¡Buenos Días de Ecuador! - Week 4

Hola friends and family!

So I’m actually writing this letter on a bus…yesterday our zone leader told my companion and me that we had to be in Guayaquil before 8 am this morning.  Our alarms went off at 1 am and we had to leave by 2 am for Machala to catch the bus for Guayaquil.  We actually had to wait an hour and a half for the next bus, but we got there on time.  Pretty much all of the missionaries that came at the same time as me had to go to Guayaquil for visa stuff.  It was super simple, nothing to worry about.  I think they just wanted to double check we existed, but it was a lot of trouble to go all the way there and back.  But yeah, we’re on our way back now. 

Anyway, last Tuesday was my birthday and was definitely memorable!  I got 3 birthday cakes – 3!  One in our zone meeting we had that morning (my companion totally smashed my face into it – que bestia), one at lunch at a member’s house, and one at dinner at an investigator’s house who invited us over for my birthday (my companion smashed my face into that cake too—no manches Hermana).  Pretty sure it was a personal record.

Right after her face was smashed -- Katie looks a little surprised!

What a good sport

As far as the rest of my week went, we just kept seeming to strike out.  We had a few baptismal dates fall through and had trouble finding our investigators at home several times.  However there were some highlights: on Friday we had a Christmas devotional put on by our mission.  It was really well done, and you could feel the spirit really strongly.   On Saturday, our investigator Jair got baptized!  He’s the boy we’ve been teaching who had that dream.  Kid’s gonna be a great missionary someday.  I was so happy for him.

I forgot to mention in my last letter that last Monday was my 2-month mark in my mission.  I can’t believe two months of my mission have already gone by.  That’s real motivation to make every second count!

ª Hermana Iverson

¡Buenas Días de Ecuador! - Week 3

¡Buenos Días! ¿Cómo están?

I hope the letter/picture idea worked out well last week, because my companion and I have even less time to write this week.  [Katie has been hand-writing a letter to the family, then photographing it and sending the photo out via email.  Makes for a tough read]   I forgot why, but I thought it was so we could bake cupcakes.   Why would we be making cupcakes you ask?  Well for those of you who don’t know, tomorrow is my birthday!  Yup, I get to spend my 20^th birthday as a missionary in Ecuador.  How cool is that?

Katie showing off her birthday cupcakes.  Happy 20th!

Top priority

Well, this week has been less than spectacular.  We’ve been asking for referrals and contacting people, but we’ve been having trouble finding new investigators to teach.  We even had a fast as a companionship to try and find more people.  We’re hoping to find a family of at least six who would want to be baptized and eventually make it to the temple.  I hope we find them soon.

 

Johnny's baptism

On a happier note, we had a baptism this past Saturday!  The oldest brother of the two kids who got baptized two weeks ago finally got baptized.  So now the three children that are of age are baptized, and it’s just the parents’ turn now (if they ever get married).  Their cousin, Jair, is getting baptized on the 21^st, and we got his mother to commit to that date as well.  We might move Jair’s date up to this week though.  To be honest, he’s more than ready.  He’s a really smart kid.

It’s been hot here some days and cooler others, and Saturday night it even rained a little bit.  I’ve been eating a lot, but people still call me “flaquita” and tell me I need to gain weight.  Oh well.  Hope all is well back home or wherever you are, and feel free to write me! (*ahem*) ha ha.

All ready for Christmas!

ª Hermana Iverson

Buenas!

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

I can’t believe this week has gone by so quickly, or this year for that matter.  It’s already December!  I’m so excited.  People here in Ecuador have been decorating and preparing for Christmas since before it got here.  (It’s because they didn’t have to wait until after Thanksgiving.)  Speaking of which, how was Thanksgiving?  Sometime Thursday morning as I was preparing to go out for the day I remembered.  It was weird not having any Thanksgiving stuff anywhere. 

This week I got to finally visit Puerto Jelí, the town just next door that’s part of our sector (our sector is huge by the way).  I guess the little bay there opens up to the sea eventually or something, I’m not exactly sure.  But I liked it, it was a kind of neat little beach town, but really small.  Luckily I had my camera with me that day so I got to take pictures.

  

We’ve started teaching this boy who’s the cousin of the kids who got baptized last week.  We have been trying to contact his mother for a while, but when we finally went over he was the only one home.  So we taught him instead, and he’s agreed to be baptized!  It was so neat, because (as we found out the next day) I guess that night as he knelt down and asked Heavenly Father if he should go to church like we asked him to, he heard a voice say “(You will) go to church” (sorry it’s hard to translate and understand exactly what people are saying here).  When he heard it, our investigator asked, “¿Quién es?” (Who’s there?) but it was dark and he was completely alone.  When he told us about it, we asked him if he felt like he got his answer and he said he did.  Guess who came to church on Sunday? 

Katie and her companion, Hermana Herrera

Each with their Spanish/English dictionaries

 

View from their apartment

Obviously they are way too serious

Katie's location in Southern Ecuador, near the Peru border

I don’t think I explained much about my area last week.  Like I said, I’m in Santa Rosa, four or five hours south of Guayaquil.   It’s in El Oro, near Machala (45-60 minutes south of it—we actually had a capicitación there last Friday.  Funny story really quick, at lunch I ate my big whole plate of food but was actually still hungry.  Pres. Torres and his family sat down at our table, and when I mentioned I almost wanted to go get seconds he just said, “Go ahead! Please, eat more.  EAT.  You need it.”  A lot of people have commented on how skinny I am, but that one took the cake.  It can get pretty hot here, but usually since I’ve gotten here it’s been overcast.  It’s sunnier today.  We’re in Rama (branch) 1, and like I saidour sector (or area I guess, we say sector in Spanish) is pretty large.  We go all the way out to Puerto Jelí on way and out to Estero Medina another.  We live in en el centro of the city.  There are a lot of parks with statues and fountains everywhere, and now they’re all decorated with lights for Christmas.  It’s really nice.  We’ll be walking down the street and two blocks away we’ll hear someone blaring reggaeton.  It’s totally normal for people to blare their music from their house as loud as they can.  A lot of times I recognize the songs playing and have to fight the urge to dance like all the time.  Hardest thing for me right now – ha ha.  Also, it’s very common for people to just never get married here.  They just start living together and have kids and everything.  I was expecting that, but I wasn’t expecting how young they’d be living together.  One girl we know is 18, and she’s been living with her boyfriend for three years already!  So crazy.

Well, I’ve run out of room.  Food’s great, people are great, everything’s dirty, language has its good days and bad, and I am so glad I decided to serve a mission.  Peace!

Hermana Iverson

I'm Here!

November 25, 2013

I´m here!  I´ve made it to Ecuador!  Still alive, if anyone was wondering.  I had a long flight on Monday morning: I left the MTC at 2:30 in the morning for Salt Lake City for my 6:25 flight.  From Salt Lake, Elder Kabel (the only other person in my travel group) and I flew to Dallas, and from Dallas to Miami, and then finally from Miami to Guayaquil.  We got in at around 8:30 that night and our mission president was waiting for us.  Since most of the new missionaries were coming in the next morning, we stayed at the temple with a few other missionaries that came in that night.  The next morning while we waited me and some of the other sister missionaries there got to do a session in the temple!  It was really nice.  When the other missionaries came from the Mexico MTC, I got to see my old companion Hermana Davenport again!  It was nice to be reunited with her again.  Later that day, I got to meet my new companion!  May I present to you the lovely Hermana Herrera!  She´s 20 years old and is from Honduras.  She understands a lot of English which is a HUGE blessing.  So far we´ve been getting along really well together.

Katie and her new companion, Hermana Herrera

My Spanish isn´t totally hopeless.  I´ve found I can understand almost everything being said until it´s directed at me, then I can almost never quite make out what they´re trying to say.  Go figure.  I feel like my speech is pretty awkward, but my companion was really impressed my Spanish skills.  She says I have a Spanish accent, like from Spain.  At least I don´t sound like a gringa!

On Wednesday after we had our interviews, we went to our area in Santa Rosa, just south of Machala.  It´s pretty nice here!  The weather has actually been overcast recently, but it´s really mild.  I won´t be cold here!  

(Hallelujah)  The food is really good too.  We eat lunch at members´ homes and it´s basically a soup and then a main meal.  Loooooots of rice, pero es muy rico.

No one here can pronounce my name, but I decided a long time ago to not correct people.  So when people read my nametag and say "Hermana...EeBERsohn?" I just smile and nod and say "sí".

We had three baptisms on Saturday!  Nice way to start off the mission.  Wish I could take any credit for them, but they were scheduled to be baptized long before I got there.  Still, pretty neat!  Two of them were children from the same family, Delicia and Lucio Sánchez, and the other was a young man named Christian Gauliche.

One of the trainers that I met when I first got to Guayaquil is from Alpine, UT.  I asked her if she knew the Bowmans and it turns out that not only is she their neighbor, but she´s like best friends with their daughter Mollie!  So Mom or Nathan, you can let them know I met Hna. Jolley.

Hmm, what else...well I´ve got a bunch of bug bites (picaduras), all of my books and notebooks are warping and the pages are all wavy, it´s super weird, my shoulder bag was killing me so I bought a backpack today, and we´re going to start teaching English classes on Fridays!  Fun stuff!  Oh yeah and there´s another companionship of hermanas in our apartment and one of them, Hna. Almeida, is from Uruguay!!  Woooo!

Well I think that´s it for now.  I´ll tell you more next week!

Katie Arrives in Ecuador

November 20, 2013

Mission president, Maxsimo Torres, sent our family a wonderful letter letting us know that Katie arrived safe and sound in Ecuador.  Here is a picture of her with the other new missionaries in from of the temple in Guayaquil.  Note:  She is standing next to Hermana Davenport, her first missionary companion in Provo.

Last Weekend in the US

November 15, 2013

Hi everyone! 

So I leave for Ecuador on Monday morning!!!  I have to be at the travel office at 2:30 in the morning to make my 6:25am flight.  Not super looking forward to that, but I want to try to place a Book of Mormon in one of the airports before I get to Ecuador.  I'm kind of terrified to do it, but I better get used to it since that's what I'll be doing for a year and a half.  I actually have two short layovers; I and another elder fly from Salt Lake to Dallas, and then from Dallas to Miami, and THEN from Miami to Guayaquil.  It's gonna be a long day.

The weather has been pretty mild recently, except that it got colder today.  It's been raining lightly all day.  I'm glad I have a raincoat at least, and also that I'll leave for a much warmer climate in three days. (!!!!!)  Apparently it's supposed to snow on Sunday or something, which I'm not looking forward to.  I REALLY did not want to be here when it snowed, but I'll escape pretty soon after.

Katie messing around

Showing off her apartment

Katie being Katie

It was pretty cool this week, because we had Elder L. Tom Perry of the Twelve speak at devotional Tuesday night!  And I got to sit pretty close to the front!!!  It was so cool.  He was just kind of adorable, and the longer I looked at him the more I wanted to just give him a big hug.  That is honestly the hardest thing so far about being a sister missionary, especially a solo sister in a district of all elders.  I get close with these elders and they've become like brothers now, and I won't be able to give any of them a hug when we leave.  It's okay, we're planning an MTC district reunion in a little over two years, so I'll do it then haha.

Katie and her district (Elders Bueno Cabral, Robins, Burnett, Williams & Howell)

Yesterday we had in-field orientation on main campus for like nine and a half hours.  It was actually not as bad as I'd heard it was.  They had us move rooms a lot and had a bunch of different workshops, so we didn't totally die of boredom.  We learned about planning and setting goals and working with members and a bunch of other stuff that we'd need to know about going out into the field.  I met a girl in my workshop group who had the same name as me: Sister Iverson!  When I saw her walk by me, I didn't know what to say, so I just pointed at her name tag in shock and then pointed at mine, and after several seconds I finally said something like "That's my name!" or whatever.  It was really embarrassing haha.  I got to talk to her later and found out her family is Dutch and came across the plains with the pioneers, not Norwegian and from Minnesota.  Oh well.  But still, I've never met anyone with the same name as me before!  It was so exciting.

With friend Katy Armknecht (met at EFY)

with Keely Lu (from San Jose--going to New Zealand) 

It feels so surreal that I'm actually going to Ecuador finally, but whenever I'm not freaking out and getting all stressed about it I realize that I actually am ready to go and do this.  It's going to be hard, really hard, but I'm excited to push the boundaries of my comfort zone and grow in my testimony.  I'm really excited to go to Ecuador and do the Lord's work.  I just have to remember that all of these feelings of fear and doubt don't come from my Heavenly Father, but the adversary.  I know that God will protect me as I bring His children the truth of the gospel of His Son.  

Yo sé que Dios es mi Padre Celestial y que Su Hijo Jesucristo murió para mi y pagó el precio para mis pecados y los del mundo.  Yo sé que él les ama Sus hijos y quiere lo mejor para ellos.  Mediante la expiación, podemos ser limpios y llegar a ser como nuestro Padre.  Si hacemos todas las cosas que nos pida, podemos tener vida eterna y vivir con nuestras familias por siempre.  Estoy muy agradecida y animada para servirle la gente de Ecuador.  Vaya con Dios!

Love,