Most of the month of May 2014

No letter on May 12th, just a phone call home on Mother's Day!!

Hermanas in their new dresses! Miracle time!

May 19, 2014 2:28 PM

Dearest familia,

Not much happened this week BUT I have been watching the most amazing miracle happen. One of our investigators, started out as we only invited him to church and he came. So we went and put a baptismal date and THEN found out that he has been doing drugs 3-4 times a day for 4 years! We taught him the word of wisdom gave him a book of mormon and really he has done the rest. He stopped the drugs cold turkey and hasn't had any problems. He told us that every time he feels tempted he just reads the BOM or says a prayer. He has read all of 1 and 2 Nephi in a week! He also taught himself to use the footnotes and the whole plan of salvation. He is sooo amazing. We were sitting outside talking to his neighbor and he walked past with all of his dvds because he didn't want the temptation! AH! seriously, there are no words for how amazing it is to see someone change so completely with the help of the gospel! 

ok, so this neighbor of David is Patricia and she is going to get baptized this week! POR FIN we have baptisms! Her kids are getting baptized in two weeks! AH mi primer familia :) 

And the other fantastic thing that happened this week was that we had lasagna!!!!! bah! it was awesome, minus the pile of rice that came with it... seriously whats with the rice people? i do not need more carbs! haha

Welp, thats all i got for you this week folks!

Love you all!

Hermana Whitmore

Picture 1:This is what i do when I'm waiting for my companion on pday! 

Pic 2: Writing (typing)  letters on pday!

Another week in the REAL paradise :)

May 26, 2014 1:32 PM

Hola familia,

I love hearing the different sides of your cruise stories and the reaction of when you got home! haha Awesome! I hope you enjoyed yourselves because i sure did this week! We´ve been working and working and working and finally it all paid off! We finally got to see a baptism here in the Aurora. Her name is Patricia, and she a single mom with 7 kids! Yikas. 2 of them will be baptized next week. She is so great and has a good little testimony started of how the gospel can help the family. We´ve been working so hard this week to get our program set. We are working with a lot of people and families! Its so awesome to work with the members and get their friends to come to church. Its so much more meaningful to them both! 

Most of the week was normal, just the regular working and working and working. I love learning from my companion! She is a convert of 3 years and has soooo much knowledge of the scriptures. I hope i can really use this time wisely to learn as much as i can! 

I have to apologize... i don't have any really cool stories to tell you... I did learn that i can follow the spirit this week. We were in a lesson with 3 supposed menos activos, which usually means we talk about the sacrament. But i felt like we needed to cover all of lesson 3, sooo then we found out that 2 of them have never actually been baptized and we put 2 new fechas! Woo hoo espiritu santo. So that's my awesome missionary experience this week! 

Love you all! hope you have

a great week :)

Hermana Whitmore

picture 1: p-day papas! 

Picture 2: Patricia and most of the herd!

Yay fiebre!

Yay fiebre! [yay fever] Quierido Familia,  Todo esta bien en la tierra de Machala.[all is well in the land of machala] We're all on our toes because we are expecting full cambios[changes/transfers] tonight! But i want to thank you all for remembering my birthday and tambien[also] i want to publicly wish happy birthday to my daddy!!!!! Entonces! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!! and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOM!!!!!!!! It's quite convenient for me that those days ended up on the same day :) haha  Well this week has been fun. Normal things going on. I got really sick.. like 101 degree temperature. But no worries all is well now! Our menos activos[less actives] definitely still need your prayers and our investigators really really need your prayers. Seriously, we had this flip flop situation with one of our investigators. He was all super excited one day and then the next day he was all i don't want to be baptized... i know its all true but I'm gonna stay catholic.... what???????? seriously. And we finally got one of our menos activos to come to church and it was literally, physically hard for her to walk into the building. Lots of prayers for Elizabeth please :) But really that was all that's been happening. Just work work work!  I'm super excited for SUNDAY!!!! yoohoo!  Love you all! Hermana Whitmore Pic 1- washing sheets in the sink is not fun.... but i will be a fantastic mother if our washing machine breaks!  Pic 2- This is what fever looks like in 90ish degree weather! Pic 3- Breakfast! yum,yum!

May 5, 2014 2:08 PM

April 14, 21, 28 of 2014

i love being sickly...

April 14, 2014 2:38 PM

Dearest Familia!

Como estan? This week has just been a treat. I started out great and then about an hour after i sent off the letter last... well that's when the fun began. My kidneys started hurting and then it just went downhill from there. We had to stay in the house Wednesday and Thursday because even though i was feelin pretty good, presidente was worried i had an infectious disease! No se preocupe[worry]- i don't!  well,  just to make sure these things don't come back, I'm taking multiple pills, multiple times a day. woohoo! gotta love south america!

Anywho, real missionary things that happened this week. My testimony of the Book of Mormon grew! Again! It was awesome, we were having a lesson with this one fecha and his cousin and his friend. and this friend is a "bad kid" so to say, does the drugs alcohol, tattoos, all that stuffs and was only talking to us to "give us his opinion" on everything- but we were reading in 2 nefi 31 and after he was all: i wasn't interested before but now i want to listen and i´ll read this other chapter tonight! How cool is that? The book of Mormon can change someone like (*snap) that!

Also, to answer moms questions, Machala is a decently sized city (like... no sé... sandy? but ecuador style!) There is a city center for shopping and its right on the ocean, but i never see it because its in the other zone! we eat a lot of fish and shrimp... and yeah. That's machala! we have this big ol´ huge sector that covers all the outskirts of the town on the way to santa rosa.  Its a little frustrating right now because we don't have people and its really hard to find them, but we wont lose faith or animos![fortitude]

I love being a missionary- even when i'm sick! my testimony grows everyday and i learn a little bit more about Christ too! i love it!

Hermana Whitmore

April 21, 2014

full poder!  [full power]

April 28, 2014 2:31 PM

Alright family!

This week was full of spiritually uplifting experiences! We had an Area Seventy come and we had capacitacion[training] with him for 6 hours! it was AWESOME! He got us all excited to work with the members and he talked all about this new era of missionary work! It was so enlightening and ... ah just awesome! I just know that it changed the way I'm going to do everything in my mission. I obviously have a gift with menos activos[less active] because that's literally all we've been able to find this week. Our program looks super sad but really we are just reactivating tons of people! In sacrament meeting we had 4 investigators and 5 menos activos! woo! But that was another miracle by itself because we were only planning on two menos activos and all of our investigators flaked!

So we got to church all depressed-like and one of the conversos[converts] of H. Brule had 3 non member family members and some menos activos were there just because they felt the need to come back to church after five years and he brought his brother who also isn't a member soooo! We put fechas with 2 of them and have plans for the other ones for this week! Our faith finally paid off! Woo! Happy day :)

Well, really, i think that's all. Sorry its kinda a lame letter but i just can't think of anything else that was really that cool.

This morning i studied some pretty cool stuff about the prodigal son. I just love that story because its like what we are doing right now! We are finding all of the lost "sons" and bringing them back so that our heavenly father can rejoice for their return!

I love you all, I love being a missionary, I love ecuador!

Hermana Whitmore

PS if you can pray for my investigators: dana y jhonny pogo. and these menos activos: Shirley Barreto, and Luis Pesantes and family, Victoria, and Christian. I would greatly appreciate it!