Week 35

Everybody-

Ecuafact: When cutting the cake the cut a cirle out of the middle and then cut slices. I´ve no idea why.

Mission fact: We have a rule that we cannot brush the dirt from our knee´s after we pray in the homes of our investigators or members.

I´m doing really well, although it has been a week of challenges! To say the very least. One of our Investigators, Ivan Augilla who was progressing so well, didn´t come to church yesterday. Which isn´t super surprising in and of itself but we went before church and he said that he would be coming. So we stopped by after church, and he was drunk. He´s got some major problems and just doesn´t know how to cope. Later it turns out he beat his wife, Gloria, a new convert. It is just so sad what alcohol does to people. They don´t have alcohol laws here so he´d been drinking the pure “moon-shine”. It´s so sad because he was just doing so well.

Rosio Pilco and Pilar were also tough this week, the family of Rosio is catholic and won´t let her talk with us anymore, she´s 27 but she lives at home. Pilar was also hard, her husband won´t give her permission to talk to us either. It´s sad to leave behind people who want to learn about the gospel but can´t for their circumstances.

On the up-side, Edison Cando is doing really well, he has a baptismal date for the 29th of August. I don´t know what happened to change his mind because a few weeks ago he said: "Sisters, I wasn´t looking for a religion." Now he is excited. almost all of his family are members (recent converts). It´s been really fun to see how the gospel really can change lives.

Vinicio and Veronica are also doing really well and planning on getting married next week and they also have a baptismal date for the 29th of August. They are still so great and always come to church without any help from us.

This week we had a service project to clean up the church grounds. It was one of the best moments in my entire mission. Only 10 people (of the 157 active members)showed up, but 4 of them were recent converts. It was such a blessing to me to see my converts really really "join the church". I can´t even describe the feeling.

Unfortunately I won´t be here to see him get baptized. I´ve been changed again to Ambato. Yes, my former sector. So I´m torn, I love Riobamba but it will be nice to have more time in my old sector. I still am moving every transfer. I´m going to be senior companion to Hermana Ovalle, also from Guatemala. I´ve been able to learn so much from Hermana Castillo and I´m grateful for the experience.

The good news is that all of the family of Octavio Borja lives in Ambato so I´m going there to convert them all!

Love,

Whitney