¡Buenos Días de Ecuador! - Week 5

December 23, 2013

Hola! 

But yeah so anyways, Merry Christmas!  It´s so weird because I guess everyone gets all excited and ready for the 24th; at least that´s how it seems.  Whenever we visit anyone, my companion always asks them, "Are you excited for the 24th?  Are you ready for Christmas?" and I´m always like "wait what, what day is Christmas here" but I guess families all get together on the 24th and then at midnight they´re like "Yay it´s Christmas!" and they all celebrate then or something.  Idk.  Weird.  We have to be in our houses by 6pm both the 24th and 25th.  We bought ice cream today and are gonna get pizza for Navidad since we´re gonna be in our house all evening.  I think a lot of people are going to give/bring us food.  It´s gonna be awesome.

Hna. Almeida (Hna. = Hermana or Sister) from the other sister companionship living with us finished her mission last week and went home to Uruguay, and now Hna. Macahuachi has a new companion, Hna. Whitmore.  She´s from Utah and it´s kinda nice having another gringa in the apartment.  It´s nice to have someone understand everything I´m saying haha

This week...wasn´t the best.  We´ve been having such a hard time finding new people to teach that we´ve been contacting in areas.  We visited a family again that was given to us as a reference before and tried to teach them, but it turned out to be a disaster.  They were Jehovah´s Witnesses (there´s actually a lot of Jehovah´s Witnesses and Evangelicals here; we probably meet more of them than Catholics sometimes) and the husband is very smart and only wanted to have an intellectual discussion/debate of sorts.  He spoke English as well, and it was really frustrating when I finally tried bearing my testimony and was getting nervous because he was asking all of these weird questions (he doesn´t celebrate Christmas or believe in the Old Testament...welp), and he kept just critiqueing me and how I spoke and kept telling me to just speak in English.  I finally did but he was still trying to give me tips on how to talk to him (he´d snap his fingers whenever I looked away but that was because he was making me so nervous) and finally I just said "It doesn´t matter that I´m from the United States and can´t speak Spanish very well!  Just listen to what I´m trying to tell you!"  Ugh that´s the worst thing about being a gringa here.  No one takes me seriously sometimes when I try to speak.  Meh.

But anyways, yeah so not super successful this week.  But we finally found some people!  We have a couple people set up for baptism.  We even have a family!  The husband is super interested and has a ton of questions.  Gonna be praying hard things don´t fall through with them.

The Lord has definitely been trying us here and I know that it´s only because He wants us to be better because He loves us.  I can´t believe my first transfer is almost over (cambios are next week, so I´ll either stay in Santa Rosa or go somewhere else, who knows).  The time literally goes by so fast.  I´m so grateful to be here and hope I can make the most of my time here.  Love all of you!

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año, 

Hermana Iverson

P.S.  My companion says hi!