3 weeks of February

FEB. 10, 2014

COW STOMACH.......

Hola Querido Familia Mio,

jijiji! That's all the Spanish i'll throw at you today... hopefully :) Well this week was fun, with lots to do, Lots of people to see and far away places to go. We got some new training at the beginning of this week. So now we do plans de asistencia for church and all these steps to help people realize the importance of going to church. we were doing this before but now we do a Vancuna (vaccine) that's from Moroni 7. Good things come from God and Bad things come from the Devil... What is church? This helps people realize that church is the most important thing they could be doing on Sunday! It's pretty cool.

So the title of this email needs some explanation i guess... This week i got to eat cow stomach... twice... yeah... i decided i don't love it all that much. They cook it in peanut sauce and its like eating fuzzy gum. But its a little funny because all the members that find out you don't like it, always always always say "oh well its because you haven't tried mine!" yeah... so the thing we can learn from this is just don't talk about it! haha

We had the baptism of Yajahira this week! She is the sobrina of a member in our ward. She's gone down some wrong paths, made some wrong decisions... BUT hopefully now that she has a new start to life she can start making good decisions. We talked with her after church and talked a lot about temples and how awesome they are and how you can have an eternal family and be with someone that actually loves you! It was really tender :)

Well that's my week! OH! side notes:
-I gave my first machete (serious speaking) with an investigator. Ful poder! haha
-I'm starting to like fish! yikas!!! What am i to do??? 

-And our zone leaders are sooo awesome! They care about us soo much and they are soooo super spiritually powerful! love them!

Well family i love you all :) Until next time!

Hermana Whitmore

FEB. 17, 2014
NOT MUCH THIS WEEK....
Dearest Familia de mio,

How are you all doing? This week was a bit boring in the grand scheme of things... I did get your package!! So i now have a functioning camera! WOO!

That day was actually pretty eventful, we actually got a member to come with us and do visits! Woo! so we were in El Recreo, about 30 minutes outside of Santa Rosa, and we were praying when the last bus passed.... Yeah.. so this has happened before and we weren't worried because there is always a taxi of some sort that comes along.. yeah nothing came by for 45 minutes. know why? because it was raining.. when it rains, everyone buttons up the hatches and stays inside! So we had to call Elder Osorio to save us... Yay sister missionary moment!!!

We didn't have any baptisms this week, so no crazy running around on Saturday, BUT the elders in our ward had a baptism and their investigator was totally MIA! They were looking and calling him until 8:00, finally found him, and brought him to the church. BUT when they finally arrived, everyone else from the other 5 baptisms had left and all the water had drained out of the font!!! SOOOO we had to wait around for the font to fill up and there was only missionaries, one friend, presidente, and the mission leader. A little sad. BUT he is now the newest member of Rama Santa Rosa 2! (PS same thing happened for his confirmacion... yeah...)

Well tha-tha-tha-thats all folks!

Loves and h...handshakes!

FEB. 24, 2014
ANOTHER WEEK IN SANTA ROSA!

Querido Familia Mia,

Pues, everything is normal here in the middle of the globe. This week i had my first real sickness!!! WOO (I'm a real missionary now)! I woke up in the morning with a stomach ache but i was all "it'll pass" but then we went Planeamiento semenal and it grew a little... then we had lunch and it was a little worse... then we went to Estero Medina to do some visits and i couldn't even WALK! Yeah! So i tell my companion "voy a morir![i am going to die] Llamar los lideres porfa!!!"[call the leaders] so shes on the phone with Elder osorio and says hey we are going to the apartment, my companion doesn't feel very good. So i yell "Elder Osorio VOY A MORIR" and he just starts laughing!!! haha (its all good! he is my pata ((super good friend)). So we go to the apartment and I'm just laying on the bed dying. It was soo weird though because it was just pain, no other symptoms whatsoever! So yeah after calling the enfermeras [nurse] and checking my temp.3 times, a nap and  another call to the enfermeras, everything was still the same. The elders call and say "don't leave! we're coming by the apartment!" ...like I'm going to go anywhere... So they come by, go and buy my pastillas (pills) and then give me a blessing and and like 30 minutes later i was fit as a fiddle! So moral of the story... I'm not going to die and the sacerdocio [priesthood] works!!!

in other news, We had two baptisms this week! yihee! One of a kids is named Luis. He is super super smart and remembers everything like the second you teach it to him. He was sooo excited to get baptized, and it was a little sad because his parents didn't come to support him in his decision (but he had 3 cousins come and watch so that was awesome!) but he had elder thompson baptize him and when we met him at the church he says to elder thompson in super awful english "I'm here for my baptism!!!" ah! so cute!

The other is Douglas and he is super pilas too. We've been teaching him for about a month now and his mom is super awesome and supportive BUT shes not married and her man is Ateo and doesn't believe in marriage or something like that so she cant get baptized :(

So now Santa Rosa 2 has two new members! And this week we are going to try to do a lot of reactivating. So pray for the menos activos here in Santa Rosa because we´re coming to find them!

I love you all!!!

Heramana Whitmore

So much to do! So little time! AND... One more week in paradise!

One more week in paradise!

Jan. 27, 2014

Alright, what a week, what a week! This week started out with one of the hermanas going to Guayaquil for a training and so her compy was with us for a couple days... that was interesting because we were trying to work in two sectors. So one of the days i did a split with my converso, Derly. and I put a fecha! All by myself! in Spanish! and i verified everything! Woo, go me! Super confidence booster... it's really too bad that we haven't seen him since, but that's the way things go here in Ecuador.

Anywho! this week we had the baptism of Isabel Herrera, age 75! That was quite the adventure. We said that we would pick her up at 6:30 for the baptism at "7:00" AKA 8:00 But when we got there, we found out that she had left for Machala and hadn't come back yet! So we left in hopes that she would show up before 7:00. When we came back... she hadn't, so we wait around until 7:40!! BUT luckily she had come in a taxi (they live on the very edge of our sector, and she has really bad health so she can't walk very much) so we tell the taxi to wait because we need it! But my comp and i decide to wait in the taxi for her to change and stuff. so we hop in the taxi and the taxi takes off without Isabel!!! We're all , hey we need that other lady and he's all, it's ok I'm just going to get gas. and we're all ... ah ok... but we get to the gas station and there is like a million cars! I'm all, we don't have time for this! and he's all, why? well buddy, we kind of have a baptism and we need that lady that you left behind! THEN it all clicks for him... ahyayayi. well, after much trial and tribulation we get Isabel to the church, take pictures, change her into her baptism dress, find out she didn't understand the whole baptism by immersion thing meant that she had to get wet. get her in the font with 2 elders and a chair, and baptize that woman!!! all in all it was a very interesting day. BUT now Isabel Herrera is the newest member of RAMA SANTA ROSA 2!  WOO :)

Well that's all i got for ya, i hope you enjoy the story. i love the work here :) i love being a missionary, i love my life, all that I'm learning and doing. I love watching peoples lives change for the better, i love you all :) 

Hermana Whitmore

So much to do! So little time!

Feb. 3, 2014

Dearest Familia!

This week has been great! We found a family and they are sooo ready to hear the gospel. They are actually married (not very common here) and have 3 kids! Javier, the dad, is sooo excited about it! Its awesome. He took his kids on a drive to see the church and when his son said he didn't know how to pray he taught him the correct steps that we had taught him the day before. Only Javier and his daughter came to church but we`´ll get his whole family there! I know! :)

Also this week, we had a bunch of run-ins with Testigos and Evagelicals. It just made my testimony of this gospel really grow. The doctrine is so confusing if you don't have the book of mormon to straighten it all out. It was fun to talk with them because they kept trying to stump us with locisimo questions and we were just calm and kept reading them scriptures. in the end we invited two of them to read the book of mormon and pray to know the truth... we´ll see if they actually do it!

WE have this investigator, Angie, and we went to visit her and she said she didn't want to get baptized but didn't have a reason either! So we asked her to say a pray and ask directly if she should get baptized. after the prayer we all knelt in silence so that she could receive an answer. I know i was using that time to say a prayer and I'm pretty sure my companion was too. But after about 3 minutes, she says: i think i need to get baptized!!!! SOOO COOL! We'll have to do it again because she called us last night and said she changed her mind again... but i know that she can ask again and again and always get the same answer :)

Alright, so, fun story time!

Story number 1: The other night i open my journal and there is a cricket (giant enough that i thought it was a cucaracha) just hangin out! I freaked out and totally screamed, chucking my journal across the room. Then after that, it took us about 10 minutes to get up the courage to find it and kill it... yeah, that was fun.

Story 2: So we have to take buses to part of our area. we were on the bus and i was takin a little cat nap. When all of a sudden i feel a hand on my face... that's right ON MY FACE!!!!! I open my eyes and luckily the hand had been removed.. but there was just this creepy Ecuadorian man standing over me, smiling! WOW! some people. i was sooo stunned i couldn't think of anything to say.. let alone any spanish words to say. So yeah that happened.

Also we had the baptism of Angel! he's super pilas. 

Anywho. That's all i got for you :)

I love you all! 

Hermana Whitmore