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

I don´t know why I write so much

January 12, 2015

The first half of this week was really slow, so I´ll just fast forward through the boring stuff.  So Thursday afternoon, we were in Baños, a part of our sector that is a little bit out of the city and up in the hillsides.  We had passed by a member´s house to visit her, and as soon as we got there she asked us, "Do you want to go up to see the view?  Come on, let´s go!" and before we knew it, she was taking us up her property, showing us her little crops that she had on the steep hillside above her house.  After showing us a few of her plots, she took us up a little higher, and then she showed us a path that was above her property (all of this is us going uphill), so we climbed through the fence and followed her up the path with her two kids.  The view was super neat and you could see everything, so we kept going higher and higher and higher.  At one point we stopped to talk for a little bit, when we realized what time it was.  We were going to be late for an appointment!  The sister asked us if we weren´t going to go up to the top of the hill. That´s when we realized we had almost climbed all the way to the top.  It was a fun little hike, especially since I haven´t hiked in a while.  It was a really neat view, especially since we could see the churches that were in the city center, which was really really far away.  

We ended up rushing back down so that we could make it to that appointment, but as it turned out, the family we were going to visit wasn´t even there...but the member couple that was going to come with us to visit them was waiting for us.  Oops.  It´s kind of funny, because the couple that was going to accompany us (familia Zapata Ponce), I´ve literally been following them my entire mission.  They´re both from Santa Rosa, and when I started my mission in Rama 1, the husband´s dad was the branch president there, and I met them when they came to visit when they were newly married.  Later when I left Santa Rosa, I came to Alamos for the first time, which is where they attend.  When I went to the other side of Cuenca, I saw them with the husband´s mom in the stake conference and we took pictures (that they still have, and showed me), but this time she was pregnant.  Then when I went back to Santa Rosa, I went to Rama 3--which is where the wife´s family lives.  They had come to visit while I was there, with their little baby.  So I know the families of both of them, and have been in their own ward twice.  Kind of funny.

We had a cool experience on Friday night.  We were leaving an appointment and were walking towards the main street to get the bus, when the member who was with us stopped and was like "hey that kid who just passed us is reading the Book of Mormon" so we were like "WHAT WHO WHERE" and one of my companions whistled at him to get him to come back haha.  So he came back and we asked him how he got that book.  Turns out his friend had lent him a copy and he liked it so much, that his friend got him his own two days earlier.  He had been reading it since then and was already 58 pages in.  In the short time he´s had contact with the Book of Mormon, he had already begun to quit drinking and smoking and other bad habits, and he´s only 17.  It was a miracle.  But...he didn´t have a phone number and he didn´t show up to our appointment the next day to find his house, so now we have to pray really hard that we find him again.  But we have faith!  We WILL find Jonny again, I know it.

Welp, besides that, on Thursday I found a white hair by my forehead...the sister who took us up on her hill pointed it out.  Also, Friday would have been my 15 month mark...my quinceñera *sniff*  Oh well.  It´s fine.

Love you a bunch!

Love, 

Hermana Iverson 

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2015?? WHAT?!

January 5, 2015

Katie and her companions

Happy New Year!  I´m still freaking out that it´s 2015.  That means that ten years ago it was 2005.  It´s already been 10 years since then!  MANDE.  Ya pues.  

We had to be home by 6pm both the 31st and the 1st.  That was fine with us because there are usually a ton of borrachos near our neighborhood anyways, and we didn´t want to know what it would be like on the one day of the year of the highest alcohol consumption.  Literally, like even the people who normally don´t drink, they always say that the only time every year that they do drink is New Year´s.  Imagínense.  New Year´s Eve was pretty boring, we pretty much did nothing that evening in the house.  We watched a video.  Yup.  New Year´s Day there was barely anyone outside.  There were usually a lot more people than I thought I´d see; usually everyone´s sleeping.  That night when we got home, we went downstairs to the bishop´s house to borrow their mixer and their oven to make chocolate chip cookies.  They turned out really good and I was so happy.  I wanna make more.  While they were baking, we played a Book of Mormon trivia board game with his family.  It was super fun, especially since his two kids, who are 10 and 8 years old, are crazy, and we totally won.  We kind of read that book every single day, so hey.  It felt like a little Family Home Evening, it was great.

Yesterday we got a bit of a surprise thrown at us.  Since it´s the first Monday of the month, there was Consejo de Líderes in Guayaquil, so the zone leaders and the hermana leaders went.  But the thing is, the companions of each of the hermana leaders are still in their 12 weeks of training (they both literally only have a week left), so they couldn´t be alone together without an hermana that wasn´t in her training.  So somehow somebody decided it would be best to ask the trio to stay with them.  It was a little crazy trying to meet up with them, but we finally did.  We aren´t allowed to do divisions for whatever reason, so we´ve been in a strange 5-person companionship for the last 24 hours.  Yup. 

We got the Liahona magazine for this month, and I saw that the Mutual theme for the youth is in D&C 4:2.  I thought that was really great, and it made me remember how our teachers made us memorize that entire section in the MTC.  I really hope that the youth take it to heart and really study what the scripture says.  I only remember it in Spanish, but mas o menos it says: Therefore, oh ye that embark in the service of thy God, see that ye serve Him with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength, so that ye may appear before him without stains in the last day.  (that´s a rough translation)  Now more than ever we need to be more focused in being in the service of Him, to serve Him and show Him that we´re willing to do whatever He needs in order to complete His work and His glory here on earth.  A lot of the youth are getting ready to serve missions, and they´ll learn to really appreciate this scripture a lot more once they´re out on the mission.  

Well, gotta go, but I love you a lot and be careful with all that snow!  One of the hermanas that was with us today is from Rancho Cucamonga and was hardcore freaking out, like "THAT IS NOT CALIFORNIA, THAT LOOKS LIKE UTAH.  THIS NEVER HAPPENS."

Abrazos y besos,

Hermana Iverson

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! (Happy New Year!)

December 29, 2014

Wow what a busy week.  I was so happy to talk to my family on Thursday.  It felt way too short. I love you all and I loved being able to talk to you.  

From the beginning of the week, there wasn´t anything that really happened.  Just that after we had our district meeting on Tuesday, our district leader shared some Christmas fudge that his mom had sent him, and besides calling my family that was probably the best thing that happened to me this entire Christmas season.  I haven´t had fudge in TWO YEARS--far too long.  It was delicious and made me just the tiniest tad bit trunky.  It also made me want to kick myself for not asking my mom to send me some, but I didn´t think she would for fear of it melting or going bad before it got to me, but now I see I was mistaken.  I really want some fudge.  And nut goody.  OH MY GOSH.

Tuesday night, we went to visit a part-member family that Hermana Petersen had been visiting with Hermana Gutierrez before we got here.  The husband/boyfriend is an inactive member, and his wife/girlfriend isn´t a member, but would like to be baptized; but she couldn´t because they were living together and weren´t married.  They have a little baby, but I guess before Christian, the boyfriend, wasn´t interested in coming back to church or getting married or anything.  But when we went Tuesday night and asked them what they thought about the matter, they took us completely by surprise when they told us that they had already started to get the papers they needed to get married!  As we continued talking, Christian said that he´d talked to his mom as well about coming back to church and how they want to take that step.  So we helped them make goals and put deadlines for their marriage, and for the baptism of Nelly, the girlfriend.  It was really really neat.  We´ve been really excited for them.

Wednesday and Thursday we had to be inside the house by 7pm.  Wednesday, we helped our mamita make lasagna for our lunch.  It was soooooo good.  We ate the leftovers for lunch the next day.  Thursday, right before we went to call and coordinate the time we were going to skype, we ran into a recent convert who took us to present us to his cousin´s family.  He took us to his aunt´s house to wait for them, but the thing is, she and another woman were preparing cuy--or in other words, guinea pig.  We watched them burn their hair off over the stove and then gut them completely.  It was gross but mesmerizing.  Very strange.

This week will be interesting with New Year´s; pretty sure no one will be out on Thursday.  Nobody.  They will all disappear.  Should be fun.

Love you all, stay safe, make good choices, and have fun!

Love,

Hermana Iverson