Week 3 in Ecuador

Hey everyone! This week was pretty great! so some random info: we have been crazy successful this week! We found 11 new people to teach, we are gonna have two baptisms this Saturday, and we had 12 investigators attend church yesterday!! Its been a really cool week! We have a family of three that we are pretty certain we can put a baptismal date on this week!

Last pday after emails we went to the plaza de panchos which is like this giant market with so much cool stuff! I bought a sweater with llamas on it, a wallet, cuz its all coin here, and a backpack because we can use backpacks here!! I didn’t know that before my mission haha! We also ate at this really good pizza place in Otavalo, its a lot different than the states tho. Then we went back to the house and cleaned it because it was disgusting but I´m certain that it is the cleanest in the mission now! We also had two really good lessons that night!

Tuesday: Tuesday we had a zone conference that took up the entire morning! After lunch we had a lesson with two people that have a date for baptism. We also had a lesson with a new family we found of 5!!!! Anyway that lesson went crazy good we were also with the ward mission leader! It was all the way in Angla, which is a 20 minute bus ride! It was so late that there was no more buses after the lesson! Anyway we started walking and the dad of the family, Gonzalo found us soon after and gave us a ride back to our house! He was awesome!

Wednesday: Wednesday morning we started off great! We had an early lesson with a family of three! We got there and they fed us a big breakfast! We talked for a while then gave the first lesson! They have already been to church twice and we are gonna try to put a date on them this week! After all our studies and lunch, we taught English class which we will be doing every Wednesday and Friday! That went well also! Later we taught another family of four who have been attending the church! We went with the young woman’s president and she did awesome in helping teach lesson two, The Plan of Salvation! It went great! That night we met with Rafael, a recent convert, and his member family! It was already late and they had fed us dinner because they own this restaurant! (ate a lot that day!) But his wife was having some issues and we gave her a blessing of health! That was an amazing experience and the spirit was so strong!

Thursday: Thursday we did all of our studies then our lunch fell through! We decided to go to Otavalo to eat there! we had this Chinese place which was really weird in Ecuador but it was pretty good! After lunch we met with Rosa and Jose who have a baptism date! We taught Tithing, fasting, and Fast Offerings! They are pretty old so they don’t understand very well, so it went just about as good as it could haha! Later that day we walked 40 minutes to Iraque, but our appointment fell so we visited another sister that we have been teaching! Until this point we havent had contact with her husband but he was there and he was super nice! He showed us around this sick house he is building and then they fed us dinner! That took up to 8 ish so we had a long walk back home!

Friday: So in the morning we had district council. After that we ate lunch in Otavalo in a members restaurant. It was pretty much a giant plate of beets and rice so ya… I hate beets haha… After that tho we were doing language study while we waited for the president of our mission to come to our house!!! He was going around to check the living conditions of every house and doing interviews with everyone! Anyway since our house was so clean we were good with that. President Chacon was so impressed with my Spanish! He said I was the fastest progressing missionary with Spànish! That was really great to hear! My comp also says that no one is able to like understand people and actually participate in doing the lessons during their first change! But ya I’ve been able to understand about 70/80 percent of what everyone says most of the time and I also can say just about anything I want during lessons! That was really good to hear my progress considering I have been working my butt off with the Spanish… But I still have a long way to go haha!!! After President left we had a lesson that fell through so we decided to do some contacting. we got one new out of that and have a cita with him this next week! We had an activity with the hermanas in our district where we handed out hot chocolate and bread! They got a lot of new people out of it so that was successful!

Saturday: After studies and lunch, we had to do weekly planning which usually takes up a couple of hours. After that we went all the way to Iraque again to teach another sister lesson one, the Restoration. We also figured out that the husband and wife are not legally married, which is super super common in Ecuador everyone tells me… Not sure what we are gonna do with her, but if she reads, prays, and truly gets an answer she will have the desire to change. Later that night we ahd a lesson with another couple, Patricio and Maria. Anyway Patricio knows like a lot about the bible and had so many questions when we were teaching the restoration! That was interesting, but we were able to answer all of his questions, and actually they have a lot of potential! They gave us some bananas from there store too! All we eat for breakfast or dinner is either bread or bananas haha! I wasn´t the biggest fan before, but I love bananas now!

Sunday. Sunday we had 12 INVESTIGATORS COME TO CHURCH!!!!!!!!!! Sacrament was awesome with all of them. After sacrament we gave another blessing of health to an older sister then we headed to class! After class we wrangled up Rosa and Jose to do their interviews for baptism with the zone leaders.My comp was busy with that so I was alone for ward council. That was scary with 12 people talking to me in Spanish haha but I survived and got 6 members to accompany us with the lessons throughout the week! After I got word that Rosa and jose are ready for baptism this next Saturday! Haha sadly I won’t be doing the baptism tho but thats ok haha! Anyway it took an hour and a half on a bus to get to lunch which was good.( rice and potatoes like every other day!). Anyway we managed to make it back to our house! After studies we had about an hour of no plans so we decided to go contacting! And there is this house way up on this mountain that we’ve been wanting to contact! Long story short we only made it half way up before we had to turn back to get to the next lesson! But we did get some cool pictures out of it! After that we had a noche de hogar with some investigators and members. We watched the restoration video(super funny in Spanish) (also the video takes place in the 1800s and its like exactly the same as here now besides cars and phones ahaha). Anyway that was really good! We talked with the family who lived in that house for a while after because there son isn’t a member and we have been working with him! They fed us some soup and we headed off! We did some contacting then headed home. Oh and at some point in the day this random guy came up to us and said that before he had received lessons from other missionaries and he wanted us to teach him! Haha how often does that happen? Anyway ya we have a lesson with him tonight!

So that was my week! I love all of you thank you for all of the support and prayers!

Love

Elder Curtis!