Never would I think to feel Godly sorrow for sleeping in, but I felt pretty bad this morning :P

Hola todos!

A lot happened this week, and when a lot happens, time moves really really slowly. 

For one, we had transfers, Elder Sócola left :(, but Elder Gómez came! :)

I cooked papi-huevo becase elder Sócola left. I burned myself with the oil :P

Elder Gómez is from Lima Perú, has been in the mission the same amount of time as me, and has been a member of the church for a little over a year. He has a strong testimony of the gospel and especially eternal families, so we get along really well.

Elder Gómez and I outside of the chapel. I had really bad allergies so my nose is a little red.​

We´ve been working really hard together to talk to a lot of people, but my goal is to talk with everyone in the street, and we are still really far from that goal. 

We´ve been struggling in this sector since we opened it to find a lot of new investigators to teach every week. Often we hear stories about missionaries in the right place at the right time, but I always feel like we aren´t in the right place at the right time to find people :( :P.  But I still have faith that this is God´s work, and we are his servants. 

Monica was baptized this week!!! The service was really powerful. She bore a short but strong testimony after that she knew this was the right thing to do to help her daughter. Wow!!!!

​Monica at her baptism. Her brother, daughter, us Elders, and the Hermanas are in the foto also.

We are also working with a part member family that has a sister in the mission. The dad in the family doesn´t have very much time to meet with us because he works as a taxi driver in the night time and is sleeping during the day. His three daughters really want to be baptized, but we want to help him first and baptize the whole family. 

Zone Conference, Divisions, Lessons falling, Food

Hola todos! 

This week was pretty hard. 

We had zone conference, which was very powerful and all about humility. I learned a lot about being a more humble missionary. God has given us everything, and he wants us to use every single one of our gifts as the Savior would, to bless the lives of others.

We also had divisions and I got to go work with the district leader in his sector for a day. I had the opportunity to testify powerfully to his investigators. I really enjoyed it!

This week was a lot like the last. We contacted more than double the number of people, and found a lot of people that had a lot of interest in the message, but the lessons with them fell through. It really stressed me out, but we will try again to get in contact with them next week. 

Abraham passed his baptismal interview, so now all we have to do is make sure he doesn't drink any more coffee, and help him grow his testimony in preparation for his baptism next Saturday. Yay!

Monica and Christian have been a little hard to get a hold of because they spend a lot of time away from the house. I´m worried for Christian because we haven´t seen him in a week or more. Please pray that we can find time to teach the two of them and help them come closer to Christ.

We recently also helped a young boy named Jesùs to accept a date for his baptism. He is of a less active family, and his baptism will help strengthen their family a lot.

Here is a fruit that is really interesting called granadia

and some tasty cookies called Amor

what my companion did today for P-day

Baptisms, Changes, Really Good Week!

Hola Todos!

Things are looking a lot better than last week. 

One thing's for sure - we found a lot more people this week that are interested in our message.

There are three young girls that we found - Anabel, Maribel, and Daniya - who have a sister who is a member and want to be baptized but haven't yet because they want to wait for their sister to come back first. We are going to try to set up a Skype call so they can be baptized and their sister can watch. And their uncle Diego also really wants to be baptized to set a good example for his 2 year old son.

We taught Mónica almost every day this last week and she also passed her baptismal interview! She is so prepared. Although we still haven't found her brother Christian.

Abraham was baptized this weekend and also a family of four that the sisters have been teaching. It was so exciting to see so many children of God make the first step to return to him!

Abraham (on the right) with his cousin, the branch mission leader

The large family and a lot of the branch before their baptism.

On a sadder note, this week is changes, and my companion was called back to the coast. I will have to stay here and be in charge of my sector. How intimidating!

I will really miss Elder Sócola and his goofy spirit. I won´t find another companion to tickle me or point to dog droppings on the ground and say "for you" Also, he won´t get the chance to see all of the great work he started here. :(. And I will have a harder time learning Spanish without him.

I truly feel like he was an answer to my prayer when it comes to learning Spanish, because I had to wait in Pennsylvania for 6 weeks speaking less Spanish so it got a little rusty. God told me if I worked hard in Pennsylvania, I would be just fine when I made it here.  Elder Sócola was the reason that my Spanish grew tremendously and I was "just fine". He loved me and taught me so much.

Gracias por todo las oraciones!

Elder Cloward

A foto of Chimborazo peaking above the clouds during the evening.

It is really big, and marks the northern part of our sector.

Bad pancakes, not enough contacts (or not the right contacts), the highest mountain in the world

Hola todos!

This week we had a lot of lessons fall through, and we weren´t able to contact enough to find very many new investigators. We did contact into a drunk man in a bar who sang us some love songs and told me "Hasta la Vista baby"

Monica is progressing very well. This Saturday, she said her first prayer in public. It makes me so happy to watch people come closer to God.

Abraham is really enjoying the church meetings. Our only problem is that we haven´t had very much time to teach him. He still needs to learn a lot.

Christian is also really excited to continue, but he hasn´t yet attended church.

Today we took a trip to Chimborazo with a large group of missionaries from the zone. Chimborazo is the largest volcano in the world. I wish I had a picture of the whole thing from the distance, but it´s hard to take one on a clear day. From bottom to top, Everest is the largest mountain in the world, but if you count the shape of the earth the top of Chimborazo is closer to the sun than everest. Of course we didn´t go to the top, but we still were up really high. 5100 meters!

We had to hitchhike to make it back to the city because the bus that came back to pick us up was full. There were some really interesting deer llama type things up there called Vicuñas.

My companion and I have been experimenting with making pancakes. The pancakes in these pictures have banana, choclate, chia seeds, a little mayonaise, and a little yogurt. They made my companion sick, but not me. He says that I´m a pig.

Next week I will contact a lot more people, and hopefully not more drunk people.

I will have more investigators to talk about! 

Gracias por todo!

Elder Cloward

Lots of rain, more cake, Mother´s day.

Feliz día de la Madre from a very rainy Riobamba!

We worked really hard this week, but a lot of rain made contacting much harder. We taught a few part member families and have a good chance at baptizing many of the nonmembers in the family. Christian and Monica are members of a strong family of recent converts who really want to change their lives but don´t have a lot of time to meet with us. Monica has a hard time because she is only 18 years old but already has a 2 year old very rebellious daughter. Abraham, the nephew of the branch mission leader came to church last week and really enjoyed it. 

My parents gave me some silly putty to use to play with crazy kids while I was here, but I ended up using it to patch some cracks in the wall of our house to keep the rain out. One of the days this week it rained really hard for the entire day. 

We bought another cake for 8 dollars this time, only because my companion wanted to. It has a jam filling on the inside, and is even more delicious than the first.

For Mother´s day, I had a wonderful opportunity to call my family on skype for 45 minutes. I was able to bear strong testimony that what I was doing was of God, and that perfect love casteth out all fear. 

I know God is real, and he loves us. I know that his son Jesus Christ is our savior and redeemer and because of him we can repent. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and that this church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God´s church on the earth.

Love you all!

Elder Cloward

7 dollar cake for Emma´s birthday

8 dollar cake. Really tasty inside!

My companion has an electric machine that sends electricity
through your muscles to help them relax?
I don´t really know what it is meant for.
But here I am sending pulses of electricity through my arms.

The very empty living room of our new house. 

Our study room

Our bedroom

Luckily we don´t have to shower by bucket,
but the water is poor here so we have a large filtered jug.
The water from the shower is really really warm. 

Cake, Mr Pig, and a house... finally.

Hola Todos!

This week was really hard and really great. We had lesson after lesson fall through, so most of our lessons have been with members, and we've been walking everywhere. We've found some great people to teach, but it´s hard to stay on top of them.

We found one man who has been having some really hard family problems and was praying to know what to do before we knocked on his door. He makes soccer balls for a living, and has a big reason to need the gospel in his life.

We also started teaching the nonmember nephew of the branch mission leader, and he has a baptismal date set for June 2. He isn´t super social, so we are going to try to find him a friend that can help him feel welcome in the church.

The branch is really great. This fast and testimony meeting, almost everyone bore their testimony, so Elder Sócola and I didn´t get the chance. 

There is a meat store here that keeps a dead pig (se llama Mr. Pig) outside of the store for a couple days before cooking it and selling it. Yuck!

Because Tuesday was my sister's birthday party, we bought a really big and tasty cake from a local bakery for seven dollars. Things are a lot cheaper here, except technology, cars and shoes (because they aren't made here). I heard that an Iphone X here is about 2000 dollars. Eek!

We´ve been sleeping in other Elder´s houses for the past two weeks since we´ve been here, and finally we´ve found our own apartment to rent! It is decent sized with a living room two bedrooms a big kitchen and a nice bathroom. A lot of the furniture in it is older, but overall it is a really nice place, and I am excited to have our own house, that is in our sector so we don´t have to walk or ride the bus as often. It will help our schedules be a bit more solid, because right now we haven´t had a lot of time to study because we have been walking so much.

I don´t have my camera right now, but I will send pictures of the house, the cake, and maybe something else exciting, funny, or random next week.

Gracias por todo sus oraciones!

Elder Cloward 

First week in Ecuador!

Hola Todos!

The view outside the zone leaders apartment.
I like to watch the cats outside in the morning.

I don´t have a whole lot of time right now, but I will see what I can write. 

Ecuador is incredible! It is so beautiful here. The weather is perfect in the mornings and hot in the afternoons. Although my companion thinks that it is cold in the mornings. I am serving in an area called Alamos in Riobamba. We are starting the area, so it has been a while since Elders were here so we don´t have a house or a phone. We have to share with some different Elders, the zone leaders. We are pretty lost most of the time, and we have to walk a lot to get to our sector. 

The branch here is really awesome, and we´ve eaten a lot of great food at the members homes. The food here is incredible, and I haven´t gotten sick yet! 

We generally stay in the members homes during lunch for a while, because the lunches are really big. 

We´ve found a couple of great families to teach also. One family was actually four living together in one house. They were very receptive to our message, and with one lesson, we had 7 new investigators. Que genial!

Massive waterfall!

This P-day we took a trip out into the jungle to see a massive waterfall, and that is why I don´t have a whole lot of time to write. My companion wants to visit more out in that area, so maybe next week we will leave earlier in order to return with more time to write, and eat lunch, because we haven´t done that yet.

I am working on the spanish, because it is hard to understand people right now, but I can speak ok. 

Thank you for all the support!

Us near the waterfall!

Me getting drenched behind massive waterfall!