Hey everyone! Ecuador has been sooooooo awesome so far! I love the culture and the people here in San Pablo! I’m writing today because we are going back to Quito on Sunday Monday and Tuesday to go to a devotional with President Nelson!!!!!!!! The whole mission is going!
Monday: Monday we woke up at 2:30 and headed to the airport for the longest day of my life… As soon as we got there, we found out one of our flights had been cancelled, so we got a completely new schedule… Anyway we went to LA first instead of Phoenix which added about an hour to the flying. We got in LA, with four of us, and had about 20 minutes before our boarding started so we were in a huge hurry… Anyway that next flight was from LA to Miami. In 6 hours I got to see the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico… We arrived in Miami and were stuck there forever!! After our flight was already delayed for an hour and a half we finally boarded. but then the Pilot told us that we had to remove 7000 pounds of fuel from the airplane because of the weather or something. That took about another hour or longer.. Later we finally left to Ecuador and I made my last step in the United States…
Tuesday… We arrived in Quito at about 2/2:30 in the morning.. We had a small meeting for our visas then we met our President and his wife, along with the AP’s and some departing missionaries. We got to this apartment in Quito and had about 3 and a half hours to sleep. Later that day we got up and had meetings all day… I finally met my comp, Elder Ahrens, from Idaho. He has been awesome so far… Then that night the noobies all ate dinner at the mission home which was crazy nice… I got some sick pics of Quito from their balcony.. After we went back to bed.
Wednesday: We woke up early and made our way to San Pablo. Its about a 3 hour bus ride which wasn’t too bad and I just got to talk to Elder Ahrens. We got to our… “house” around 12. Our house/apartment isn’t too bad. There’s hardly room to walk but we have running water so… not terrible. Anyway we unpacked then ate lunch from one of our Mamitas. ( we get fed lunch everyday by members they call Mamitas) They are super nice. I have absolutely loved all of the food so far… We eat a lot of bread type things from bakeries around town. I haven’t actually had much food from the Mamitas because none of them rly knew that we had already gotten here. But we have eaten a lot of restaurants. The food is definitely different and I couldn’t tell you what’s in it, but I have liked everything! For drinks its either water out of our water bottle with filters, some kinda juice (soooo good) or coca-cola, which is way better here. Anyway that night we did some contacting.. we got two new investigators that night. We also have 3 people that we are working with that have baptism dates in September.! We are praying hard for them!
Thursday: So on Thursday, we did exchanges with the zone leaders, elder Pollmann and Elder Paulson. They are super cool! I was with elder Pollmann in Otovalo which is in town, San Pablo is all country. Elder Paulson was showing Elder Ahrens around San Pablo because he was just there and they decided to whitewash the area before we got there. (both Ahrens and I are new in San Pablo). But I got to teach the restoration with Elder Pollmann to a man names Hermano Armondo! He was super nice and the Spirit was strong int the lesson! Other than that, every other appointment fell through. We did a good amount of contacting that day haha! Anyway Elder Pollmann was swamped with giving out information with the devotional because the whole mission is gonna be spending multiple nights in Quito, so its all really complicated. We went to a church, which was almost nicer than the ones back home, to get on a computer so Pollmann could do some stuff. After that we headed back and I went straight to bed because Pollmann’s area is all big hills that we walked all day.
Friday: That morning we got ready and swapped companions again. When we got back we had to meet with the district and the ward mission leader. Our district is us two and two sisters. After we ate lunch then did our studying and planning. Then we went to go find some more people to teach.. We made some new appointments then headed to a lesson we had with an 18 year old named Eric who was super cool! On the way I ate chicken feet… not too bad actually. When we got there we found Eric’s dad o the porch. We were talking with him for a bit and looking at this huge wildfire like a mile away on one of the volcanoes… There’s 2 right by us, and I’m gonna hike them one way or another… Anyway we found out that Eric’s dad had been baptized a long time ago… long story short, he had some bad experiences with the bishop and members and we basically got chewed out for an hour… We left and felt pretty crappy after that, but we kept pushing on… since that was our last appointment we started knocking doors again. Its actually kinda tough here because everyone is crazy Catholic… Anyway a while later we met an older man named Jose. This was actually the first time someone had let us in their house. We gave all of lesson one and it went perfectly! Everything was clicking and i definitely was speaking with the gift of tongues… Then, of course the worst happened… The rest of his family walked in and were not supportive of our message.. We talked to them for a while, but they kept saying, we are Catholic, we have a religion! I got the strongest prompting right at that moment! I asked them… You all believe in the prophets in the bible right? I named off some and they said yes… I told them.. if God had called another Prophet on the earth, do you think it would be important to follow him? They stared for a moment… their mindset completely changed. and obviously I can’t give a full account of what I did because I didn’t do anything… The spirit did all of the work… All I did was listen… Later on we stayed for a while and by the end we were laughing and joking and actually got to be great friends with this awesome family… (btw there are 12 PEOPLE IN THIS FAMILY!!!!!!!). We made an appointment to teach all of them this next Wednesday, and I can’t wait! We left and met some awesome members on the way home who are gonna feed us on Saturday…
Saturday: We have three hours to prepare for the whole next week… We lost our pday to go see the prophet on Monday, but its worth it! I have loved all my time here!!!! Its gonna be a great two years! But ya today we have scheduled 4 more lessons later today, and I’m so excited to teach! But I’m also gonna get a haircut in a barbershop! Haha that’ll be sick!
All I can say to everyone is that we have been given the Gift of the Holy Ghost. whether we realize or not it is always with us! All we have to do is listen! That’s what has helped me through this whole process… It can help you too! I love all of you thank you for the support!
Love
Elder Curtis!
Hi,
Great to see Bryant is doing well .Ido not know if you will receive anything for I can just verily see what is written my screen. Hope all is well with everyone. Hope to see again sometime.
Garth