After 11 days of being cooped up, I learned that I am really bad at monopoly

Hola amigos!

Well I feel like there isn't a whole lot to tell you about this week, because the whole week we were cooped up in our house waiting further instructions with our leaders. We were with the other Elders here in Puyo so at least we had some company, but every day was just about the same.

Wake up, read the scriptures, cook something for breakfast, read the scriptures some more or maybe go onto the roof. Eat lunch, play a board or card game. Go to the roof again, and eat dinner and play a few more games. I was impressed by how patient we all were with everything.

Luckily, yesterday the president of Ecuador was able to meet with the angry indigenous people and make some deals so in this week we will be working like normal again (hopefully).

Through all of the process I learned a lot about what it means to trust God. This weekend, the entire mission fasted, or went without eating or drinking anything with the purpose of healing this wounded country. In my prayers, I said something like this. 'God I know I'm imperfect. I know that my work hasn't always been the best, or I haven't always been the most obedient. But I've tried my best and I will try even harder if you open Ecuador again for work.'

My work now still won't be perfect, because I am imperfect, but it will be a lot more complete, and I will come home even happier than if the stop in Ecuador wouldn't have happened.

Here's a goofy video of the smoke from the tire burning that they were doing in downtown.

Elder Cloward

Well things have been....... fun.....

Well I'm not sure if I will get time to write later on so I'm going to write something short now. 

On Thursday, due to rising gas prices in Ecuador all the taxi drivers and bus drivers stopped all of the roads and blocked up passages. After the district meetings the missionaries couldn't go back to their sectors and between the 2 companionships in Puyo we had to babysit 4 missionaries each for two days until they opened up the passage again. These past few days (since Thursday) we've had to stay in our house because they say that the indigenous peoples are also rising up for other problems that they have. We haven't been able to work since Thursday, and I feel like we are in some kind of apocalypse. But don't worry too much, I'm not physically hurt, just mentally stressed because of lost progress on the investigators not being able to see general conference and I'm really bored. If I can write again today I'll fill in some details. 

Elder Cloward

This is what a missionary looks like when he is cooped up for a few days. =P

It has been raining a lot

Hola Amigos!

We had a really good week. It ended with 3 baptisms in our district, and 10 in the zone in the month of September, and for the first time since our mission president has been in Ecuador, we had 110 baptisms in the month of September. It was really incredible. 

We had a baptism in our sector. Deysi was baptized and was really happy about it. I love seeing how the gospel changes people, and she had an errand to run on Sunday with her mom whose is not a member but preferred to receive some hard criticism from her mom and receive the Holy Ghost than not get it. It was happy.

I have been worried in these past few days because we don't have a lot more people to teach. But this last week we had two new people come to church. One of them was a young man who is best friends with the branch president's son. And the other one was a young woman named Noemí who my companion found while I was doing an interview in Tena. She is really excited and is looking for more peace in her life. 

It has been raining a lot here recently. 

Monday it rained really hard after I wrote to my family and we had to spend the rest of the night in the rain. Saturday it rained really hard and we had to cross the river that was running through the middle of the street to get where we needed to go, and it rained today. It has been pretty crazy. 

Well that's about all for now. 

Elder Cloward

Miracles, and a bugs in my stomach

Hola Amigos!

We had a really good week. We haven't really been able to find a lot of new people this week, but we have found a few opportunities, and we saw a miracle in the progress of someone.

First of all, Maria Belen was baptized this week. We are really happy for her. She has always been worried to attend the class with the other young women in church, but her family members shoved her in this time, and she was fine in there.

Also Deysi her aunt is getting baptized this week. She is really prepared for it and I know God will bless her a lot. It has been hard to talk with her really well because she is always with all of her family when we teach them, and that makes it hard to teach, but she is really good about completing homework we leave and whenever we ask her how she feels about baptism, she says "great!"

Last week we met a new family. Alí is a member of the church but doesn't go because his wife, Magdalena didn't want to yet. Last week when we met with them, Magdalena said that she didn´t believe that Sunday was the sabbath that is written in the scriptures. But this last Friday when we went to visit them, she told us, "I got my answer. I was trusting my own knowledge and not trusting in God." She came to church on Sunday. It was incredible how the spirit worked to help her.

On Saturday, we planned a ward activity, and 90 people came. We were expecting less than 80, maybe 60? But we had to buy more refreshments at the end. It was really exciting because a lot of members brought friends. A Venezuelan sister in the church brought her daughter and grand-children that aren't members, so this week I hope to meet them and teach them.

We played soccer today for p-day for the first time in a while. A lot of the missionaries were really rusty, and afterwards we played a really intense game of Phase10. It was a pretty good breakday.

However, I feel like I've got some bugs in my stomach. I think I may need to watch what I'm eating a little bit more. I'll update you guys on that this week.

Elder Cloward