#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.