Week 43

Recently in Ecuador,

Blue Gatorade was out for like two weeks, but now it´s gone :(

We had conferences from Elder Uceda of the Seventy. We were all super nervous that he was going to be harsh on us because all of our leaders told us that we had to be prepared and memorize all of this stuff, but in the end, he turned out to be a really nice guy. We all learned a lot from him. Normally, we have to talk to 10 new people every day. Knocking doors, in taxis, on the street or however. But Elder Uceda said that we need to start focusing on getting referrals if we want to really find people that progress. Elder Walker and I put it in practice last week, but so far it hasn´t gone too hot as far as finding investigators. Though we did get like 3x the referrals we normally get.

One of our investigators (Vicente 60 yrs old) is preparing for baptism for the 27th of June. He still hasn´t had a true conversion, but he is keeping a lot of the commitments we extend him.

This taxi driver (Milton 29 yrs old) has been reading A TON in the Book of Mormon. We´ve been seeing him almost every day. He showed enough faith to keep the Sabbath Day two Sundays ago, but he didn´t go last Sunday. He really wants to know if Christ´s church is true, but he has a lot of doubts.

Elder Walker and I are going to make this last week together count.
Love you guys, thank you for your emails and for your letters.

Week 42 - Photos

No letter this week, just some great photos.

Week 41 - Invasions

This week we went and did invasions (where all of the missionaries in the Zone go and contact) in other missionaries´areas. We went to my old area, and another area that I´ve never worked in here in Manta. It went good, we were able to help them a lot. Also, the assistants had a sleep over at our house for two nights because President Dennis had some business to take care of here in Manta, and the Assistants wanted to work in some of the missionaries´ areas.

We had some new people that we found go to church, so we´re going to keep working with them to see if they´ll progress. My companion and I made this chart with ALL of the members that can accompany us and their schedules. It helped us a lot. We have really been bugging everyone we possibly can so that we always have a member to teach with us. It helps with fellowshipping the investigators, and helping them go to church.

We´ve been teaching this really interesting guy named Milton. He was a referral. He picked up the missionaries from another area in his taxi, and they got talking and said we could visit them. He was really intrigued when we taught him about the Book of Mormon. He´s actually really prepared. Every time we teach him, it´s like we´re teaching him things that he´s always wanted to know, but never knew where to find the answers. His wife and kids are pretty cool, too. We´re doing everything we possibly can to get him to church this week.

And well, I´m doing fine. I haven´t gotten sick. We had really good food this week. And, yeah.

Elder Najera

Week 39- Photos

All is well in Manta

Here are the Photos I promised last week.

Week 38

Okay, real quick!

This week has been great, we have great investigators that are really progressing. Transfers have come and gone, Elder Walker and I are still together.

This week we get to Skype home for mother´s day :D I´m working hard, and enjoying being here :)

Love you all! I´ll send tons of photos next week.

Week 36

Veronica didn´t get baptized. She did get home the day before her baptism, but she was super sick with Chikungunya (A virus that´s been spreading like wildfire in Ecuador). We gave her a health blessing and she got better, but she still didn´t get baptized the next day because her sisters own the house that she lives in right now, and they said that if she gets baptized, they´ll kick her and her child out of the house. So yeah. She said that she wants to be clean of her sins eventually. We´re pretty positive that if she gets an answer that the Book of Mormon is true, she won´t let those other doubts get in the way of her goal. We´re going to be passing by a lot to help her take those steps to true conversion.

Israel got an answer to the Book of Mormon and wants to be baptized on May 9th. He´s so humble, and he really wants to turn his life around. And we have another investigator named Alex who´s read more than half of Gospel principles and is currently in the repentance process :) He´s really cool too, we just have to help him a lot.

Elder Walker and I are doing fantastic. His health is much better, and we were really blessed this week. We thought that we were going to end the week with 1 new investigator and only Alex at church, but the Lord put in his part and three new investigators showed up and stayed for the three hours. They are all really good college friends, but none of them live together or are related. We pulled them aside the third hour of church and answered a lot of their questions. They said that a lot of bad things happened to them, and they saw online that members of the church are usually happy people, and they wanted to be happy.

Love,

Elder Nájera

Week 35

When traveling to a third world country, don´t trust the internet cafes with your memory cards. Luckily, I only lost about 30 photos, but it was still pretty depressing. Besides that, this week has been really annoying, but really rewarding.

We have been teaching Veronica everything as fast as we possibly can so that she could be baptized this Saturday. She´s got all of the lessons, and she´s had her interview. She´s just really stressed out and uncertain because her family and friends are giving her a hard time with the whole Catholic thing. She´s also been able to give up coffee for a whole week now! But she´s had a headache all week because of her addiction. We´re praying so much. The cherry on top of it all is that she went on vacation today, and won´t be back until Friday. So that´s just nice. But we´ve been seeing a lot of blessings as well.

We´ve found a new less-active family, and they went to all the conference sessions, and church this Sunday. The only problem there is that they give us a lot of food when we go over, haha.  Also, my companion, Elder Walker, is sick. We couldn´t leave the house yesterday. This week´s been rough, but we´ve found some great people to teach, so I know this week´s going to be great :)

Elder Najera