Really Great Week

Hola todos!

Well we had a really great week. It started a little rough, but things turned out really well in the end. 

We had a lot of people come to church yesterday. Among them, Natali, three children from a family we are teaching, and Reina with her husband. I may have talked about them before.

 Natali is a friend of one of the young men in the ward. He likes to join us in the weekends to visit and he introduced us to Natali. She is really excited to feel God´s love more in her life, and her family is also interested.

The other family was listening to us a little bit, and the children went to church! The mom needs a little bit of a push, but they are very interested. (Perez Cuenca family)

Reina is the daughter in law of a member and her husband was baptized but they lost his records. We are going to do our best so they can be married and  baptized. 

I am excited also to see how the new communications for missionaries will change the work here. I can use chat, phone calls and video calls to talk with my family now. Pretty exciting!

Well we will have more news next week!

Elder Cloward

¿Como está vecino? (How are you neighbor?)

Hola todos!

We had a week of success and sadness. Firstly, nobody new came to church this week, so that was kind of sad, and we are going to have to postpone the date of Julian for another time, when his family is also ready to be baptized so they can all do it together.

But we found 2 families this week, and they are married!!! What makes things better is that they are from Venezuela, and the people from Venezuela are really humble and really smart. Venezuela is passing through some really difficult moments and they may even have a civil war. The citizens there can´t get food and when they can, it is really expensive. So most of them have moved to other countries in search for work and better lives. They come here to Ecuador with really big titles but have to work selling fast food or washing cars. One of the families we found this week is in that situation. The father is a chemical engineer and the mother an accountant but they sell  french fries and sausages and wash cars here in Ecuador. It is really hard, but it helps them to be receptive to what we teach. They are amazing people.

The title refers to the way people greet in the street here. They say vecino (neighbor) a lot. Or sometimes they shorten it, "veci" It reminds me of the TV shows my sister Anatolia watches like Daniel Tiger and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. 

It´s a beautiful day in the neighborhood a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine, could you be mine, won´t you be my neighbor. Even the people call me neighbor sometimes. =P

For our preparation day, we spent the afternoon cooking pollo a la coca-cola, or chicken cooked in coca-cola. It turned out really good. I´ll send a picture.

I want to leave with a spiritual thought. 2 Nephi 25: 23 says 

23 For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. 

As missionaries we labor diligently to preach so that all people can know that when life gets hard, we can turn to Christ and he can make up the difference. I love this verse.

Elder Cloward 

Un bautismo, y la pelea entre éxito y fallo.

Hola todos!

This week was really great, most of all because we had a baptism! The baptismal service for the Mora family was beautiful. Especially the testimony of Yenifer, the wife of the family. She said, "The first time the missionaries talked to us a year ago, I felt weird and out of place. But this time something felt different. Something felt right. I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true"

The one year old daughter of the Mora family was asleep during the entire baptismal service. =P

I´m pretty sure when she said that I smiled bigger than anyone in the room, except maybe my companion =P. 

Also we set Julian, the son of Jonatan and Oriana, on a baptismal date. His parents can´t be baptized yet because they need to get married. But if Julian gets baptized he will help them to want it even more in their lives. When we shared the doctrine of baptisms for the dead with them, they were sooo excited to hear that they could be baptized for and see their ancestors again. They are currently working to get some papers here to Ecuador so they can get married here. How exciting!

We´ve been working a bit with a few other families, but we aren´t seeing too much progress. We are going to work hard to find a lot more people this week.

This week we had interviews with the mission presidente. He helped me realize that Satan had been controlling a lot of my thoughts. Satan has been making me feel really down. I tend to be self critical, especially when it comes to my own obedience. With that Satan has made me feel like I´m not a very successful missionary, and that has spread to other problems. Something really important that my presidente said is that our mistakes and weaknesses don´t define us. We are all children of God with infinite worth. When my mission presidente sees me he doesn´t see a struggling young man with lots of problems. He see´s a wonderful missionary that is trying to do what is right. That helps me out a lot. If you are feeling down, I would invite you to remember who God thinks you are, and keep working to be more like he wants you to be. 

Nos vemos!

Elder Cloward