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