A Pretty Interesting Week

March 16, 2015

Katie and her companion Hermana Quispe

Katie giving her former companion Hermana Risco her pin

Katie and Hermana Risco getting recognition from the mission president

Welp, the week started out pretty interesting.  Tuesday we had a capacitación with Presidente in Loja.  We had to be there by 7:45am, so we had to take the bus that left at 6am.  We woke up very early that day.  We were the first ones to get there, so we waited outside in the rain underneath a tree waiting for someone to come open the chapel.  One neat thing about the capacitacion was that since the two zones in Loja were there, I got to see Hermana Risco again, my last companion (she´s in Zamora)!  She´s a little cutie, she always calls me mamita since I finished her training.  And now she´s senior companion, even though both she and her companion barely just finished their 12 weeks of training.  Something they do here in our mission is that in every capacitacion, every missionary that´s finished their training receives a special pin of the mission logo, and their leaders get to put it on them, or their trainer if they´re still there.  And since I was there, and technically was her trainer, I got to give her her pin!  I was so excited to finally do it.  Later, they did something a little different, where they handed out certificates of recognition, and Hermana Risco and I received one for the most rescates (rescues: less actives that we´ve helped reactivate)!  So now I have a neat certificate and a little pin of the temple in Guayaquil.  Super cool.

This week the Relief Society president presented us to a family.  The wife had been receiving lessons from the missionaries several months ago, when she and her husband were separated.  In the end she didn´t get baptized, and at the beginning of this month she and her husband reconciled and are together again.  We´ve started teaching them, and the husband has agreed to be baptized if he feels ready--but we know he will, he´s a really good guy and really wants to follow Jesus Christ and help his family.  Just the wife feels a little nervous because of things that happened in the past and doesn´t want to do anything that will disrupt her family again.  We would really really really appreciate your prayers for them, so that they continue progressing.  They went to church yesterday and really liked it, so we hope things keep going up with them.

Well, some sad news is that Michell didn´t get baptized this last week...she drank coffee on Monday, so she couldn´t get baptized on Saturday.  She also had a lot of doubts (her abuela tells her a lot of things to get her not to do it and it confuses her).  We´re going to try talking to her again to try and help her to maybe get baptized this week.  She just really needs to have the desire to do it for her, and not for anyone else.  Feel free to pray for her as well.

Other than that, everything´s pretty normal.  We´re working here, and I hope things get better and that we can find more families and more people that are willing to repent and that are ready to accept the Restored Gospel in their lives.  We literally have the best thing in the world.  We don´t even realize how blessed we are just to have this knowledge.  The gospel is true.

I love you all very much,

Hermana Iverson