one last time

May 18, 2015

Welp, this is it.  I finally made it to this point.  I can´t believe my time is up.  It still doesn´t feel real.  I hadn´t been telling anyone here that I was leaving, I didn´t want to seem trunky, but yesterday when we were in church I started to say goodbye to people and let them know that I was going.  In branch council in the afternoon, someone announced that it was my last Sunday and everyone was really sad.  I´ve been here for four months, my longest time in any sector, and they all were sad to see me go.  The Relief Society president asked us to go to her house that night to help her with something, and when we were running late since the elders asked for our help, she was calling and calling and calling until we got there.  We were a little confused as to why she was so persistent, when supposedly she just needed help pronouncing the names of the Apostles and the First Presidency, when we got there and realized they had made me a dinner and had invited some of the members over to bid me farewell--all last minute.  I was so touched and completely surprised, because I just wasn´t expecting it.  I really love the members here, and I´m so sad to have to leave them.  I feel right at home here.  I´m so grateful for the opportunity I´ve had to be here in Catamayo, it really is a special place.  All my mission I´ve met some truly amazing people and have learned so much.  I don´t know what kind of person I would have been if I had never gone on a mission.  It´s really the best decision I´ve ever made.  

But I am excited to see my family.  I love you all, and I wanted to ask a special favor.  This Sunday I´m going to be speaking in our ward in Temecula, and those of you that will be attending to see me speak, I wanted to let you know that the church meeting is not just that first hour; there are two more hours that are special classes that they have to instruct and help us learn and grow spiritually.  After the sacrament meeting (the first hour), I was going to stay to attend for all three hours, but I´d like to invite all of you if you can to stay as well, so that you can see what they are like and so that you can learn and grow as well.  It´s just an invitation, but I would be really pleased if you could stay.  

I love you all so much, and I´ll see you this week!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Just Two More Weeks!

May 11, 2015

Well, this week was a little more exciting.  More traveling, again.  It was the beginning of the month, so we knew that there was going to be Consejo in Guayaquil, but normally we travel Sunday afternoon to be there Monday morning.  Saturday night we still hadn´t heard anything, so we thought they weren´t going to have it.  I was a little bummed, because I wanted to go one last time.  I was also worried that maybe they were going to release me at the last minute so that I wouldn´t have to go so soon before I´d have to be traveling to Guayaquil anyways, which is something that often happens.  So here we made some plans for things we were going to do last Monday, when at around 8amthe zone leaders call to say that we have to travel that day to Guayaquil because Consejo was going to be on Tuesday, so we just had a few hours to get our stuff together, try and buy some stuff really fast, and then travel to Loja so that we could catch the bus.  The zone leaders from the other zone almost didn´t make it; the bus had started moving to leave the terminal, and they came running up 5 minutes later.  If there hadn´t been several buses leaving at the same time and blocking our bus, they would have missed it and not made it to Consejo.  So that was intense.  But Consejo was really good, Presidente talked about the Sabbath Day and how we have to put more of an emphasis on it in every aspect--in how we teach it to our investigators as well as in our own lives.  That´s why he officially changed Consejo to Tuesday, so that we wouldn´t have to be traveling on Sunday.  I really liked it, because I´ve actually been thinking a lot about the Sabbath Day recently here in our sector.  

We ended up not getting back to our sector until about Wednesday, and we´ve just been going with our newest convert, Adela, every day.  She´s been a big help.  She´s been so excited to help us and will present us to her friends all the time, and will just share her testimony with them without us needing to ask her.  It´s been really nice to see how happy she is.  

On Saturday we had a branch activity that us as the missionaries and the mission leader put on, and it was really fun.  A lot of people came, and everyone had fun.  My companion and I were in charge of this one game where there were some donuts tied with a string and hanging in the air and they had to eat them without using their hands.  It was pretty funny.

Mother´s Day was a very, very busy day.  We almost didn´t have time to do anything.  We had church at 10am, and then afterwards we went to eat lunch, and then my companion called her family, and when she finished we had to go to branch council meeting, and then we had to leave so I could call, and then we tried to have our correlation meeting with the branch mission leader, but the elders were still calling their families so that didn´t happen, so at the end of the day we just had half an hour to go visit Adela, since she was sick and hadn´t gone to church that day, so we went to see how she was doing.  We made a few little cards for some of the sisters in the branch for Mother´s Day, and they turned out really cute.

Welp, this is officially my last week here in Catamayo, so I´m going to do everything I can to make it count.  See y´all soon!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Some good news!

Katie with Adela and Gabriel

Well, the biggest news this week is that our investigators, Adela and Gabriel, FINALLY GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!  They had a lot of obstacles to get to this point, but they were determined to follow Christ.  We were really happy to see them get baptized, because we´ve grown very close to them.  She really became truly converted.  We saw how she just trusted in God and she received a confirmation that these things are true, that the Church was restored and that the Book of Mormon is true.  She started accompanying us since last Wednesday to visit people, before she was even baptized, because she was so excited.  We would go to invite her friends to her baptism.  She faced a LOT of opposition in this time, but she remained firm.  It was a good last baptism.

And last little note, Happy Star Wars´ Day, today!  (May the Fourth be with you, tehe)

Love,
Hermana Iverson

Sorry Super Boring this Week

April 27, 2015

Not a whole lot happened this week...we did intercambios (exchanges) again, and I went to Loja in the other rama (Argelia).  I spent the day with another hermana from California, so that was cool, the two Californians.  But idk, every time I meet other people from California here in the mission, they´re always so different...it´s cuz they´re all from Southern California...I´m the only one here representing the Bay Area. *sigh*  

...That was basically the only exciting thing.  This week we´re having baptisms!  Woooo!  Pray a lot please!!!  Sorry I don´t have much else to write today.  It´s been a pretty normal week.  Just my companion and I laughing a lot.  She´s so great.

Love you all,

Hermana Iverson

Only a month left

April 20, 2015

After straightening her hair.  Getting long again!

As for news this week on my part, it was pretty slow.  Just a lot of sun.  Oh, I wanted to send you pictures last week, but the salon was closed so we went straight to the cyber to write as we waited for it to open.  But last week we went to a salon (gabinete is what they´re called here) and I had my hair straightened!  It looked really nice, and suuuuper long!  It was the first time in my entire mission that my hair has touched my nametag (a common problem for other sister missionaries).  

Yesterday we had the District Conference here in Loja.  We traveled there with the branch in a bus that they rented.  It was really nice, there were some very good talks.  I´ve noticed that Church leaders have been talking a lot recently about the families and marriage, and also self-reliance.  Those were the two main topics that I noticed yesterday.  Makes one wonder what´s to come in the future...

Other than that, not much.  Just that I FINALLY finished reading Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage (that thing has nearly 800 pages; I think I started it in August when I was stuck in the house every day with my cast) this week, and I was really happy--I had wanted to finish it before I finished my mission.  Also, I think Saturday is April 25th is the perfect date: not too hot, nor too cold, all you need is a light sweater (if you´ve seen Miss Congeniality, you understand me).  But yeah, not much else.  Same old same old, looking for investigators, teaching the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  Still haven´t had cambios, but I only have a month left, so I hope I stay here in Catamayo with my companion, so I can finish her training.

I´m so glad I came on my mission.  It´s the best thing I could have done for my life.  I wish that everyone could have this opportunity to serve a mission.

Love you all so so much,

Hermana Iverson

I still don´t have cambios and MY SISTER HAS HER MISSION CALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

April 13, 2015

LAUREN GOT HER CALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I´m so excited for her!!!!!!  This is such an exciting time for her.  I can´t believe she´s going to Ohio!  I was convinced she was going to Germany, or Europe in general.  But then again, I was also convinced that Nathan was going to go to Canada, and then he went to Colorado.  Guessing people´s missions is not a skill I have.  Good thing I´m not in charge of assigning missions to future missionaries, I´d make a mess of things.

Well, so far we haven´t had cambios!  I´m still here in Catamayo with my hija, Hermana Quispe.  I really really really hope I get to stay more time and that we don´t get cambios today, because I really really really want to be here when our investigators, Adela and Gabriel, get baptized, and that should (hopefully) be this week.  Last week, we couldn´t find them nor get in contact with them on Sunday, but the next day we found them in their house, and it turned out that Adela´s health/vision had gotten so bad that she had to go to Loja for an emergency doctor´s visit.  Her vision won´t get better until she gets glasses, but they´re really expensive for her circumstances, and she´d have to pay a lot for a pair just to use them for a trial period of 3 months.  It´s rough.  That wasn´t the only trial they´ve had this week.  They needed one more church attendance to get baptized on their original baptismal date, April 18 (aka this Saturday), but another emergency came up, but this time with her other son (she has three children in total, but only the youngest, Gabriel, lives with her for the time being).  He was born with a certain medical condition, and in his 10 years of age, has already had four surgeries, and was about to have another one, but it was going to be a 50/50 chance that he would survive the surgery.  Since he´s having the surgery up in Quito, she traveled there as soon as she could so she and Gabriel could be with him before his surgery.  BUT, with the help of the members here and a returned missionary there, she and Gabriel found a chapel there and got to go to church!!  I´m really hoping our leaders count that as an attendance even though it wasn´t here, because honestly it shows their desire.  They´re traveling back today, so they should arrive in the early morning.  We´ll see them tomorrow.

Other than that, I got another card from Miho Poelman!  I think I´ve received about 8 or 9 cards from her throughout my whole mission.  I´m going to be there in the Judgment Day vouching for her when she goes up.  But really though, I just feel immensely grateful and full of love for her every time I receive mail from her.  I´m excited to see her to give her a big hug.

I think this week is Olivia´s 2nd birthday, no?  It´s Friday if I´m not mistaken.  Give her a big hug and a kiss from me!

Not really much else going on here, just praying I don´t have cambios--I HAVE to be here for this baptism, both of us. *fingers crossed super duper tight*  Love you all a lot!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Happy (post) Easter!

April 6, 2015

From the top of La Cruz

Well the biggest news this week: this past weekend was General Conference!!  It was also the first time in my entire mission that I was able to attend all four sessions.  My first, I was only able to go to the Saturday morning session, the second time I only missed the Saturday morning session, and this time I saw all four; and they were AMAZING.  I don´t know if the messages are getting better over the years or if I´ve just learned to appreciate them more as I´ve gotten older.  I think it´s a bit of both.  

They talked a lot about the family and marriage on Saturday (my companion and I were just like "que bestia, how trunky").  The connection was still a little iffy, and it was pausing so much that we finished watching the morning session 35 minutes late.  That was awkward.  It improved greatly after that, when the members figured out that when they moved the tv closer to the door and the open hallway that the connection improved a lot.  We had our investigators, a single mom and her 9-year-old son (Adela and Gabriel) in the morning and the afternoon.  Well, Adela came alone in the afternoon because Gabriel was still eating his lunch.  They kind of disappeared Sunday morning and we haven´t been able to find them since, so we´ll see what happens.

Other than the super awesome talks that we got to hear, we also did an intercambio (divisions/splits, I still don´t know what you call them in English) with the other hermanas in Loja this past Wednesday.  So I got to spend the whole day there in Loja and I found a convert of my trainer (Hermana Herrera)!  She was going to tell Hna. Herrera to write me since she hasn´t written me ONCE since she went home almost four months ago (and she has my email address, no excuse), but still no email.  *sigh*

Welp, this week would have been my last if I hadn´t gone home last summer.  This Thursday is April 9, and would have been my 18-month mark.  I can´t believe that I already would have had a year and a half in the mission!  I´m just glad that I still have more time.  Well, not that much.  I officially started my last cambio (transfer) today.  I don´t know what date I´m going home, but it should roughly be in six weeks from now.  Roughly.  If they don´t send me home early or extend me, two very probable options in this mission.  Today there are cambios, so three things could happen: 1) My companion and I both stay here and I finish her training before going home, 2) she has cambios and I go to train one last time before I die (something quite common that happens here), or 3) I have cambios, since I already have 2 cambios here in Catamayo (roughly three months).  I really hope I finish my mission here.  I don´t want to start over in a new area, and I really love it here in Catamayo.  

Only time will tell all these things. Love you lots, and hope everyone´s doing well.  Until next week,

Love, 

Hermana Iverson

Happy Easter/General Conference!

March 30, 2015

Reunited with her trio companionship

Reunited with her old district

Sorry for the short letter last week, but it´s going to have to be short again this week.  We had to go to Guayaquil again for consejo de lideres, and our bus leaves at 5pm for Loja.  

As for news, the weather was really weird again this week.  It would be really really hot and sunny in the afternoon, and then around 5-6 it would start to get cold and even rained some days.  It was very frustrating.  

It´s almost General Conference!  Woohoo!!!  We got to go to the women´s conference Saturday night (the connection was awful and it kept pausing for a minute or two and we´d have to wait until it started again) and it was really nice!  Talked a lot about families so that was nice.  It stopped working at the end, so we never heard Pres. Eyring´s talk.  That was a little sad.  But anyway, super excited for General Conference.  I hope we can bring people so we can see it.  

Other than that, I´ve been using a rosemary shampoo that one of my former companions gave me and that´s what´s been helping my hair grow so fast.  Super awesome.

Welp, gotta go, the other hermana has to write too.   Love you all and talk to you next week!

Hermana Iverson

A Very Short Letter

March 23, 2015

Michell's baptism

Well this week it rained.  A lot.  It was really weird and kind of annoying.  But the biggest news is that Michell got baptized this week!!!  She was really careful not to drink coffee this time, and we were able to help her resolve her other doubts.  It was really exciting.  

Welp...that was really about it.  Nothing much happened this week, just a lot of rain and the baptism.  Yup.

Oh and tomorrow´s Kinsey´s birthday (I CAN´T BELIEVE SHE´S 18), so tell her I say happy birthday!

Love you lots,

Hermana Iverson

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

Both good and bad

March 9, 2015

Welp I have almost no time to write because I have been looking for a place to send a package to my house and people have been sending me all over Catamayo looking for one.  We spent a super long time in one place to have her tell me that for my 8 lb package, from here to california it would cost me $128...so obviously I didn´t send it, but I did spend half an hour there that I could have spent writing.  Super mad.

So yeah, this week was both good and bad.  Good, because we found a whole bunch of new investigators!  Woohoo!  But bad, because none of them went to church.  So we´re going to be working on that this week so that it doesn´t happen again.  No good finding new investigators if they don´t go to church.  But there are other good news!  Michell is getting baptized this week!  She´s an 11-year-old girl that we´ve been teaching; her twin sister and her younger brother are already members, and for a long time we thought she was a member as well.  But when we found out she wasn´t, we went to talk to her and invited her to get baptized and she was just like "yeah okay" and we were like "oh cool, sweet".  But she´s a sweet girl.  She´s actually been really excited, because she´s getting baptized on her birthday (she´s turning 12), so we´ve been planning on making cupcakes.

This week has been really sweet with my converts: Delia told us this week how even though she has 1,001 health problems, "she got baptized, so she has to keep going and enduring to the end."  It´s a wonderful feeling hearing one of your converts say that, especially if she´s an adorable tiny little old woman.  Also, Jesus got a Bible this week!  She´s been wanting one for a while, and a senior missionary couple had talked to her when they visited Catamayo last week, and this week since they were going home, President Pettingill sent his own Spanish Bible to Catamayo specifically to gift to her.  It was so so sweet, and she was so happy.  I love Jesus and Rodolfo.  They´re the sweetest couple.

Welp, gotta go now.  Talk more next week!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

I´m a mom! (wat)

March 2, 2015

Guayaquil Temple

Katie's new companion, Hermana Quispe

Katie with Hermana Whitmore who is going home

First of all, I CAN´T BELIEVE THAT IT KEEPS SNOWING IN CALIFORNIA WHEN I´M NOT THERE THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING.  It´s snowed in Temecula, and now it snowed in San Jose--I feel like at any moment I´m going to hear stories about snowboarding in San Diego.  Gosh darn.

Well the biggest news this week is that I HAVE AN HIJA NOW!!!  Or in other words, right after I wrote last week, at 6pm on the dot, we got a phone call saying that Hermana Risco had cambios and that I was going to train!!  We had been saying all week, Hna. Risco and I, that she was going to have cambios and that I was probably going to train.  But it was a little weird that that was exactly what happened.  So we had to go pack up her stuff super duper fast and barely left on the 7:15 bus for Loja (one of the very last buses to leave).  She ended up going to Zamora, in the other zone, and I left for Guayaquil with other trainers and missionaries who had cambios at about 10pm.  We got there to Guayaquil at about 6am, and the trainers went straight to the temple with the missionaries that were going home (one of them being Hna. Whitmore, my bff here in the mish; I never lived my dream of being her companion *sniff*).  I was so tired and gross and all I wanted to do was bathe and change my clothes, but there was no time; we ended up going to the temple, so I changed there (que vergüenza).  But woohoo!  I went to the temple this week. :)  But yeah, later we met the newbies and had the capacitacion (training meeting? I don´t know what it´s called in English) and then they assigned the companions.  My new companion is... *drum roll* ...Hermana Quispe, de Perú!  She´s from Arequipa, which is in the southern part of Peru.  She´s also 25 years old, and taller than me (that surprised me more than her age to be honest), so it´s kind of interesting.  She´s a little quiet, but really sweet and really excited to work.  We´re starting to open up a little more and we´re starting to get along really well (not to say that we didn´t get along, just that she´s a little reserved, like I said).  So yeah, I have an hija. :)

Nothing else really happened this week, just that exciting change.  I was a little nervous, but I think it´ll be fine.  I´ve reached a point where I pretty much know what I´m doing, and I know that the Lord will help me teach her what she needs to know.  We´ll see how this goes!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Carnaval´s over now...back to normal

February 23, 2015

Straight hair!

This week had a lazy start.  Since Carnaval here lasts until Tuesday, we had to be inside the house by noon both Monday and Tuesday.  So after we wrote on Monday, we went straight to the house and were there alllllll afternoon.  We were supposed to clean the entire apartment, and as I had been putting something in the freezer I realized that there was so much frost and ice that I could barely stick the thing in there.  I therefore got to work getting as much ice out as I could.  We had to unplug the fridge and I had to pick at it with a spoon for about an hour before I could get most of it out.  I attached a picture of the ice, using the spoon as a gauge so you can see exactly how much was in that tiny little freezer (it´s just a tiny little compartment in the top of the fridge).  I sadly did not take picture before and after, that would have been more impressive.  But yeah, so that was the most exciting thing I did that day.  Tuesday, we went to the district meeting in the morning and then got to work for two hours and go to lunch, but then it was back to the house.  We were all supposed to do weekly planning that day as well, so we did that, but even then we had a lot of time, so I also straightened my hair (since I recently bought a hair straightener...surprise!) and in the evening I made tortillas.  They´re getting better.  I´m getting excited.  

Wednesday we finally could leave!  We were so excited, but we weren´t sure what we were going to do with so much time.  We kind of didn´t have any investigators, so we weren´t sure what to do.  The previous Saturday, we were in the same pickle, so we stopped and said a prayer before continuing.  After saying a prayer, we started walking, and Hna. Risco asked me where we were headed, and I just showed her 1 Nephi 4:6 ("And I went guided by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand what I would have to do.").  I´m so funny hehe.  But yeah, we just kind of kept walking in el centro, and then we got to an intersection and we both just kind of looked at each other and were like "...let´s go to the left".  So we did, and we passed the store of an hermana that I thought was a member, because her kids were always in the church.  We started talking to her and I found out that she wasn´t a member (apparently my companion already knew) since she isn´t married to the man she´s living with, but neither of us knew that of her twin daughters, one of them wasn´t baptized.  So we decided we were going to go talk to her Wednesday.  We went and asked her why she hadn´t gotten baptized with her sister or her little brother, and explained some of her questions and stuff, and after a few minutes, she was just like "Yeah, I´ll get baptized" and we were both like "wait...wat. ...CHEVERE" so we invited her to get baptized March 14, which just so happens to be her 12th birthday.  We´ve been teaching her every day, and she´s really excited.  She´s a little more shy and quiet than her sister, and a lot of elders have passed by to try and teach her in the last couple months, but I think she just needed some hermanas to invite her.  That happens sometimes.  But we´re really really excited, and very happy.

Delia's Baptism

Bueno, other than that, we did intercambios (...exchanges? idk missionary english is hard) again this last Friday, but this time I was in the other sector in Loja.  It was actually really sunny there.  It´s definitely colder in Cuenca, even on Cuenca´s sunny days.  But that went really well.  I had been planning on making tortillas for the zone meeting Saturday morning, so I had to bring the flour with me to make them there.  Our zone leader (who two weeks ago was our district leader here in Catamayo) is from Mexico, and every time he hears that I´m making tortillas he almost cries from sadness if he´s not there, or from joy if we´re making them for him.  He´s a cool guy.  I think he goes home this week...but we aren´t sure.  They never tell anyone the date that they´re going, even if you´re a week away from hitting 18 months or 2 years.  It´s a little weird, but that´s how it is here.

Oh I also got two packages this week!  One from I think the Activity Day girls from the Foothill Ward, and the other from Erin: she sent me some leftover nut goody!!!!!  I was really excited.

I´m so happy that I served a mission.  I´ve been able to learn things that I may never have been able to learn just as a normal person doing my things.  I think the reason for that is because here you really learn to completely rely on the Lord in everything you do, and you learn to depend on His Spirit to help you.  I´m not looking forward to when I can´t feel the Spirit every day like I do here, like how everyone says it´s like when you get home.  In two days I hit 15 months, which means I´ll only have 3 months left.  My companion just hit 3 months last week (she officially finished her training yesterday, and today there are cambios, so we´ll see if she goes or not), and I think about how fast the time went for her, and it makes me sad.  She just finished her first 12 weeks, where I just began my last 12 weeks.  Pero cuida´o!  Not trunky.  Just a little sad, and motivated to work a little bit harder.

Love you all so much!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

long time, no letter...

February 16, 2015

 

After being pelted by water balloons

(sorry for not sending a letter like this in so long, I keep forgetting/running out of time)

So we´re writing a lot earlier today because of Carnaval.  It´s a lot crazier here than it was in Cuenca.  There, it´s cold so everyone travels out of town to go to the beach, but here it´s hot and people are traveling to come HERE to party and whatnot.  I think I might have mentioned last year that what they do for Carnaval is throw water at people?  Welp, it´s way more common here than it was in Cuenca.  We escaped water balloons, water guns, trucks full of guys with buckets of water that drive around attacking people in the street.  Saturday was the day that it was "officially" carnaval (even though they´ve been playing for two weeks).  We passed through the park in the middle of the center (downtown, I guess you´d call it), where it was the craziest:  There were people all through there, soaking each other, throwing water balloons, spraying carioca (it´s basically a can of foam that you spray at people), and we somehow miraculously stayed dry.  I said to my companion "we are literally walking with angels today".  Buuuuuuuuuuuuut the next day, Sunday, was very very different.  We had so many people following us, trying to get us wet.  It was worse in the afternoon.  These last two days, we´ve had to be in the house by 6pm, and yesterday about an hour before we had to go back, we got straight up attacked.  I have a picture of me at around 5 o´clock, where I´m perfectly dry, and then a picture in the house at 6 o´clock where I´m completely soaked.  There were probably about a dozen people, men, women, and children, that were straight up chasing us with buckets of water.  I was yelling at everyone in English and no one understood me.  It was great.  We were with about 5 other sisters there in the branch, and alllllllll of us were so wet.  We went home about 10-15 minutes early, because it was just ridiculous.  

Today we only have until noon to write, but it´s better than last year; at least we got to write this time.

Well, that was pretty much all the news I had.  We´ve been super terrified and paranoid all week with everyone throwing water balloons and everything.  Y´all can keep on praying for me if you want, no complaints here...

Love you a lot and talk to you soon!

Hermana Iverson

Lots going on

February 9, 2015

So after last week´s email all I could think was "Chuta, ¿qué está pasando?  Everyone´s either dying or pregnant!"  But really though.  Almost makes me believe in reincarnation (cuida´o, I said "almost").

Welp, after consejo last Monday, we left at 5pm for Loja.  We got there at 1:30 in the morning (so it´s more accurately an 8, 8.5 hour drive).  By the time that we got to the hermanas´ house and the hermana and I went to bed, it was 2am and even though we were exhausted, we were no longer sleepy.  It took us almost two hours to fall asleep.  I was so tired Tuesday morning.

We went back to Catamayo that day and Angel had his baptismal interview...and didn´t pass.  There are some things he needs to work on before he can be baptized, so he couldn´t be baptized this past Saturday.  So that was sad.  The next day (Wednesday), we went back to Loja to do intercambios with the hermanas.  I ended up staying in Loja that day with one of the hermanas there.  Loja is basically Cuenca I´ve decided, but maybe not quite as cold.  Everyone says that Cuenca is colder, but I felt like it was only by degrees.  But yeah, it looks the same, the weather/temperature is the same, and it kind of made me miss Cuenca a little bit.  But it´s okay, I´m very happy in Catamayo.  Since we also have zone meetings on Saturdays, I ended up traveling to Loja three times this week.  It was interesting.  Especially since after the intercambios, when we bought the tickets to go back to Catamayo and I gave the lady my name (Hermana Iverson), she wrote on the ticket "Jomara Averson".  It was really really funny.  I took a picture, but I lent my camera to the elders today and it looks like they passed a virus to my memory card and I lost my photos...we left it in a photo place to try and recover the photos.  I´m so done with Ecuadorian cybers.

One good thing this week, was that even though Angel couldn´t get baptized, after I saw my companion again after the intercambios (splits? idk what they´re called in English), she told me that Delia, the mother of one of the members here who has been staying with her daughter for a month or two, was going to be baptized that week!  She had gone to church for several weeks and had gone the minimum number to be baptized, and had been kind of unsure if she wanted to be baptized, because after she would go back to her house, she would have to travel an hour to the nearest town to go to church.  But while I was in Loja, the elders talked to her and she decided she was going to be baptized!  So even though Angel didn´t get baptized this week, Delia did!  Yaaaaaay. :)

This Sunday we finally moved into the new building that´s much larger now.  So now we aren´t in the tiny tiny chapel.  We all fit now!  It was the first time in the month since I´ve been here that I´ve been inside during Sacrament meeting.  Pretty exciting.  

Welp, I had a bunch of pictures to send this week...hopefully I´ll be able to send them next week. *fingers crossed*

Love you lots, and talk to you next week!  

Love, 

Hermana Iverson

p.s. pray for us, this Saturday is Carnaval...they´ve already started with the water balloons (I got hit in the head right before I got on...)

Rodolfo and Jesus got baptized!

February 2, 2015

At the baptism of Rodolfo and Jesus

Sorry I wrote so little last week, and it looks like I`m not going to be able to write very much this week either.  The thing is when I came to Catamayo, I was made hermana lider again (when I went back to Cuenca I had stopped being hermana lider), so I had to travel to Guayaquil for Consejo de Lideres today.  It was pretty rough, because Loja is the farthest away from Guayaquil.  It`s roughly a 9 hour bus ride.  We left at 1:30 in the afternoon yesterday and got in at 10 o`clock at night.  We leave to go back at 5, so we`re going to be getting in suuuuuper late...

But anyways, the big news this week: Rodolfo and Jesus got baptized!  It ended up being a really special service.  It was going to be Friday night at 6pm, and the day before we visited them and verified with them the time and everything they would need to bring, with both of them and their son, and somehow the next day all three of them had gotten confused and had thought that it was at 7pm.  I don`t know how, we told them 6 o`clock, and we verified and they all told us 6 o`clock.  I don`t know.  We realized that they got it confused because the elders found Rodolfo at around 5 en el centro, near the church, with a big old backpack and he had told them that his baptism was at 7, so they called us to confirm.  We started to freak out, because we weren`t exactly sure where he was.  But when we went to get Angel and Jesus in their house, Rodolfo showed up and started getting ready to go.  We were so relieved.  Since they were a little thrown by surprise since they forgot the real time that the baptism was starting, they didn`t get ready in time and we showed up really late.  But it`s okay, because they got baptized!  And everything worked out really well.  They got confirmed yesterday, but once again the teeny tiny chapel was so full that we had to sit out in the hall, so we could barely just hear them giving the blessing.  But it`s okay, the point is they`re confirmed.

from our service project with Carolina

Another exciting thing that happened this week is that we got to do service on Thursday!  We went and helped the member that`s always accompanying us paint her room.  It was really fun.

This week, Angel, Rodolfo and Jesus`s son, is getting baptized (on saturday).  I hope everything works out well, he has a weird girlfriend that`s been causing problems for him.  But she`s starting to be more supportive, so I hope things keep going well.

I love you and everyone a lot, and I`m so so so grateful that families can be together forever.  That`s something I`ve been really grateful for this week.

Until next week,

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Camera works again!

January 26, 2015

Katie & Hermana Risco

Catamayo

Welp, not much interesting happened this week.  But one very exciting thing is that I got my camera checked out and now it works fine again!!  I´m back to having a working camera that takes pictures without freaking out.  

You know how I said it was raining last weekend?  It rained until about Wednesday.  There was a lot of mud, but I loved how nice and cool it was.  It was amazing.  But now we´re back to the typical hot weather of Catamayo.  

Here´s Rodolfo and Jesús (yup, the wife´s name is Jesús...pretty weird, right?)

This week we have a baptism!  An elderly couple is getting baptized on Friday, and next week is their son´s baptism.  We´d really appreciate your prayers, since they´ve had a few challenges along the way.  They´re a really special family.

Welp, pretty boring week.  sorry.  I´ll write more next week!

Hermana Iverson

Cambios! (transfers)

January 19, 2015

Katie and her new companion, Hermana Risco

Some big changes here this week.  First of all, I had cambios!  They called me Monday night, and I already kind of knew.  My time had come.  The next day we went to Guayaquil, and after waiting for a very long time, I found out where I was going, and I was so excited, because I´M NOT IN SANTA ROSA OR CUENCA!!!  POR FINNNNNN!!!!!!!!  I am in a town called Catamayo, which is about 30-45 minutes west of Loja.  Loja is sierra as well as Cuenca, and even though I had heard that it isn´t as cold as Cuenca, it still was reasonably cold.  I knew that Catamayo was in the general region of Loja, so I thought it would be chilly there too.  Welp I was a little mistaken there.  It´s so strange, because I know I´m in the sierra but I feel like I´m in the coast: it´s super hot and sunny, there are tons of bugs (I have so many nasty mosquito bites), and I got a crazy sunburn my first day.  I guess it´s at a lower altitude, and is in a valley, kind of like a bowl, and the sun just comes straight down here.  But Saturday a thunderstorm randomly kicked in, with lightning and everything (it was so cool!!); it´s been raining off and on ever since.  It´s actually raining right now, and I thought it was going to be sunny again...oops.

The other exciting thing is that I´m training!  The cambio (or transfer period of 6 weeks) having started over again last week, I got sent to Catamayo to finish training my current companion, my first hijastra (stepdaughter).  My companion is Hermana Risco, and she´s from Iquitos, Peru.  This is her second cambio in the mission, so she´s only been here in Catamayo and the mission for 6 weeks.  I was a little anxious when I heard that I was going to train, but then I got here and realized my companion is so pilas that I practically don´t have anything to worry about.  She´s super great, always stopping to talk to everyone we see.  I think this will work out fine.

Other than that, I got some mail this week! I got two packages and two cards: I got one Christmas package from the Poelmans, and a really cute Christmas card from the Relief Society back in the Foothill Ward that came in the other package.  I also got your (our?) Christmas card, and it turned out really cute!  I liked it a lot.  I also got a Christmas card from Kay Harrison from the ward there in Temecula.  I was pretty impressed, because I received most of my Christmas letters and packages last year in February, March, April... but I was really excited to receive all of that mail at the same time.

Welp, for now that´s all the news I´ve got.

Love, 

Hermana Iverson

p.s. yesterday we were reading the story of Elijah and the 450 priests when they try to see whose god can start the fire first, and there´s one verse that´s super funny, it´s in 1 Kings 18:27