La vida misional acá en Ecuador [Mission Life in Ecuador] Week 19

March 31, 2014

A panoramic view of Katie's sector from the top of one of the many hills.  "I'm dying there are so many hills!"

Well, guess what?  I got cambios!  There were just four hermanas in Barrio Alamos, and they took all four of us out.  It was ridiculous.  The other three all went to Guayaquil and I´m not sure where they went after that, but I just went from Cuenca Sur to Cuenca Norte.  I´m in Rama Totoracocha on the other side of Cuenca, so that´s not too bad.  

Katie's new companion, Hermana Carollo

My new companion is Hermana Carollo and she´s from Colorado (I already checked she´s not from Nathan´s mission, she lives in the Colorado Springs mission).  She´s really cool and we get along really well.  It´s funny, because she was companions with Hermana Herrera in Santa Rosa right before she trained me, and she also trained Hermana Davenport, my companion from the MTC!  We´re just waiting for Hermana Herrera and Hermana Davenport to become companions now haha.  Her mom is Mexican, so we always tell people that between the two of us we have one gringa and one latina haha.  She went to BYU-I like a semester before I did, so I´m excited to see her there when we get back.  There are a lot of people here who went to BYU-I or are going there after the mish.  One last thing about her, she literally has Lauren´s eyes, it´s super cool.

We got a whole bunch of new rules in the mission.  Before, for someone to be baptized they just needed to attend church twice, but now they have to attend three times if they´re older than 12.  If they´re 8-11 and don´t have the support of their parents or a close member of the church (or basically someone who can make sure they´ll be going to church every week), they have to attend church for a couple months before they can be baptized.  We also have to teach spouses together; if one of them isn´t there, even if they aren´t interested in the church or getting baptized, we can´t teach them until they´re both there.  Also, they have to have ALL the lessons before the baptismal interview.  The idea is that this way so many converts won´t go inactive, because often times they go for two weeks, get baptized, and never come back, and we don´t want that.  So this will be good.  It´s going to be a whole lot more difficult though, so I expect that the baptisms will go down for a while before they go back up.  

It´s cool because we also got new techniques.  Oh yeah, they give us techniques here in the mission and scriptures for different situations and for baptismal invitations.  We just got new ones for the sierra, or basically Cuenca and Loja, since people there are more duro and waaaaaaay more Catholic.  So now we have scriptures and techniques specifically for them.  It´s awesome!

I was thinking this week, since they also asked us to talk to our investigators and converts about family history, that it says in my patriarchal blessing that I´ll be able to help further the genealogy work in my family.  Now that I´m here in Ecuador learning Spanish, I´ll be able to help read all of the old records that are written in Spanish.  I think that´s another reason I´m supposed to learn this language.

We did a lot of wandering this week since Hermana Carollo only has a week more than I do in the sector, and I got some nasty blisters that hurt me when I walk, but other than that, things were pretty good.  We have an investigator that´s progressing like crazy; Hermana Carollo found him with her last companion the weekend before I got here, and in about a week and a half he´s probably read up until 2 Nephi 10, after starting from the very beginning of the Book of Mormon.  His testimony is growing so fast, it´s really cool.  I´m excited for him to watch General Conference.

Katie enjoying a p-day (preparation day)

That´s about it for now.  Keep it real folks!  Choose the right!

Love, 

Hermana Iverson