Ecuador Week 10

So this week was interesting.  Hermana Herrera didn´t actually come back from Guayaquil until Wednesday afternoon, two days later.  She was traveling in a trio of hermanas and one of them got sick so she had to wait with them.  I was so glad to have her back.  I was in a trio with the hermanas in Rama 2 and it was no longer working trying to go on splits with members to work both of our sectors and whatnot.  What a mess.  But she´s back now and it´s okay.  

Katie & Hermana Herrera with Gladys and Yadira

Emperatriz and her family

Saturday we had 3 baptisms!!  We could have had 4 but the sister of one the girls who got baptized decided she wanted to wait, which was kind of sad.  But yeah, we had 3 baptisms for us, one for the other hermanas, and one for our district leaders (Rama 2 with the hermanas).  So there were 5 people baptized Saturday night, and it was one of the most stressful nights of my mission.  First of all, we kept waiting for certain people to show up, and we almost couldn´t have the baptism because there wasn´t anyone from the bishopric in our rama to preside over the baptism.  We finally got permission to have it without them and started.  Gladys (whose sister Yadira ended up not getting baptized) was super excited to be baptized and went first, and hers went flawlessly.  Next was Emperatriz, who´s a little quiet and timid and was also a little nervous as well, and the elder who baptized her is newer than me and was almost more nervous than her.  He kept saying the prayer wrong and then couldn´t help her down in the water so she just kept leaning backwards or something---it was bad.  Finally they went to get the zone leader who baptized Gladys to get him to baptize her, but he was already changing, so his companion got dressed super fast and baptized Emperatriz on the first try.  I felt so bad for the new elder, he felt really bad.  Poor Emperatriz was a little upset.  So that was a bit of a disaster that we had to avoid.  Next was Davis, a 10-year-old boy who lives with his grandparents and aunts whom are members.  His grandpa was going to baptize him which was all nice, but he´s a little old and couldn´t remember the prayer to save his life.  He said it the first time (wrong) and without pausing sort of threw Davis backwards into the water and back up again super fast.  I wish I could have gotten a picture of the look on Davis´s face when he came back up after that first time because man that was hilarious hahaha.  Eventually he had to have about two or three people help him say the prayer correctly and then he was fine.  Next was the baptism of the hermanas, a viejita that couldn´t stand up straight because of how bent over her spine is.  Her baptism was really...interesting, challenging, impressive, I don´t know the word to use.  They had to get one of the little chairs from the Primary room and have her sit in it and two elders had to help dip her back into the water.  It took a looooooong time, and I don´t know if she fully understood what it meant beforehand to be baptized, like the action of being submerged in water.  It´s okay, she eventually did it and it was really sweet.  The last one was of the elders, and the new elder was up again.  He was more nervous than the boy he was baptizing, but this time he did it perfectly on the first try.  I was proud of him.  But yeah, so a lot of mini heart attacks.

As far as other news goes, we ate at a restaurant owned by members Saturday 

(I think they´re going to send you photos soon of me eating there, they were taking photos of all the missionaries and getting their parents´ emails, really sweet) and after we finished the soup, a soup that I have had before, one of the elders came out to our table and asked us if we knew what we just ate.  That made me really nervous but I asked him what we ate.  Apparently this soup doesn´t have potatoes, but pies de burro.  That´s right.  Donkey´s foot.  I´ve eaten it.  At least twice.  He even brought the plate with the foot out to show us.  I didn´t know how to feel after that.

I don´t have a whole lot of other news besides that.  Still loving the work and being here.  It made me laugh when you said it was almost 90 degrees.  It´s almost always over 90 degrees here haha.  Thank you for all of your support.  I love you all and miss you a lot, but I´m really glad to be here.

Love, 
Hermana Iverson

Ecuador Week 9 (whoa that´s a long time)

January 20, 2014

Katie with her companion and the two sisters, Dorly & Paula

What´s the weather like there?  I´ve kind of forgotten what the weather is like in California right now.  I keep thinking that it´s like April or something because it´s always so hot here.  Well it does rain from time to time so that helps to remind me.  Oh right, fun story about that: so yesterday Hermana Herrera had to go to Guayaquil for una capacitación for all the zone leaders and hermana leaders (she´s the hermana líder for our zone), so I did splits with the hermanas in Rama 2 so that we could go visit all of our fechas (baptismal dates).  While we were talking to one guy, the dark clouds we had been watching from afar finally found our area and it started to absolutely pour.  We ended up walking around in the rain and got totally soaked.  It was kind of fun actually.  Reminded me of when I got caught in the rain in Nicaragua (that was super awesome).

We had a baptism this past Saturday!!  I was so happy for them.  They were two sisters, Dorly and Paula.  They're so fun.  Dorly is almost 19 and Paula is almost 15.  Paula totally looked up mine and Hermana Herrera´s facebooks this week while we were over at their house and it was the strangest thing seeing pictures of me wearing pants and having long hair.  Needless to say, I´ve been missing my hair this week haha.  But yeah, they got baptized with two other youths from the other elders.  So we had four baptisms on Saturday! (There were supposed to be five, but one guy never showed up; it was really sad because he was our investigator first before they divided our sector.)  Super duper exciting.

Oh I´ve forgotten to mention for the last two weeks, but on New Year´s Eve I got mail!!  I got Bhargavi´s letter as well as a letter from Ashley Poelman and a letter from the Barlow family!  I was super happy to get them.  Last week I got mail again: a Christmas card from Marguerite Swansen (which was opened but still totally had a $20 bill inside--I have no idea how that happened) and a Dear Elder from my old SOAR counselor!  Totally random.  I'm still waiting on my family´s Christmas card and package and from the other letter that was from Neeharika, I think.  Ya mismo! (that means soon by the way)

But yeah, things are pretty good around here.  It´s always hot and we visit people and find new investigators and drop others.  I´m starting to really get into the swing of things here.  Yesterday when I was working alone with the hermana from the other rama (branch) I found that I was perfectly able to talk to our investigators and to teach them, with the help of the hermana.  I even managed to talk to one investigator about moving up her baptismal date to this Saturday instead of Feb. 1, all by myself (the other hermana brought it up, but then at the first sign of opposition dropped the subject and started moving on, which was super weird; so I totally just spoke up and bore my testimony and got her to agree to try to work it out to be baptized this week.  I was so proud of myself, listening to the Spirit and all).  I know that the Lord answers prayers, because he´s been answering mine; as I´ve gone on splits with the other sisters and working in our area without my companion I´ve seen Him help me do everything I need to do.  I really love what I´m doing here.  I´m so grateful.  Yesterday as we were speedwalking in the rain I had the hugest grin on my face.  Yo sé que vive mi Señor; consuelo es poder saber!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Week 8 in Ecuador

January 13, 2014

This week was pretty good!  We´ve been working in Los Ceibos, which is like the the outskirts to the north of Santa Rosa.  We can generally walk there, but it does take a little while.  Every time we meet someone there or we tell someone we work there, people keep telling us that it´s dangerous and that we shouldn´t be there and that we should be careful or whatnot, but that´s where we, the hermanas, have been assigned, so I guess that´s where God wants us.  We haven´t had any problems with anyone whatsoever, but we always have to make sure that we have a way to get home safely at night when it´s dark.  We either have to take the bus (the last one for el centro leaves at 7:20, an hour and a half before we have to be home), try and catch a taxi (hard to find way out there at that time of night), ask a member in the area if he can drive us to our house, or walk with members and have a man with us.  A little complicated.  But don´t worry mom, we´re always being safe and following the rules.  I can´t promise that I won´t talk to strangers, because that´s kind of the point of what I´m doing here.

We´ve been dropping and gaining investigators all week it feels.  Every day our number of investigators with fechas (baptismal dates) fluctuates it seems.  Like on Saturday we dropped three investigators but got two more, and yesterday we got three more.  Right now we´re at 11 fechas, we´ll see how the rest of the day goes.  

I´ve eaten some interesting things this week!  On Monday we had ceviche con camaron y concha, or in other words, shrimp and CLAMS.  That was the first time I ate clams...they were kind of weird.  I don´t think I like them.  On Saturday, we had also had crab!  Now THAT was interesting.  I´ve decided I like crab but it takes too much effort to eat it.  That reminds me, I don´t think I´ll ever be able to use a fork ever again, and only knives when it´s absolutely necessary.  We eat everything with spoons and now I can´t imagine using anything else.  It just makes so much sense.  

I´ve also been learning the differences in bananos (erm, bananas).  I think they have different stages that people buy them in, I´m still a little confused haha.  There´s verdes y plátanos maduros y bananos or something like that, I don´t really know anymore.  My companion´s laughing at me as I write.  She still hasn´t stopped, she´s still laughing.  Yup.  She says she doesn´t actually get it much either, and she´s from Honduras.  Oh and there´s also a difference between español and castellano, because people keep asking me if I speak castellano.  I think español refers to what they speak in Spain whereas castellano is Latin American Spanish.  I dunno.  I´m generally confused.

Other random tidbits: I literally have a million mosquito bites on my leg, it´s actually drawing attention (the worst is standing outside and talking to investigators as it´s getting dark and I can´t stop and just start spraying repellent in the middle of the conversation).  I also realized that a vast majority of this family in the branch literally has Lauren´s eyes.  One of their daughters accompanied us for an afternoon and it was freaking me out.  Full trunky.

One last serious thing:  I´m so glad that I´m sealed to my family in the temple.  I´ve seen so many families and people who are part member families or are with someone who isn´t a member and the heartache they go through because they can´t be sealed to their spouse and children and parents is heartbreaking.  I´m so grateful that you and dad were married in the temple and that I was born in the covenant.  Now I know more than ever that I want to marry in the church so that I can be sealed in the temple.  Nothing is more important.  I love you and everyone else in our family so much.  

Love, 
Hermana Iverson

Feliz Año Nuevo!

January 6, 2014

So this week was pretty interesting.  First of all, last Monday were transfers, and I´d been freaking out that I or my companion would get transferred.  But lo and behold, we´re both still here!  So I´m pretty grateful for that.  I really hate packing and moving.

Katie in front of the "ano viejos", before and after burning

On New Year´s Eve we had to be inside at 6pm again.  We went to bed at 10:30pm like we´re supposed to, but we got up at about a quarter to midnight to welcome the New Year.  It was super fun.  We just kind of hung out the window in the other sisters´ room and watched the fireworks and people burning their año viejos.  Oh yeah, so it´s kind of a huge tradition here for people to make life-sized dummies out of old clothes and paper mache and what not and burn them at midnight on New Year´s Eve.  They´re called "año viejos" or "old year", and I guess they´re supposed to be symbolic of the old year passing and making way for a new one.  But they had all sorts of them, like as different cartoons and whatnot.  Some were enormous!  There was a giant plane just at the end of our block.  We got to see them burn it at about a quarter to 1.  It was huge.  It won a prize and the guys who made it got $1000.  Crazy!  We went to bed at around 1.  Super fun.

The next day we got to visit our branch president´s farm for lunch with all eight missionaries in the branch (oh yeah we got another pair of missionaries in our branch! crazy times).  It was so cool.  Ecuador is beautiful. 

Later that day, we finally divided our sector into four parts, one for each companionship.  We´re in the farthest corner in Los Ceibos, which neither of us had ever really been to.  We´ve only been working there for four or five days and we´ve already seen amazing results.  We´ve found so many people, families even, and committed them to baptism!  We had 11 investigators come to church yesterday!  This is awesome!!  I´m excited to be there.

Yup, so things are going pretty well here.  It´s been raining off and on the last several days, but on Saturday in the afternoon it was 38 degrees Celsius.  That´s 100 degrees Fahrenheit!!!  It was hot, but it didn´t feel like 100.  I feel proud of my ability to withstand the heat.

That´s all for now.  Keep it real and choose the right.

Love,

Hermana Iverson

¡Buenos Días de Ecuador! - Week 6

December 30, 2013

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas!  Mine was...different, but everything here is different soooooo

I feel like something significant happened every day, so I´m just going to give y´all the breakdown by day:

Monday 23rd: Last week we came home from an investigator´s house to find that the people who lived above us (we live on the third floor of a four story building) were having a very very very loud party on the roof.  As we turned the corner we realized the crazy loud techno was coming from directly above our apartment.  We could see the discotheque lights and everything.  It was ridiculous trying to sleep that night, especially since there´s a hole in the ceiling above my bed (oh dang I forgot to take a picture to show you) right below a skylight to the roof, so it just directly blared into our room.  We couldn´t even try to sleep for an hour.  Funnnnn.

Tuesday 24th: Christmas Eve!  Or "Noche Buena" as it´s called here.  Today seemed to be the main holiday, which was kind of weird.  Whatever.  We had to be in our apartments by 6pm that day, so right before we went home we bought some pizza to celebrate.  It was soooooo good.  I didn´t realize how much I missed pizza.  Oh man.  Anyway, so we kind of just chilled in our apartment for like three hours before we planned for the next day.  At 10pm, the family next door brought us dinner (since I guess people eat a super late dinner on Noche Buena) and we had a little feast that we had to eat super fast since we needed to be in bed by 10:30 haha.  Good stuff.

Wednesday 25th:  Christmas!!!  I GOT TO SKYPE MY FAMILY IT WAS SO GREAT!!!  I have a picture of the screen that I may have printed out today...  Nothing else was really that important that day, except for the fact that it was really really hot.

Saturday 28th:  We had a ward activity that was like all day long but actually really cool.  We managed to bring some investigators (one guy we met that day and invited thought I was 16 and literally wouldn´t believe us when I said I was 20...so anyways) and the missionaries in the ward even put on a little performance.  We did a skit to this song about a "Querido Juan" (Dear John).  It was actually super funny haha.  Later that night at about 10:20pm (ten minutes before we have to be in bed mind you) my companion gets a call from our zone leaders saying that she has transfers that night with them (ten minutes earlier they had told her over the phone that they had cambios and were leaving that night too) and that they´d call her in 20 minutes to see if she was ready to leave yet.  Hna. Herrera´s been in Santa Rosa for her entire mission--almost 6 months--and we were freaking out trying to get her packed in less than half an hour.  We had literally taken all of the clothes out of her closet and almost had them all packed in her suitcase ten minutes later when they called back and asked if we knew that it was El Día de Inocentes in Ecuador.  So basically it was the equivalent of April Fool´s Day and here it was after 10:30 and we had packed her clothes for nothing.  They literally made her cry when she heard she had cambios.  We were so mad hahahaha.

Sunday 29th:  Fun fact: exactly 12 years since my baptism.  Yup.  Oh and also last night we went to the house of a member in the ward and the mom showed me how to make patacones and they were delicious (basically fried smashed banana chips--but they aren´t bananas, they´re something different...I forget).  Felt pretty cool as she was showing me and then had me help her.

That was basically my week.  Pretty full of crazy stuff.  I´m still loving it here, and kind of proud at how easily I can stand 95+ degree weather (just so long as I don´t know the exact temperature haha).  Have a fun and safe New Year´s everyone!  I´m super excited for an Ecuador-filled 2014.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Hermana Iverson

¡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!