Skousen that night though and our past Thanksgivings with him. I love that picture of him and Grandma and N&E outside of the temple, I keep it on my desk.

I seriously refuse to believe that it is December.

Mommy, I hope you have a great birthday this week. I love you very much and I hope you think of me every so often haha. I sing loud and proud in all meetings (they don`t call on me to lead, but I do anyway with my voice from my pew...) and I think of you. My zone has to prepare a performance (not a musical number, an entire performance - songs, actions, storyline etc.) for Christmas and I`m trying to figure out how to put myself in charge.... I love you!

The time is far spent.

I love you all, thanks for the prayers!

Hermana Rust